COMBING THE ROOTS PODCAST
By Ally Henny
The Secret Origins of Ally Henny
Season 1, Episode 1
April 18, 2019
TRANSCRIPT
[MUSICAL INTRODUCTION]
HENNY: This is Ally Henny and you’re listening to “Combing the Roots,” powered by The Witness – A Black Christian Collective. Who am I? Why do I have a podcast? And why should you keep listening to it? The answers to these and many more questions, coming up. Stay tuned!
[MUSIC]
HENNY: Hey, I am so happy that you’re listening to “Combing the Roots.” It blows my mind that people would download a podcast of me talking about things, and would want to listen to it. And even hearing, reading, that the title is “The Secret Origins of Ally Henny,” that you would even care enough about who I am and knowing more about me, that you would download this and listen to this. I am so excited to be on this journey with you. Maybe you’re coming from my Facebook page; maybe you’re somebody who has been following my Facebook page for a while. I have a page on Facebook, a writer’s page, that has over 20,000 followers. I know that a lot of you who are listening to this probably are from that audience. So I want to thank you for supporting my work, and for listening to me, and for downloading this podcast. I’m just blown away that you would even do that, and I thank you so much for being here.
And some of you guys maybe have come from Instagram. I will post some stuff from my Facebook feed and from my Twitter feed onto Instagram; and then I also post pictures and memes, and different screenshots of different things, or whatever. And so I do have a following there, and people like my stuff. And maybe you are coming to this podcast because you’ve heard about it on Instagram; or maybe you’re coming from Twitter, and you’ve seen me on Twitter, and you’ve seen my hot mess of a Twitter feed; and you’ve said, “Hey, I want to walk with her.” And so you’re here, you’ve heard about the podcast, and you’ve said, “OK, I’m here, I’m coming in, I’m listening to it.”
I don’t know, maybe you’ve heard about my podcast from other friends, from other people who follow me on other channels, and from hearing other people promote my podcast. I want to thank you for being here. I want to thank you for listening to this. My friends and family who know me, people who know me in real life, if you’re listening to this: awesome, I’m so glad that you’re out here. And really, that group of people – friends, family, people who know me, people who are my friends on Facebook and have known me through the internet and stuff for years – y’all, I’m here and I’m doing this because y’all saw fit to support me in the early days and in sharing my posts on Facebook, in retweeting my stuff. I wouldn’t be here. So those friends, family, colleagues from school, I wouldn’t be here without this, and I don’t take that lightly.
But you’re not here to kind of hear a big Academy Awards speech. You want to know my business. And I know that you want to know my business because you are listening to a podcast that has the title of “The Secret Origins of Ally Henny.” I kind of feel like that this podcast, that this particular episode, is kind of just almost a joke, in a way. My producer came up with this title. We were just joking around, passing around ideas and stuff, and so he like typed this out on the screen that we were working from, and I was like, “OK, yeah, I guess we can do that. That sounds really cool.”
It sounds way more cool and way more polished than what I really am, so I feel like it’s like this big joke. Because: Origins. First of all, I don’t have any secret origins. Like, I’m just not that interesting of a person at all. And I feel like that people are always, “Oh, you’re so interesting. Oh, you do so many interesting things.” I’m like, well, what you see on social media – I’m not somebody that – I’m legitimately – like, on social media, I’m legitimately who I am. I don’t walk around fakin’ da funk. I hate that, when people walk around fakin’ da funk, acting like they something they’re not. Like, I hate that. So what you see is legitimately who I am, and it’s legitimately the things that I’m doing. But I am so uninteresting. Because – I do post. I guess if you’re friends with me on my personal Facebook page, I do post – you can follow me, and that. But a lot of more of my posts are private and stuff, now. But if you’re somebody who knows me from there, I post mundane stuff, like, all the time. Because I feel like that people always post, you know, their best, and I’m like, I post just random stuff that happens to me and random things that I think. But I am such an uninteresting person that it seems weird that I would have this whole time that I’m going to sit here and talk, and tell you about myself.
But you’re here because you want to know my business. So I guess I’m going to tell you a little bit of my business. So. I am a wife and a mother of two – a wife, comma, and a mother of two. I guess you wouldn’t put a comma there. But you get the picture: it’s that I am a wife, I’m married to one man; and a mother of two, as in I have two children. Because I feel like saying “I’m a wife and mother of two” is like, “Oh, you mean like you’re a wife to two people?” Like, no, I’m not. I’m not – that’s not me. That’s a different podcast. But anyway, in case you haven’t been able to hear in like the last 45 seconds, two minutes, I am also really goofy. And the people who love me, love me and they put up with my goofiness, because I tend to say things – and sometimes I don’t, like, try to be funny, but people think that I’m funny, and I don’t understand that. Because like I’ll say stuff – like, my mom is like the worst about this. She’ll be like, “Oh, you’re so funny,” or, “Oh, you’re so cute” – and I’m like, “I wasn’t being funny.” Like, I’m being serious about this. But I don’t know – so maybe you’ll see the same qualities in me as my family and friends and stuff do. And I hope that you do, because I have some pretty good friends and some pretty good family that stick around and that want to be around me. So I guess I’m not too bad of a person.
But I’m a very boring person. I’m very introverted. And a lot of people are often surprised to hear that – especially people that kind of know me and interact with me in real life. It’s that I am very introverted. And not only being very introverted, I’m very, very, very, painfully shy. Like, painfully, painfully, painfully shy. But I grew up in a family of extroverts. My mom is very much an extrovert, and I grew up in a family that’s very boisterous and – all except for maybe one or two people in my family – are extroverts. And so, growing up around extroverts, I can approximate extroversion. And if you’re into Myers-Briggs, my Myers-Briggs type is INFJ. I’m an INFJ, and yeah, that probably tells you – if you know about Myers-Briggs, that tells you everything that you need to know about me.
But I’m very introverted, so I feel like, besides the stuff I do on social media, that’s like, my life. Because I don’t go anywhere and I don’t do anything except for post on social media. And now that I’m in school, I read books, and I watch TV shows – and I tend to watch the same TV shows over and over again. And that is – I’ve been married for over 14 years, and that is one – my husband and I have an awesome marriage, but that is probably one point of contention in our marriage, is that I will watch the same shows over and over again. And so, sometimes, like he’ll want to watch TV with me, like that’s something that we can kind of do together – and especially while I’m in school, while I’m studying and stuff, that’s something I can – I can have a TV show on, and we can spend time together, and I can also be studying. And so I kind of multitask in that respect. But I’m very picky about what’s on the TV. Because if it’s a new show, if it’s something that I’ve never seen before, then I get distracted by it. And so I want to watch shows that we’ve watched before. And my husband just – he picks on me anyway, because for like the first how-many-ever months; it was well over a year, if I’m honest with myself; it was well over a year of my pregnancy with my oldest, and then through like – I guess this probably would have been, gosh, a year or two years, I don’t remember; it was a lot of time – but I watched “Downton Abbey” over and over and over again, on repeat. And he was just like, he would come home from work and he’s like, “You’re still watching ‘Downton Abbey.’” And I was like, “Yes, I’m watching ‘Downton Abbey.’” And we’d go to bed, and “Downton Abbey” would be on the TV, and he’s like, “You’re still watching ‘Downton Abbey.’” And I’m like, “Yes, I’m watching ‘Downton Abbey,’ because that’s what I do.”
So then I switched from “Downton Abbey” to “The West Wing,” so now I watch “The West Wing” pretty much on repeat. Occasionally I’ve thrown “The Golden Girls” in there, in the last few weeks. And I do have a few other shows that I watch. But I don’t have a lot of time to watch TV. To actually watch new shows on TV, I don’t really have a lot of time for that. I like the comfort of knowing what’s going to happen, and kind of having the drone of something that is predictable. I know what’s going to happen, so I’m not going to get distracted and get enthralled by it, and get distracted and sabotage myself from my schoolwork.
So that’s what I do, is watch TV; and I don’t have the TV on a whole lot, even. But I watch TV, and go to school, and post on social media; and that’s pretty much my life. But you’re here to know a little bit more about me than that, I guess. I suppose you want to know more about me. And so we’ll get into more of my personal life, get more into more of my business, after the break.
[MUSIC]
HENNY: And we’re back, and you’re listening to “The Secret Origins of Ally Henny,” which – if you were listening at all during the last section, you realize just how much of a farce that is. I am totally uninteresting as a person. But I’m here, I’m telling you about myself, and I think it’s so important whenever you listen to a podcast, that you are able to kind of get these windows into people’s lives. Because it’s really easy to just kind of listen to something, you’re kind of listening to something that’s on a topic but not really getting to know the person. And I think that especially, you know, I’m on social media a lot, and there’s this aspect where like you know me, you’ve seen me, you hear my voice in a way; but you don’t really get to know me. And so I’m here, just kind of sharing about myself and sharing my origins – which are not secret at all, and they’re not really – I feel like saying they’re secret, somehow, is like somehow it’s interesting. It’s not really a secret, nor is it really interesting. But I’ll tell you a little bit about myself.
I grew up in rural Missouri. I grew up in a town that barely, I think, had 10,000, when I was in high school. But it was between 8 and 10,000 people. So it was very small. And it was a very white context. Where I grew up is Crest Noticeably White. It is more than probably 95% white. It’s very white. But even within that, there was a black community, and the church that my family attended. And I grew up in my family, I grew up in a black home, grew up with black extended family, grew up engaging with the world through a black lens – which has been very valuable for me. Because even growing up in a context that is so white, it’s possible for people to grow up – sometimes whenever you have these contexts that are extremely white, it can be very hard at times for minorities to really be able to view the world through their minority lens. Because white normativity is just the way that whiteness works, is that it can kind of dominate and predominate everything.
I was very fortunate in that my mom was very invested in making sure that I knew about my history. And in my family, being in my family and having a big family and being in touch with my culture, that was something that always has been very nourishing to me. Being involved with a black church, being connected with black churches in my lifetime, that’s something that I realize now, I didn’t really appreciate it when I was younger; but as I’ve gotten older, I realize the value in that. And it’s something that I’m so thankful for. Because it really grounded me in my blackness. So I grew up grounded in my blackness, within a sea of whiteness.
Like I said, this town was way over 90% white. And so most of the time, I was in a context where I was the only one. The weird thing about white normativity is the root thing about being in a minority, where you’re in it, you’re a superminority. Not just like a minority. Because, I mean, you know, numerically – at least up until like 2040 or 2050 – people of color are a minority. And so we’re numerically a smaller population. And black people are even numerically smaller than some other populations. And so being a numerical minority is one thing in kind of the grand scheme of things.
But whenever that is enacted – whenever you’re in a context that there is, like, very few people who look like you, and there is a community – because I had a community, but it wasn’t like – because of growing up in a rural town, it wasn’t like I went to a school that was like “the black school.” The school that I went to, everybody went to, because it was a small town. So it wasn’t like, “Oh, I live in the black part of town.” Yeah, there was a black part of town – there definitely were some neighborhoods and some streets and stuff that were black parts of town – but it wasn’t like, “Oh, I live in the black part of town, I go to the black school and I go to the black high school.” I feel like that’s what happens a lot in urban contexts; but in a rural context, it’s everybody together. And it’s everybody kind of having to learn how to live together. And usually what “learning how to live together” means is that minorities assimilate. And so, to be in a context where I didn’t feel like I had to assimilate, where I was rooted and grounded in who I am as a black person, I’m super thankful for that. Because I don’t know – I won’t call it rare, because I don’t think I’m a unicorn, but it’s something that I’m very thankful for, as I’ve encountered more people who have come up in contexts similar to me, that don’t have that, that didn’t have that – that their family was very much invested in assimilation. And I’m happy that my family wasn’t invested in assimilation. That’s something that was very beneficial to me, I think.
So I always kind of had this weird understanding of reality that I’m a black person and I’m carrying my blackness into this space. I learned from a very young age how to code switch, literally how to code switch. My mom, who is a speech pathologist, says that no, we do not speak African-American vernacular English; but speaking, I guess, the regional dialect and slang that I grew up with, and not true African-American English – whatever it was that I grew up speaking, however I grew up talking, realizing that there are certain things that I could say, a turn of phrase that the white people wouldn’t understand. So I had to learn how to communicate differently, and learned how to kind of navigate. Even with racial things, I learned very early that there were certain things you couldn’t say, because people would get offended, because of white fragility.
So I learned about white fragility at an early age. I just learned all these things about the world and just was very aware of how that world was. And as I grew, and I went to a college that was also in a predominantly white city – and it was predominantly white, but there was a little bit more diversity because there were people from some of the larger cities that came into this university. So being around a lot more black people, and even, we had a very large international student population – so being able to be around other students of color was great. I had a lot of different friends who were not only black, but even from different parts of the world. I would have friends who were international students, from other parts of the world. So that was a really enriching experience for me.
But I learned how to navigate, and I learned how to code switch. So I have found myself – even though I’m somebody that I’m rooted in my blackness – I found myself in these contexts often, where I’ve had to code switch. And I’ve had to learn how to carry my blackness. And there’s a thing about code switching, like, “Well, is that respectability politics?”, etc., etc. I don’t know, and that’s a whole other broadcast. I find myself code switching less, now. For me, code switching wasn’t a choice of respectability, it was a matter of survival and success. And being able to survive, and being able to achieve and thrive in my situation. And I understand people who are all, “Well, I’m not code switching, I’m just whatever,” and I get that. And that’s probably something that I need to unpack on a different podcast. Because there’s so much, even to that.
All of that to say that as I’ve learned and as I’ve grown and as I’ve interacted with the world, I’ve always been acutely aware of race and acutely aware of the implications of race. I’ve always been acutely aware of racism, and experiencing things differently because of my race. There are so many stories I could tell that I won’t go into.
But growing up in that rural context definitely affected me. It definitely shaped who I am. And I’m not saying that it affected me for better or for worse; it just is what it is. It shaped my worldview; it shaped my outlook, in a lot of ways. And I’m even able to go back and think about some of that experience and think about who I am and how that experience shaped me. And I think that perhaps it even informs my race work, a little bit, because I understand white culture in a way – I’ve had access to white culture in a way – not just because of being married to a white person, but because of being a superminority in spaces, I’ve had access to white culture that a lot of minorities don’t get. And they don’t get it because of segregation; they don’t get it because what black people – sure the city is diverse, but all the black people are shoved off into a certain area of the city. They end up in all the same middle schools and high schools and elementary schools. And even though they’re having to learn how to navigate the majority culture, is even learning how to do that, in some ways, I think, in more of a cocoon of blackness, as opposed to just being out there, and being the only one.
And I don’t say that to pit the experiences against one another, because that’s not what it is. This ain’t the Impression Olympics. It’s just the truth of the matter. So I think that where I started in a lot of my race work was a lot of what people call bridge building: I noticed, yeah, there are these divides here, and some of these divides exist because we don’t understand one another’s culture. Or even better stated, white people don’t understand black people’s culture. White people don’t understand that black people have cultural differences. So I really shouldn’t say we don’t understand one another’s cultures; that’s really not true. It’s more so, the dominant culture refusing to acknowledge or understand that there are other cultures that are present within the United States. So I feel like a lot of tensions, really even pre-2014, pre-Ferguson, pre- all of that – some of the tensions that existed, exist because it’s like – whenever I say that, some of the tensions that existed, I think of some of the cultural things like, “Why do you talk this way?” or “Why do you listen to this kind of music? Why do you wear your clothes that way?” – that type of stuff. That kind of just, ignorance, I guess is maybe what I should say. There’s so many – racism has always been a thing. But the ignorance is ignorance of cultural differences.
So I kind of started my race work – and it wasn’t really work; I wasn’t really concertedly doing anything; I would notice there would be tensions that would arise about certain things. Like Paula Deen, you found out she was racist and said a whole bunch of stuff – just pointing out, yo, this is culturally insensitive, like yo, this is racist. This is why this is a thing. This is why people are mad about that. Because clearly you don’t understand why people don’t want to see a person like, beating up an effigy of Barack Obama. We have to explain why that would be wrong for that to be done at the Missouri State Fair or something. Something of that nature happened at the Missouri State Fair, and it was really like, wow, you guys really don’t get why that’s a problem?
And so I started being that person that sort of was like explaining about black people to white people. And my work has shifted. I do think there’s kind of a level, like being black-ish and explaining blackness to white people, because white people don’t get it. But I realized that white people don’t want to get it, and a lot of white people just want to be racist, and they just want to say and do whatever they want to do, and without any regard for how it might affect other people. Then whenever you throw racism on top of that, because white culture is just so individualistic, and it’s just kind of like “Let me just do my thing” – and people are, “OK, let’s care about others,” but it’s done in a way that still is very individualistic. So what I realized is that me, just sitting here, being like the Negro Whisperer for people, like, that wasn’t helping. I mean, it was helping, in some ways, because I think legitimately people don’t know, in their ignorance. And the cure for ignorance is knowledge. You can cure people’s ignorance.
But I realized there’s more to it than that. I can sit here and cure people’s ignorance with knowledge, but people are actually choosing to still be just stupid. At that point, it’s not ignorance, “I don’t know anything” – it’s just stupidity, and like “I am just going to choose to be the way I want to be.” I realized no, I’ve got to push back against this.
And so I’ve started in this work of – and it really is work – I started in this work of speaking out against racism. So in the next segment I’m going to talk about that more, and talk about what this podcast is and why we’re here.
[MUSIC]
HENNY: And we’re back with Part 3 of The Secret Origins of Ally Henny, or I guess the Not-So-Secret Origins and the Not-Very-Interesting or anything origins, but we still shared about it. And so now I’m going to talk a little bit more about why I’m in race work, and talk about what this podcast is, and what this podcast is for and what I hope for it to be.
I entered into race work – I mean, I’ve always spoken about racism, I’ve always been involved in race issues and the issue of race just by virtue of my upbringing. But being involved in race work and doing it as a concerted effort, it started for me in 2014. At that point, during the Ferguson uprising, my oldest was an infant; and as I saw Ferguson, as I saw all that happening – and for me, I was living in Virginia at the time, so this was all, but it hit close to home, because it was in Missouri, so it very much hit close to home. And seeing just the ugly response from white people about this issue on Ferguson, and seeing the ugly response even from Christian white people, from people who I had gone to church with, and whose kids I had pastored – just this ugliness that arose, it’s like it bubbled up to the surface. Every person’s internalized racism just bubbled up. It was always under the surface, anyway, like, whenever I really think about and process the past, but it just really came to fruition, and came out in a way that was disturbing and that was hurtful, and it was all sorts of different things.
And as I sat there with my infant, holding my infant, realizing that one day she was going to grow up and she was going to read about the things that we were watching live on TV happen, that she was going to have questions. Because she would probably – if she was anything like me – see the year and do the math, and realize, “Oh, 2014, that was the year I was born” – and do the math, and figure out how old I was, and figure out how old her dad was, and realize that we were alive and we were adults then. And she would wonder, and my grandchildren would wonder: “Well, you were alive back then. What did you do? You were alive during this new civil rights movement. What did you do? Were you part of it? Did you demonstrate? Did you march? What did you do?” And I realized that I couldn’t tell my kids I didn’t do anything. I realized I couldn’t tell my kids, I couldn’t tell my grandchildren, that I just had existed during this time and had just sat back in this bubble of neutrality and just sort of let all these things pass me by, and it happened and I was just going to be happy, and just going to kind of smile and push into whiteness and assimilate. I just realized I couldn’t do that.
And so I started speaking out on my personal Facebook page, and I started posting about race. I started talking in a much more concerted way than I had in the past, because I definitely had always – that had always been a perennial topic in my Facebook feed, but I dug into talking about it in a concerted way, and just went at it. And I had a lot of controversy, a lot of people, a lot of hurt feelings; a lot of people unfollowed me, a lot of people unfriended me. It has caused tension in personal relationships, but I insisted on building a better world for my children. So that’s what I’ve done.
And so as this has sort of snowballed, I had done a couple of public events, had done some things, I realized it would probably be good for me to have a Facebook page. So I created a Facebook page, created a writer’s page, and just thought, I’m going to put my thoughts and stuff here. With Facebook pages, you have to engage with them – you have to keep posting stuff – so that it keeps popping up on people’s feed, and if it’s relevant to people, they keep engaging with it. And so before I knew it, I started my Facebook page; and then within six months, I had 10,000 people. And within a year, I had 20,000 people that liked my Facebook page. And so this has snowballed into this opportunity.
One of the things that opened up this opportunity was a post – or a tweet, rather – that I had, that went a little bit viral. Maybe you saw it, and maybe that’s you started following me. It was a tweet about the president, about people believing the president, but then not believing black people whenever they experienced racism. If you follow me on Twitter, you can see it; it’s my pinned post. And I’ve had a few other posts that have gotten a lot of traction since then.
But I realized I needed to speak about this. I felt compelled to speak about this issue. And so, as I felt compelled to speak about this issue, that’s what I’ve done. So this podcast exists out of that. After I had my tweet go viral, I contacted my friends at The Witness, and they had me on. My friends at The Witness actually, they contacted me about being on their podcast. But I had contacted them, because I had floated the idea to them of potentially doing a podcast. I had another idea for a podcast, and they were like, “OK, let’s see.” So I booked an interview on “Pass the Mic,” and then they invited me to do a podcast, invited me to become part of their team. And it’s sort of, as they say, I guess, the rest is history!
But I’m here because I want to make the world a better place. I want to make the world a better place for my children. And so that’s why I’m here, and this podcast. That’s why this podcast is here. But the podcast is more than just teaching people about racism. This podcast isn’t here to teach, in the sense that I’m not here to – I’m going to say this very carefully – I want for the majority culture, the white audience, people in my audience who are white, I want you to gain from this and to benefit from this; but I’m not creating this for you. I hope that you benefit from it. I’m creating this for black women who are in places and spaces – whether it be work, whether it be their place of worship, whether it be their neighborhood, whatever it is, wherever they’re at – because no matter how black you are and how much entrenched in blackness you can be, you’re always going to be a minority in some space. I think it’s hard at this point in time to really be in spaces that are black, no matter what. So I feel like for y’all, for black women, there needs to be a place that’s safe, where somebody can speak to your existence.
And that’s why I’m here, is to speak to you and your existence; but then also allow you to speak through me. And in you speaking through me, you have something that gives you language, that empowers you to go out and make a difference in your sphere. That’s why I’m here.
I’m doing this work for myself because I want to overcome. There’s a verse in the Bible that talks about how we can overcome by our testimony, and I’ll get to why I quoted the Bible here in a second. But I want to overcome the enemy of white supremacy. I want to overcome that. So I see that the vehicle for that is by telling the truth, by living in my truth – my lower-case “T” truth. Living in that truth, and speaking to that truth, and doing that, hoping just to elevate and empower black women.
I hope that as you listen to this podcast, that you feel empowered to speak truth, and that you feel empowered – that I’m giving you languages, and I’m helping you to name your experiences. Because that’s one of the things that has been the most beneficial to me. The most beneficial to me, in doing this work, has been whenever somebody has said, “This is what your experience has been,” and somebody names that for you. And so that’s what I hope to do. It’s not to speak for you, not to speak over you, but to say, like, “Black Woman, I see you. I see you, and you are wonderful, and you are fearfully and wonderfully made. I see you and hear you and know your experience. And so I’m out here.”
So if you’re able to share my podcast, if you’re able to share episodes with people in your world, and it helps change your world, then that’s awesome. Because that’s why I’m here. And so if you’re a white ally who’s listening to this, I’m hoping that you hear what I’m saying – even though I’m speaking to these black women out here, I hope that you hear what I’m saying, and that you take something away, that you’re able to go and you’re able to work on yourself, and that you’re able to work on the world around you.
And so just a note, as I close here, about my ethics and about my worldview. I’m a Christian minister. Christianity doesn’t really have a very good name in America right now, because there’s a lot of people giving Christianity a bad name. Really, I guess, Christians have always given ourselves a bad name at different points in history, but that’s a different point. This is not a preaching podcast. And I’ve talked about being in seminary, and I quoted a Scripture. You may or may not have realized that I quoted a Scripture a few minutes ago. And that’s what informs my worldview. And I don’t apologize for that. And I realize that not everybody who listens to my podcast is a Christian, or really wants to have anything to do with Christianity. Or you might be a person of another faith. And I definitely respect that.
And so this isn’t a preaching podcast. This isn’t something that I’m going to open up the Bible and give you Bible study every week. I know, I always kind of hesitate when I tell people that I’m a minister, or that I’m in school to for how to become a minister. I always, like, hesitate to say that – not because I’m ashamed, but because it often kind of changes the dynamic with people. But I’m here, and that’s what my worldview is. But like I said, this isn’t a preaching podcast. This isn’t a Christian podcast where I’m going to sit here and tell you how much you need to be saved. I’m not trying to get you saved – at least, not “get you saved” in terms of joining Christianity. Because, what you do with your spiritual life, you have the agency to make that decision.
I’m here to get you saved from white supremacy. I’m here to help that. So I guess if I’m evangelizing or preaching anything, it’s that white supremacy is bad. But the reason why I say that – the reason that the source, my source, is the teachings of Jesus Christ. It’s my Christian worldview and ethics. And so there’ll be times whenever that comes out. So I hope that you are able, even as you listen to that, that you don’t feel like you’re preached to, and you don’t feel like somebody’s trying to convert you to their religion. But that you are able to see even a different expression of Christianity; and that maybe you would be able to, even if you don’t want to become a Christian, maybe you would have a more favorable view of at least some of us.
And so that’s why I’m here. And that’s what this podcast – what I hope to do with it. And I hope that you will continue to listen. See you later.
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“Combing the Roots” is powered by The Witness – A Black Christian Collective. Special thanks to executive producers Tyler Burns and Beau York. Catch up with what I’m doing on these internet streets by visiting allyhenny.com. There you’ll be able to connect to my Twitter feed, my Instagram, and my Facebook writer’s page. I’m your host, Ally Henny. Peace.
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Ally Henny 