- Just ahead on Black Issues Forum, a big weekend in June as we celebrate Juneteenth and father's day with fun, but also some important conversations.

Stay with us.

[upbeat music] ♪ Welcome to Black Issues Forum, I'm Deborah Holt Noel.

Even though Juneteenth has long been celebrated by many black families, its status as a national holiday means it's a day for all Americans.

The North Carolina Museum of Art has taken steps to make it inclusive with a major concert headlined by celebrity gospel artists and music legends, like Hezekiah Walker and Fred Hammond.

It will be quite the celebration.

But right now I want to welcome the Museum's Director of Performing Arts and Film, Moses T. Alexander Greene.

So happy to have you with us.

- Hi, thank you so much, Deborah.

- Moses, interestingly enough, as Juneteenth comes into its own as a national holiday, it's also drawing some of the attention that some think distracts from it as a holiday.

For example, there was a lot of criticism on Twitter when Walmart released their celebration edition of Juneteenth products that included a red velvet ice cream and festive pan-African colored plates.

So I just wanted to ask you, how do you think Juneteenth should be recognized?

- Wonderful question.

I think that Juneteenth should be recognized in the very spirit of the holiday.

The spirit of the holiday is not about exploitation, it's freedom from exploitation.

The spirit of the holiday is not about commodifying one's identity, it's freedom from all of that.

So I think that Juneteenth should be celebrated and honored as a teachable moment of what freedom looks like, of what one's being and one's identity looks like.

And I will just say, that's more than what ice cream can present, and that is more than good branding.

It is the lived experiences of a people, and it is also a time for acknowledgement of who America once was and what it can be.

So that's the way that I think that it should be celebrated.

- And how have you incorporated that into your vision for commemorating Juneteenth at the North Carolina Museum of Art?

- Well, last year we had Sweet Honey in the Rock and I wanted them in concert just because of their social justice lens.

And we also had a series of teachings, Dr.

Crystal Sanders from Duke.

And we wanted people to be educated.

This year, I wanted us to have the sound of freedom.

And so we're gonna with this phenomenal gospel concert of Grammy, Stellar and Dove award-winning artist, singing music of freedom.

And then the next night we are going to show the Oscar winning documentary Summer of Soul, that Questlove just won the Oscar for, and we're gonna have this dance party that literally celebrates the iconic fashions of the 1960s and the 1970s, which is the background, the landscape of Summer of Soul.

And we have K97's Brian Dawson coming.

So literally, it's a celebration, again, of the lived experiences of people, of black people, of African diasporic people.

And it is seen in their fashions and in their music and in their movements and in their being.

- Sounds very colorful and like a lot of fun.

How important would you say it is to bring in a more diverse audience to the museum's visitor community and how has that effort sort of improved the visitor experience for everyone?

- Well, I think that in these times, I think that that is our number one job.

And it is not just diversity, Deborah, it is that we are cultivating belonging.

Dr. Anita Sands says that belonging is a much more powerful force in any diversity and equity and inclusion initiative.

So when people come to the museum, do they feel seen?

Do they see themselves in the art?

And if they don't, being the Director of Performing Arts and Film, I get a chance to bring in the films and the music and the movement and the theater through which they can see a little bit more of their experiences.

So I think that that is our number one job.

- And how would you say that you've been able to, you know, you talk about lived experience as a black man.

How have you been able to incorporate that lived experience into the rich overall visitor experience that anyone could connect to at the Museum of Art?

- I wanna be humble, but I think I interrogate the system to make sure that we are seeing more people of all identities, of all cultures at the museum in our programming.

And so whether it is elevating, I created The Freedom Seder.

The Freedom Seder, it honored our Judaic art gallery, but it also anchored that in the civil rights movement.

And so we got a chance to see that bridge.

I also started NCMA Groove, the joy of soul and the joy of Latinx music.

And it literally is four and a half hours of nothing but the best in [Moses speaking Spanish].

And literally, people can come and they can see, if you are of Latinx heritage, you just get a chance to hear what home feels like.

And I think in little small ways we are doing it, we're doing it every day with NCMA Jukebox, where some days I'm playing eighties music, then some days I'm playing sixties Motown, other days I'm playing classical.

So literally, we are expanding what art and what the performing arts feel like and are in very meaningful ways that represent all cultures.

And I think that performing arts and film does that, I'm not gonna say the easiest because it all has to be intentional, but I think that I have a major role.

I think that my department has a major role in expanding that sense of belonging and becoming and helping the museum to become a place of joy for all of our visitors.

- And what is the NCMA Jukebox?

What is that?

- NCMA Jukebox, it's every day from 11 to three.

And it's a curated playlist where we literally, if you're coming and you're walking in the park, you can just hear music.

And the idea came, I took this position in the beginning of the pandemic.

I was in the building by myself many days, and I think, Deborah, the best quote came from a woman that said NCMA's Jukebox pierces the COVID silence that the world had been under at that time.

So imagine just coming in for four hours, you're hearing the jazz of Coltrane and Ella, or you are hearing 1980s ABBA playing, you're hearing some rock, you're hearing some Bon Jovi, and music is universal.

And so music brings you back to a place that you remember where you were in high school, or you remember seeing your parents dance to something like that, and it just makes people feel alive.

And I think that is what Performing Arts and Film specifically does.

Whereas sometimes the visual art in our works in our collection for some, they may not be able to understand that.

Well, if I can bring dance, and that's part of my job, to activate the galleries with dance and theater and music and film.

Well, someone who may not understand this one piece, if I bring Carolina Ballet and they activate and they create a dance based on Diana and Actaeon, then for that kind of learner, they understand what the piece is about.

That is what we're doing.

- Well, it sounds like some really fun things, interesting and exciting things that you're doing.

What have you got coming up?

What's on the horizon at the museum?

- So right after Juneteenth Joy, the concert that you spoke of, we are launching our very first 2022 Jazz at the NCMA.

And so, we are going to have four Thursday nights.

We're starting with Ledisi Sings Nina, Ledisi Sings Nina Simone with special guest Al Strong.

And then we have Jonathan Butler and special guest Avery Sunshine.

And then we have 10 time Grammy award-winning Take 6 and they're with Najee.

And then we end with Arturo O'Farrill, he's a seven time Afro Latin jazz legend with Veronica Swift.

And so again, that came out of me when I first got the job speaking with the patrons and I said, "What's missing?"

They said jazz.

So we're bringing them jazz.

And again, we're bringing you great jazz, we're bringing you Grammy award-winning jazz legends and artists.

- Wow.

Well, it sounds very exciting.

Thank you so much for what you're doing, Moses T. Alexander Greene.

Thank you so much again for being on Black Issues Forum.

- Thank you.

- As we mentioned at the top, June is a month of celebration and that includes our dads who don't always get the credit that they deserve or the care that they need, especially black fathers.

This year, The Family Resource Center South Atlantic hosts the 2022 North Carolina Fatherhood Conference welcoming fathers and families to the McKimmon Center in Raleigh for their ninth year of workshops, events, vendors, and speakers.

Past keynoters have included the likes of coach LeVelle Moton, education advocates Steven Perry, recording artist, Common and actor Malik Yoba.

It cannot be missed that the last couple of years with the pandemic have uniquely affected all of us, dads and sons included.

And among other topics, the conference will be talking about it in a session called Fathering After the Pandemic.

I wanna welcome this year's keynoter, who is an award-winning sports anchor and journalist, cohost of the sports and race podcast Two Man Game, author of the Amazon best seller Journey with Julian, and father of two sons, Dwayne Ballen.

So excited to have you here with us.

- Pleasure to be with you, Deborah.

- And we also have Dr. Veronica Hardy, professor of social work at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and a licensed clinical social worker who will be a panelist at the conference.

Dr. Hardy has also published several books, including titles Let's Talk About Finances and The Process of Grief.

Dr. Hardy, delighted to have you with us.

- Thank you so much.

- Let me open up with you, Dwayne.

A lot of us have had to reexamine our lives and our parenting after being shut in after the pandemic.

This episode's really affected our minds and emotional health.

And in your family, you've got the additional layer of having a child with autism.

It's so important that we understand that children and adults with autism are like anyone and they have feelings and desires and struggles.

Can you please talk about how you saw this pandemic and life impacting your son Julian, and how you came to understand that he was in crisis?

- Deborah, for the context of the conversation, I need people to understand, Julian is now an adult in his twenties, but socially, he's more like a nine-year-old.

So you have to understand that.

And people with autism, they have routines and they have set agendas that they follow on a regular basis.

Schedules are very important and disruption of schedules cause issues.

And for Julian, he had a schedule where he volunteered at The Autism Society of north Carolina's offices.

He would go there three days a week and performed task and he worked with them and he looked forward to that and he would go out and do other things that he would do volunteer work.

But when the pandemic set in, suddenly that was gone, the office was closed and he wasn't able to do any of that.

So he was at home and it really disrupted his routine.

And you could see a difference in him.

He was upset.

As I said, people with autism, they do not like their routine interrupted.

He would get upset.

And for Julian, it was hard to process what was going on.

Was the pandemic doing this to him personally?

And he would get upset and sometimes he would want to lash out and melt down as it were because things simply were not going the way he wanted.

But overall, two years in, I think he handled it really well.

And for him though, it was different.

It's a reinforcement with him, constantly reminding him that things are gonna get back.

Like every day he would say, "Dad, I love going to the office and doing my work."

So every day I have to engage in this with him and let him know, "And it's going to happen again, I promise you," but he would get anxious and you could see him physically start to get upset because things simply were not going the way he wanted them to go.

So we had to navigate that, my wife and myself, had to navigate that and be mindful that we're locked in here together and we've got to make it work with Julian and really make him understand that it's going to be okay, it's just going to take time, and no, none of this is directed at you personally because people with autism tend to internalize things like that.

- And I would imagine there are a lot of young people, you said he sort of has the mentality of a nine-year-old.

- [Dwayne] Yes.

- But kids out there, they also are probably thinking that something out there in the environment is due to something that they're doing, they just can't quite separate it.

But at a certain point, it becomes more than just trying to figure out how to navigate discomfort in the home.

Did it get to a point for you, Dwayne, where you needed to consider additional counseling or help for Julian?

- Well, he does have a psychiatrist he sees regularly and that did help because, at first, those were Zoom too and he had to get accustomed to that.

He wanted to know "Why can't I go see my doctor?

Why can't I go see him, Dr. Christian, in person?"

And I said, well, and you know, you have to explain over and over and show them the way the pandemic is affecting everyone.

"Your mom's not going into her office, you see her down in the study.

I'm doing a lot of my interviews and stuff on Zoom.

I'm not going out as much."

And you have to make them understand that.

So at first it was hard for him, but it helped that he was able to still check in with the psychiatrist via Zoom.

Now eventually, he got back to the point where he was doing it in person.

And that made a difference because, again, you have to make them understand that it's going to be okay.

"You haven't done anything wrong."

Because with Julie and he internalizes, the minute something is askew, "I did something wrong and I'm going to get upset because I did something wrong though I don't know what it was."

And we had to readjust his schedule.

We lived near The American Tobacco Trail in Durham, so I would take him out for regular walks, said, "Let's go on the trail and let's go see some animals."

He loves that.

So it was a matter of getting him accustomed to Zooming and his psychiatrist was there, he could talk to him.

And then the fact that he was able to see him later on in person helped a lot.

But it wasn't easy.

- Yeah, I can't imagine it was.

A lot of parents struggled at that time.

And Dr. Hardy, can you talk about some of the challenges facing black fathers in particular as they love and raise their children in the aftermath of COVID?

- Absolutely.

When I think of COVID-19, it was both a public health and a mental health crisis.

And oftentimes, the mental health piece of it does not get discussed as much as it needs to be.

And when it comes to African American fathers, we know during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was significant job loss.

So financial distress was one of those challenges.

And when there are those significant job losses, it affects the household as a whole.

Childcare, gas, transportation, you name it, the type of food choices that someone can make, and many of the African American fathers were essential workers, where that type of career cannot transition to a virtual environment.

So being present was necessary as well.

Another major challenge was that in relation to say, racialized traumatic events, during COVID-19, many of us, of course, stayed within our household.

Therefore we were subjected to televised events more and more throughout the day.

And being subjected to repeatedly seeing such traumatic experiences and devastating experiences can also affect the family as well and the child and the child's understanding of this.

So being able to process that too.

"And what does that mean?"

"And why is this happening to people who look like me?"

And then a third major challenge is that of grief.

There was significant loss during COVID-19, and we can speak of losses as far as job loss, like I mentioned earlier, housing loss, financial losses, et cetera.

But in addition to that, loss of significant others, people who have strong representation in lives as well.

So for children, making meaning out of that.

"I don't understand why my grandfather didn't come home from the doctor this time when in the past he has always come home."

So those are some of the significant challenges that I have noticed as well in regards to COVID-19 and the African American community.

- So black men, boys, families are dealing with these additional pressures.

Dwayne, how do you get to the point?

Because we know that there's sort of a taboo when it comes to seeking mental health assistance.

It's pretty taboo for all of us, but particularly for African American men.

Why would you say that might be the case for black men and how do you get over that hump?

- Well, mythologically, we believe ourselves to be invincible because of everything, historically, we have been through, and yet here we stand.

So one of the things that never touches us is mental illness, right?

Wrong.

And we believe it says something about our manhood when we address it.

And I had to do it in the past.

I come from a world of alphas in sport.

I'm a sportscaster, I'm in locker rooms, I'm with some of the most impressive physical specimens in the world, some of the strongest and fastest in the world you ever see.

And that's not something that should come out of that environment.

But the fact is, there are times when I had to come to terms with being Julian's father, having a son with autism, and I wasn't dealing with it properly.

So I had to talk to someone.

So I had to come to a point where I had to do that.

And then when Julian himself had a nervous breakdown, when he was 16 years old and he began to really lose himself mentally, I had to come to terms with the fact that my son really needed help that I nor my wife could give him, professional psychiatric help.

There were those in my family who loved him, but said, "Everything's going to be right, you can work it out.

You're a man, you can get that done."

But that's really not the case.

That's counterproductive.

And that type of talk really doesn't help us at all.

And so, I had to be okay, Deborah, with saying that, "Yes, I'm a man and I'm this black male who has this identity in this society.

And I'm tough and I can do this, but I have to recognize that I'm still a human being."

There's a fragility that goes with that.

And I had to address that.

Because I'm not gonna be a better father, I'm not gonna have good stewardship over either one of my sons, we have a newer typical son named Jared, either one of them, if I'm not whole and healthy.

And that includes my mental state.

So I had to address that.

And I did.

And with Julian, I had to accept the fact, again, that he needed more help.

And I wanted to add something else.

Jared, our newer typical was with us during the pandemic.

Now, he was away at university in Virginia and he was living his own life being a young college man, then suddenly he comes back into the house, Dr. Hardy, and it was different.

I mean, because, first of all, the pandemic set up rules.

"No, you're not going out to see this.

You are not going out.

There are three other people in this household that you have a responsibility to.

If you go out and hang out at a party in the middle of this pandemic, what is going to happen?"

So we went to a lot of that, Deborah and Dr. Hardy, where we had to really, it was difficult being in the household because see, he was a young man now, he had just pledged Omega Psi Phi.

He thought he was a guy.

And I had- - Oh yeah, you had a tough time.

- Yeah, I said, "Son, [Deborah laughing] this is the way it is."

- Yeah.

It was tough for everybody, but in particular coming home from having that independence- - Yeah.

- At that age and in this environment, it's just additional pressure.

Dr. Hardy, when you are a dad say, in the house, and you're seeing things kind of evolve differently, how do you get to that place where you decide, "Okay, I do need some additional help."

Where do you seek that?

How do you take yourself to that place?

- I appreciate how Dwayne mentioned earlier about, my mental health needs to be in a good state in order for me to support my children, my family, and help them in navigating this COVID environment.

And when we think of mental health, that's the way we think that our emotions, our actions, and that affects our decisions and affects our successes in the different areas of our life, right?

Whether it's relationships, career, or academics.

So thinking of, well, how do I go ahead and reach out when this is something that's quite different for me can be very challenging when it comes to seeking counseling.

Now, I'll say, counseling now has taken steps to become more culturally responsive.

And that means what do the populations that we are providing services to need?

And what context do we need to meet them at?

Does it need to be in the office?

Does it need to be where men frequent and where men feel unique and where men feel safe about communicating about their thoughts and emotions?

So these are some shifts that we may see more taking place within the mental health professions.

And the thought is, if some of those shifts take place in an increased fashion, it may also increase the likelihood of African American males pursuing support such as counseling.

An additional thought is, we also need to understand where mental health falls in a person's life, meaning what is that person's understanding.

Sometimes mental health is in relation to spirituality.

So does there need to be a spiritual focus?

So like I said earlier, I appreciate how Dwayne said about, I need my mental health to be in a good state.

And then what steps do I need to take to be able to do that?

- Let me ask you both, how can a partner be supportive when they see that there's an emotional mental health need in their partner, Dwayne?

- Deborah, I think the easiest thing my wife does is she recognizes and she analyzes and she speaks truth to me directly.

She says, "Something is going on, we have to address it.

It does not help anyone in this household if this continues to fester.

So let's address it."

And you listen to your partner, you trust your partner, they speak truth to you.

- [Deborah] Dr. Hardy?

- Yes.

And I would say enter in with a place of openness, being willing to hear your partner's narrative in their story and being a part of, if you could attend, say, get counseling sessions, please do so to be a great support.

- Dr. Veronica Hardy, Dwayne Ballen, thank you so much for your insights and for being here.

And we hope that people will enjoy the North Carolina Fatherhood Conference.

- Thank you, Deborah.

- Thank you.

- I wanna thank our guests for joining us today, and we invite you to engage with us on Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag BlackIssuesForum.

You can also find our full episodes on pbsnc.org/blackissuesforum, or listen at any time on Apple iTunes, Spotify, or Google Podcast.

For Black Issues Forum, I'm Deborah Holt Noel.

Thanks for watching.

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