How should organizations support employees who experience racist incidents in their personal lives and how can those kinds of experiences affect their work?
In December 2020, jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold and his teenage son, who are Black, were attacked by a white woman who falsely accused Harrold’s son of stealing her smartphone. Captured on video, the incident made worldwide headlines as an example of racial profiling.
Harrold tells host Porter Braswell about the response he received from the music industry and how that incident has changed his career.
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KEYON HARROLD: I think the industry at large is more receptive. I mean, but we got to see how it all pans out. It’s still a process, it’s still ongoing. What can the industry do to help rid this systemic problem? You know, what are they doing for artists in their contracts? For me specifically when this incident happened with my son and I, many of the establishments reached out to me, the Grammys reached out to me.
So many people reached out and are more receptive of things that maybe they didn’t pay attention to before
PORTER BRASWELL: From HBR Presents, this is Race at Work. The show that explores how race impacts our careers and lives. I’m Porter Braswell. I left a Wall Street career to start a company called Jopwell because I wanted to help corporate America build a more diverse workforce. Each week, we talk to a different leader about their experience with race and how it impacts our daily lives.
Racism can affect people of color inside and outside the workplace, and it can come in many different forms from micro-aggressions at work, to blatant racist attacks while going about daily life. Therefore employers have a responsibility to make sure that all employees feel supported, whether at work or in their personal lives.
That could mean scheduling check-ins, conducting internal surveys and providing mental health resources. In this episode, we explore how racist attacks can affect the careers of professionals of color and how that has a ripple effect in our communities, our networks, and our families. That’s why we reached out to Grammy award-winning trumpeter and social justice activist, Keyon Harrold. Keyon, and his 14-year-old son, Keyon Harrold Jr., were attacked in late 2020 by a woman who wrongly accused Keyon Jr. of stealing her smartphone at the Arlo Hotel in Soho New York. I’d imagine by now, you’ve seen that video as the video went viral and it made worldwide headlines. As a parent, Keyon has been supportive of his son who in his words was traumatized by this event. And as a working musician, this attack has affected Keyon and his music. Since it happened he’s been trying to raise awareness around other instances of discrimination and racism that Black people experience every day in this country. He’s currently working on an album centered around exactly that. We started our conversation talking about Keyon’s lifelong relationship with music starting with where he grew up.
Let’s start at the beginning. So you’re from Ferguson, Missouri. What was it like growing up there? Tell me about your household, your family life and growing up within that city.
KEYON HARROLD: Growing up in Ferguson was, it was great. I mean, it was interesting in the sense that many things I didn’t understand about race until I moved to New York City. In St. Louis, in Ferguson, many of the, like very overtly racist things that would happen between law enforcement, I just thought they were regular. I thought they were normal things. Like I thought it was just okay for people to be stopped and basically be harassed.
Everybody got stopped. Everybody got arrested and never charged, you know, so it was just a part of the way it was. And until I moved to New York City where I realized that, oh, people don’t just stop you just for the hell of it. I mean, I guess sometimes it happens, but not nearly as often as it was happening.
You know, you had that part of St. Louis, but then you had the beauty, you had the idea of a real family, real character building, real love, like a Gabi love. My dad was always about that and family first and the whole just morals and different things like that.
PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. That story of it being normal to be pulled over and to be harassed that will come up, I think later on in this dialogue as well, because it’s unfortunate that there are a lot of things that happen that are not uncommon to people of color, but it becomes this normalized thing. So you categorize it, you push it off to the other side of your brain, but when you realize that it’s not normal, then it shocks you.
So talk to me about music. How did music enter your life? Where was the inspiration behind becoming a professional musician? How did that come to be?
KEYON HARROLD: Music was always in my house. My grandfather started a drum and bugle corp in which he was a Sergeant in the police force, but he wanted to do something more impactful with the community, with children.
So for years he started this drum and bugle corps and he would teach people for free.
He was actually doing an amazing service by providing the arts to people who wouldn’t ever be able to pay for it.
So, but his grandkids, myself and my siblings, we all learned music. I fell in love with it. He would give us the lowdown on Miles Davis and Count Basie. So many amazing people, which was a beautiful thing.
PORTER BRASWELL: So in 2017, you released an album that was focused on Michael Brown and you have a new album coming out this year. What’s the inspiration behind this album?
KEYON HARROLD: The new album that’s coming, it’s the idea of basically reflections. I feel 2020 was a, is a year of reflection that we have, I think cultural amnesia about what really happened.
We remember like two or three things. We remembered the people who died. We remember protesting, and we remember either the love that you kept or the love that you lost. Other than that, it’s kind of a blur. And the fact that we can do zoom calls and not wear shoes, you know, that kind of thing. But it’s more of a reflective thing as a point of looking into yourself and realizing that the source comes from within and then in pours out in the name of it, it’s called melancholy aura.
It’s just a vibe and not in the traditional sense of me playing a lot of super fast melodic lines and stuff like that. It’s more of reflection and taking a listen. Long notes, sounds and yearnings from different instruments and the baseline is vibing and it’s the music of today. It’s the collaboration of jazz quote unquote and the hip hop drums.
And it’s the quote unquote, classical harmonies on top of that. So it really is, uh, a pretty interesting mix of dopeness.
PORTER BRASWELL: Hmm, that’s awesome. The music industry has a history with artists who use music as a means to communicate their lived experiences, take Billie Holiday and her song, Strange Fruit for example. People high up in the federal government didn’t want her to sing a song about lynching because in 1937, the Senate did not pass an anti-lynching law. And much later in the eighties and nineties, she was investigated by the FBI. Also the group N.W.A rapped about police brutality and racial injustice.
They were also targeted by the FBI for their music. So watching this play out over time and time again and over the decades, and even throughout your professional career, how has the music industry been more receptive to music centered around topics of race and social justice?
KEYON HARROLD: The music industry has been, I say I’ve seen a lot of music people really be supportive of the movement. I mean, it makes sense. Cause if they don’t, I mean, can you think about it. Hip hop is the number one selling genre in the world. When we think of music being creative, you got rock and roll, you got jazz, you got hip hop, you got all these things that are created by Black people.
And if you don’t support them, what is your purpose? Like the narrative of Black people is in the airwaves. Period. It’s the culture. It must be supported. How these songs received, I think, you know, people have been writing these songs forever, unfortunately, and we have to keep writing, keep writing the same song about, um, lamenting somebody else who was killed over and over again.
It’s unfortunate, but we have to keep doing it until people get the message. I think industry is a little bit more accepting of it at this point, because more people are paying attention to it and more people are keying in on it. I’ve been asked several times. Can you write something for this? I’m working on this film, we’re looking at, we’ve seen your experience.
Can you give us something of your experience, your voice? I think the industry at large is more receptive. I mean, but we got to see how it all pans out. It’s still a process it’s still ongoing. What can the industry do to help rid this systemic problem? You know, what are they doing for artists in their contracts?
What are they doing? How are they sharing the equity with people who actually created it? It’s so many, obviously so many different tentacles to how this racism game works. But I feel like industry at large has really stepped up. And I’ll say for me specifically, when this incident happened with my son and I, many of the establishments reached out to me. The Grammys reached out to me, many people from all over the world, none that have to do with music. I mean, obviously I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many different people and each part of the industry, whether that be publicist, whether that be the venues, whether that be artists or just fans or whatever.
So many people reached out and are always, are more receptive of things that maybe they didn’t pay attention to before.
I write music to actually speak for people who won’t ever say anything or have anything to say, or they can’t say, they can’t find the words to say, they can’t find the music to say, or they don’t have the confidence or the platform to speak on injustice or to speak on things that actually matter.
And I’ll just continue to do that in any role that I serve, whether that be just me talking, whether that be playing the trumpet or producing or composing or doing whatever. I’ll always be writing from a standpoint of the Black experience, the Black narrative, the Black pluses, and the minuses, and, you know, the things that we aspire to be in the future.
PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. Well, I think that’s so important and so powerful, especially what we experienced in 2020. It’s hard to put words to what that experience was and is, and music is that escape. And when you hear it, you get it, it’s that release that people need. And so I appreciate your music being so powerful and coming from a place of experiences and lived experiences and it definitely comes out and it resonates with the listener.
So, let’s go back to December just the day after Christmas, you and your son were in the Arlo Soho Hotel, going down from your room just to get food, then something happened. Can you tell us about that day?
KEYON HARROLD: December 26. 2020. I was hoping that the aura of 2020 was done. You know, I was, I was hoping that we were, you know, we were four days away from new year’s and lo and behold, my son and I walked downstairs and we’re confronted by this person who we never met. Basically, this person wrongly accuses my son of stealing her cell phone, which is the furthest from the truth.
My son basically showed his phone to her, but that wasn’t good enough. She wanted to take his phone case off to prove that it was her phone, which is the most ridiculous preposterous kind of thing. So in it all, I basically had the opportunity to show my son that he deserves his dignity. He deserves to preserve his integrity just as a man, just as a child.
And at the time he didn’t really understand the implication of being wrongfully accused of something. And in the history of Black people, we think about Emmett Till, we think about so many people wrong, wrongfully killed, wrongfully imprisoned, wrongfully blamed for so many things. And it was perpetuated by the actual hotel, which is the most crazy thing.
As, as a father, I was trying to deescalate the situation, you know, really communicating the most clearest form that, listen, this is not your phone. Let us go. Why are you not giving me the benefit of the doubt as the patron? This person’s not even a patron.
PORTER BRASWELL: She wasn’t even staying at the hotel.
KEYON HARROLD: No. So, you know, in the context of it all, me speaking with the manager at the hotel, he’s, you know, coming at me and my son, he’s given the proverbial, show me your, show me your papers, boy, you know, in the context of, you know, show your phone, show your property.
But I know for a fact that if I had did the same thing, to someone, to someone else, I’d either be in jail or dead.
PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah.
KEYON HARROLD: It wouldn’t have turned out the same way. When we came downstairs and this person started yelling at my son, telling him that he had her phone, it was so unbelievable. She started grabbing him.
I don’t know. It’s like when you’re walking down the street and somebody touches you and you’re like, whoa, you know, so I’m like, okay, let me just start recording because you never know. You never know. In, in today’s day and we have the technology, thank God for Apple and having the ability to have a camera.
We’ve started to see many things that most people can just act like they didn’t happen or pay no attention to it. Out of sight, out of mind, kind of, kind of existence. When I took this video, what is shown was it’s bigger than race at this point, it was, it was like bad humanity. To me to this day it’s messed up. I actually, we can go seeing the entire video. And it was actually worse than what I remember. I feel, you know, I want to find the silver lining in tragedy.
I feel like there is love in tragedy. I feel like there’s something beautiful in it. In spite of the ugliness, there’s something beautiful that can be birthed out of this. Obviously we have the scenario where we’re celebrating the year of George Floyd and so many others who have been killed, but at the same time, I hope and pray that it can bring about some positive changes, some positive new reflections.
We have the opportunity to show a better version of what people, I guess who hold onto stereotypes as their means for acceptance of Black people or their, their way of putting Black people in a proverbial box. Like, this is what you are, you’re a thug, this is what you are. You’re a musician and you can’t be anything else. Unfortunately, we have to rewrite a narrative to it being normalized for us to be accepted as beautiful.
PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. There’s so much to unpack with this. And so much of what you said really hits home. I have countless stories of things that have happened to me in the past. They weren’t documented. So people didn’t realize, but it’s a lived experience and going back to seeing police officers harass you when that was just normal. I’ve been harassed so many times it became normal.
It wasn’t until 2020 and people took out their phones and recorded it. But now all of a sudden. People were shocked because they can see it play out. Let’s rewind a bit, most parents who have children of color, will sit them down, especially Black children, especially Black men will sit them down and give that talk.
You’re Black. That means something, the world is going to interact with you in different ways. And when it does interact with you, what are you going to do? How are you going to be prepared for it? Did you have the talk with your son before that incident happened? Obviously you had to talk with your son after that incident.
Did you have the talk with him before that incident?
KEYON HARROLD: You know what, I’ve had the talk in different ways, in different degrees. He lives in a neighborhood where he’s like one of two people of color, not two Black people, two people of color that goes to his school. So he’s in a different kind of scenario than what I grew up in Ferguson is very different and different from his mother who grew up in the Bronx.
But now, it’s so imperative that I talk to him like every day about what’s going on.
So I would have the talk in different ways before, but afterwards it was like, okay, the gloves off so this is what it is. This is a system that perpetuates violence against you, to my son, biggest thing, and not just my son, to many Black people. You know, we’re in situations where again, you know, my dad and my mom would say, listen, your best friend’s white, but know this, you can’t do what he does.
You can’t get away with what he gets away with. You know what I’m saying? That’s your man. You know, you love him. He loves you too. But just know that this world treats you very differently and you have to know that. So the name of your day is survival.
PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. I think oftentimes, non-communities of color, think that as a parent, you can’t tell your child that. That’s unfair to tell your child that. Well, my perspective is, that’s very dangerous if you don’t tell your child that, because they’re going to think that they can go out and do what their friend can do. And they’re going to get themselves in a situation where they might be killed, to do the things that their friend did. So it’s a dangerous thing if you’re not keeping it 100 with your children, especially if they’re Black boys in this country. It’s, it’s being irresponsible. And I think that, that conversation is not understood well enough.
KEYON HARROLD: 100%. And in a utopian world that says everybody’s equal, everybody’s free. You don’t have to have those conversations, but we’re the furthest from that, unfortunately. And again, 2020 sheds so much light on race. Probably more so than any other year that I can remember because the curtains have been removed so much of this systemic perpetuated issues that you know, it’s been easy not to pay attention to.
PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. It’s definitely a systemic problem. And if you’re an employee, it’s up to your management to help you cope with incidents like this, which can really affect you in your work. They should be engaged and supportive by just humanizing this and having dialogues and honest conversations with their employees in the correct safe space.
Racism happens everywhere. It’s not isolated to one particular place. It can happen unexpectedly when you’re at work, you know? And so someone makes a small comment or says something that they may not realize is offensive. You need to be able to approach management wherever you work and do something productive about what you’ve experienced.
They should be engaged and supportive by ensuring that there is space and room for you to have dialogues about what’s going on in your life and how it’s potentially affecting your output at work. That’s on the corporate business side. So as a working musician, someone who is outside the traditional nine to five workplace, who as a creative professional could be considered almost like an independent contractor, even a freelancer.
Did you find yourself prepared for stepping into the spotlight to have to talk about what happened to your son and your experiences that day, and to find the words to try to have people understand what you experienced. Did you feel prepared to do that?
KEYON HARROLD: I definitely felt prepared to do it. I mean, for me, it’s not, again, it’s not new to me.
Even before this happened to me. I was always a champion of social justice and equality and again, trying to be an image that people can be proud of in the community. So we can continually build derivative greatness in the Black community. So I feel like, you know, as an artist, as a musician, it’s a part of my communication.
We’re communicators. I’ve always done that even before this happened. So for me, when the situation happened with the Arlo happened, it was more of a microphone being put on me. I’ve always known it, but it’s just interesting that it’s happening to me. You know, my first album, I, I dealt with so many different, you know, subject matters. Just in politics and I did the song about Mike Brown. And then I did a song called when will it stop because Mike Brown was killed, and then it was so many after that. So I had to write another song and the problem is we have to continually write these songs. Like I know this dialogue through and through, you know, I’ve seen it with my friends, I’ve seen it with my family. I’ve seen it with other people that I don’t know, there’s not anything new. So I was like, all right, I’ll tell you about this. Thank God that my son and I are here to speak about it. Because most of the time it doesn’t turn out like that. And the irony of it all is, we all know how much worse it could have been.
I’m a Black man. I’m six one. When people see me, they look and they say, wow. The first thought about me is that, look at that guy,
PORTER BRASWELL: he’s a threat,
KEYON HARROLD: a pure threat. And then after this thing happened, my son and I, we, we finally did get some food and he asked the question. He said, dad, why. Why do they look at me as a threat?
And this is the most beautiful, super chill, super talented, cool, this is, he’s just a proper kid. And it’s just like for me to witness him being humiliated is just the most horrible thing to see. And I don’t wish it on anybody.
PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. The video that went viral, and put you into the worldwide spotlight stops at a moment in time, and you just hit on that. After that video stopped, you continued and you broke bread with your son. How was he doing at that meal, a day later, before the video became viral, and how’s he doing now? How has that evolution shaped him?
KEYON HARROLD: Man, he was just in shock and we were in shock for months. You know, for weeks and months he was paralyzed trying to figure out why did this happen and why did it happen to me?
Why does it happen continually. Obviously, you know, he’s made the correlation to what happened to him and what happens to Black people and what, what happened to Ahmaud Arbery and what happened to George Floyd. Him making those connections at the age of 14, it’s important, but I, again, going back to your question, I didn’t want to have to talk to him about that, but now I realize you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t.
So you might as well. Therapy is involved and a lot of support from a lot of amazing people. A lot of unlikely people shout out to Charlemagne tha God and so many other people who reached out, D.L. Hughley and so many amazing people. And not just that his his godfather, Robert Glasper and so many amazing people that just really reached out. He’s finding ways to thrive in spite of his trauma.
You know, and we’re supporting him in the best way possible. He’s into music. He’s making music, but he’s doing much better.
PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. So I remember growing up similar to your son. I grew up in a town, went to a school where I was one of two or three people of color forgetting about Black folks. Like I grew up in a very white town and I was in a Champ sneaker store at the mall.
My mom’s light skinned, looks different than I do being dark skinned. And so I’m in the store. I’m probably in like six or seventh grade looking at sneakers. And my mom is standing behind me and just kind of observing me. And she sees a manager come over to like the sales person and overhears him, telling him, make sure you keep an eye on him.
Like I, you know, I’m not sure if he’s going to steal that, just make sure you keep an eye on him. So then I ended up having two people follow me as I went to like the different sneakers. And I just thought that they were salespeople. It clicked in on my mom after the shock. She was like talking about my son and she shut the store down, went off screaming, like you’re talking about my son.
Like, what do you like just went off and, and I’m shocked in the moment. So I’m paralyzed because I see my mom losing it and I’m like, mom, chill, like what’s going on? And she can’t control herself. She’s like, defending her son and now she’s causing a scene. And if it was my dad that was there as a Black man in this white store causing that scene, then what starts to happen?
Right. So you start to play through all that stuff in terms of like, how could it have gone wrong? So she grabs my arm, yanks me outside. She’s like, we’re never going back there. And I’m like, yo, this is the local Champs store. Like I don’t, I don’t understand. So had to have the conversation at that point. I’ve had it many times before that, but had to have it there.
Another time I’m in my town. Walking down the street. I have my shirt off coming from the local pool with my buddy, walking down the street minding my own business, cop car goes speeding by. And as a joke, I tell my friend, watch him turn around and try to get me for something.
Sure enough, cop does a donut in the road, puts his lights on speeds up to us, stops us, and just starts yelling. What are you doing here? Where are you going? I’m like, I’m coming from the pool. I’m going home and he’s like, well, there’ve been reports of, of homes being broken into like questioning me.
I’m like literally in a wet bathing suit. I’m like, I am walking home. Called my parents. Told them what happened, my mom and dad went down to the police station that day, looked at the video, saw everything play out and just was like, that was completely unnecessary to target an eighth grader with his shirt off, coming from the pool, and you traumatize him by pulling up on him, obviously not doing anything.
Or if I think back to this most recent incident that happened to me living in New York City. So I’m in New York City on the subway coming home from work on a packed subway, 6:30 in the afternoon, going to the upper west side, this professionally dressed white woman was standing directly across from me, staring at me the entire trip. We’re making eye contact, but I’m listening to my music. I’m putting my head down, but making eye contact because I’m like awkwardly like, this woman’s looking at me and as it’s approaching my stop, we’re about 10 seconds away. She looks at me and she just stares me down with everybody there. And she goes, you’re a n-word in front of everybody. So everybody starts shouting, like ma’am ma’am doors open. Everybody pushes me off the train and everybody’s like, are you okay? Are you okay? I can’t believe that happened. And I’m shocked. I mean, I’m literally stunned, you know, I’m running a great business and you know, I’ve done a lot of things, but to this woman, all I was is, was that. In New York city.
So I go home and I’m like, you know what? I’m not going to let that sit with me. I’m not going to let this paralyze me. I’m gonna write about it. So the first thing I did is I wrote a letter to my company and I told them what happened. Then I wrote a letter to my hundred thousand plus followers on LinkedIn.
And I disarmed her and I got my confidence back because I wasn’t going to let that sit within me. I was going to explain how crazy this person was and how that could chip away, but I have a microphone. If it’s happening to me, it’s happening to everybody else. So I want to talk about it. That’s not gonna, that’s not gonna shake my confidence.
KEYON HARROLD: Gotta stop the cycle. It’s simple as that, got to figure out ways to stop the cycle and that’s the reason why I posted the video. For myself. Because I spoke to the manager, I spoke to law enforcement and you know what they said, oh, she was just having a bad day. And that is like a hundred percent verbatim what was said. And I said, okay, I’ma post this video cause I know it was disgusting. And I posted it that night. A day later, it was like wildfire.
PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. Well, you know, I specifically wanted you on this season because I wanted to discuss, again, going back to how you grew up. The normalizing, these things happening. Like these things have happened to me throughout my life.
I could tell 10 more stories. It’s happened to you. It’s happening to your son now, it’s happened to you. The difference is, you got yours on camera, and now nobody can say that that doesn’t happen, but that stuff has been happening and it continues to happen. And what corporate America needs to understand, is that just because your employees aren’t coming out publicly and telling you that this is happening, you need to presume that it is. So therefore you need to create the space for people to share their experiences, if you want people to bring their full self to work.
KEYON HARROLD: Absolutely.
PORTER BRASWELL: Like when your son goes into corporate America, that’s a part of his DNA now. That’s a part of his experience. That’s going to be a part of his superpower, but he lived through that and came out on the other side. So how is a corporation going to get that and understand that, that experience and leverage that so that he can come to the table with creative genius and look at problems differently because he’s experienced the world differently.
So create the space to allow him to share that story and feel like he belongs within that culture and doesn’t have to hide that portion of him, which is a significant portion of him now, but it’s a superpower and that’s something that he has that nobody else has. And that’s the beauty of being Black.
You have these experiences and now it’s a part of it’s a part of your tool kit.
KEYON HARROLD: Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
PORTER BRASWELL: So one of the questions that we’d like to ask all of our guests and really want to hear this from you. It’s clear that we should be talking about race, but in, in your experiences, how should we talk about race? How can we communicate these topics that people need to understand?
KEYON HARROLD: Man, interesting that you say that I’m actually working on initiative now and it’s called music against bias. For me, I’m a musician, I’m an artist. So the easiest way that I communicate is via music. When I think about jazz, I look at it as, you know, you got four or five people playing. That’s like democracy. That’s a, that’s an opportunity to see that, you know what, that person takes a solo that’s that person’s voice, you know, that person, you know, what your job is to do is to lay the baseline.
Just keep that cool. Do the rhythm, you know what, but we all can’t play at the same time. If we do, it might get too loud, so let’s just control the dynamics. So in life, it’s all about communication. So we have to do the same thing. So I want to start, I am starting this foundation called music against bias, and it’s about basically looking at our lives as a garden, starting with kids.
Since this incident happened with my son, I want to start with kids and talk about biases. We all have biases, you know, everybody’s not racist and racism is a, being racist is a grownup problem. Kids don’t even know about that. Again, you know, my best friend was white until I was like six, seven years old. Then we grew apart, whatever. We didn’t, I didn’t even know.
I didn’t even pay attention to that part. But after a while, you know, these ridiculous stereotypes, I look at as weeds in a garden of how we are growing up. So I want to start with kids like, you know, six, seven, eight, before we’re introduced to all this, you know, ridiculous parental biases that they’ve picked up over the years.
Let’s give this kid in New Hampshire, the opportunity to realize why it’s not okay to walk up to a Black person and touch their hair. You know what I’m saying? Like, you know, that’s one of the more obvious things, but there are so many different things that we can talk about using music as, as a platform to actually have basic conversations, because everybody can get with the beat.
Everybody can get with the groove and we can just take some time and really talk and come together in that way. I’m basically looking for a higher level of humanity, you know, I want to show people reach higher so we can exist.
PORTER BRASWELL: Yeah. Well, I appreciate you, deciding to come on to this show and to have this conversation and to relive what you went through.
I think it’s important that people hear your story and understand that this happens. You got it on film. And so when people are telling you that these things are happening, believe it. Be receptive to it. And, and learn. So I appreciate you taking the time to share that perspective and, and to share again what happened.
You know, it’s a critical part of this season, so thank you for taking the time.
KEYON HARROLD: Oh, it’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me really.
PORTER BRASWELL: That’s Keyon Harrold. Grammy award winning trumpeter and social justice activist.
This episode was produced by Liz Sanchez. Special thanks to Anne Sani and Nick Hendra.
Next week, we’re talking to Miami mayor Francis Suarez about representation in government and voter demographics, including the political climate in Miami, around the 2020 presidential election.