Stephanie Rosario Rodriguez and Nathaniel McLeroy

[00:02] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: My name is Stephanie Rosario Rodriguez. I'm 31 years old. Today is January 12, 2021. I live in Boston, but I'm currently based in the middle of nowhere, Virginia. And I'm chatting with Nathaniel McLeroy, who is my. Would you say, romantic domestic partner? Who's my partner?

[00:29] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: Yeah. And I'm Nathaniel McLeroy, 33. She just mentioned the date. It is the same day I'm in Boston at our home. And Stephanie. Yeah. There's no real words to describe what kind of partners we are. It's hard to quantify what you say.

[00:53] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: Romantic partner, life partner, finance partner, business partner. Yeah.

[01:00] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: Doggy partner. Doggy parent partners.

[01:03] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: Yes. I think, you know, it's funny because I think that that has been in question a lot. You know, I definitely don't love the term, oh, this is my boyfriend or this is my whatever. And I remember one time at a wedding, someone I said, oh, this is my partner. And he responded, well, that's a very select choice of words. And I think that that's very true because I think this is a very different type of relationship and union, you know?

[01:37] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: Yeah. I told. So the new sister that I met, I recently met a part of my family that I hadn't known because I didn't know. My dad said, so they're from Texas. And I told them, I say partner. And for the longest time, I think it was only. So I've known them for two years now. And then maybe three months ago, they were like, so, are you gay? And I was like, no. Why do you think that? And they're like, well, we just don't say partner. And like, I knew you weren't gay, but I couldn't understand why you were saying partner. And I think it's. It's taught me a lot about how we treat words and how when even coming from. We can be from the same place and then have such drastic different meanings for things. And I think even with you and me, we've come across that. And learning how to define things so that we can have conversations together has been really important. On yours and my growth, would you say?

[02:37] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, no, I totally agree. And I think on the flip side as well, anytime I, you know, I think people just assume that I'm a lesbian when I say my partner. And, you know, and it's also gotten to the point where, like, I don't care to correct anyone because to me, that that's not important, you know? Yeah. You know, and I think early on I was like, oh, well, you know, my partner is a man. And then I was like, why? Like, why does it matter? You know, not just why does it matter, but almost like, me going out of my way to clarify that almost seemed, like, more problematic to me, where it was just like, my partner is a spirit that I've kind of united myself with, and it is what it is, you know, And I definitely do see this. You know, one of the things that I really appreciate you and appreciate about us is, you know, I grew up in a very Puerto Rican household. And what that means is there's a lot of gender roles, you know, very, very clearly defined. And, you know, women cook and women clean and women get married and women have children. And I never saw a lot of those things for myself. And I think, you know, exploring new ways of showing love or language or whatever, like, how that really impacts a lot of the way that we kind of go about our lives and our business, you know, and for me, it makes it much more enjoyable and much more equitable, you know, so, you know, I think of the language and how does that affect everything around it?

[04:40] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: I agree. Language. So something that I've been coming to terms with in the last couple years is that language is actually one of our weakest forms of communication. It just drops so much that we are trying to say and trying to convey to the people that we're communicating with. I've been on this real emotional IQ journey, or emotional quotient, so EQ journey. Like, I've always been a very emotional person, like, understood emotions in a general sense. That doesn't mean that I've always been good about understanding my own emotions and then operating in the world based off that. But I have always known that emotions clearly dictate how we operate, especially when we don't understand them or even know them to, like, exist. Being a black man, being a man, period, we're taught that we pretty much have a. An emotional. Like a very short emotional range. And it's between. It's not even really happy. Like, happy isn't really a man feeling. It's more just like we exist and we either are angry or we're there. And it's not. It's not like we don't have all the emotions. We've just never been taught to express them or even understand them. So in. I remember when I was in high school, and then, like, right after high school, I would. I found this, that I really enjoyed putting a lot of words to a place where I could just say in a sentence, in, like, very few words, and what it ended up doing to me was like making me frustrated that I was always coming up with really cool ways to say things but not really being treated as like it was a norm. I would always get told, oh, you speak so well. And then there's like an ellipses after that and it's in my head I'm finishing the sentence for them. And it's, you speak so well for being a black boy. And that taught like that I have this like oppositional defiance disorder type of personality. And it turned me into, well, now I'm just going to say things really blunt and shortly. And in doing that it actually made me realize how weak words actually are. Like I was saying. So like I went from having these lofty, lofty explanations of things to having these very direct and blunt ways of saying stuff. And in doing both things, either way my message was missed. Like what I'm trying to get out of me. So exploring this like emotional quotient and understanding how much we feel versus how much we're saying is severely lacking. Even if even so even with you, I think there's been moments where we've just looked at each other and kind of just like touched or even not even touched, just looked. And the facial, and the facial expressions and just the like the glint in the eyes and all these small things told me more than what you could say and I felt more than what I could express.

[08:07] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I think for me it's always been really difficult to put emotions into words. I, you know, growing up I think most easily accepted was anger. You know, if I was nice, I was bullied. You know, I grew up in a very kind of the community I grew up in is very different, I think than what the community is now. And it was hard, you know, there was a lot of like you have to have an incredibly tough skin and, and I don't know that I'm that person by nature, but I had to condition myself, you know, in order for like a self preservation. And one of the things you said, you know, like, oh, you speak so well for a black boy. You know, I remember that kind of triggered this memory of, you know, some. Sometime in high school, I want to say like 9th or 10th grade, I wrote, you know, I was a English second language student and by 9th grade, you know, I had, I was proficient, you know, and a teacher called me up and asked me where I got the words in my essay and I thought it was a trick question. So I said like my mind and you know, looking back on it, you know, and he questioned me a bit more about it. And looking back, you know, he pulled me to his desk in the front of the classroom. You know, this is definitely not like a, a quiet conversation, but looking back, really, he was testing my competence and my intelligence and it's almost like he didn't believe that someone like me could put words into a beautiful way. And my reaction to that was people think I'm plagiarizing, I need to dumb myself down. And I regret that, you know, and I try not to hold what 13 year old me did like too harshly because again, you know, I was a 13 year old who really up until that point, you know, I was largely, yeah, I kind of describe it as like one step above feral where like so much of my self governing was on my own, you know, Mommy, my mom, she used to work 3 to 11. I got home from school at 245. So sometimes there were weeks that I didn't see her, which definitely came out in very aggressive ways. Right when we moved, we moved a lot when I was a kid and all of those came out in very like turbulent ways, you know, I was destructive in classrooms, I was talkative, you know, and never in a way where I was like actively combative, but I wasn't engaging, you know. And I think of all the things that kind of conditioned me to be like that, whether it's community, whether it's people, you know, and how when I was 17, I was like, I need to get the hell out of here. And I, I remember when I got accepted to college, I packed my bags in the spring, even though I wasn't leaving until the fall. And all of that to say is that I think I've still struggled to kind of understand what a good communication style is and how language is used, you know. And I think a lot of it wasn't until really I met you that it made me kind of rethink how I communicate, you know. Yeah. So I guess all to say is like, I'm interested to kind of hear about how or what necessarily kind of triggered your transition into that like shift of perspective and language. You know, if it was like a catalyst event or if it was just like over time, like seeing that people are not understanding you and trying new things. I've been told I too, I think have been very blunt in my, particularly in my professional kind of world. And what I've been told is that a woman is, I lack tact. I've been told to attend. You know, I've not even Been told I've been forced into, like, communication workshops, and I hate it because, you know, those workshops just tell me that I'm the problem, and I need to. I. Very vividly, I remember it tells me that I'm the problem, and I need to shift the way I communicate to better suit my audience. And then I found that when I did that, I was just a hundred different people, and I kind of lost sight of that. So I'm wondering if there was, like, a catalyst for you to kind of shift your language perspective.

[13:23] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: I wouldn't say there was. I'm just writing notes right now. I wouldn't say there was a catalyst. I've always. So I'm going to rewind because I forget that you and I had very similar childhoods in the sense that, like, both our moms worked a lot, and we both have the same amount or had the same amount of siblings, kind of sort of. So, like, you have three younger siblings that you live with here in the country, and you have two in Puerto Rico. Three in Puerto Rico.

[13:51] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: Three.

[13:51] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: I always forget about the twins, three and three. So, yes, my mom also. My mom would always. She still, to this day, works two jobs, and she doesn't need to. She may have needed to when we were younger, but she definitely doesn't need to now. So she would work, and I would take my brother to school. She would work 3 to 11, 2 or. And then she would do 11 to 7. So sometimes she would just work doubles, and then we wouldn't see her at all. So I'd get up in the morning and get my brother to school. She would have, like, something to, like, throw in the oven. She'd, like, make a meal for us, and then we'd warm that up, whatever, after school. So we were the same latchkey kid that you were. I just responded differently. So. So when you had those issues, you were just angry and you had outbursts, and I would do things like shut down. I ran away a lot, which, like, will feed into, like, what we'll talk about, about you and me and our relationship. But I ran away from, like, abusive, abusive household once my mom met her, the man that she married while I was living there. And then. And then I also left as soon as I could. So I ran away in foster homes and then lived. Then I was, like, emancipated at 17, essentially, which is kind of like you. You, like, left at 17 as soon as you could to come to Boston, which isn't far physically, but, like, emotionally and socially. I think you distance yourself from your family as much as I distance mine from mine. And then I joined the Navy, right? So, like, all these things I kept doing weren't actually so, like, me getting emancipated, me joining the Navy, me getting out of the Navy, and then, like, moving to Boston. Everyone's like, oh, you. You're an independent person, and you do these things all the time. Why. Why do you say that? You're running away. And while they seem like really cool and really necessary changes in life, like, I went to school and things, they were actually just attempts to, like, distance myself from whatever pain that I have from. From childhood, growing up. Because I was never, like, in one place. I never had, like, that close group, family, friends or anything. So I always had to fit in. I always had to make friends. I always had to figure out how to survive, which it doesn't seem like as a kid, it just seems like, oh, I'm just socializing. I'm making friends. But in reality, what we're doing is surviving. We're pack creatures. We're social, so we need people around us. And I've been in so many different environments, learning the language of all those different environments, from living in a 98% Mexican farming town in California to going that was. I think that town was 3,000 people. And I moved to the big city, which was Sacramento, which isn't a big city, and living with black folks for the first time and feeling. Feeling more stand. Feeling like I stood out more with those black folks than I did with Mexicans. I feel like I fit in with more with Mexicans than I did with blacks. And not knowing that language and then learning that language and realizing, like, all of these languages, like, I learned the language of black community. I learned I still speak you. And I have, like, small conversations. Like, I can say a few words in Spanish, and I can understand a lot. So, like, all of these, even literally different languages, but speaking the same language and having different meanings, like I said, it allowed me to get in there and communicate with people, but it never made me feel close with people. Like, actually have that emotional, deep, spiritual connection with folks. And I. And I didn't recognize that, obviously, as a kid, but when I got to be probably, like, 25, 26, I realized, like, I have a lot of friends. I have friends all over the world, and it's cool, but I don't actually feel necessarily connected with them. They're good friends, and, like, I can hit them up and I can come hang out with them, and we can go hang out and Talk and drink and play games and all that, but there's none, there's none of that like what you and I have, where we can just look at each other and kind of feel what, what the other person's feeling. Or at least when we share those moments, we know what we feel about that person. So it wasn't like a catalyst. There was no moment that just it clicked for me. But I will say around 24, 25, I started welcoming myself to feel those emotions and play with them, like, try to understand them and see where they go. I took this emotional quotient test. I think that's what it was. And I'm really good at understanding emotions. I'm really good at understanding people and why they do what they do. And I'm also terrible at understanding my own emotions and why I do what I do, which was funny to see that. So in the last few months, I would say this year, definitely since we started the podcast and everything I've been. And that this has to do with you and me, I've been learning, like, my triggers and what, what I do when I feel anxious or things like that. And the whole running away feeds into that, which I'm going to stop talking now and let you talk. But we can talk about how it played, how the things that we grew up with probably played a role in our relationship now.

[19:47] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, you know, I always say that, like, my longest standing relationship is my cousin Jahida, and we're going on 27 years together. And I say that because, you know, sometimes I look back and I think, like, who really knows me? You know, and I think it comes down to you and Jahida and, you know, and she was someone that, you know, we're cousins in the way of. My mother married her uncle. He's my stepdad. And although my mom is now divorced from my stepdad, you know, she, you know, starting in, we went to the same elementary school, we lived in the same duplex for growing up. And then once we got to middle school, I would take the bus to her house and spend all after school, you know, talk about after school program. My after school program was going to Jahida's house. And that was, you know, up until the point where I had to. Then, you know, come high school, I had to go to my own house and care for my siblings. Like, I had to make sure that the chicken was taken out of the freezer and all of that. And when I got to be like 17, I was like, I hate this town. I hate the Fact that I go to this high school where people might stab me, like, how is this my reality? You know, I remember one time very vividly in a classroom. I was in a psychology classroom, and someone came to our campus with a gun, and they flashed it at some of the kids and then they left. And, you know, in that moment, no student reported it. And we were talking to our teacher in the classroom, and we're like, yeah, some dude just came with a gun and just like, showed it to us and then left. And she was like, why didn't you say anything? And it's like, we don't know that that's not normal, you know, and now it's like, you know, school shootings and all that are so prevalent. And I think, like, that was almost expected for us. You know, it's like you knew where you would go, you knew what you would hide. And you say you grew up in or you lived in that town of 3,000 people. My high school was 4,000 people, you know, so that was kind of like its own ecosystem in itself. And it really taught me, I think seeing that and then going to a private, small, formerly all women's Catholic college made me realize that, like, I was another, you know, and that my communication was subpar. You know, I was talking and the reason I mentioned Jahida is because, you know, her and I recently had a conversation. We had a big falling out for a long time, and we've recently come back together. And, you know, she says, yeah, like, you're my cousin that's in the big city. And I think, like, I was like, you have no idea, you know, like, going to the big city, just big city as in Boston, just meant, like, I was lost and I was confused. And I was trying to kind of like consistently code switch and, you know, it's trying on a bunch of different outfits. And then you kind of forget what your original style even was, you know, And I found that in my separation of my hometown and my community. I also separated from my core and I didn't know what I was doing, you know, and I just kind of like wandered aimlessly. And I think, like, a lot of. A lot of that has kind of appeared in. In relationships. Right. I became very dependent on other. You know, growing up, I was very independent. I always had to be. I was the oldest of technically 7. So I was always the caretaker. I was always the one that had to make sure that I unlocked the door because I was the only one with keys, you know, and those types of things. So then When I went to college, I became very dependent, you know, and largely on men, which took me a really long time to unlearn. And that dependency on men and other friendships that weren't really genuine kind of left me, I think, a little bit bitter and angry, you know. And you and I, I think, talk a lot about trust and opening up to people. And I would say that you're a little bit more trusting than I am in terms of others. But you have really taught me to be open and that it's okay to be open and to ask for help. And I found that the reasons I didn't ask for help is because I've asked the wrong people, you know, and I was not discerning enough to understand who's the right people and who's the wrong people. So when those wrong people let me down or let me astray, I just assumed. I almost put those experiences to all of society, you know, because like I said, I grew up in a. I grew up in an environment where you can't trust everyone. You know, it's dangerous to trust everyone. But I also found that I had more comfort around gang members and homeless populations. I ended up working with homeless populations for some time. I had more comfort in those circles than I did with, like, the board or with, like, professional environments, because I didn't understand those people's intentions where. When it came to a community of poverty and a community of struggle, I understood what their intentions were. And even if it was like a drug dealer, I knew what that drug dealer wanted from me. But like, this director at this fancy organization, it's like, I trust you less because I don't. You may say one thing, but I don't know what your intentions are. You know, And I think it's interesting. I think looking back and seeing all the things that have happening and how that has kind of jumbled into how we interact with people. And I. And I think that there's a lot of similarities between you and I there.

[26:26] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: Absolutely. You know, that I always think on a macro level and how, like, these major things affect us individually. So that social trust is what you're talking about, like, being able to trust in the people around us. So right now you're in a new. And it's not new to you at this point, but it was new to you when you came into the. When you start working at the organization you work at now, which is run by people of a different class than we grew up with. And when we're entering those new classes, like you and I, have officially made it out of the socioeconomic status that we started in. And I mean, your mom, obviously.

[27:18] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: Peace out.

[27:23] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: So doing that, we've luckily. So for me, like I said, I've been in all of these different environments. I grew up in a small farming town. I lived in a big city. Ish. I joined the Navy and worked alongside people that don't really think the same as the liberals that I grew up with in California. I'm intimately and interconnected with people that I should. I don't know if I showed you, but one of the people, the one that has the face paint and the headdress that everyone's showing from the. From the.

[28:01] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: Insurrection.

[28:02] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: Insurrection, as we're calling. I was drinking buddies with that guy in the Navy. Like, that's. That's nuts to me. Like, I have a picture of him from our.

[28:11] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: Wait, that literally.

[28:14] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: Yeah, I haven't sent you the picture. I'll send you the picture. He's in my. He's in my cruise book from the Kitty Hawk. Chris sent me the picture. So Chris, him and I used to go out drinking when we would go to different ports. And these are friends. These are people that I know. Right. And I'm. I. So what I mean to say is, like, I have built this. It's never been fake for me. That's one thing I'll say. Like, the code switching is. It's not disingenuous in the sense that I've lived in those environments and learned from those social markers. So it's not fake. I've always been honest with how I express myself and who I'm saying, how I say it and what I'm saying. I will say, like, back to what I was saying before. It's much more direct, much more streamlined to what I'm feeling. But we don't have that social trust that you're talking about because we're all living in different bubbles. I've just been able to be a part of most of the different bubbles that exist. But because we're living in different bubbles, it feels weird when we go into another bubble. So when it comes to you and me, who have successfully made it past the class that we started in, it's still uncomfortable sometimes. So now I'm working at this new job, and I still get. What's that called? Imposter syndrome. Right. At this point. And I've been doing. I've. This is the first time I'm back. I'm in the private sector, but this isn't the first time I've Worked with people who work with law enforcement, and yet I'm here talking to them. And sometimes I get that little like, do I belong here? And that's from. That's kind of just ingrained in our social structure because we haven't built those pathways to having that connection that we're talking about. And also, it's because language isn't strong enough, right? We keep saying these words, and I'm hearing both sides and both sides are saying the same thing, but neither side gets that they're saying the same thing. Everyone wants to feel safe, Everyone wants to feel comfortable, and everyone wants their kids to do better. And when we say inflammatory statements, they're not even inflammatory. They're very basic, right? I could say black lives matter, and I could say all lives matter. And those are both very basic. But in our language, they mean two different things because we're not actually listening to each other. And we don't have that social trust that you're talking about. Like, we don't have communication skills, and we don't have trust to. To hear someone say something and trust that they're not trying to hurt my feelings, right? When I say black lives matter, I'm not telling you that your life doesn't matter. When I say all lives matter, I'm not telling you that black lives don't matter. When we're saying, I'm not going to use more statements. I'm just going to point out that our communication styles differ because our language isn't strong enough to. To get to the heart of what we're feeling. And we're not learning how to do that. We're not learning how to express ourselves emotionally. We're not learning how to figure out ourselves emotionally. Like, understand what's going on inside me when I hear black lives matter. And it frustrates me, like, what's actually going on, because there's an emotional response that's causing us to do something crazy or do something that makes me feel like I need to one up you and say, yeah, of course your lives matter. All lives matter. So stop trying to be mean to me. Sorry, I just went on that tangent. But to your point, I like that we are building. You and me are building, like, this space that we have right now. Are building strong communication patterns that will. That will cement into our relationship rather than just, hey, we're not communicate. Communicating properly on this. On this topic. Figure out how to fix this topic. Instead we're saying, hey, we're not communicating the best we can. Let's fix the Fact that we're not communicating the best we can.

[32:24] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, Yeah. I think that that's. That's very true. And, like, as I've mentioned to you, I'm in Virginia right now, and yesterday I went to the supermarket, and it was, you know, everyone's, like, wearing camo, and everyone's like, you know, it's. I think a lot of the assumptions I had about people kind of all came up to me while I was in that supermarket, and I. And I. And I panicked. I became very scared, and I tried to kind of tap into what that fear was, you know, because it's. I've been in many rooms of all, where I'm the only, let's say, person of color, you know, and. And even still, like, I've always been very keenly aware that I have one foot in kind of either. In both spaces. You know, I am often, you know, I am Puerto Rican. Ethnically, I grew up in Puerto Rico. It's something that's very tied to who I am. And I know that if I really wanted to hide it, I could. You know, I could pass as, like, a white woman, and my life would be so easy or, you know, easy in some ways, because I'm not going to say that that's a default to things being easy, but I was trying to tap into, like, what my anxiety around that space is and what those feelings are, and so much of it is. Can be conditioning. You know, I grew up in a place where our high school was, like, 70% minority, you know, largely. I came from a Puerto Rican and Cambodian community, a lot of Laotians, a lot of Southeast Asians. So to me, that history was always very, kind of deeply ingrained, because I always felt that there was a lot of similarities. You know, I had friends who grew up or who were born in, like, concentration camps. You know, they were part of the Khmer Rouge, you know, where internment camps is. What. I mean, I'm sorry. And it's hard. You know, you think about those struggles, and you think about where those people are now. It was a very different experience when I came to my kind of wealthy college, and people were talking about their boats and their ships and all those other luxuries that I couldn't even fathom. And I just remember thinking, you don't care for your siblings. You don't care for X, Y and Z. And sometimes I wonder. Well, sometimes I wonder, you know, from both ends. I think a lot of the people from my hometown, I'll call them townies. Who knows where they would be if they've been exposed to others. Right. And vice versa. And I feel like so much of that, this communication, this language is kind of like the overlap of different circles kind of like coming together. And I worry that now that's harder than ever because there's so much, there's like so much information, you know, and so many people talking where it's, it's really overwhelming.

[35:47] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: I 100% agree. I think that's why. So one of the things about being good with emotions and like understanding where people come from, it's kind of like a gift and a curse. So it's hard for me and people will find problems with this, but it's hard for me to be upset with the rioters and protesters from last Wednesday because I 100% understand that from. And this didn't start when Trump got elected, this started when Obama started running for president. But that slow incline of lies and confusion and anxiety that rose, it's frustrating that they're getting anxiety from a black man or a half black man, half white man becoming president, but it is still anxiety. Right? So I can't, I can't get upset with them for being anxious and I can't get upset with them for. Because a lot of these people, I've had the privilege to live with poor white folks. So I know what, I know what the world looks like for someone who grew up in Rio Linda, Sacramento, because it's, it's a hard struck place. And it's not, it's not too dissimilar. It's still, it's still a little bit different, but it's not too different than being black, like being a poor white person by the wealthy elite. They get treated the same. And while they're, while the core issues are what I understand it's hard to be upset. So I forgot why I was saying this.

[37:24] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: No, I think that that's a great point. And that kind of brings me back to a conversation that I had with Matt V. A few years ago about the Metco program and Boston to the Metco program is, you know, you take inner city kids and you bust them out to suburban schools which are better, resource better. All these, they're just like good schools. And I've always had a problem with that because it's taking a handful from a lottery and taking, you're literally bussing them out and putting them into better schools. And once they get to those schools, you know, these are inner city kids that are now in like a predominantly white community and they have to code so you know, so there's a lot of learning that they have to do. And Matt was really angry that he, as a poor white person, could not access that opportunity. And I kept trying to explain, like, systematically, like, people of color suffer more. And then, like, looking back, it's like you were orphaned. You know, who am I to say that? Because you were. But he was like, I am a minority because Matt is a Russian Jew. So to him, it's like he was a minority in Russia. And I get it. And it took me years to really understand his frustration, you know, but I.

[38:40] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: Yeah, and it comes from language, right? Like, if we could. If we. So I keep having these conversations with people about these generic terms that we even. That we put on. So even with you. When we got in the argument about minimalism and I said, I'm tired of hearing people say the word minimalism, a friend of mine and I were talking about depression, even anxiety. Even though I said it, it's still a term that kind of is just like this. This catch all that doesn't catch everything. We're trying to say this one term to mean so many different things. So when we say minority, it actually means so many different things. But for some reason when we say it here, it actually just means black and brown folks. But like, if I think of people from. What is that, Bosnia and Lithuania, like all these places that had really devastating. What's it called when someone. Genocides. Right. They were treated as minorities. And they are. They are minorities in their country. So to come here, they're. We just make it white and others. Black and brown folks. Yeah, right. And like, I don't know any. I know a lot of people that come from European countries or even come from, let's say like Eastern European or even South Asian that don't consider themselves white. And when they get here, they're automatically lumped into white. And white is. White's another one of those catch all terms that doesn't even tell us what we're talking about technically, because there's two continents full of white folks. So that doesn't say anything technically.

[40:14] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: I'm white.

[40:16] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: Yeah, exactly.

[40:18] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: Latino is not a race, you know, And I think of this time where I was working with an executive director and I work for an international organization, and we had these pictures of. From one of our sites in Denmark, you know, and Denmark is a very white place. And she was like, we need to show more diversity here. And I was like, what? Like, what are you saying? You want a black kid in this picture? This site is 99% white. And their diversity might be economic. You know, these might be poor kids, it might be, you know, disabilities, it might be all these other things. But because there's not a brown kid in this picture, it doesn't. This is Denmark lady. Like, you know, and I just remember being like, that's. You don't understand what diversity is. And if it's just putting a brown face in a picture, you're missing a lot.

[41:13] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: Yeah, I agree. So. So this new job that I have, so I came from the nonprofit sector. I've worked with families and kids for the last decade and now I'm working for a private company that manufactures law enforcement tools. So they do body worn cameras. We do empathy training now through VR. We do all these really cool things to make policing so much better. I have a lot of problems with that and that's why I'm here. So one of the reasons that I'm now working at this job is because after the George Floyd thing, they hired my friend Regina because they realized that they're a unit, that they're a company, a multi billion dollar company that builds and creates technology for law enforcement to police communities. But never in their last, since they've been around, have ever talked to the community, never even reached out and done anything with revolutionary. And now they're realizing, right? And now they're realizing, oh, hold on. Communities are actually our customers. They're the ones that are going to be utilizing these innovations in policing. So now I'm here, my friend Regina is starting this department, or we're starting this department called the Community Impact Team, where we actually go out and talk to the community. Something that's obviously necessary for an organization that's making stuff that directly affects the community. So when we're saying community, we mean specifically black and brown communities and communities overly policed or have disproportionate interactions with police. Those things, I don't know why I got here. Now I keep doing this.

[43:04] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: I mean, I think all those things are really important because we're not, we're making decisions and we're doing things for a community that we don't know nothing about. You know, and being here in Virginia, one of the things I realized is I don't know anything about the rural struggle. Being someone that grew up in a city. I drove 20 minutes to get to the closest grocery store. I thought about how insane that is, that that's something that someone has to do on a regular basis, where in Boston for my apartment, I can walk to the closest grocery store in under 10 minutes. And how that kind of feeds into other struggles of food insecurity or food deserts and things like that. And all of that to say is that there are so much community struggles that I think are just overlooked when you break it down into a black and white issue. You know, it's not that all white people are really well off and it's not that all black people are struggling. And we need to kind of let go of those assumptions and those ideas. And I know that, like, and we.

[44:10] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: Also have to pay attention. We also have to pay attention to the nuances of all of those. So I think you're. I mean, you're definitely right that we can't just say black people are in poverty and white people are rich. We also can't just say, well, all poor people need this. And, oh, I remember we were talking about diversity. So all poor people need this. And rich people don't need anything because suicide rates for rich white men are higher than ever before. There's a problem there. That means that there's something that needs to be fixed. Also, suicide rates for youth are going up. So there's a problem there that needs to be fixed. But we can't just say, oh, all rich people are committing suicide because of this, or all teens are committing suicide because of social media.

[45:07] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: Right.

[45:08] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: Which is probably, like, there's a high correlation there. But there's also something else going on. And I could definitely use America's current state of like, anxiety, like, as an impetus for a lot of issues underlying or a lot of reasons a lot of these issues are happening. But I want to go back to what we were talking about before, where you were talking about diversity with the Denmark place, where it's like, diversity isn't just race, which is why I'm at Axon. I didn't mean to say their name, why I'm at the company that I work at. But the diversity isn't just going to be like that because they're now branded as a tech company. Diversity isn't just going to be getting more colored folks in tech people of color. I'm black.

[45:57] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: I can say colored folks.

[46:00] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: But it's more of a. We can't just do this because people look different. We definitely need. Because I don't want one of. I always say this, but the only thing that frustrates me more than rich white folks is rich are bougie black folks. So I don't want like nothing but elite class black folks here either. Like, we need the gambit, right? We don't only need black men. We need black and brown women in tech, too. We need more trans in tech. So diversity isn't just your sexual orientation or your race. It's also, like, different beliefs. I don't want to work. A big part of the reason why I left California is because it's a giant bubble, and I love my Californians, but we tend to think very similarly about things, and I don't want that. That gets us stuck. So in talking about. In talking about, like, the different kinds of problems that under. That are running under, like, the undercurrent of America, we can't just say, this is what has to happen. We do have to have that diverse thought, which only comes from having an actual diverse group of people.

[47:13] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, I agree. And I think more than anything that what I'm taking away from this is that, you know, innovation as a whole and progressiveness really comes through a cumulation of a bunch of different ideas, you know, so sometimes it's even better to work with someone that you don't agree with because it kind of helps you tap into that. But I know that this is, like, the end of our time, and I just wanted to thank you for this.

[47:41] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: Yeah, thank you. I'm sorry that I took it macro. It was supposed to be about us, but.

[47:47] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: Macro, micro, it's all the same to me.

[47:52] NATHANIEL MCLEROY: That's fair. Cool.

[47:54] STEPHANIE ROSARIO RODRIGUEZ: Do.