Whose Month Is It? How To Celebrate Differences Without Being Divisive | S3 E12

Intro: SN 3, EP 12

SPEAKER_03 0:09

But hello and welcome to the Family Business Podcast with the Alesssies. And today, as Steve Alesi, I'm being joined in the podcast booth with Alan Paul, who is not an Alesse. No, I am not.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Sometimes I wish.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

Oh, come on, man. Sometimes I wish you were in

What Are We Celebrating This Month?

SPEAKER_03 0:30

it.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

I wish you were in it for sure. I feel close enough that I could be an honorary. Maybe I could be an honorary Alessie. You've been with us for a bit. Yes, sir. Wow. Since uh 2012, 11. I keep going back and forth, but yes, I think I think at some point I should get a uh honorary title. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 0:46

It does pop up on the calendar, your years and so on, every so often. Yeah. Awesome. And I bring up calendar because uh we have learned that this is uh being recorded just before. Uh, well, let me say it this way on the heels of Black History Month in February, we've learned that in March it is women's history month. Correct, correct. And we asked the question, as soon as we learned that, is there a man's history month? Well, I I yeah, we we looked at it.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

You felt it, right? I really wanted to say it. And like all the people are going to groan halfway through my wife's press is going to groan. But just in the immediate response to I've I'm I don't I definitely cannot speak and would never try to speak for any women in our audience ever. However, I'm sure as soon as we mentioned Is There a Man's History Month, they all likely said uh duh the entire year and every other day is man's history, his story. We is his story, I've heard that somewhere else. Okay, I've heard that somewhere else. And that's why we start. I'm sure there's some some back some again with that little backlash of hey, you guys got plenty of pub, of course, and the women deserve their month too. So I won't argue that purpose at all because I like to sleep at night in my own bed.

SPEAKER_03 2:14

This is gonna be tough, Alan, because there are so many things I wanted to say right there, came up in my mind, but I see my wife's face, so it will not come out of my mouth. Yes, we are we we want to stay happy, happily married. Most important part of this. Wow, have we learned? Yes. This gray hair has taught us something along the way. Well, we're not going to continue to joke about all these unique uh days that they set aside, but there's something that these months where we highlight the uh black history, the Hispanic heritage, the American Indian heritage, there's something about it that we could take out of it as being positive and good. And I'd like us to direct our attention to that because we don't spend time on a Sunday talking about matters like this, because we keep our eyes on things like faith and how we're gonna move forward and the challenging days that we are in. And there's so many people that in our unique um congregation we are uh helping and speaking to because it's such a great ethnic group. I mean, just a couple of weeks ago on one of our stages, the there there was a couple of Dominican, two brothers that were one was on the bass, I mean, the drums and the keyboards. Right. We had um uh goodness, we had an Argentinian that was singing, we had a Brazilian that was singing, we had a Peruvian that was playing the guitar and singing, we had a uh a black uh islander that was playing Caribbean. Um, and we had uh one American that was my daughter, white, that was there. Well, let's clarify their white person that was there, and uh then we had a Peruvian-Asian mix on the keyboard. That's just in one environment, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Just between eight people, you had three, four continents represented, however, many other you can't even count how many cultures within that family

Examples of Diversity in Our Family Business

SPEAKER_01 4:30

are not specifically because they might be married to a Colombian and they're married to you know, someone that's Italian or or Cuban or whatever. So even in that stage, you have an incredible mix of what really Miami. Obviously, we're in Miami as we're recording this, and we represent that every time we step forward. Like most people, I believe, step into areas like that, even if you're in a slightly less culturally diverse place, right? There are stories like that pretty much in every workplace and every family. And we just don't we don't recognize it because we're usually kind of thinking in that one label kind of mentality.

SPEAKER_03 5:07

And I and I'm just afraid um recently things have become so sensitive that you're almost you almost feel forbidden to celebrate one another's heritage. And I guess that's what I want to talk about today with you. Um hello, let me get rid of that. Uh, how can we do a better job at celebrating our unique heritage, our unique uh race without it feeling like there's so much competition between the races, or there is something that's occurred in our past that has to be paid for? And why are we keep paying that kind of stuff forward? And instead of taking this moment here and me being able to look at you across this table that you share uh two different races, and yet we have such a mutual respect for one another and a wonderful working relationship.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

How can we how come we can't do that more? Well, there's there's there's two sides of that right away, right? You mentioned the word celebrate and celebrating our differences versus I guess the other side would be is focusing on the differences, which is a weird kind of place to draw the line, but I think you have to draw the line there. If I celebrate a difference, if I celebrate the fact that I have a unique heritage, um, I got the chance to tell a little bit of this story in season two, I believe, when we did the woke episodes. But I love talking about my family and my heritage because my aunt Lily, who's a black history professor at a lot of Ivy League schools, wow, has tracked, well, even before her, we had already tracked my mother's side of um back in Georgia, back where the farm is. Um, my aunt, I'm sorry, not my aunt, it would be my great-great-great-grandmother and grandfather, Isaac and Georgiane Williams. Georgiane Williams being a Cherokee mixed mulatto woman, and Isaac being a freed black uh slave at the time, we're not slave

Why Celebrate Heritage?

SPEAKER_01 7:09

at that time, obviously. They were free, thank goodness. But 16 generations have been tracked. Now that's not common. A lot of ancestry.com stuff has come out right. And a lot of African Americans, unfortunately, you know, with all the records, don't get a chance to, even in the South, not even black Americans in the South, a lot of those records weren't kept because they're farmers. So no one's tracking when the baby's born. No. My grandmother didn't even know what her birthday is. We just picked um February, I think we picked uh New Year's Eve. Really? She picked New Year's Eve as her birthday because we think it's around that time. My father's mom. Um, we didn't even know because in the South, they just didn't write that stuff down. The baby was born. It's like, okay, get to work. Get to work. So so much of our heritage is based on what do we want to celebrate? What do we want to remember? I want to remember that. I want to celebrate the uniqueness of my culture, having Tuskegee Airmen in my family, having judges in my family, having the first social worker in that county in uh Georgia, my grandmother in my family. I want to celebrate that, but I don't necessarily want to use the label to celebrate it. It's because it's my family. I just, I'm just proud of it. And that is that you should be on that. Yeah. So I think the difference that you said when people are saying now, oh, well, that's divisive. Yes, it's divisive if you're saying that your history is the only one that should be celebrated at the expense of everyone else. But to celebrate what somebody's done, I want to celebrate my Hispanic brothers and sisters because I want to learn more. I want to learn more. I don't want to uh be forced to in a certain box of learning because I don't think anybody fits into those boxes. And I think that's where we got in the problem. We try to put it in a box. And this month, you must learn everything and you cannot, at the exclusion of all else. Right. That's not life. As you just mentioned on the stage on a Sunday, that's not a box. There's no box you could put. We just did Black History Month celebration, even in our service. And the music came from Hispanic influences and black influences, and you know, when a couple of them were were written by white Americans, you know. And I'm like, but I grew up with it as a song in my church. So I don't really care who wrote it.

SPEAKER_03 9:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

This to me is part of my heritage now because I love the way it sounds with the gospel flair. Right. So that's what I think it is. Celebrating differences versus focusing on a difference and making that a dividing line.

SPEAKER_03 9:28

Yeah. And I guess my issue is if you don't jump in and celebrate that specific group, then you are made to be or look like you're against that group. Yeah. And that's where I think we get we get wrong. We're using something that should be very celebratory. And if you don't celebrate it with me, then you're against me. And it's like, wait a minute. I can't make uh I want to be there for every one of my kids' birthdays. But if something takes me out of town, yeah, and I can't celebrate that birthday, it doesn't mean I'm against my kid. If you didn't post that day. On that day, it just means that I'm gonna celebrate them when I see them. Yeah. Um, it doesn't just have to be one month, it doesn't just have to be one day. And I think that's what I like about what you're saying. Now, part of the whole uh focus on celebrating that ethnic group in our country, I hope is based on letting you be educated of the uniqueness of each of those people groups.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

I agree. It has to be education, and that's why I mentioned the first part, wanting to learn. Yes. And um, a famous quote, I don't remember who said it, is uh a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion

Shamed for Not Celebrating?

SPEAKER_01 10:47

still. So the idea of educating people by telling you, you know, I've been an educator, as you know, for a teacher for a long time. And there's nothing worse than saying, okay, children, now we are going to learn about.

SPEAKER_03 10:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Like those are those words. 90% of the kids are like, oh boy, here we go. Yeah. And so even though I still I definitely believe in setting up opportunities to learn, you have to give people the opportunity and then let them walk in, say, okay, we're going to learn about my brothers in South America or my brothers in Asia. You know, I believe there is an Asian Heritage Month that we didn't even mention. I'm sure I don't know which month it is. We've got to look it up. But I welcome the opportunity to learn about that. But if you told me this month, I don't get to read anything else but, you know, whatever their ethnic culture, Asian or Caribbean or Black or European, whatever, whatever you pick, I can only read this book. And if I don't read it, like you said, this month, I'm going to be getting an F that week. Now, if I'm school, I mean if I'm in school, that's different. Right. But as an adult, I'm going to say, wait, this is not my entire life, and I want to embrace this on my own terms. So I think that's the key. You just said it. Education is key, and we give people opportunities to learn. That's why I do, I do celebrate and welcome Black history and all these heritage months. What I worry about is again the idea that, oh, now, if you didn't post on that day, and this is a lot of social shaming, right? That's the thing now. It's like the, oh, well, if you didn't say it, like you said, if my my silence somehow dictates what people really think about me. Well, meanwhile, you and I in a relationship, we got Ashley and John in here representing all these different cultures. We're in actual relationship, but I can't post this. Right. They they wouldn't know. They wouldn't know that we actually care and learn, and I learn something new about my you know, people's heritage every day that we're in the office.

SPEAKER_03 12:45

And A B, there's there's certain things that I have to work through because I know the sensitivity of people. Uh, and I have it with my black friends, my black brothers, for instance. In January, we have Martin Luther King Day. Right. And then in February, we have President's Day. So now I've gone to the Martin Luther King Memorial, taken pictures there with the family, had communion literally there with my brothers of different races when we visited that what we called our reconciliation gathering. It was beautiful. It was beautiful. We prayed and sang and had a great time. Um so when it comes to us planning our year calendar for our business, and we're showing what days the office will be closed and what days the office will be open, we work on Martin Luther King Day. We don't take it make it a holiday, a paid holiday. We make it a paid holiday for President's Day in February. Now let me tell you why we do that. We do that because in our line of work, we close our offices for two weeks during the holidays. Right. Then the third week we're back in and we're really out of the office for a few days because we're in a planning session. So we lose uh the end of December and then almost the first week of January. Yep. So we finally get back in the office and we start to build up this uh flow of work and then to pause it for a day when we in this organization work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, close offices on Fridays. That means we just get up, get some momentum going. We're head steam, full of steam

Hiring, Holidays and Tough Choices

SPEAKER_03 14:47

coming out of the holidays and planning. Then we go, okay, let's get back in the office. Oh, pause, we lose a day. And when we lose a day here because we're working full days in the office, yeah, it offsets the whole flow of our schedule for that particular week and puts us behind. So it's not, I struggle because I wonder does anybody question why we don't take off that day in January? And if so, do I feel pressured as a business owner to have to take off one specific day because we've become so sensitive to okay, if you don't honor uh Black History Month or Asian History Month or uh Hispanic hair, if we don't honor that, oh, you've got something against me. And here you are as a white pastor, white business owner, white leader, you take off President's Day, yeah, because most of them are white, but you don't take off Martin Luther King. I I really go back and forth, and it's like, wait a minute, I I I can't I can't make everybody happy because not everybody knows my heart.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:00

But it's a challenge.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Well, the fact that you just you laying that all out and full disclosure, as an employee here, yeah, right? As an employee here, realizing that as an African-American employee here, very good. Hearing you say that, and I don't think you've ever shared that entire process, even again, this is why people should really watch this podcast, just to get your heart, especially those who are part of our business here at Metro, to hear your heart behind that is why me as an African-American person would never question well, he's he must not care about Martin Luther King and all the sacrifices he made. When you just laid out your struggle to say, is this a good business decision? And does this honor the actual sacrifice that the man made? The reason I am here is because of the sacrifice Martin Luther King made, right? That's why I'm here, because of him and others in the civil rights movement. For me to even have this job, for you to be able to bring me in and hire me in a multicultural, inter in integrated company is because of what he did. What better way to honor him than to show up for work in the place that he worked for? Wow. Wow. Now, I mean, that's the mentality I have to take to this because I could, if I wanted to, jump into the blame game that he's a white guy that doesn't really get it. He's he's and this is why I love your you putting it in the context of a person that really cares for all cultures and does not want to check the box. I want to bring up something in sports real quick because this is coming up a lot more, and we're getting into the weeds a little bit politically and stuff like that, but hey, might get ratings, might not. We'll see. Um, the whole thing with Brian Flores and the suit against the NFL and the Rooney rule, Rooney rule, am I saying it right? And it's coming up over and over again. Stop for a minute. I'm impressed you know all that. Oh, I you thought I didn't watch sports. Okay, I you're a musician. I keep an eye out. Okay, I'm not I'm not a dolphin fan like everybody, pay attention. So go ahead. So that key issue with that whole thing, hopefully I'm you know I'm summarizing it right, is that he's out is he's alleging that there's racial discrimination because he was being subjected to the Rooney rule, which says you've got to bring in a black candidate for a new head coaching position at NFL. And he's saying that basically what they were doing is they were bringing him in, checking off a box, saying, yes, we interviewed a black candidate. Pastor, I, as well as everybody else who's African American in this country know there's been racial discrimination and know it may still exist. But what we, what Brian Flores experienced is what we are getting more and more tired of. We, I, I am getting more and more tired of is feeling like I have to have a box checked to validate that I'm here. I don't need a checkbox. I'm not a checkbox. I'm here because I earned it and because you felt I was worthy of the position. So again, not to say the heritage doesn't matter. I'm proud of it, but it doesn't, I don't lead with that and I don't need it.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

I don't need it. And if my work doesn't stand for me, then I don't want to have somebody say, oh, well, you know what? Let's keep them because we need to keep diversity. Yeah. No, that's a that's no way to live. That's no way for me to live. And so the fact that you are looking at the heritage and the celebrations in that same lens, that that that to me speaks more to where I think the majority of Americans, well, I believe more Americans are. Let's celebrate. I want to learn more, but don't use it as a checkbox where I just need to say, yeah, I posted that day. We had that day off, therefore, you know what they're calling it now? I think I'm I'm getting this cultural, they're calling it um, I think for environmentalists, they're calling it greenwashing, right? So you just put your environmental label up and say, oh, we're we're saving the planet, we're saving this, and corporate corporations are putting up that that label. Well, we care about the planet, and they're like, Well, you're just doing it to get, you know, get all get over with the environmental people to make you feel yeah. Wow. And it's the same thing with wokeness and infirmity and all this other stuff. It's like now they're like, well, just put a label on it. Yeah, we celebrated the holiday. Yes, we we black voices and stuff. And we're seeing more and more of people from my culture saying, yeah, that doesn't really do it. That's not it. And the reason is is because they're checking a box. And we never wanted that. We just want equal rights, and that's cool, and that's all we want. Equal, not this kind of, you know, I don't know what it's called, but yes, checking out.

SPEAKER_03 20:34

And I don't even think you want preferential treatment. Absolutely not. No, you you let's compete. Let's complete. If we're gonna run the race, we're we're we're not gonna slow down. Yeah, but if I'm the better athlete, I'm not gonna slow down because I want somebody of a different race to be given the chance to win. Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

And if you always, again, historical things aside, we started further back because of racial discrimination that passed in slavery. Yeah. However, when we do start at the same starting block, don't treat me like I need to be farther ahead. Because then again, as we've seen, who gets preferential treatment? Is it the women this year? Is it the Hispanics? Is it Asians? Is it blacks? Who gets who gets to start further ahead? Every time we keep saying which group suffered more. Yep. Right? And so each time we try to move the starting blocks, the rest of the groups are like, hey, what about me? Right, right. What about me? What about my month? What about me? And it's just a losing game. It's not that these aren't noble intentions, yes, but noble intentions don't always bring great results. No, and I think that's what we're finding out.

SPEAKER_03 21:40

I hope, um I hope we can appreciate the fact that every ethnic group, every race should be celebrated. Yes. But maybe that celebration shouldn't be limited to a day or a month. If you're in that ethnic group, Share your story with your kids. The good, the bad, got it. But mostly the good. Tell me the accomplishments. I I, you know, I do get a little nervous when I see certain people wanting to pass on the negatives of their race, and it's like they just can't get past it. My concern is, can we get past that? Somebody may be upset with me even saying, How can I get past slavery? I go back to a biblical manuscript of a people who went through slavery in their own way, biblically speaking, the Jews going through their slavery. Whatever that looked like, it was so long ago we can't we don't know all the details of it. Can you compare it to what the African American, the blacks went through? I I I don't even know what what ultimately I would want to say to that is I like hearing when you just told me about your family, yes, where where they were, how they adapted and experienced levels of influence and success back when all we've really been conditioned to think is there there wasn't these opportunities

Can We Get Past the Past?

SPEAKER_03 23:18

given to our black friends. Hearing your story, hearing that is inspiring because it it's interesting to me because of the person, yes, who they are and what you came from. Now, again, my side of the family, yeah, sad to say, some of them back in Alabama on my mom's side, they you know, they were involved in the KKK. Not good at all, but I want to know what were they thinking? Yeah, what was that about? So tell me some of that history, you know what I'm saying? So I'm almost celebrate that history, but then when I start looking at like uh uh two of our brothers, um uh Cecil and Donald yesterday showed up at our Daydelane campus. And when they opened the door, one of them was wearing what looked like an African garb, right? Clothing. And then I saw and I commented on it, looked good. And I thought they knew they got the the word that we were gonna be doing something in honor of Black History Month. And then I saw Donald and he was wearing something as well. And I'm like, guys, what were you doing? They said, Oh man, we just wanted to celebrate our the the Black History Month and they're they're islanders. So they were already thinking in their own way, let's celebrate, let's wear the garb, let's share. Little did they know we were having our own little celebration as well. Right. I like that. And it wasn't as though I was made to feel bad, okay, you didn't do this for us, so we got to go do it for ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

They were gonna do it anyway.

SPEAKER_03 24:43

They were gonna do it anyway. Got it.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

I love that. Yeah, that's how it should be. And it I think the thing you said about the story, and this really again, you can see how I light up. And the fact that you just mentioned, again, your history where there was people in your in your family who didn't um, for whatever reason, follow through with biblical ideas of equality, right? And just national, you know, the KKK, you know, the human, that people that there are there are bad people in our families, who knew, right? Yeah, there, I'm sure if you look back in my history, there's some people that I'm not proud of. Yeah. Right? I mean, right now, there's people I can say that, okay. Yeah. So the fact is that we can't necessarily punish you for the sins of your fathers and your forefathers by saying, okay, you'll never get it. You want to learn. Now, again, I always do the caveat. Yes, there are bad people now that don't want to learn. Yeah. Let's ignore them, let's put them to the sidelines and focus on the real relationships. And I wanted to say this real quick because it really points out something that you have been talking about a lot. Our children are starving for heroes. They're looking for influencers, they're grabbing on to this guy and TikTok and everything. What if we became the new heroes of our own families by telling these stories? I know my daughter and my sons were inspired when my grandmother took them to the area where all these historical people were in Tuskegee. We have family reunions. They know, they've seen it. I didn't get a chance to go. They didn't take me, they took the grandkids. Now, I know not every family has that. You have that with your legacy between Pastor John and Pastor Anne and how they they told you the stories of the, and now I know the stories of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Yeah. I know about the immigration. You guys are immigrants too. So it's it's like, oh, this is not as cut and dry as a hashtag. Once I have a context of the personal story, I don't just look at a single lens of this race or that race, this culture or that culture. I realize that God has a tapestry. He builds it up like a tapestry and weaves it. And if you try to pull one thing out, it's like, no, there's a bunch of things. It's not going to pull the whole thing out by just pulling one little thread and saying the whole thing's going to unravel. There's a lot of lines twisted and woven into this fabric that we call our American society. Yeah. And the fact that you, again, are willing to open up. I just wish more people would do that. And I do say that to every culture.

SPEAKER_03 27:09

Yeah.

Our Families Need To Hear our Stories

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Don't wait. Like you said, Donald and Cecil, don't wait for the holiday or the history, or don't blame people when they don't mention it. Just say, hey, you know what? Let me continue to tell my story, focus on the positives, and be honest when things don't look exactly right. Because, hey, that's not just your family. That's not just your history. No. We go back in Africa, we go back in any culture, there's some really messed up stuff that we all have to deal with, but it shouldn't define the narrative. No.

SPEAKER_03 27:39

And I hope from that standpoint, uh, if we would do it, I hope they would see the value of family. So our our podcast is the family business with the Alesssies, because family is everybody's business. If we make our family business at home, this kind of conversation and and celebrate the the culture that we're in, but also let them know there's other cultures. Yes. If we can do that in a way that's healthy without having to always make it, this person's against me or that person's against me, I just find you would raise such healthier children. I mean, I went down today to uh the dealership where I dropped off my car in the service department. Um, maybe the only American walking in at that moment. I walk up to a guy, Hispanic guy, and uh he's in the service department. Service. He's supposed to be having a spirit of serving. I think I know where this is going. Yeah. I walk up, he doesn't even look up at me. He's the only one there in the service department, doesn't even look up at me. And by the time he finally does, young guy younger than me, okay, he looks up and he says, uh, yeah, bud, what's up? Yeah, bud. Wow, what's up? And uh meanwhile, as I've been waiting for him, about three of his buddies that spoke his language were playing, going back and forth and having conversation. He's turning to him, he's talking, I'm there. He literally turns his back to me. Okay. And I'm looking at this guy, and I'm like, okay, reality is if I was Spanish, I'd probably be able to get this thing done in a lot quicker manner with a little bit more service mindset. But here's the gringo in the room. And and I have to just kind of, okay, whatever. All right. People have their people groups that they feel more comfortable with. Absolutely. I got it. I got it. And that particular people group, you know, I don't have to go out of my way to say, um, okay, I'm gonna celebrate you because I'm forced to. Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna hang out with my Hispanic friends. And it's not, we're not gonna have to go to a month of celebration for you, which by the way, this is so perfect for the Hispanics. They can't even find a month. Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_02 30:23

Okay, they gotta go between they go between two months. Thank you. They were late, they were late coming to the table at the month of their Hispanic month. They were late by 15 days, and so now they have the middle of the month going into the middle of the next month.

SPEAKER_01 30:39

They want two months. Okay, out of all the the landmines we have stepped on today, this is the one where I'm like, yeah, Pastor. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 30:48

But I'm gonna celebrate my brothers and uh the the Hispanics and go eat at their Spanish food in South Florida because I don't need a month to do that or a day to do it. And I'm going to go and try to find soul food or whatever food that my uh my black friends enjoy going to and get started on food now.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

That's that's a great equalizer. Everybody, once, once once you got food on the table, we all show up. We all show up, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 31:14

Uh let's celebrate that uniqueness of our heritage. My daughters, I promise you, Alan, I don't have to push down their throat the Italian heritage portion that they share.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 31:27

Somewhere along the way, we have talked about it. We have showed them the country. We have told my my father and mother, uh, mother and uncles have told them stories about uh uh being Italian. They watch the Godfather movies and everything that go with it. They like the the uh Giotta, who uh is a chef and she's got her cooking show and shares all the Italian recipes. They find themselves naturally migrating towards that, and we're really not Italian. There's nothing about our features or life that makes us Italian, but they embrace that heritage because in the home they have found that it's a value. Yes. Now they don't devalue other races or other heritages, they just find themselves moving towards the one that has been in their DNA. So for our Hispanics, our Asians, um, our blacks, our Italians, our what is white anymore in America? I don't know, Caucasian, I don't know. Caucasian. Let's let's celebrate our own heritage while we are with our family, but also not be so locked into our own heritage that we're not willing to look across and see the value of our friends' heritage.

SPEAKER_01 32:51

I'll tell a quick story that really kind of puts that in. And again, I always like to use Marcus and Naomi, right? Because just like you did with your kids. Um, I always joke that our kids had this, not just because we're musicians, and because I'm a musician, because my wife and I, you know, keep them around music all the time, but that playlist in our family, like my daughter went from Queen to Musicals to uh John P. Key and Gospel to like her playlist is just all over the place. And I'm like, why how did we raise these kids that have a, you know, you cannot tell their ethnicity by their playlist, by their, by their musical heritage. They don't just gravitate the ones because we I remember those days, Saturdays cleaning up, and we would just have African necks and then something you're oh my god, she's singing in Spanish. That sounds cool. What gravitated? It was it wasn't that I wanted to force them to say, you need to know about all these cultures. This was good music. This is good music, this is good music. This is good music, and the same way in culture, like you said, the African and American heritage that I share is a good heritage. Yes, sir. It's something they should embrace because it's good, not because they had to, because it's amazing. And because being a part of that helps them know who they are. It helped make me who I am, it helped make my parents who they are. But it's not the only one. There's other good stuff out there. So just learn and celebrate all that is good. Bible talks about it. We used to take the Bible in, but right, it says, you know, whatever, so other lovely, whatever things are good report. Yep. Think on those things. Focus. Yeah, focus on those. And I think that's a great, you know, way to talk about culture.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

Yeah. And so I I celebrate your heritage. And I thank you every time we do talk, I learn something new about your family. Uh, I thank you for celebrating our heritage and the heritage of our other staff members that are part of what we do here in our business at our church. And it makes for a great environment. And um, thank you for helping keep all of that in check and in balance. Because from the outside, there's always voices that are trying to keep that out of balance.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

True.

SPEAKER_03 34:59

And we won't let that

Final Thoughts

SPEAKER_03 35:00

happen here. So we found it, we were going to protect it and move forward. And so today we just wanted to share with you a little bit about celebrating our own unique heritages. And we trust and give you permission to celebrate your own as well as everybody else that is around you. So thanks for joining us today on the Family Business with the Alessis.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

You've just enjoyed another episode of the Family Business Podcast with the Alesssies, and we can't thank you enough for being a part of our podience today. Now that you've learned more about us, here's how you can join in in the family business. First, make sure you're following our podcast right now and download this episode so you can hear it at any time. Second, think of someone you know that might need or enjoy this episode and share it with them. You'll be helping them and helping us to spread the word about the family business. Third, go to AlesiFamily Business.com and tap the Ask the Alessies button. This is really cool. You can use it to record a voicemail comment or question, and we can add your voice to our conversations. Finally, while you're on our page, tap the reviews tab and you'll see a link to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. We love reading your reviews and we might even share them on the show. Thanks again for joining us, and we'll see you next time at the Family Business with the Alesssies because family is everybody's business.