This post is built out of an interview conducted with Nancy Lindsey, receptionist at Americans for the Arts.

I’m the receptionist. I’ve been here for 14 years.

I enjoy working for Americans for the Arts. They’re laid back. No pressure. No one standing over me, telling me what to do.

You’ve got to have an open mind.
You’ve got to be honest with people.
Until that happens, nothing is going to work.

I have certain people that I hang out with, you know, like we all do. So they know me and I know them, but on the whole I don’t know a lot about a lot of people. I’m sort of private, so I don’t pry into other people’s lives—I only accept what you give me. And I like people to respect me that way, too. And I think people do, here. I think AFTA is a joyful place. I think everybody pretty much gets along here. I think it’s a happy place—I do. I think I get along with everybody here. Everybody is different, of course. I have a relationship with certain people, like a close relationship, and then with some people it’s a more casual relationship. And that feels okay. If you’re going to work somewhere for 8 hours a day, you’ve got to get along with people. You’re not going to be able to please everybody.

I am telling you, right now in this time that we’re living in, we need to figure out how to talk about these things like discrimination. Not only inside here; we need it on the outside, too. It’s some bad times right now. There are some good apples in the barrel, and then there are some bad apples, and you’re not going to be able to please everybody, I don’t care what color you are. Black, white, Hispanic, whatever, you’re going to rub somebody wrong. But we need to try not to define people because of their race or whatever.

When I was coming up—when I was younger—my family lived in the South, so I saw a lot of racism. And I was brought up that that’s not the right way to be—that we’re all one. People need to communicate more, learn how to get along, and stop worrying about these racial issues, because it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

The highlight of the retreat for me was when one of our board members, Margie Reese, talked about experiencing discrimination. She touched on things that I’ve experienced—I was born in the South but I was raised in Chicago. And there’s racism everywhere. And I saw things like she was speaking about. Back then you couldn’t really interact with whites. You couldn’t sit down in a restaurant—you could go and order, but you could never go inside—you had to do it on the outside. And like water fountains. They had two different fountains—one for whites and one for blacks. And that could have gone either way—it could’ve made me bitter, but it didn’t. It made me stronger.

In what Margie was saying, when she was talking about racism, it was like she went through it and it made her a better person—she kept moving ahead. If you let stuff like that bother you and play on your mind, you’re just going to be stuck. You’re going to be bitter. And that has a lot to do with what’s going on now.

We had the two killings of the two black gentlemen a few weeks ago. I’ve seen the video, and a whole lot of other people have, too. And there are some good cops, and there are some bad cops, but you can’t base your feelings on what these people did. I mean, the gentleman who took the lives of the police officers in Dallas—he was black. But I don’t want people to think he’s anything like me. That doesn’t reflect me.

We need police officers. I don’t know why they keep killing police officers. All of it was a tragedy, and they should all be held accountable for what they did. But also, we have to deal with the issue—if this had been a white man, would they have pulled him over? This guy, he had so many tickets—he had been stopped 52 times. And his light wasn’t even blown out. So was this racial profiling? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I just saw the bits and pieces like everybody else.

We don’t all talk about that stuff at work, at least not as a whole. I mean, I talk about it to some of my co-workers. But it’s not like we’re all talking about it. And I think we should figure out how to. Because if we’re trying to improve here at Americans for the Arts, I think we need to work on our communication. We need to be more open-minded about what people say. Without communication, nothing is going to work. I don’t know where people find the strength to do that right—I think you’ve just got to reassure people, and let them know that you want people to come and talk to you. 

I think it’ll happen. I think we can change. I don’t think it’ll happen overnight, but I think it can happen—it’ll be something that we have to continuously work on. You’ve got to have an open mind. You’ve got to be honest with people. Until that happens, nothing is going to work. We’re going to always be divided.