FEATURED STORYTELLER: Tamara M. Banks
Tamara Banks is an Emmy-Award winning journalist who currently is Host to the TV Show From Moment to Movement, an interview series providing a platform for the diverse voices of Black Americans. She regularly covers social justice and human rights issues in North America, Africa and the Caribbean, and speaks to business, advocacy and membership groups about how “one person can make a difference.”
The Early Days
My family is from Louisiana and the Midwest area. My Dad is Black. He was a physician and entrepreneur. My mom is of French origin. She also worked in the medical field and later in life became a painter. Both are deceased now.
I am the oldest of three. I have a little brother who is a professional dancer, actor and singer who lives with his partner in New York City. My sister is also a dancer who teaches and provides massage therapy to other dancers. Yes, we are a creative family.
Tammie at 8 Years old
When I was 8, my father started leaving us for long periods of time. Eventually, he left the country and opened two or three clinics in rural Mexico. For some reason, he liked it down there. In 2005 he got sick and made it up to Albuquerque, New Mexico. My brother found him and said, “You know, we’ve got to take care of him. He's a mess.” So, we did. That was an opportunity to rebuild some kind of relationship.
The upside of my dad's absence is that I know how to change a tire, how to maneuver, to be a problem- solver. Not that women who have fathers can't do those things but I was able to either figure it out on my own or find somebody who could tell me, because it wasn't as if somebody was going to come to my rescue. I had to figure things out. So early on I became independent.
Even though my Dad was gone, my identity was influenced mainly by my dad's side of the family who were around. I spent lots of time with folks in Denver and Louisiana, being brought up in the Black church, the Catholic Church, and the Black community.
Growing up, people didn't understand that African American people come in a wide range of coloring. Without trying to find out, people would confuse me with being Latino, be it from Mexico or South America, or they assumed I was from Italy or was of Arab descent.
Then there was the other side of being brown. In college I competed in a pageant for Black women. I am not a beauty pageant kind of person but prizes were scholarship money. I won first runner-up and thought, that's pretty good! Met my goal – got some funds for school plus a toaster or blender or something. A week later one of the judges came up to me and said, “You should know that you had the most points and should have won, but the organizer of the event said you aren't really Black.”
Finding a Calling
Journalism was always my dream career path. I figured that people don't always have to agree but they can certainly get along. Part of getting along is reaching a point of understanding, to be open to hear somebody's story. I knew that I could be that storyteller, to let people know that while we all pray differently, eat different foods, live in different parts of the world, we also pretty much raise our children with respect, to have good education and get good jobs, so we can have a roof over our head and food on the table. There’s so much more that pulls us together than things that make us different. Journalism is my way to enlighten people and inform them about what is going on beyond the “marquee” headlines. I'm also an adventure seeker. I love exploring the unknown. It goes back to storytelling. Once I find a deeper sense of what's happening, I want to bring that to people because not everybody in the world can go where I go, nor should they.
I remember covering the war in Iraq. Most of the stories being reported were simplistic, body counts and blame…we’re the good guys and they are the bad guys. It really became my mission to dig for deeper perspective than that. What I found was that the US was leading an effort with its allies to train and mentor Iraqis both on the federal level and on the local level to establish a democratic system of law & justice: everything from forensics and court judiciary issues to investigations, so that they could start building their infrastructure and be able to stand on their own once the US left. So, I told the these stories and also those about relationships between US soldiers and Iraqi security forces that no one was talking about.
Tamara conducts interviews in Iraq
Africa Calls
Again, I was curious. I had questions…
Why are certain places around the globe considered perfect – and others Sh#$ holes?
Knowing that the US was built, on the backs of enslaved people, as well as through the genocide of the native people, how is it that westerners think they were more civilized?
How could they say there was no civilization across Africa before 1619 when slaves were first brought here? If you have any knowledge of religion you know there was sophisticated civilization on the African continent.
In 1999, I went to Haiti for the first time and covered a story about corporate philanthropy. American Airlines employees volunteered during their time off to fly clothes, toys, and other items to the people of Haiti, many of whom are living in poverty.
In 2007, I was drawn specifically to Sudan. South Sudan wasn't a country yet and the South Sudanese (mostly Black people) were targeted for genocide by the extreme Islamists of Northern Sudan. The Arabs believed that the indigenous people should be enslaved. Part of that plan was also to take over the oil reserves that are in the South. I wanted to tell that story because no one else was.
I have always had a special interest in genocide and how that comes about. I understand that people can be hateful but is it more the actions of the perpetrator or the apathy of those who aren't saying anything about it? How does it happen? It wasn't like the US didn't know about the genocides occurring in Africa – in 1994 in Rwanda and in 2003 in Darfur, Sudan. We kept saying after the Holocaust “never again” so how do we explain what happened in these countries? Like, what the hell?
The experience was unlike any other I’d had. It's not like you go and stay in a hotel, do your reporting work, come back, have a nice dinner, a couple of drinks, and end the day in a nice bed. You buy a tent and a good sleeping bag, and stock up on “jungle juice,” which is this high- octane bug spray, made of bad but effective chemicals. I would be miles away from hospitals or a clinic or medical care and to get malaria would be deadly.
I embedded with Christian Solidarity International, a human rights organization that helps free slaves in Sudan and provides aid. The story was about reuniting survivors of slavery with their families. We were told everybody should meet under this tree at three o'clock in the afternoon, and all the people from the surrounding area came. They arrived hoping to see their loved one. It was mind-blowing. There's nothing - absolutely nothing - like it. It's one thing when you've lost a loved one, a soldier who is away serving their country in the military. You may expect that the risk of capture and losing one’s life is part of the agreement. But to have your loved one stolen from you, stolen (!) and then enslaved…
Yes, sometimes there was no reunion. It was really sad to see families go back home thinking maybe the next time there is a “slave retrieval” we will. But there was great pain even for those reunited. Many of the survivors were kidnapped as children now returning after 10-20 years. The families have to contend with the physical changes of the survivors, the genital mutilation and abuse resulting from rapes, the scars on their faces and backs from knives and whips. All of these impacts are compounded by the victims’ broken hearts and mental illness.
There are nonprofit organizations in South Sudan and here in the US helping folks with the long-term effects of the genocide and enslavement. I go back and I see people over time. There’s a major difference between those who have received support and those who have not gotten the help and mental health assistance that they need. Some remain “enslaved” in their trauma.
These stories were my first of three journeys into the south part of Sudan. Later I reported stories about the lost boys and lost girls of Sudan, children who were kidnapped and forced to take up arms against their own people, and post-genocide stories from Rwanda.
The next issue after reporting the war and conflicts, and the impacts on the local people and the survivors is how to live with what has happened? What to do with the organizers and leaders of genocide vs how to deal with former neighbors who killed one or more of your family members?
Think of it this way: if you get the drug dealer off the street who may be selling drugs to feed his family and just to stay alive but let the cartel or gang members or the white supremacists go free, then you are cropping justice, not getting to the root of it.
The aim of the trials at The Hague in the Netherlands was to prosecute the organizers, the leaders of the genocide. Then, on the grassroots level, there were meetings aimed at facilitating some form of reconciliation between neighbors, the local participants in genocide returning to communities where the victims and their families still live.
The Trauma Continuum
As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
There is little difference between my interest in human rights and social justice In Africa and here in the United States.
I see the continuum between what has happened to enslaved people in African countries and the African-American experience in the US, some of the impact is historic in origin and some of it is contemporary. Slavery and targeted killing result in a spectrum of reaction and response to trauma. There are people who are impacted for the rest of their lives by persistent racism, and then their pain and fears are carried down through families. It gets passed along in different ways.
Slavery and genocides occurred here in the US and the impacts continue today. There are police departments that have gone for over 200 years now, unchecked in their treatment of people of color in general, and specifically of Black people.
You can look at the Los Angeles California police department for one example. In the early 20th century, well after the Civil War and despite abolition of slavery, Black Americans still faced discrimination in the form of Jim Crow laws – a collection of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation. Black people left the South in droves seeking more freedom – some going north and others going west.
In LA, the locals didn't know how to deal with this influx of Black people so they recruited Ku Klux Klan members, under the aegis of the police department, to “manage” Black activity. In this way, racial profiling and discrimination of people without power by people who have power became entrenched in US culture. Treating people differently and judging them based on the color of their skin, and at its core, our fear, ignorance and intolerance continues. So does the need for it to be called out and reported today.
From Moment to Movement
When the pandemic lockdown happened, the shelter in place, people I know were feeling helpless and hopeless. I regularly give speeches about my career and personal experiences with human rights and social justice across the globe and one of the common themes has been – “One Person CAN Make a Difference.”
To uplift and inform I created an interview show on Facebook featuring people who are doing just that. It was really fun showing: , Hey! You don’t have to be stuck! It's a frame of mind - just think of different ways that you can help others and when you’re feeling down, helping others actually also helps build ourselves up.
But also in February, just a short distance from my home in Atlanta, Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed 25-year-old African-American man, was pursued and fatally shot while jogging near Brunswick…and in March, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old unarmed African-American woman, was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky apartment by white plainclothes officers…and in August, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis right in front of our eyes by a white police officer – his foot upon George’s neck.
What’s different today in America compared to the country’s beginnings is that almost everybody's got a phone with a camera and Internet access. Blatant police brutality against people of color is being captured in real time and reported. The mainstream white community can't deny it. They can’t NOT see it. Most importantly, we have a leader in this country who, since his election in 2016, has normalized racist behavior and supremacist attitudes.
Flagrant disregard and demeaning of Black lives in the US did not start with the killings of Ahmaud, Breonna or George – or any of the many, many young Black people who have lost their lives to racism and police misjustice in the last few years. What did start in the Spring of 2020 is the galvanizing of a broader spectrum of Americans who embraced Black Lives Matter.
Of course not all police are racists. But there are enough out there that there is not one Black man in my life, be it my father, my brother, my cousins, my husband, my friends, my colleagues, that has not been stopped by police for no other reason than to be harassed and intimidated for “driving while Black.”
I'm blessed that the ones that I know and love survived it.
Amid all this turbulence, PBS called me, and in so many words said, “we're sick of this, we don't want this to happen, we have a platform but we don't know what to do. Can you please host and executive produce a relevant show?” My reaction was “we're in this moment, and a movement has to arise from the ashes of a moment, otherwise the moment is wasted.”
So that is how From Moment to Movement was born, my PBS12 series of one-on-one conversations with people in the Black community, most of them with voices rarely heard on commercial news. They are artists, recent college graduates, policymakers, some candidates for office, professionals, working folks, entrepreneurs – from all walks of Black life.
One of my recent guests was a police chief from Savannah who made one of the most remarkable quotes of all the shows. He said, “I can take off my blue uniform but I can't take off my Black skin. I'm still treated like the N word when I don't have my uniform on, especially when I'm in a nice store.”
My goal is not to just to talk in an echo chamber or only to validate Black experience but to also provide resources for people, not just in the Black community but specifically the white community – whether perspective from my guests or books, movies, documentaries or events. I want to support people coming together to have thoughtful, respectful conversations and really get engaged in a meaningful way without taking over.
Tamara’s BE BRILLIANT initiative distributes Solar lamps to Afican and Haitian villages without electricity so that children can study, adults can work, and all can be safer after dark. You can donate to bring light!
Finding Personal Peace
When challenged, I always feel I can solve this. When we start getting into trouble I lean on God. And I can help solve all of this in my lane through the power of God. It's not all my own power. I mean, we're human beings, flesh and blood. But I believe we can do all things through God.
Practically, it’s about starting at home base. You have to have self-care and for me that looks like working out at the gym, going for a run, or yoga or Pilates. All these things to keep us physically healthy and strong are so important. And then, helping people in our own family, you know, making sure that there's peace in the relationships of people that are near and dear to me.
It all starts in the nucleus because I don't think you can be a peacemaker outside of your four walls if you're not a peacemaker within your own community, within your own household, within your own spirit. So it begins with making peace with who you are, perfect in your imperfection.
Tamara is a much in-demand Keynote Speaker (remotely during the Pandemic!). She is also engaged in freelance journalism and video production, and documentary filmmaking. If you would like to engage with Tamara regarding her social justice communications work or professional services and experiences, please visit www.tamarambanks.com.
