My First Podcast Interview: Ancestors, Race, and Responsibility

I spent a few days in our nation’s capital at the end of last week for the March on Washington 2026: Defend the Vote. More about that next week. The trip threw off my writing schedule a bit, so I decided this week I’d share with you my first podcast appearance, which was also last week, on “Real Talk with DeDe.” DeDe is based in Nigeria, and her show centers on “meaningful discussions about life, healing, spirituality, health, finance, relationships, and personal growth.” DeDe and I talked about my work on the Healing White History project, including my conversations with my ancestors and how they changed me. You can listen to the episode here: The Past We Inherit, The Future We Choose . I’ve lightly edited the transcript below to take out some of my repetition and “you knows.” I’ll work on those verbal tics and more – plenty of my flaws are still reflected in the transcript. I hope you enjoy our conversation, imperfections and all. The Past We Inherit, The Future We Choose DeDe : Today I’m excited to have Steve Jensen with me. Steve spent 23 years as a plaintiff’s trial lawyer, but today we are talking about something much more personal. Family, history, identity, and what happens when you discover something about your own past that completely changed the way you see it. Steve discovered that an ancestor he has admired was involved in slavery and pro-slavery organization during the Civil War era. Instead of looking away, he decided to confront that history head on. He even took the unusual approach of saying he deposed his ancestor, using the skill of a trial lawyer to have an emerging conversation with a man who has been dead for more than a century. Steve, welcome to Real Talk with DeDe. It’s so good to have you here. Steve: Oh, I’m really excited to be here, DeDe. Thank you so much for having me. DeDe: So before we get into your family history, I want people to get to know you first. You spent 23 years as a plaintiffs’ trial lawyer. So what drew you into that career? Steve: I practiced in an area of law that we call toxic tort, which just means I represented individuals who had been affected by exposures to toxic substances. Most of the clients that I represented over those 23 years were people who had illnesses. Many of them had cancer. And I sued chemical companies for the most part. And I did that because I have always been concerned about the environment. And I also consider myself a storyteller. I love stories. I love connecting with people through storytelling, either listening to stories or helping create stories. And that’s what the job of a plaintiffs’ lawyer is. DeDe: And when you spend that much of your life asking difficult questions and looking for evidence, I imagine that those skills probably come in handy later in a very unexpected way. Did being a trial lawyer influence the way you approach your own family history? Steve: Yes. So, when it came to imagining conversations with ancestors who had been involved in building the false story of race and the false story of white superiority, white supremacy, I definitely used my trial lawyer skills in those imagined conversations to confront those ancestors, my own ancestors, about whether or not their interactions, their behaviors with respect to race were consistent with their own ethical and moral beliefs, their spirituality. And that was a lot like cross-examining a witness. DeDe: That actually brings me to Charley. You had this photograph on your wall and I believe you knew the man you were honoring. So what happened that made you realize there was another side of history? Steve: Yes, I was reading some of the documents about our family that were left to me by my grandmother, who had died a few years before. And she had left this treasure trove of documents, photos, and correspondence that went back generations in our family. She had put together scrapbooks for both her children and her grandchildren. And I was going through these scrapbooks and I came across a biography of this man, Charles Arden Russell, who was my third great-grandfather who lived in the 19th century and during the Civil War era. And I had known that he was a lawyer like I was a lawyer, and he was a judge, and he was a pioneer. I had been taught all of that. So I had known a little bit about him before, but I came across a biography of him, a short biography written by his son, which revealed to me that he had not only owned slaves, But he had traded in enslaved people, bought and sold other folks. And that was very shocking to me. And that was what led me to decide to look into how I need to tell the whole truth about my family. DeDe: Once you had uncovered all this information, you could have simply just written about it and just leave it there, but you choose to do something very different. You say you deposed your ancestors. What would your work actually look like? Steve: Yes, it was a little like a deposition or like a cross-examination in a trial. But it was not just that. I imagined conversations with these ancestors, including Charley. And these imagined conversations, I imagined going back in time to their time and going to their homes and being welcomed by them. They knew who I was and where I was from when I got there. And they welcomed me as family. And we had small talk. We had conversation. We caught up as family do when they’ve seen each other after a long absence or meeting family that you haven’t met before. That’s how I imagined these conversations beginning. So they weren’t like a trial or a deposition from the get-go. They were more like an encounter with family, a loving encounter. And then I started asking them questions about their interaction with People of Color during their time, during their lives. And that started getting to where we were getting more into the area of where it looked like what I would do with a witness as a trial lawyer. DeDe: Oh, you talked about once believing that saying everyone is the same was enough. What made you realize that that wasn’t enough? Steve: Yeah, I undertook this project exploring what it would mean for me. And as I imagined these conversations, they were very intense. I would do a lot of research beforehand. Before I wrote those imagined conversations, I would do as much research as I could about the person, about not just the individual family member, but also the world in which they lived. So what was the culture like in Texas where Charley lived in the 1850s, in the 1860s, in the 1870s? What was that culture like? How did that culture treat the issue of race? And what stories would Charley have learned? What would he have inherited? And how would that have affected his mindset? And then I stepped into those conversations and started writing them. And, of course, they were happening in my own imagination. But even though that happened, they were transformative for me personally. I didn’t know how they were going to come out. And at the end of it, at the end of it, DeDe, I experienced more in a much more visceral way than I ever had before. A very personal connection to racism and to how my family had been connected to that. And that motivated me to work much harder on repairing the racist systems that still exist in our country on economics, on justice, on health, on education, on every area of life. Here in the United States, we continue to have systems that harm People of Color and benefit people who look like me. And I believe it’s our responsibility as white folks to help repair those systems and make them equitable. DeDe: Yeah. And I know this become even more personal because this isn’t just history sitting in a book for you. Your son married a black woman and you now have three black grandchildren. So how does that change the way you think about everything you’ve uncovered? Steve: Yes. I mean, a good friend of mine who I have worked with on racial equity issues for years is a Black man. When I told him that my son had married a Black woman and he said, “Good! Now you have skin in the game.” And it does. It changes, particularly when I have three black grandchildren now, as you mentioned, they will be throughout their lives impacted by these unfair, inequitable systems that my own ancestors helped to build. And being able to imagine these conversations where I got to know these ancestors and what felt like a very real sense made it just more visceral for me. It made me feel this responsibility to help work toward change in my gut. And I had not felt that before. But also, as you say, having family members who are Black, also was a huge contribution to that. DeDe: What do your relatives think about the work that you’re doing? Steve: Some of them are very supportive and want to work together with me to help heal our family history, and work toward racial repair and racial reparations for what our family’s role has been. And so a small group of one of my brothers and some of my cousins have been meeting together to discuss how we heal and what we can do. So some of them have been very supportive. On the other hand, I reached out to my whole family and I asked them to read the book manuscript I had written that included these ancestral conversations and included the discussion of my feelings about how we have a responsibility to repair. And some of my family didn’t respond at all. But every response I got was supportive in the sense that they thought the work I did was very creative and thoughtful. But, many of them were not interested in pursuing racial justice and think that it’s a little wild-eyed. But they loved me anyway. So some of them are supportive of the work and some of them are not, but they’re all supportive of me in a general sense. DeDe: Now I want to ask you something that I imagine that you’ve most probably heard before. So people might hear a white man writes a book about his own racial reckoning and immediately roll their eyes. So what would you say to someone who feels that way? Steve: If People of Color are the ones rolling their eyes, then I get it, because historically white folks who have presented themselves or thought of themselves as allies with People of Color on racial justice in the United States in particular have let those folks down. They have burned out because the work is hard and there’s pressure from family or friends or your society or community at large to not do that work because it’s seen as being some kind of a traitor to your own race. And so people have burned out and they’ve stopped. And, of course, People of Color don’t have that choice, right? They have to fight that fight to survive for not only their own lives, but for generation after generation. And so if you’re a Person of Color and you’re rolling your eyes at me, I get it because historically that work has not lasted long enough or not been true enough or authentic enough and has not actually helped change the systems that we have been talking about. And I get that. And I have to just accept that that’s the history that white folks have had and just try to see if I can work to get beyond what that history has shown and do something different. And that’s my hope and that’s my intention is to make it part of my own lifestyle, not just something I’m doing for a little while. I intend to do this work for the rest of my life. On the other hand, if you’re a white person who’s rolling their eyes at me, that’s a little different. That suggests that you think there is no race problem or that racism is just a bunch of crap or you believe that it’s not the right thing to do, even though the facts are what we’ve been talking about here – which is that there continue to be ongoing effects systemically in this country that harm People of Color and benefit white folks that cut across all different aspects of our society. So I accept their eye rolling and try to continue to put out the truth and hope that the healing work will eventually lead to healing everybody, including the folks that have been rolling their eyes. DeDe: Do you think it’s important for people to examine their own family history rather than only learning about history in a general sense? And why do you think that? Steve: Yes. Well, I can say that for me, as I’ve told you, it was transformational to do this work, to imagine what my ancestors were really like as people and to actually encounter them as individual human beings. I found that changed my own attitudes about myself and what my role was and what my responsibility was in a way that was much stronger. I’d been involved in racial equity work for years. So I’d been doing the work, but still, doing this family history work for me really was a game changer in terms of my energy, my attitudes, and my sense of responsibility to really take this to the next level. And to convince other people that I’m sure I’m not alone. It’s not going to connect for everyone – and I’m not claiming that this is the right path for every person, but I would encourage every white person to at least explore their own family history and the connection with race that that family has had. DeDe: You’ve had access to family scrapbooks, letters, records, and all of this documentation. But someone listening might be thinking, I don’t have any of that. I don’t have a scrapbook. I don’t even know where to begin. Where should that person start? Steve: Yes, thank you for asking that. I recommend that the first thing that white folks do if they’re going to start this process is take some time to learn about the history of race in the United States. And that history goes back a little more than 400 years now. And race is really, as it has developed over the last 400 years, an American creation. It was a story created by the white colonists in the colonies at the time to help protect their wealth and their power. And so that story has developed over time. And of course, it’s spread throughout the world so that now we have racism in every corner of the world. But that story of race really was developed here. And I think that it’s important for someone who’s exploring this work to start by learning that history, learn about the history of race. And there’s different ways to do that. There’s books that you can read. There’s articles that you can read. Or if you’re not a reader, you can watch documentary films that do much the same thing. And I recommend some of those to people who are starting the work. So that’s where I tell people to start, because it gives you a framework for understanding who your family was in connection with the issue of race. Because until you understand what the culture of race and the story of race was, you can’t really understand how your family fits in. And then once you’ve learned that broad history of the story of race, you can start digging in and say, OK, when did this particular family member live? Where were they and what was the story of race in that place in that time? And how would that have affected their daily life? And try to gather as much information as you can through genealogy websites, for example, Ancestry.com. You need to gather as much information as you can about the person. But the thing that you really need to do to understand the person’s connection with the story of race is understand that story more broadly first. And so that’s the step. DeDe: And let’s say, what if they actually discover something uncomfortable and something that changes the way they see their family? What if? What would you say to them? Steve: Yes, I would say to not run away from that uncomfortable feeling. That uncomfortable feeling is natural. The sadness, the anger, the just not knowing what that means for me and for my family today, all of that is natural. But what our culture has taught us white folks to do in America, our culture has taught us to run away from that and to ignore it, to be blind to it, to write it out of our own family histories. And I think the only way that we can heal is to confront it. And I tried to confront it in a very direct way by actually going back and talking to those ancestors. DeDe: You’ve been doing this for eight years now. So what has surprised you the most? And after everything that you’ve uncovered, has anything about yourself surprised you? Steve: Yes. Well, I didn’t expect when I started writing that the writing would change me as dramatically as it did. I didn’t realize that I would feel compelled after confronting my own ancestors to go out and tell other white folks, you should be doing this too. I didn’t expect to start a project where I was trying to convince other white people to do this work. But that’s where I have found myself. And it’s because of that strong emotional transformation that I think we need. We need that from white people as a society because it is white work to fix this problem. DeDe: True. You said something really interesting that guilt isn’t the point because guilt can actually paralyze people. So if guilt isn’t the answer, what does responsibility look like? Steve: I think that guilt both paralyzes and it also gives people excuses. And what I mean by that is the United States, our culture is very individualistic. And we often say if someone in our family in the past or even our current family did something wrong, that’s not our fault. And if it isn’t our fault, what does it have to do with me? And that’s just part of American culture. And so I think that we need to take a broader collectivist kind of approach to examining history of the United States, broadly speaking, and our own family histories and say, look, what part did our own families – and white people in general – have in building the terrible inequities that we have today? Why do those inequities exist? Well, we personally didn’t build them. They were built decades or centuries ago, but those systems continue to create harm today and they continue to create benefits for white people today. And as the recipients of that unfair benefit, it’s our responsibility. We also inherit these stories of our ancestors. So if our ancestors played a part, as most white folks’ ancestors did, in helping build these cultural systems – we owe responsibility as people who inherited those false stories of race and white superiority, we owe a debt to help make it right. DeDe: Yeah. Steve, do you think that people can acknowledge the harm in their history without feeling personally responsible for something they didn’t do? Steve: Yes. I mean, like I say, I differentiate between guilt and responsibility in that sense. Guilt says,“I did something.” And you didn’t do it. Obviously there are still some white people who are continuing to help build racist and inequitable problems. And some of them are explicitly racist today in America. That still exists, but most white people aren’t in that place. And most white people can honestly say, those decisions, those choices that my ancestors may have made, that other white people made decades or centuries ago, those choices weren’t something that I did, so I don’t think that I need to be involved in that. And even white people who are sympathetic to the issue of race and may even consider themselves allies – and this was true for me for most of my life – don’t think of race as being my problem. I didn’t think it was my problem to work on. I thought it was something for People of Color to fix. And that’s not right. Even though I didn’t make those racist choices, because I inherited my ancestor’s stories and I inherited these systems that benefit me, I do have a responsibility. So that’s how I differentiate guilt and responsibility. DeDe: My final question is, underneath all the history and research, there’s also a very personal story here about identity and becoming a different person. So how has this entire journey changed you? Steve: Yeah, it’s been transformative for me in that I believe I am called. I feel it’s a spiritual calling to help repair the problems of race and to convince other white people to join in this work that is white work. Now I get it. Race is my problem. And the journey has been very inspiring and difficult, but also incredibly powerful in a positive way – a transformative experience for me. And I want other people, other white folks to jump on that ride with me. DeDe: And after everything you’ve learned, questioned and confronted, what do you hope people take away from your story? Steve: I hope they take away that this can be positively transformational work. And even though it’s difficult, it’s intense, it’s uncomfortable, that it can still lead to joyful connection. It can lead to transformation of systems in a way that benefits all of us, and creates joy, connection, and transformation that we can all benefit from. DeDe: Yes. Steve, this has been such an interesting and honest conversation. Before we wrap up, where can people find you and learn more about your work? Steve: Yes, I would hope that people join, subscribe to my Substack, which is called Healing White History. You can get there by going to healingwhitehistory.substack.com or just opening up Substack and searching for Healing White History. And I also have a website, a separate author website called stevebjensen.com. So you can find me at both places. ____ As I said in the interview, I hope that all of you white folks will give this work a try yourselves. I lay out a seven-step process for doing that in Framework for Healing Your Own White History . And I have a standing invitation to anyone who’s trying this to ask me questions in writing. Or we can meet via Zoom to discuss how to overcome any obstacles, and to help process the journey. Please subscribe to follow the arc: truth → healing → transformation & repair.