Speaker 1: Real celebrity joined the Breakfast Morning. Everybody is DJ Envy Angela, Ye, Charl,
Speaker 1: I mean the guy. We are the Breakfast Club. We
Speaker 1: have a special guest in the building this morning, doctor
Speaker 1: Boys Watkins. Come on and so what's happening in brother,
Speaker 1: How you doing? Oh? Everything's good, longtime Pola mine. You know,
Speaker 1: we've been having a conversation for the past two weeks
Speaker 1: about financial I call it illiteracy, you know, ever since
Speaker 1: mister Damon Dash left, you know, and it's parked up
Speaker 1: a good conversation in our community just about finances, and
Speaker 1: you know, entrepreneurship investing, its investing in self empowerment. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to reach out to a financial expert that
Speaker 1: I know, doctor Boys Watkins. Now, for people who aren't
Speaker 1: familiar telling why you're a financial expert, we'll have a
Speaker 1: PhD in finance and a tough finance for about twenty
Speaker 1: years University of Kentucky, Indian University, Syracuse University, etc. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, I know a lot about money. I
Speaker 1: know what it's like to not have any money. UM.
Speaker 1: I used to really want money. That's why I major
Speaker 1: in finance. I wasn't even really supposed to go to college.
Speaker 1: I figured that if I study money learned about money,
Speaker 1: somebody would pay me money to talk about money. But
Speaker 1: then I really also learned how money can be used
Speaker 1: as a tool not just to liberate you, but it
Speaker 1: can also enslave you. I mean, we have a lot
Speaker 1: of multimillionaires in our community that are scared of their
Speaker 1: own shadow, that are just afraid of everything, afraid to
Speaker 1: be controversial, etc. And I think sometimes if you look
Speaker 1: at money in the wrong way. Money, money, it's powerful,
Speaker 1: like fire or like a drug. Like fire can either
Speaker 1: cook your food and keep you warm, or it can
Speaker 1: burn you and your family alive. A drug can either
Speaker 1: heal you and make you better or can turn you
Speaker 1: into an addict. So that relationship with money, I think
Speaker 1: is important because most of us think about money several
Speaker 1: times a day every day. And you wrote several books
Speaker 1: on finances as well. Yeah, yeah, you know. I wrote
Speaker 1: a book called Black American Money. I have another book
Speaker 1: coming out called It Takes a Village to Raise the Bar,
Speaker 1: a New paradigm for Black America, and it's basically talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, just ways to think about money in ways
Speaker 1: that that money can really be the next step in
Speaker 1: our civil rights movement, you know, because you know, if
Speaker 1: you have political power without without any economic power, that's
Speaker 1: kind of like having a driver's license but not having
Speaker 1: a car. You know, like you're not gonna go anywhere
Speaker 1: unless somebody else wants you, wants to give you a ride,
Speaker 1: and then at that point you're still only gonna go
Speaker 1: where they want to take it. Now, question Dame Dash.
Speaker 1: We mentioned that earlier. What did you think of Dame
Speaker 1: Dash his interview? You know what, um I describe him
Speaker 1: as a breughly fresh air you know, yes, well, you
Speaker 1: know what I liked. Here's what I like about Dame.
Speaker 1: I liked the energy that Dame comes with, Like I
Speaker 1: like to me, I think that that so many black
Speaker 1: men have been so emasculated economically, and it's it's it's
Speaker 1: not something that just recently happened. It's been happening for
Speaker 1: one hundreds of years. That I liked the idea of
Speaker 1: just having a call to manhood and kind of saying,
Speaker 1: you know, look, we can do better, you know, and
Speaker 1: and sometimes like you think about it, on the football field, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, your coach that motivates you to play, sometimes
Speaker 1: you're gonna punk you out to be like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're playing like a bitch. You'll get up. You know,
Speaker 1: you you need to win, you know. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: I think with Dame it's interesting because you know, he's
Speaker 1: he's a little bit like uh. I think he was
Speaker 1: trying to be kind of like an economic version of
Speaker 1: a Harriet tubed me, like, you know, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: these slaves off the plantation. I'm gonna shoot you if
Speaker 1: I have to. Um. But you know, we all understand
Speaker 1: that in order to escape the plantation, you have to
Speaker 1: have a plan. Right to go to war, you have
Speaker 1: to have a battle strategy. But not having the strategy
Speaker 1: and head right away does not give an excuse to
Speaker 1: not fight. And I think that, and so that's what
Speaker 1: I like about Dame. I think Dames started a conversation.
Speaker 1: We weren't really talking about this kind of thing, you know,
Speaker 1: two or three weeks ago. So I'm glad he did it.
Speaker 1: But it's deadly, it's very deadly, and it could hurt
Speaker 1: a lot of our own Let's look, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different things that were said, some things that we
Speaker 1: may agree with, some things we may not. Rhetoric, so
Speaker 1: you enjoyed the safety and the security of a job
Speaker 1: every day. But there's no pride in that to me. Now,
Speaker 1: let me ask the question. There's millions of people out
Speaker 1: there that don't have that opportunity and boss every day.
Speaker 1: So you're basically saying because they have a boss, there's
Speaker 1: no pride in it. I think because people on the
Speaker 1: radio tell people it's okay to have a boss, they
Speaker 1: don't understand that they can have more. It's just a pride.
Speaker 1: You should have an ownership that platform. How do you
Speaker 1: get to the platform by putting your own money up
Speaker 1: and investing in yourself the last reason why we set
Speaker 1: up the platform. Say they don't have to do any
Speaker 1: you have a boss, but a man say he has
Speaker 1: a boss and be proud. Okay, no pride in having
Speaker 1: a job. Having a boss is like calling another man daddy.
Speaker 1: And how can you have a boss and be proud.
Speaker 1: I think that it's okay to have I mean everybody
Speaker 1: has some kind of a boss on some level. Like
Speaker 1: with the interview you deal with Andy, I think it's
Speaker 1: his name, Um, you know Andrew. Yeah, there's always you
Speaker 1: know what, even if you're on your own business, you
Speaker 1: have someone that you have to answer to. You have
Speaker 1: something right. Every day when I get up and I'm motivated,
Speaker 1: I'm answering to the boss that lives inside of me.
Speaker 1: That's saying, if you don't get off your but you're
Speaker 1: not going to achieve your goal. So everybody kind of
Speaker 1: has some sort of boss. The question is whether or
Speaker 1: not you're being pimped by your life, whether or not
Speaker 1: someone is is boss, is your boss to the point
Speaker 1: where you don't feel free, you know, you don't have
Speaker 1: any degrees of freedom in your life. You feel stuck
Speaker 1: in your own existence. Um, I think in that situation
Speaker 1: you have to make a change because here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. A lot of people don't get this.
Speaker 1: If you work for me and I'm the reason that
Speaker 1: your children get to eat every day, I'm the reason
Speaker 1: that your wife has a roof over her head, You're
Speaker 1: not really the man of your house. I'm the man
Speaker 1: of your house. And so I think that having someone
Speaker 1: you answer to is okay. But if you can somehow
Speaker 1: shift your situation where everything is a partnership, where you
Speaker 1: have options, you know, for example, the question one question
Speaker 1: you could ask is do you have f you money?
Speaker 1: If somebody in your job calls you the in word
Speaker 1: or disrespect you, or you just hate your job? Do
Speaker 1: you have enough put aside? Do you have enough other
Speaker 1: options so you can walk in and say, f you,
Speaker 1: I'm out. If you can't really do that, then I
Speaker 1: would say you have to adjust something in your life.
Speaker 1: Just because you're committed to something doesn't mean you don't
Speaker 1: have options, right, So, you know, is there no pride
Speaker 1: in having a boss? I mean, I don't think we
Speaker 1: can agree with a statement like that per se, but
Speaker 1: because there's dignity and working hard no matter what. But
Speaker 1: I do think that if you are being pent by
Speaker 1: your life, you got to make it a j I
Speaker 1: gotta tell some of my friends who might complain other time,
Speaker 1: I hate my job, I hate my bus, I hate this.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, you can't complain about it for too long.
Speaker 1: You got to do something about it. In that case,
Speaker 1: if you really hate it and it's not what you
Speaker 1: want to do, at some point, instead of complaining for
Speaker 1: years and years and years, you gotta get up off,
Speaker 1: you know, and do something. Change you, get a new job,
Speaker 1: create some more opportunities. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of what I think we have to embrace
Speaker 1: is the idea and I want to believe. I want
Speaker 1: to believe the best about what Dame was trying to do.
Speaker 1: And I think that this is a conversation that has
Speaker 1: to be had with a community, not with one person leading.
Speaker 1: This was met him or anybody else. You know, all
Speaker 1: these deals have to be laid on the table. But
Speaker 1: I think that what we need to really consider is
Speaker 1: the idea of the importance of building things. We need
Speaker 1: a nation of builders. That's why I love Lewis Farakoon
Speaker 1: for example. He's one of my favorite Black leaders because
Speaker 1: he built his stuff. You know, he didn't climb up
Speaker 1: somebody else's tree. He planted the seat and grew his
Speaker 1: own tree and climbed to the top of that. Right,
Speaker 1: the baton was passed. But at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a building mentality within the Nation of Islam that
Speaker 1: I think we can all learn from. It does not
Speaker 1: mean that you don't form partnerships. It doesn't mean there's
Speaker 1: no pride in working for other people per se. I
Speaker 1: mean I can't I can't sign off for something like that,
Speaker 1: But I do think that we have to resurrect the
Speaker 1: pride of building as opposed to just borrowing, because what
Speaker 1: we don't understand sometimes is that you know, and I'm
Speaker 1: talking about I'm really talking about people of color right now.
Speaker 1: A lot of this stuff that's out here, it wasn't
Speaker 1: really built for us, you know, it wasn't. I mean,
Speaker 1: these co operations were created by other people of other
Speaker 1: ethnicities one hundred years ago, and we get in there,
Speaker 1: and we somehow become disappointed and surprised when we're treated
Speaker 1: differently because we're black and we don't get the same opportunities.
Speaker 1: But you can't really move in somebody else's house and
Speaker 1: then expect to be able to shift around the furniture.
Speaker 1: It just does not really work. Um. So I think
Speaker 1: taking that pride in building your own house and just
Speaker 1: and being proud of that, right because think about this,
Speaker 1: if you start your own business, it's not You're not
Speaker 1: going to be bawling for a while, if ever, right,
Speaker 1: But you have to you have to realize you can't
Speaker 1: you can't judge the quality of a tree by the
Speaker 1: size of the seed. Every every tree is gonna start tiny,
Speaker 1: and you grow that, and you grow that over several generations.
Speaker 1: Even large companies like the Ford Motor Company. If you
Speaker 1: look at the history of a company like that. It
Speaker 1: started off as a tiny seed. It was it was nothing.
Speaker 1: Now it's massive, and I think we have to ask
Speaker 1: ourselves not about what's happening in twenty fifteen, but what's
Speaker 1: gonna be happening in twenty one fifteen with our grandchildren,
Speaker 1: great grandchildren, great great grandchildren. What are you passing playing
Speaker 1: in those seeds? Now? I think this is the first
Speaker 1: generation of wealth for black people. You may civil rights
Speaker 1: back side of the nineteen sixty four were still in
Speaker 1: segregation fifty one years ago. Yeah, but I'll tell you, man,
Speaker 1: I don't even know if black people have that much well.
Speaker 1: I mean the average round of billionaires you're seeing. You're
Speaker 1: seeing some of the black elite doing extremely well. I
Speaker 1: don't think that the black middle and lower class are
Speaker 1: doing all that well. We're gonna take time, though. But
Speaker 1: one thing I do agree with is as a kid
Speaker 1: growing up, I didn't learn about being an entrepreneur or investing.
Speaker 1: My parents didn't they My pops was a police officer
Speaker 1: and my mom worked at Guardian Life Insurance. They didn't
Speaker 1: instill that of me. I still letting my kids because
Speaker 1: I was a little different. But the problem I had
Speaker 1: with Dame when I say it's deadly. Is you know,
Speaker 1: you tell these kids don't have a boss, you get
Speaker 1: out there and do it. And see this problem with
Speaker 1: Dame is you know, if you listen to Dame, or
Speaker 1: you listen to past interviews, or you listen to to
Speaker 1: wholes records, you see that they started their business from
Speaker 1: illegal activities. Illegal activity. So you're encouraging kids. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't have a ball. I started like this. No, I
Speaker 1: went to college, I went to high school, got my degree.
Speaker 1: I went to college, got my degree. I started work
Speaker 1: and save my money. And that's how I built my empire,
Speaker 1: you know. And you're telling kids, well, you shouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: And that was my problem because a lot of kids listen. Well,
Speaker 1: he is saying sell T shirts. Now what do you
Speaker 1: get money to sell T shirts? You know the drug
Speaker 1: dealer upfront? You gotta have some weeds, but you got
Speaker 1: you gotta have some capital. And the way you get
Speaker 1: capitalists having a job and put money on the side.
Speaker 1: And I don't see nothing wrong with having the boss.
Speaker 1: Let me let me tell you, but I agree with you.
Speaker 1: I'm not you know, I think we can agree on
Speaker 1: that for sure. Um, And one thing I'll supplement with
Speaker 1: and it's not really a matter of fighting about it
Speaker 1: one way or the other. Is uh. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a book called The one hundred Dollars Startup which basically
Speaker 1: explains how you can start a business one hundred hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: And I know this type of stuff works because I
Speaker 1: started something with my brother for about seven hundred dollars
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. We made a quarter million
Speaker 1: dollars within two years, right, So just from that one business. Right. So,
Speaker 1: And the thing was, if I hadn't been thinking like, Okay,
Speaker 1: what can I create, what can I generate? I never
Speaker 1: would have done that, right, because sometimes we get caught
Speaker 1: in thinking that a job is something that someone is
Speaker 1: supposed to give us. A job is also something you
Speaker 1: can create. It doesn't mean you have to do it.
Speaker 1: But one thing I do say is I think every parent,
Speaker 1: every parent who cares about their kids, should teach their
Speaker 1: child how to have their own business, even if they
Speaker 1: go work for somebody else. It doesn't mean that you
Speaker 1: have to be an entrepreneur. Everybody isn't built for that.
Speaker 1: But what I would say is either run something or
Speaker 1: invest in something. So, for example, if I got together
Speaker 1: with three other people. And let's say, no, the other
Speaker 1: three didn't want to be entrepreneurs. They ain't have the time.
Speaker 1: They want to keep their jobs. Well, everybody comes up with,
Speaker 1: say two thousand dollars, you pull together that six. I
Speaker 1: get my twenty five percent of the company, but with
Speaker 1: equities because I've got free time. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: run the company because I have the expertise in the
Speaker 1: free time. You guys are investors, therefore we all own something.
Speaker 1: I think that money from them. Well, if you're working,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if you got a job, you
Speaker 1: can't come up with two thousand bucks over time. It
Speaker 1: may take you a year to save it or whatever,
Speaker 1: but you can come up with that. I mean, we
Speaker 1: invest in so many other things. I mean, people always
Speaker 1: say black people can't really create jobs, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that's true. We create a lot of jobs for
Speaker 1: other people. But we're spending all this money on these
Speaker 1: brands and all this other stuff that we do. We're
Speaker 1: not thinking where that money is going. And I think
Speaker 1: that is the problem. That we're sort of letting our
Speaker 1: power escape. Like money is your power, and you cannot
Speaker 1: give your power away because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you will be powerless. I just had recently bet an
Speaker 1: article about an entrepreneur. He was working at a phone
Speaker 1: store right where a lot of the phones that they
Speaker 1: don't sell, they don't have anything that they can do
Speaker 1: with it. Everybody, you know, it might be some old
Speaker 1: phones that are just laying around. He started his own
Speaker 1: business and turned into a billion dollar business where he
Speaker 1: would get those phones that they didn't sell and he
Speaker 1: was selling them the companies that maybe you know at
Speaker 1: your job, everybody gets a cell phone that the company
Speaker 1: gives to you, and he was selling those phones that
Speaker 1: they didn't use at the store. He was like the
Speaker 1: go between person selling them to companies that had to
Speaker 1: give their employee cell phones. And he turned it into
Speaker 1: a billion dollar business just when working at this cell
Speaker 1: phone store. Yeah, it is. And I don't think he
Speaker 1: really needed much money to start that. He just started
Speaker 1: mediating those because he saw a need. He saw that
Speaker 1: there was this overflow of phones, and then he saw
Speaker 1: that there were companies that needed to give employee phones
Speaker 1: and didn't want to spend a whole lot of money,
Speaker 1: so he just merged the two ideas together. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: you go. I mean, and the thing is that to
Speaker 1: come up with those ideas. You have to have a
Speaker 1: certain kind of spirit you have to have, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean really creating a job for yourself. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit like the difference between somebody who thinks that
Speaker 1: they can only eat if the grocery store has food
Speaker 1: or if the restaurant serves them, versus somebody who says, well, actually,
Speaker 1: if worst comes to worst, I can grow my own food,
Speaker 1: I can cook my own food. I'm not gonna starve,
Speaker 1: you know. So you should never starve to death because
Speaker 1: somebody would not bring food to you. You should know
Speaker 1: how to create your own food. So I think it's
Speaker 1: an idea, you know, in terms of creating opportunities, it's
Speaker 1: about building the entrepreneurial spirit, which starts with taking pride
Speaker 1: in that I have more so much more respect. You know,
Speaker 1: when I hear about young brothers that they don't have much,
Speaker 1: who say I own something, I'm building something. Then I
Speaker 1: have for people who say, oh, I work for such
Speaker 1: and such corporation, I'm making a lot of money. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that both people aren't accomplished. But you know,
Speaker 1: I really think we have to build because I really
Speaker 1: think that this affects us politically and socioeconomically in the
Speaker 1: sense that people can never people don't respect you when
Speaker 1: you're always begging for something. Malcolm X talked about that.
Speaker 1: He said, look, as long as you are begging for
Speaker 1: jobs from businesses that you do not own, you will
Speaker 1: always be severely unemployed. And if you look at the
Speaker 1: unemployment disparity in nineteen sixty five, nineteen sixty four, and
Speaker 1: Malcolm was saying this to twenty fifteen, it hasn't changed
Speaker 1: that much. And that's why it's dangerous to tell people
Speaker 1: there's no pride to having a job unemployed. I think
Speaker 1: that you can be proud if you are a proud person,
Speaker 1: But I think at the end of the day, you
Speaker 1: have to figure out what you're what you're comfortable with,
Speaker 1: what you can live with. UM. Let's let's let's be real.
Speaker 1: You know, racism UM is stressful for people when they're
Speaker 1: dealing with There's an angry black middle class of people
Speaker 1: who did all the right things. They went to school,
Speaker 1: they worked hard, they got these corporate jobs, and they
Speaker 1: are pissed off because they know they're being treated unfairly,
Speaker 1: but they don't feel like they have any options. So
Speaker 1: and and and some of in many cases. I mean
Speaker 1: there's studies that show this affects your health. I mean,
Speaker 1: for man, it kills your testosterone. Uh, you know you
Speaker 1: can get people get cancer. I mean, people get sick
Speaker 1: off of this stuff. So my thing is, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to find a way to liberate yourself and
Speaker 1: restore your manhood because I think it affects our families,
Speaker 1: because I think that black women have a hard time
Speaker 1: really respecting black men the way they should, because many
Speaker 1: of us have been so beaten down by the society.
Speaker 1: We don't know what to do right right right now.
Speaker 1: And I'm not I'm not saying this there's some sort
Speaker 1: of fundamental flaw and who we are. I'm saying that
Speaker 1: maybe we need to resurrect some ideas that can that
Speaker 1: can restore that that power maanhood. There was nothing better
Speaker 1: that happened in my life in terms of dealing with racism.
Speaker 1: Then when I figured out how to start my own stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it just it. It made me stronger,
Speaker 1: It made me prouder, It made me more courageous. You know,
Speaker 1: I got into this crazy when I worked at Syracuse University.
Speaker 1: I would you know, I was dealing with all this racism,
Speaker 1: all the stuff, and I got into this big fight
Speaker 1: with Bill O'Reilly about something he had said. He made
Speaker 1: a joker you remember that. Yeah, he got it. He
Speaker 1: made a joke about lynching Michelle Obama and I didn't
Speaker 1: like that, so you know, we got into it or whatever. Well,
Speaker 1: he worked really hard to get me fired. And I
Speaker 1: mean I'm talking about really hard, you know, and to
Speaker 1: the point where multimillion dollar donors are saying, We're not
Speaker 1: gonna get money to your school because you got a
Speaker 1: racism you don't have a riley. That played a big
Speaker 1: part of it. Yes, um. And the only defining factor
Speaker 1: in terms of whether or not I could stand by
Speaker 1: what I said versus apologize or something I did not do,
Speaker 1: was whether or not my financial situation was right money. Yes,
Speaker 1: when your money, when your few money is right, you
Speaker 1: have the ability to be a little boulders. I'm not
Speaker 1: more courageous than other people. I just checked my money,
Speaker 1: check my bank accounts, check my business and said, Okay,
Speaker 1: if I get fired, I'm gonna be okay. You under
Speaker 1: saying so, so that's the idea, And the thing is,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. It wasn't just my situation. I think this
Speaker 1: is a microcosm of what what so many of us
Speaker 1: experienced every day. UM, just make sure you've got options
Speaker 1: for yourself. If you've got options, I think you're gonna
Speaker 1: be all right. I want to ask you about what
Speaker 1: you said. I don't want if I'm mis quoting you.
Speaker 1: Let me know you said that a man is not
Speaker 1: a man if somebody if he if he has a job,
Speaker 1: that boss. You're not the man to your house. The
Speaker 1: boss is the man to your house. You know what
Speaker 1: I will say this, It is fundamentally flawed for you
Speaker 1: to depend on the descendants of your historical oppressors to
Speaker 1: get the things that you need in order to survive.
Speaker 1: But the reason I ask you that because you, like
Speaker 1: somebody like you, you went to school, You busted your
Speaker 1: ass to get your degrees to put yourself in that
Speaker 1: position to make that money. So it's not like they're
Speaker 1: giving you something. You earned that position. Yeah, I earned it,
Speaker 1: But understand I mean you know what. For example, when
Speaker 1: when I got my first job as a professor, I
Speaker 1: was the first black person they'd ever hired in one
Speaker 1: hundred year history of that department. But I was not
Speaker 1: the first smart black person to apply for that job. Right.
Speaker 1: We've had brilliant black people since they're since black people
Speaker 1: came into existence, but I was the first one to
Speaker 1: get that opportunity. Um, so understand it. I mean, if
Speaker 1: someone doesn't force certain people to open the door, they
Speaker 1: just won't. They'll just when I In fact, I'll give
Speaker 1: you a good example when I graduate from college. You know,
Speaker 1: I was a number one student in my hole senior class.
Speaker 1: I won awards for and everything, got two bachelor's degrees
Speaker 1: in four years. I mean, I busted my butt in school.
Speaker 1: I wanted to work on Wall Street. And it's funny
Speaker 1: because I'm staying on Wall Street this week, and it
Speaker 1: made me think about this. I sent out two hundred
Speaker 1: resumes to two hundred Wall Street firms and got two
Speaker 1: hundred rejection letters. W Yes, and you know, and I
Speaker 1: mean hurt me to the core, right, but you know, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: if one yes would have made a big difference in
Speaker 1: my life. But at the same time, sometimes not getting
Speaker 1: what you want, um, it's it's a lot. It's a
Speaker 1: lot like a relationship where you know, you ever been
Speaker 1: in love with somebody and they didn't want you, and
Speaker 1: then maybe a year later you realize that you're happy
Speaker 1: that they didn't want you because you found somebody better, right, right,
Speaker 1: And it was the same way with that, Like I
Speaker 1: can't explain. Um, when you own your own stuff, when
Speaker 1: you get a chance to feel that power of a boss, Um,
Speaker 1: it goes far deeper than the money. If you're doing
Speaker 1: it just for the money, I think you're missing like
Speaker 1: ninety percent of the equation. I mean, I don't love money.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I studied capitalism and finance. I
Speaker 1: know all about that. But it's just I breathe easier
Speaker 1: every day I get up. I don't just crawl out
Speaker 1: of bed. I bounce out of bed, right. Um. You
Speaker 1: know it's so I think everybody should get a chance
Speaker 1: to feel this, and I think we got. We definitely
Speaker 1: start with our kids, you know, and and and don't.
Speaker 1: And there's no excuse to say, well, I don't understand entrepreneurships.
Speaker 1: I can't teach us to my kids. The best university
Speaker 1: in the history of the world is called Google dot
Speaker 1: com and YouTube dot com. You can literally go to
Speaker 1: YouTube University and learn everything you want to know. We
Speaker 1: actually have a website called Financial Juneteenth as well that
Speaker 1: people can go to. But that's one of a billion
Speaker 1: that random YouTube videos. Boys are out there too, Okay,
Speaker 1: there all right, there you go. Okay, well I got
Speaker 1: the endorsement for Charlotte Magne. Thank you, brother. But you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: but all seriousness, like I mean, the information is out
Speaker 1: there and sometimes really sometimes it's something small. Um. It
Speaker 1: might be something like just saying to your kids, yeah,
Speaker 1: one day makes you own your own business. If you
Speaker 1: say that a few times a year to your child,
Speaker 1: will hold on to that, you know. Um, I knew
Speaker 1: a guy. I know, a guy who's a twenty seven
Speaker 1: year old millionaire, and that's what he said. He said.
Speaker 1: My dad did not, Um, you know, he didn't have
Speaker 1: his own business, but he just always said to me,
Speaker 1: you should have your own business. He didn't explain how
Speaker 1: to do it, you know, he just said, this is
Speaker 1: what you should do. So that's what I did. And
Speaker 1: now he's doing really well. You know. And my dad
Speaker 1: was a cop like like your dad, and so we
Speaker 1: understood the value of hard work. Um, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know about your dad. My dad was a very
Speaker 1: tough guy. He was a Vietnam vent and he did
Speaker 1: and I think the reason that I don't have a
Speaker 1: big problem with Dame Dad said, is because my dad
Speaker 1: has a little bit of that in him. Like my dad,
Speaker 1: you know, he was straight up pump me. You know
Speaker 1: when when when I got to feeling sorry for myself
Speaker 1: or like all the world won't do this for me,
Speaker 1: do that for me. And and if you if you
Speaker 1: sort of sift through that energy that you're that you're
Speaker 1: receiving that might bother you or assault your masculinity, you realize, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe he has a point because at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, nobody really cares that much about you in
Speaker 1: this world. He's absolutely right about empolierment. He's absolutely right.
Speaker 1: But you know what, it was my dad that actually
Speaker 1: made me become an entrepreneur because, like you said, my
Speaker 1: dad would was a police so he was very hard
Speaker 1: on me. And him being so hard at me, I
Speaker 1: didn't want to work for anybody. I would never wanted
Speaker 1: to have a boss like that, That's what it. So
Speaker 1: I started doing mixtapes and started on my own and
Speaker 1: sell them because I didn't want a boss. And for me,
Speaker 1: like I told Dane, radio was my passion. I love it.
Speaker 1: Like now people get up and you said, you get
Speaker 1: that bounce in the morning. I'm not tired. I enjoy
Speaker 1: coming to work. It's not a day when I'm like,
Speaker 1: damn it, I got to come to work. When I
Speaker 1: missed work too many days, I start fidgeting, like I'm like,
Speaker 1: I gotta get to work. I start calling Charlemagne, like
Speaker 1: what you're doing? Calling you like what you're doing when
Speaker 1: you were at you know, because I love this job.
Speaker 1: But it's back with what you said. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of people that don't need to be entrepreneurs, that don't
Speaker 1: have that in their heart. So that people who need
Speaker 1: to invest, what can they invest in? Because that's something
Speaker 1: that people just don't know. They don't they're scared of
Speaker 1: the stock market, so they don't know what they can
Speaker 1: invest in. They hear about the stock market going up
Speaker 1: and down. They feel like real estate is too much
Speaker 1: money to put ten percent down a five percent down
Speaker 1: on a home. So what would you advise for that
Speaker 1: person that doesn't want to be an entrepreneur, or doesn't
Speaker 1: have the time, or has kids, that just wants to
Speaker 1: invest their money. What would you tell them to put
Speaker 1: their money and something that can make money, not just
Speaker 1: a bank where they're gonna make two percent or you know,
Speaker 1: out of one hundred years something that they could possibly
Speaker 1: make some money. Well, you know, when I first got
Speaker 1: started investing, UM, I put my money in mutual funds UM.
Speaker 1: And it's not complex. If you just go to your
Speaker 1: bank and say, you know, can you show me some
Speaker 1: mutual funds I can invest in, They'll show you what
Speaker 1: to do. They even have scenarios where you can set
Speaker 1: up a drip where you take a little bit of
Speaker 1: your paycheck. It could be ten dollars, fifty dollars, whatever,
Speaker 1: and it goes into account over time. And I can
Speaker 1: tell you that there go a lot off you if
Speaker 1: you do like a four one K like a tax
Speaker 1: divers type thing or four or three buh. You know
Speaker 1: that that can be the start of kind of thinking
Speaker 1: about investing. And that's what I do. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I had money going into my retirement account and believe
Speaker 1: it or not, actually what I did finally leave my
Speaker 1: job and start my own business. UM my retirement account
Speaker 1: which I built up over the years. Uh, it kind
Speaker 1: of played like it was. It played the role of
Speaker 1: a small bank for me, because sometimes you can't get
Speaker 1: the capital you one. Sometimes a bank won't lend it
Speaker 1: to you and you just don't have it. Um, so
Speaker 1: sometimes I borrow against myself whatever. And and what I
Speaker 1: found too, though, was that there are so many opportunities
Speaker 1: when it comes to investing in the black community, so
Speaker 1: many opportunities that have just overlooked and uh and and
Speaker 1: literally I was able to double and triple my money
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. You know, so so bank stuff, yeah, just
Speaker 1: well just off of us to find your portfolio. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: now the mutual fund part that is diversification. Like a
Speaker 1: mutual fund is not something where you're picking the stock
Speaker 1: or trying to pick the right stock at the right time.
Speaker 1: You your money's invested in thousands of stocks and and
Speaker 1: and really I just put my money in and I
Speaker 1: just made sure I had a certain like balance as
Speaker 1: far as risk, you know, not too much risk, not
Speaker 1: too little. And then I just left it alone. But
Speaker 1: that's not that's longevity. Most especially African Americans, they want
Speaker 1: that money now, like they don't want to wait twenty
Speaker 1: years down the line to see that money flip something,
Speaker 1: don't sell crack with something with more risks, Like what
Speaker 1: do you advise because you know, I have my money
Speaker 1: in mutual funds in bonds, but you look at that
Speaker 1: money black my kids to see that, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. But what can they invest in now, to say,
Speaker 1: you know what, here, try this or look at this,
Speaker 1: or maybe this might be for you where I can
Speaker 1: make a quicker flip. Well, two things. One, um, there
Speaker 1: are billionaires being created every day on the Internet. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm telling you these Silicon Valley cats or whatnot.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've got it figured out that, you know,
Speaker 1: they create value very it's very quickly, with very little
Speaker 1: capital investors. Sometimes apps all those stuff, all that social
Speaker 1: media apps with Snapchat, Twitter, yep, yep. And then uh,
Speaker 1: you know, on top of that, you know, I would say,
Speaker 1: partner with someone that identifies the need and help fill it.
Speaker 1: It might be something as simple as, uh, my friend
Speaker 1: bakes cookies really good, and when she goes to work
Speaker 1: and brings her cookies, everybody loves them. So what you
Speaker 1: bought that? Guys in cookies, self cookies, cookies, cookies. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean cookies. I don't know, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: like cookies. I like cookies. My son sells cookies. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you know, so so a lot
Speaker 1: of times, you know, I can tell you I've made
Speaker 1: most of my money like that, just identifying a little
Speaker 1: need and and and you know, if I have a
Speaker 1: friend that wants to do something and they need five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars to get started, I invest our own half
Speaker 1: the company or whatever, and then you know you can
Speaker 1: make money that way. Um. You know, most of my
Speaker 1: money has been built from small businesses I created, you know,
Speaker 1: online and offline, as opposed to the long term stuff
Speaker 1: of the stock market. So I think people should do
Speaker 1: both a little bit both. That would be real realistically, right. So,
Speaker 1: now you open up a business, who do you hire
Speaker 1: to run your business? Who do you hire as your employees? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't hire African Americans? Or do you hire people
Speaker 1: that best suit the job? I think you do both. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of of hiring black people. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, because because people tend to hire people like them.
Speaker 1: A lot of times people think it's a race issue
Speaker 1: with the employee discrimination, but actually it's just like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm just hiring people who are I relate to right
Speaker 1: and to me. Yeah, and sometimes black people we're the
Speaker 1: only ones who kind of fall for that that lie
Speaker 1: that that we shouldn't love our love people that are
Speaker 1: like us and support our own community. Um, if you
Speaker 1: go to like Jewish communities and Arab could be I
Speaker 1: mean they aren't hooking up their family members first and foremost.
Speaker 1: Now now, at the same time, you know, you don't
Speaker 1: want to hire relatives who are going to screw up
Speaker 1: your company or or ruin your relationship by doing a
Speaker 1: bad job. So there are some relatives I would never
Speaker 1: hire in the million years. But but I'm always when
Speaker 1: I have an opportunity, I look to the people around me. First,
Speaker 1: I take care of people in my circle, in my family,
Speaker 1: blood family or not right. And then if I can't
Speaker 1: find somebody in my family, then I might go outside
Speaker 1: of that this company or sites like old desk and
Speaker 1: elands where you can find contractors at a good price,
Speaker 1: stuff like that if you don't have a lot of money.
Speaker 1: But but I'm a big fan of supporting your own
Speaker 1: I mean, why why wouldn't we do that? I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's really essential to survive. A lot of people
Speaker 1: are scared around, a lot of I think a lot
Speaker 1: of African Americans are scared to hire our own and
Speaker 1: are fearful around. You know, It's one of those things
Speaker 1: that's like you're scared of yourself. And I see that
Speaker 1: a lot. You know, I think sometimes the biggest supporters
Speaker 1: of white supremacy are black people. Actually, um, you know,
Speaker 1: we truly believe that we are a flawed brand of society.
Speaker 1: We some of us, you know, we really we say
Speaker 1: things about ourselves that are disparaging many of us because
Speaker 1: we don't have we don't always have a culture to
Speaker 1: connect to. Remember, a lot of black history doesn't even
Speaker 1: start for many of us before slavery. We don't. We
Speaker 1: have no clue what happened to us before we arrived
Speaker 1: on slave ships. So for many of us, we might assimilate,
Speaker 1: latch our minds onto attaining acceptance within, say, white institutions,
Speaker 1: as a sign of progress. Right, we'll say something like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: so and so was the first black man to get
Speaker 1: into Harvard and I'm very proud of that, which fine, okay,
Speaker 1: harding proud of Harvard, right right, right, right, right. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing, though, right, you know, you don't really
Speaker 1: hear white folks saying, well, this is the first white
Speaker 1: man to get into more House. They don't care. They
Speaker 1: don't consider assimilation or acceptance by us to be a
Speaker 1: step up, but we consider assimilation acceptance by them to
Speaker 1: be a step up. And I just don't think that
Speaker 1: that's a healthy way to think. I look at things
Speaker 1: like that, I'm like, it's not the black president that's
Speaker 1: making progress. Harvard is making progress because they're probably accepting
Speaker 1: us exactly exactly and and I mean and we're I
Speaker 1: mean we are such as strong and capable people, I
Speaker 1: mean intellectually, physically, and otherwise. You know, even if you
Speaker 1: look at sports, you know, like there there really is
Speaker 1: no sort of white version of Shaquille O'Neal, no white
Speaker 1: version of Kobe Bryant. I think that there is something
Speaker 1: about the fact that we survived hundreds of years of
Speaker 1: the most brutal torture ever dropped on any group of
Speaker 1: human beings on the planet. And I think that's what
Speaker 1: makes people fear us. And so if you fear something,
Speaker 1: if you are a trainer of a big elephant and
Speaker 1: you know that elephant could crush you in a second,
Speaker 1: what do you do. You have to control the elephant's
Speaker 1: mind from the very beginning and make him think you're
Speaker 1: the boss. And I think that's kind of what happens
Speaker 1: to us. I think that we're trained to hate ourselves
Speaker 1: so much we will kill each other, we will you know,
Speaker 1: dog each other out, we won't support each other. And
Speaker 1: I think that's a problem empire. Well, you know what,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I think if I think that Lee
Speaker 1: Daniels to some extent is might be this and all
Speaker 1: of us, you know, I mean, you know, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong. I'm not saying I'm not hating on people
Speaker 1: that enjoy the show. I'm not attacking people who work
Speaker 1: on the show. But here's the thing. Black men are
Speaker 1: the most incarcerated group of people on the plan. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no we incarcerate more black men in America than
Speaker 1: South Africa did during the height of apartime. And if
Speaker 1: if apartime was considered the most racist regime in history
Speaker 1: and we had cars wereting more black men than they did,
Speaker 1: what does that say about America? Right? So, given that
Speaker 1: that is true, many of those incarcerations occur, many of
Speaker 1: those men are innocent, and women as well. Um it occurred,
Speaker 1: Well not everybody, that's what they say. That's what everybody said.
Speaker 1: They're not they don't say, but but there in so
Speaker 1: many cases they are. Everybody in jail. But right, But
Speaker 1: every week on You're Black World, we're writing about some
Speaker 1: brother that went to prison in nineteen eighty two for
Speaker 1: something he didn't do, did thirty years and then they
Speaker 1: gave him half a million dollars or something like that's
Speaker 1: gonna make it better. One brother, in fact, got got
Speaker 1: nine million because he was sent to prison for rape
Speaker 1: he did not commit. Uh, but he was raped many
Speaker 1: times in prison. Called it called HIV in the process. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, the prosecutors a year later,
Speaker 1: year after they incarcerated him, found the guy who committed
Speaker 1: the crime, locked him up, but didn't release him and
Speaker 1: kept him in prison for thirty years and he had
Speaker 1: a newborn daughter. This is a kind of a posity.
Speaker 1: Is the kind of holocaust really that we're dealing with.
Speaker 1: So in the light of that, with that is the
Speaker 1: backdrop of all of this, we have to understand in
Speaker 1: many cases, when that brother goes before that all white
Speaker 1: jury and many a lot of times a prosecutor to
Speaker 1: get a conviction, all he's gotta do is paint some
Speaker 1: picture of this black man being a thug. That's why
Speaker 1: George Zimmerman was released because they showed pictures of Trayvon
Speaker 1: smoking weed, like, oh, he was a thug. We know
Speaker 1: George Zimmerman was the real thug, right, Jordan Davis when
Speaker 1: he got murdered from playing his music too loud, they
Speaker 1: painted him as a thug in the courtroom. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of time he got. He
Speaker 1: got his time, thank god, thank god. But then you
Speaker 1: Brian Banks, the football player who was falsely accused of rape,
Speaker 1: who lost his whole career because of that, the accusation.
Speaker 1: His attorney told him, he said, Brian, you are a
Speaker 1: big black man. If you go in front of that
Speaker 1: all white jury, they are gonna send you to prison.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna get justice because you're a big black man.
Speaker 1: That's why he took the police. A lot of brothers
Speaker 1: go to prison for taking the police. We know this, right.
Speaker 1: So the question that I asked myself, right, let me go,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get the empire. The question I asked myself is,
Speaker 1: if you've got this all white jury, many of whom
Speaker 1: don't even have any black friends, don't know a whole
Speaker 1: lot of black people, why is it so easy to
Speaker 1: convince them that this black man is a scary perception? Right,
Speaker 1: perception which comes from many times in media. So in
Speaker 1: my opinion, it doesn't mean that I hate Empire. I
Speaker 1: saw it's a good show, but I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I have to be a constricentious objector to the consistent
Speaker 1: the portrayal of black men as criminal, thug, gangster type people,
Speaker 1: because that's not who we are. I agree with you,
Speaker 1: but this is my thing too. Art reflects life, right,
Speaker 1: and I feel like guys like Lee Daniels, they're only
Speaker 1: showing us one POV of African Americans. They're not showing
Speaker 1: the guys like you. They're not showing we need more
Speaker 1: stuff like Salm was showing guys like Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaker 1: We don't need any more slave movies. No, we could
Speaker 1: do it. We could do it out the thug experience.
Speaker 1: We've heard that numerous amount of times in music and movies.
Speaker 1: So I don't think it's necessarily Lee Daniel's fault. He's
Speaker 1: just showing us one POV of African Americans. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: in my opinion, when I look at the trail of
Speaker 1: Lee's work, he's showing kind of a very consistent POV
Speaker 1: that kind of shows this kind of the basement of
Speaker 1: black life just the most the worst, most disgusting things
Speaker 1: that happened in the black community. When I looked at Precious,
Speaker 1: I mean I was depressed when I walked out African
Speaker 1: American horror movie, right, it was like, what the hell
Speaker 1: is this? Man? Like, are you serious like that? Like
Speaker 1: this poor girl was getting crapped on the whole movie.
Speaker 1: I hate it. And then it's here's the thing. When
Speaker 1: I found out it was I thought it was real.
Speaker 1: But then when I found out it wasn't real, I
Speaker 1: was like, damn, you could have a happy ending that least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's like it's like it minds me of Quentin Tarantino.
Speaker 1: His movies are so sick that you're just like, man, like,
Speaker 1: what did you go through as a child. So I
Speaker 1: literally studied Lee's background, like I read his Wikipedia page
Speaker 1: in detail and trying to just understand it. If you
Speaker 1: look at Lee's background, He's experienced some horrible excuse my
Speaker 1: French and not mean my bad Okay, you know he's
Speaker 1: he's gone through some terrible things, and you know the
Speaker 1: trauma of the abuse, being uh, you know, denied love
Speaker 1: by his family. He talks about his sister as an
Speaker 1: obast crack addict, and I think that when you go
Speaker 1: through that kind of trauma as a as a as
Speaker 1: a as a black person, which a lot of us do,
Speaker 1: you can somehow associate your blackness with just the very
Speaker 1: worst things that can happen, you know, in a society.
Speaker 1: So what do you do? Then? Then you somehow might
Speaker 1: be convinced that maybe on the other side of town,
Speaker 1: where the white folks live, that that's the paradise, that's
Speaker 1: where you want to be, that's where life gets good.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's unfortunate because I think there
Speaker 1: are a lot of healthy experiences that occur in the
Speaker 1: black community, and I don't see those portrayed as regularly immediate. Yes,
Speaker 1: I love black, but this is the problem. Though. You
Speaker 1: look at Empire, right or love and hip hop and
Speaker 1: you say, you know what, this is not positive for
Speaker 1: my people, but it's gonna make me a lot of money. Right,
Speaker 1: then this is this is the problem. You say, Well,
Speaker 1: if I don't make it, somebody else gonna make it.
Speaker 1: So why don't I make it and make the money.
Speaker 1: Why we can't just look at it as entertainment like
Speaker 1: how you said about white people. Because I make the money,
Speaker 1: I could put the money into positive things. And maybe
Speaker 1: help do you. Maybe he's doing it, maybe he's not.
Speaker 1: But I look at some things like that where you know,
Speaker 1: you look at your Love and hip Hop and it's
Speaker 1: an FT up show, and you look at Empire and
Speaker 1: there's so many stereotypes. It pisses me up sometimes, like
Speaker 1: they're fighting in telecops, Like it's so stereotypical that when
Speaker 1: I walk out my house, I feel like my neighbors
Speaker 1: are looking at me, like, you know, VI is right.
Speaker 1: But how you said about white people. They don't look
Speaker 1: at white people getting into moor House as an accomplishment.
Speaker 1: Do you think they look at their own entertainment and
Speaker 1: say quin Tarantino's bad for white people? If stuff he
Speaker 1: makes all the music there? Well, people are mad about
Speaker 1: Italian White people get upset and like how we do
Speaker 1: well well affecting our people. Well, I think the whites
Speaker 1: have the luxury. Again, this this does come back to
Speaker 1: white privilege and a white supremacy to some extent. I mean,
Speaker 1: because they own the media outlets, they get such a
Speaker 1: diverse array of portrayals. But but I have a lot
Speaker 1: of friends in Hollywood. I'm sure you do too, who
Speaker 1: will say, you know, I get tired of going into
Speaker 1: auditions and having them tell me to be the black
Speaker 1: woman with the attitude, swing my talk loud, etc. Or
Speaker 1: I get tired of being asked to be the black
Speaker 1: man who portrays the thug. I remember I was very
Speaker 1: proud of Idris Elba because he took a standing was saying, like,
Speaker 1: their certain roles, I just will not play, even for
Speaker 1: Tyler Perry. And he was in the Tyler Perry movie,
Speaker 1: um and and and So. The thing about media to
Speaker 1: me is that media is just one of the most
Speaker 1: powerful forms of propaganda known to man. I mean right,
Speaker 1: I mean it is, yes, I mean Hitler used media,
Speaker 1: uh to justify the persecution and the abuse and the
Speaker 1: slaughter of the Jews. All you gotta do is you
Speaker 1: paint them as menaces to society, as these fundamentally dysfunctional people,
Speaker 1: these these these the almost like almost like roaches and
Speaker 1: maggots that you have to exterminate, and then people will
Speaker 1: sign off on allowing you to exterminate them. H Well,
Speaker 1: it's hard to argue that that's not what's been consistently
Speaker 1: happened with black people. I mean, even when we were
Speaker 1: being lynched on a regular basis, they didn't just lynch
Speaker 1: black people just for being black. They would always have
Speaker 1: an excuse. It would always be, well, he was he
Speaker 1: touched that white woman, or or he stole some cookies
Speaker 1: or back to cookie cookies right right, right, I guess
Speaker 1: I want I'm gonna eat some cookies after. I know, right,
Speaker 1: I need some cookies. But you know, so so so,
Speaker 1: you know, at the end of the day, I think
Speaker 1: that you know, a lot of what we're seeing in media,
Speaker 1: we have to not make sure we don't fall for
Speaker 1: this idea that it's just entertainment. That's how propaganda works,
Speaker 1: is you convince people that's just entertainment and nothing is
Speaker 1: just entertainment. But most of the time there's an agenda.
Speaker 1: Even even Lea and this producers said that, you know,
Speaker 1: our goal is to blow the lid off homophobia in
Speaker 1: the black community. They understand that entertainment does have an
Speaker 1: impact on the way people think. That's what I actually
Speaker 1: said when I heard him say that statement. I said,
Speaker 1: I think, Lee, Lee, you care more about homophobia than
Speaker 1: what we do. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, Well,
Speaker 1: I ain't tripping off it like that, But the problem
Speaker 1: is it is, especially in our community, we idolize that
Speaker 1: and like Charlemagne says all the time, you know, we
Speaker 1: we like to go to the schools and talk to
Speaker 1: the kids. But you know, growing up in Queens, I
Speaker 1: see my dad and I see my dad work mad
Speaker 1: over time to make sure my Christmas was great and
Speaker 1: spent a lot of money to put me in Catholic school.
Speaker 1: But then I would see all the drug dealers driving
Speaker 1: up the block working an hour or two and they
Speaker 1: have the expensive cause, the nice jewelry the women, and
Speaker 1: I think for our community, we look at that as
Speaker 1: making it. We don't look at the at the family
Speaker 1: as I had my mother and father in the household,
Speaker 1: and I had my father there on Christmas and my
Speaker 1: father never went to jail. You know, we don't look
Speaker 1: at that. So when you see some of these movies,
Speaker 1: and we talked about some of these movies minutes to society,
Speaker 1: you know, and what's tell the movie that you just
Speaker 1: said the other day that you boys in the hood
Speaker 1: Jews hues and uh, what'snice movie movies? We love, we
Speaker 1: love watching it and we enjoy watching those type of movies.
Speaker 1: I never gave a damn bout Tony Monte. Besides coming
Speaker 1: to America. I can't really think of a propertive. It
Speaker 1: was Bill Cosby a different world. None of that was
Speaker 1: positive to me because Martin Martin did right and and
Speaker 1: and he loved he loved a black woman too. I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's important as well. Absolutely that on TV.
Speaker 1: What do we have now? You know, it seems like
Speaker 1: now it's interesting because they just did an article that
Speaker 1: I was talking about in Deadline, right and they were
Speaker 1: saying that, um, right, now, the pendulum might have swung
Speaker 1: a bit too far in the opposite direction. Is too
Speaker 1: few roles. Before there were too few roles for actors
Speaker 1: of color in Hollywood. But now, according to this article,
Speaker 1: basically fifty percent of the roles and a pilot have
Speaker 1: to be ethnic and the mandate goes all the way
Speaker 1: down to guest parts. And basically what they're saying now
Speaker 1: is it just swung too far in the other direction.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there could be progress. I mean
Speaker 1: I think that people being more sensitive to m just
Speaker 1: here's the thing. The reason I like Blackish is not
Speaker 1: because I believe that everything is cotton, candy and cupcakes.
Speaker 1: It's because Blackish allows black people to be human. We're
Speaker 1: very diverse. Heterogeneous people. You know, some of us are nerdy,
Speaker 1: some of us, you know, some of us are scandalous
Speaker 1: or whatever. And I just like to see stuff that
Speaker 1: where where you're being black is not the first thing
Speaker 1: that people will understand about your character. Right. In fact,
Speaker 1: when when I went to South Africa this week or
Speaker 1: a couple weeks ago, I love the fact that that
Speaker 1: people didn't care that I was black because everybody was black.
Speaker 1: You know, at that point people want to know more
Speaker 1: about who you are as a person. But sometimes in America,
Speaker 1: the first thing people know is I'm a black guy
Speaker 1: and they and it comes with all this baggage and
Speaker 1: all these expectations and stereotypes, and I think that's a
Speaker 1: heavy burden for all of us to carry. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's like that in the media too, because like I'm
Speaker 1: the type of person if I see a situation happening
Speaker 1: between a police officer and a young black male, I
Speaker 1: don't think this is a white police officer black male. First.
Speaker 1: The first thing I think is what happened? Absolute scenario first,
Speaker 1: you know, I just jump to it, Oh he was
Speaker 1: why he was? Absolutely? I mean that's that's what we
Speaker 1: would call critical thinking, which we have to do. I mean,
Speaker 1: and it's really important because we got so many cases
Speaker 1: that are being revealed now of black people being shot
Speaker 1: by the police, and I think the biggest mistake we
Speaker 1: can make is assumed, is assuming that every white cop
Speaker 1: just wakes up with a bloodthirst and wants to kill
Speaker 1: black man who wants. I don't want that kind of fit.
Speaker 1: I found myself paranoid and scared, like WHOA, Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: profiling does. Absolutely, it's very very real. And I would say,
Speaker 1: I would say envy can say, I'll be with your dad.
Speaker 1: I assume you knew some cops that worked with your
Speaker 1: dad on the force. Um. I know from my experience,
Speaker 1: I saw the good and the bad. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: seen cops that that just were good people that wanted
Speaker 1: to help and think about it. I mean, a good cop,
Speaker 1: you know, has a really tough job because you have
Speaker 1: to care about problems that are not yours. You. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of times you're helping people get a cat
Speaker 1: out of a tree or help you know it just
Speaker 1: help somebody find directions of you know, just little things
Speaker 1: that that a lot of us don't really want to do.
Speaker 1: And then you're putting yourself in harm's way. But then
Speaker 1: you've got those cops who do abuse their authority. There
Speaker 1: are many reasons to be afraid of cops. We live
Speaker 1: in a society where people assume that cops are innocent
Speaker 1: and that if you are the quote unquote criminal, that
Speaker 1: somehow the cops should get the benefit of the doubt
Speaker 1: about what happened, right. And what also makes it difficult
Speaker 1: is when you had bad experiences with cops, that makes
Speaker 1: you not trust cops period, absolutely, absolutely, yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: I think good cops should be taking the lead in
Speaker 1: terms of helping weed out bad cops, you know, because
Speaker 1: because it hurts it hurts all of them. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, because we need good cops in the world,
Speaker 1: in our community. I don't think anybody want to live
Speaker 1: in a world without police officers. That's because I don'tee
Speaker 1: a black cop and be like he's good, and see
Speaker 1: a white cop and be like he bad. I just
Speaker 1: see cops period and be like I'm staying with yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you know that that blue wall of silence
Speaker 1: is real. Cops are are, you know, threatened in many
Speaker 1: any way, sometimes threatening even with death for speaking up um,
Speaker 1: And I think that's it's the system that it really
Speaker 1: is the culprit there, so because you're just as likely
Speaker 1: to be abused by a black cop as by a
Speaker 1: white cop in many cases up So that's what we
Speaker 1: kind of have to deal with and not get so
Speaker 1: caught up in the black and white and not caught
Speaker 1: up in this idea that that that that every Rick
Speaker 1: cop who shoots a black man somehow is a bad,
Speaker 1: evil person. I don't think cops just get up wanting
Speaker 1: to kill people every day. That's just my theory. But
Speaker 1: it's also media though too, because you know, I look
Speaker 1: at my son, you know, and we live in a
Speaker 1: nice area in Jersey, So what he sees is what's
Speaker 1: on TV. So when you when you look on Channel
Speaker 1: twelve with Channel one or the news channel, all you
Speaker 1: see is young African American on TV doing bad. They
Speaker 1: never show positivity, never show positive. They'll say, eight people
Speaker 1: shot in Newark, this is what the suspect looks like.
Speaker 1: Eight people shot in Patterson, two people shot in the Bronx,
Speaker 1: two people shot in Brooklyn. So my son starts to
Speaker 1: see African Americans as bad, but you gotta show them different.
Speaker 1: Right now. I've never been the type to put that
Speaker 1: much casche into the media entertainer. But my mother and dad.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people out there that don't have
Speaker 1: parents raising them, and they all raised from media and
Speaker 1: raised from music. There's a lot of kids out there
Speaker 1: like that makes it difficult, that's what. And it's very dangerous.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean, you know, what we what we
Speaker 1: still I think have not quite figured out, is that
Speaker 1: the mass and cars ration epidemic that started in the
Speaker 1: seventies has obliterated the black family. This whole seventy two
Speaker 1: percent of black children being born without a father in
Speaker 1: the house. That didn't really start until so many fathers
Speaker 1: were being sent to prison in marginalized. I'll give you
Speaker 1: one example. There's a guy no Chicago, Mario Lloyd, sold
Speaker 1: some cocaine. Never killed anybody, at least, you know, he
Speaker 1: wasn't convicted for anything killed somebody if he sold cocaine.
Speaker 1: There you go, Well, maybe a woman that overdosedbody could
Speaker 1: have killed somebody for that cold. We gotta stop saying that, Yes, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: fair enough, he sold he sold cocaine. Uh. People were
Speaker 1: hurt by this, right absolutely. But here's the interesting thing.
Speaker 1: When they when the fans, uh took him away. Uh,
Speaker 1: they locked him. They gave him fifteen life sentences for
Speaker 1: for non violent first time offense. They locked up his mother,
Speaker 1: They locked up his sister, and they locked up his brother.
Speaker 1: So the question is when you right, excuse there you go.
Speaker 1: So when you lock up an entire family, what happens
Speaker 1: to those kids? I mean, twenty years later, Mario's son
Speaker 1: gets murdered in the same neighborhood that his father used
Speaker 1: to deal drugs in. You need those all models there.
Speaker 1: You You can't think a community is gonna prosper when
Speaker 1: you're killing off all the men. If you know nothing,
Speaker 1: that is what happened. If you would have never sold
Speaker 1: code And I mean I used to sell it though,
Speaker 1: but it's just that simple. Yeah, but but but but right,
Speaker 1: I agree. I agree breaking the law is wrong, we
Speaker 1: all we all agree on that. But the punishment has
Speaker 1: to fit the crime. I mean, fifteen life sentences. I
Speaker 1: don't understand that. You know, another brother, Joel Pageon got
Speaker 1: forty years for possessing a grandma crack. I mean, come
Speaker 1: on now, and if you really want to see, if
Speaker 1: you really want to see people breaking the law, if
Speaker 1: you really want to see people possessing drugs go to
Speaker 1: a college campus on the weekend. But I guarantee you
Speaker 1: they will never raigin a college campus the way they'll
Speaker 1: go up in the hood and lock everybody up. And
Speaker 1: not only that, you said people shouldn't sell drugs, And
Speaker 1: I know this is gonna be a tough statement, but
Speaker 1: I understand that at times like like you said, you
Speaker 1: just named a young man, I got to take care
Speaker 1: of his his grandmother, his mother, and his brother. He's
Speaker 1: the man of the house. And you say, get a job.
Speaker 1: But McDonald's making nine dollars. Now it's not going to pay. That.
Speaker 1: Part of what makes that hard community that the environment.
Speaker 1: If everybody around you is doing something and that's how
Speaker 1: you were raised, and that's what everybody's doing. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: hard because well I don't understand. I don't understand it
Speaker 1: because I've seen the outcome. The outcome is jail, a
Speaker 1: death right. That's it, right, that's it. So that's why
Speaker 1: I don't understand if sandity is doing the same thing
Speaker 1: over and over expected to the results. But I know
Speaker 1: people who have said, listen, I grew up in a
Speaker 1: terrible neighborhood. That's what everybody's doing. That's what every all
Speaker 1: my role models were doing that everybody around me. That
Speaker 1: just seem normal. And so that's what makes it, I
Speaker 1: think difficult sometimes for people. And then you give him
Speaker 1: fifteen consecutive life sentences and he never has a chance
Speaker 1: to do something else or experience something else to get
Speaker 1: a second chance. But there's always Jamal that didn't get
Speaker 1: the life sentences that made the money, Charlomagne. There's the
Speaker 1: Charlomagne that I don't think people getting the type opportunities
Speaker 1: nor more, you know. And and here's another interesting thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know when you talk about that scenario
Speaker 1: working at McDonald's, um, I live on the South side
Speaker 1: of Chicago, and a lot of those kids just cannot
Speaker 1: find jobs anywhere. Um. In fact, there are some neighborhoods
Speaker 1: where a black youth or black man especially has an
Speaker 1: easier time getting a gun than he has of getting
Speaker 1: an education or getting a decent job, you know. So
Speaker 1: I think that is part of part of the issue
Speaker 1: as well. And then I think a fundamental question to
Speaker 1: really ask is we know teenagers are fun are just
Speaker 1: pretty stupid a lot of times, you know, not not
Speaker 1: dumb in terms of but a lot of us did
Speaker 1: dumb stuff when we but antisocial stuff. Right. So the
Speaker 1: question to me is, you know, what's the cost of
Speaker 1: making a mistake? Right? Uh? You know, why is it
Speaker 1: that for some people in our society, like you look
Speaker 1: at somebody like a George Bush. That's why I was
Speaker 1: talking about what I actually wrote, because what if George
Speaker 1: Bush were a black man? Because I literally said, I said,
Speaker 1: thank you, brother, I appreciate that. I said, So, you
Speaker 1: know what would have happened if George Bush were a
Speaker 1: poor black kid in Cabrini Green Projects in Chicago and
Speaker 1: made the same mistakes he made the right exactly, he
Speaker 1: was still be there, he'd be dead, or he'd be
Speaker 1: in president. He certainly would never have had a chance
Speaker 1: to become president and make up for his mistakes. Right.
Speaker 1: So so I think that for some for some of us,
Speaker 1: actually become president and make more mistakes. But ahead, well
Speaker 1: there you go. Well yeah, I mean like, well, he's
Speaker 1: a war criminal. I mean we know that, right and
Speaker 1: and and so you know, to me, I think that
Speaker 1: we have to really question why we have a society
Speaker 1: where for certain people, one mistake the age of seventeen
Speaker 1: or eighteen can destroy you. For life. You know, my
Speaker 1: my my old my older brother figure. He was really
Speaker 1: my uncle's like my older brother. You know. I remember
Speaker 1: when he went to prison at seventeen. And I don't
Speaker 1: know what happened when he was in prison, but I
Speaker 1: know bad things can occur, and and all I know
Speaker 1: is that when he came out he just wasn't right mentally.
Speaker 1: You know, he only did two years. But prison is
Speaker 1: such a nightmare. I mean, people are being tortured in prison.
Speaker 1: Think about I mean, you're rape getting raped, and we
Speaker 1: make jokes about that. That's not funny. Rape is not funny.
Speaker 1: It's not right. You know, it's okay, it's okay, is
Speaker 1: a little funny something. No, No, that's a nightmare, right,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a nightmare. It's torture. It's a human
Speaker 1: rights abuse. And so if we put people through that
Speaker 1: and then we think, oh, somehow you're gonna come out
Speaker 1: and be rehabilitated, we know that's not gonna happen, and
Speaker 1: your marginalized for life, you can't get a job. I mean, really,
Speaker 1: the truth here is that we live in a country
Speaker 1: now where where incarceration has become profitable. So I think
Speaker 1: now we have a country where people don't really want
Speaker 1: you to get away from the stock market, the market,
Speaker 1: the private prisons exactly exactly come up. Pay off man.
Speaker 1: I glad play one more Dame played a saving money
Speaker 1: clip because you know, doctor doctor boys Watkins is a
Speaker 1: jack of all trades, but he's really good at finance
Speaker 1: on it and nine to fives aren't good because you
Speaker 1: look you hustling fourth weekend. You never worked your way
Speaker 1: up to a position. You didn't. I never had a job,
Speaker 1: but you didn't jump out the t I flipped from
Speaker 1: the w yes from the womb. I was damned das
Speaker 1: the day I was born. But you didn't have everything
Speaker 1: that you have now from the wound. The way I
Speaker 1: got it was not by a job. I got it
Speaker 1: by putting up my own money. Like one day I
Speaker 1: have a lot of money, and then the next day
Speaker 1: I don't you know why, because I put it all
Speaker 1: in the street. You keep saying, you know you just started.
Speaker 1: You didn't, No, dog, I've always flipped. I don't put
Speaker 1: up money saving moneys for suckers. To me, I have
Speaker 1: so much confidence in me that I flipped, And twenty
Speaker 1: years later, I'm still a boss, and you still got
Speaker 1: a job. I would love to close on this. Um.
Speaker 1: I think that the goal of being a boss is
Speaker 1: a good objective to have. I don't think everybody has
Speaker 1: to be Dame Dash. Um. You know, there are many
Speaker 1: people who are bosses who have philosophies that might differ
Speaker 1: from Dame. Um. I like the way he just he
Speaker 1: awakened the Sleeping Dragon with with just bold commentary. I mean,
Speaker 1: Dame Dash is dam Dash. He's always going to be
Speaker 1: that person, um. You know, but there's no jay Z
Speaker 1: without Dame Dash. We know that that type of thing, um,
Speaker 1: and I give him. We have to give him credit
Speaker 1: for that, right. His his desire to take risk uh
Speaker 1: sometimes has led to tremendous fortune and sometimes him misfortune.
Speaker 1: But remember, you know, you can't dis Dame's commentary per
Speaker 1: se just because he's not always doing as well as
Speaker 1: he might have hoped. Because remember Donald Trump declared bankruptcy
Speaker 1: four times, right right, so so souckers right now, the
Speaker 1: idea of saving money being for suckers. Um, No, I
Speaker 1: mean come on that that that you can't say that,
Speaker 1: But I would say that that simply saving money doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense. I think saving the right saving and investing
Speaker 1: is really the best approach, right. So the idea at
Speaker 1: the end of the day is find ways to keep
Speaker 1: your money in your pocket and put it into things
Speaker 1: that are going to empower you. Eventually, your money has
Speaker 1: to start working for you and everybody can do it.
Speaker 1: Get out of what I would call the slave mentality.
Speaker 1: And slave mentality to me is when when you will
Speaker 1: go work ten twelve hours a day because somebody told
Speaker 1: you to come to work and they're gonna give you
Speaker 1: a minimum wage paycheck. But when it comes to working
Speaker 1: half of that time to achieve goals for yourself, whether
Speaker 1: to be educationally or entrepreneurially or whatever, you can't put
Speaker 1: it in the time. You ain't got time. You wanta
Speaker 1: go get turned up, you want to watch basketball, wives
Speaker 1: or whatever. And that doesn't make sense to me. Why
Speaker 1: why would you spend more time building somebody else's dream
Speaker 1: and no time building your own. That makes no sense
Speaker 1: to me. Always tell interns, interns, be like, well, how
Speaker 1: do I have time to go to school and have
Speaker 1: a job and do an internship? It's not one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty eight hours in a week time? And what
Speaker 1: you want to invest time? It's right period, There you
Speaker 1: go there. Do you have it? Doctor boys Watkins. We
Speaker 1: appreciate you. I appreciate the invitation in New York because,
Speaker 1: I mean, financial literacy is something that I think more
Speaker 1: of us need, especially after what I've heard the past
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. I have absolutely the dumbest financial tips
Speaker 1: from people. I'm like, y'all have no clue what y'all
Speaker 1: talking about. Well, well, I respect you guys, and Charlotage,
Speaker 1: I've always respected you, back back when we just stuffed
Speaker 1: with Wendy show Man. You you always, Charlomagne always respected
Speaker 1: me even when nobody else did. And that's why I
Speaker 1: loved this brother. Thank you, Thank you brother. Alrighty, it's
Speaker 1: the Breakfast Club, Doctor Boys Watkins