Speaker 1: And now go my mic back.
Speaker 2: You're like that.
Speaker 3: Strike waters from headquarters behind him.
Speaker 1: And if you're just tuning into civics, ie aro, I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Ramsay's joh I go by the name q Ward. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: and be sure to stick around because we are knee
Speaker 1: deep in our entertainment episode. We still got a lot
Speaker 1: more to talk about, not the least of which is
Speaker 1: rap beef m I come from hip hop radio, so
Speaker 1: I got some thoughts on that. Also, we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about Hattie McDaniel far away, Black history fact.
Speaker 1: She's the first African American to win an Oscar. She
Speaker 1: has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and
Speaker 1: she was her only Her dying wish was to be
Speaker 1: buried in the Hollywood Cemetery and it was denied to
Speaker 1: her because she was not a white woman, and a
Speaker 1: lot more cool things about her. Obviously, she's long, so
Speaker 1: hence our way black history fact. But yeah, our entertainment
Speaker 1: episode is in full swing. First and foremost, let's talk
Speaker 1: about the NFL.
Speaker 4: In a good way finally, right, that's surprising, but go
Speaker 4: for it, all right, So for our Baba segment, becoming
Speaker 4: a better ally, I pulled this from ESPN.
Speaker 1: All Right, so it says, first off, let me just
Speaker 1: preface this, I don't know anything about sports. Q always
Speaker 1: laughs at me. I'm a music guy. I always been,
Speaker 1: never been a sports guy. Actually I played football in
Speaker 1: high school, but I forgot it all. Yeah, anyway tells
Speaker 1: me that too. So it is the one thing I did.
Speaker 1: I used to play basketball a little bit, but I'm
Speaker 1: it's long on. Anyways, I'm gonna read this if I don't
Speaker 1: sound like the most articulate sports person. That's why. All
Speaker 1: thirty two NFL teams will hire a minority offensive assistant
Speaker 1: coach for the twenty twenty two season, part of a
Speaker 1: series of policy enhancements announced Monday to address the league's
Speaker 1: ongoing diversity efforts. The coach can be quote a female
Speaker 1: or member of an ethnic or racial minority and quote
Speaker 1: according to the policy adopted by NFL owners during their
Speaker 1: annual meeting, and will be paid from a league wide fund.
Speaker 1: The coach must work closely with the head coach and
Speaker 1: the offensive staff with the goal of increasing minority participation
Speaker 1: in the pool of offensive coaches that eventually produces the
Speaker 1: most sought after candidates for head coaching positions. Quote. It's
Speaker 1: a recognition that at the moment when you look at
Speaker 1: stepping stones for a head coach, they are the coordinator positions.
Speaker 1: End quote. Said Pittsburgh Steelers' owner Art Rooney the second,
Speaker 1: the chairman of the NFL Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. Quote.
Speaker 1: We clearly have a trend where coaches are coming from
Speaker 1: the offensive side of the ball in recent years, and
Speaker 1: we clearly do not have as many minorities in the
Speaker 1: offensive coordinator position. Now, the NFL wasn't hiring some guy
Speaker 1: because they were just pretending to interview him. I forget
Speaker 1: the guy's name, but he was special, Brian Florence. That's
Speaker 1: why we keep you around. And then the NFL came
Speaker 1: back and did this, so we know our beef is
Speaker 1: not eternal.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: We all got to learn, even black folks, we got
Speaker 1: to learn to We're just trying to be better brothers
Speaker 1: and sisters to each other. So shout out the NFL
Speaker 1: for becoming a better ally. Now, I feel like we
Speaker 1: still have a couple more levels, a couple more things
Speaker 1: to address with this Will Smith and Chris Rock situation.
Speaker 2: I agree wholeheartedly, but.
Speaker 1: I think I can make a point that further illustrates
Speaker 1: my issue with it and why there's a weight of
Speaker 1: gravity to it that other people may not experience. And
Speaker 1: the reason we're telling the reason I'm telling you this
Speaker 1: is because that weight comes from you, not you the individual,
Speaker 1: but you, society, you as a group in mass, right,
Speaker 1: because those prejudices, those stereotypes, those are the things that
Speaker 1: crush me under their weight. Those are the things that say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I have to be perfect to be good enough. I
Speaker 1: have to be twice as good to be good enough, right,
Speaker 1: And that's not fair, right, because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are good enough that will never be considered
Speaker 1: because they're not twice as good, you understand. And that's
Speaker 1: not the same when you cross over into a different race,
Speaker 1: because you can just be good enough. If you're a
Speaker 1: different race, it's a different reality. I want to further
Speaker 1: illustrate how this weight feels right now. This is not
Speaker 1: your fault, society, but it is. We'll call it our problem.
Speaker 1: And if it's our collective problem, then we have to
Speaker 1: challenge our prejudices and stereotypes with respect to these things.
Speaker 1: We have to do it together. I'm not putting it
Speaker 1: on you, it's us Okay. The first thing I want
Speaker 1: to talk about is those videos that go viral about
Speaker 1: people fighting. When the people are black and they are
Speaker 1: fighting after school, after a club, whatever the video is.
Speaker 1: I cringe because to me, I'm like, h white folks
Speaker 1: could see this video. They will see this video and
Speaker 1: they will think, look, I knew it. That's exactly how
Speaker 1: they behave and they paint with broad strokes. It's not
Speaker 1: if you're white. I'm not picking on you. It's not
Speaker 1: your fault. It's human nature to categorize things. This is
Speaker 1: how we make sense of the world. Right. We categorize
Speaker 1: lots of things. Right. It's not your fault. But again,
Speaker 1: it is our problem to fix right. So we have
Speaker 1: to challenge ourselves not to say that's how they act.
Speaker 1: We have to challenge ourselves to say that's how these
Speaker 1: specific individuals are acting. Right, and not all people are
Speaker 1: prone to this type of behavior. Similar to with to
Speaker 1: Will Smith and to Chris Rock, right, those two individuals
Speaker 1: are having this moment. This is not all black folks, right,
Speaker 1: because there's tons of black people in the audience got
Speaker 1: the whole night went off without a hitch quest Love
Speaker 1: God as Award, and Zelle was sitting there giving great advice.
Speaker 1: Lupito was you know what I mean, nobody, no one
Speaker 1: has any issues, right, But when you see those videos
Speaker 1: to know that, Okay, this is an individual group of
Speaker 1: people that are behaving in this way and it's not
Speaker 1: fair to paint with broad strokes. And you listening to
Speaker 1: this show, you might actually do that. But when I
Speaker 1: when I'm talking, I'm saying society. Society doesn't often do that, right.
Speaker 1: These things tend to subtly reinforce stereotypes, right that black
Speaker 1: people are violent or we like to fight or something
Speaker 1: like that. But there's just as many videos of non
Speaker 1: black people get invites.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's more, you know what. I just based
Speaker 2: on the top, based on the populators.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and again, white folks don't wear those videos the
Speaker 1: same way I do. White folks don't look at those
Speaker 1: videos and cringe, be like, oh man, they see Black
Speaker 1: people are going to look at this and think white
Speaker 1: people all, you know, do this thing, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Part of the reason that they don't cringe, however,
Speaker 1: is that the lack of societal power to create a
Speaker 1: society's outlook on them by black people, even if all
Speaker 1: black people felt that way, society at large would just
Speaker 1: as we pointed out about by the disparity in numbers
Speaker 1: and the lack of an infrastructure in place to flex
Speaker 1: any type of.
Speaker 2: Deprivation based on those ideas. Even if all black people
Speaker 2: saw those videos and said, look, that's how white people act,
Speaker 2: it would not affect white people's lives at all.
Speaker 1: Sure ever, yeah, it would just be an opinion based
Speaker 1: that a group of people have. You're absolutely right, right,
Speaker 1: There is something else to be said there though, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned in my in the in the first half
Speaker 1: of the show, I mentioned, you know, a monologue that
Speaker 1: I had on my other program, White people or other
Speaker 1: people don't tend to be defined by their outliers, their
Speaker 1: cultural or behavioral outliers to the degree that black people are. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you see, you know, some white folks in
Speaker 1: a viral video fighting at a trailer park or something
Speaker 1: like that, right, there's just some individuals in your mind
Speaker 1: and in our minds, some individuals fighting at a trailer park.
Speaker 1: Those are the cultural outliers. You yourself may not live
Speaker 1: in a trailer park. You yourself may have all your teeth,
Speaker 1: You yourself may not drink during the day, you yourself, may
Speaker 1: not have a cousin who's also your sister or whatever,
Speaker 1: some weird you know whatever, whatever's going on in this
Speaker 1: imaginary viral video. Right, And we would not look at that,
Speaker 1: nor would you look at this video and say, see
Speaker 1: this is how they act. We would look at the
Speaker 1: video as would you, and say, look at these individuals
Speaker 1: acting crazy. Right, But again go back to remember Sharkisha.
Speaker 1: Remember that video. Qu You might not remember Sharkisha, but
Speaker 1: that Sharkisha video came out, don't google this, but it
Speaker 1: was basically a fight, you know, some black girls fighting.
Speaker 2: Children, by the way, Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: That went like ultra like super viral, you know, some
Speaker 1: years back. And perhaps because of the name Sharkisha, that's
Speaker 1: that's a heavy name.
Speaker 2: That'll do it.
Speaker 1: That'll definitely, that'll definitely flow down, that'll float down the
Speaker 1: river a little bit. But also it.
Speaker 2: Just was uh.
Speaker 1: And and again I'm talking about the weight that we carry, like,
Speaker 1: oh god, okay, we're trying to get forward. The last
Speaker 1: thing we need is these people looking at videos like
Speaker 1: this saying, see they don't even know how to act.
Speaker 1: Who is they? Are you saying they those two individuals
Speaker 1: in the video, Are you saying they in general, and
Speaker 1: this is the weight that we carry because oftentimes we
Speaker 1: realize that that is largely true. It was taking the
Speaker 1: bus one time. This was in high school. This was
Speaker 1: in the nineties, right, the culture was a little different,
Speaker 1: but it was changing.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: I had, I think a soda or something, or a
Speaker 1: bag of chips or some sort of snack.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I don't drink soda, so and I didn't drink soda
Speaker 1: in high school, laiter. But you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And I'm getting off of the city bus Valley Metro
Speaker 1: and Phoenix, Arizona man. And I was with my brother,
Speaker 1: the og O, Kevin Rivers, you know, my guy, and
Speaker 1: I left my whatever it was. It was like garbage,
Speaker 1: left it there on the bus. You know my mind,
Speaker 1: someone's going to clean They clean the bus, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. So I just leave it right here.
Speaker 1: I'm not throwing it outside. It's fine. And he pulls
Speaker 1: me aside and he says something that I knew to
Speaker 1: be true, because I was conflicted when I left it.
Speaker 1: But I just I think I had my hands full
Speaker 1: backpack and I was carrying something else or whatever, and
Speaker 1: we had to go somewhere whatever. He pulled me aside.
Speaker 1: He's like, hey, man, you know you can't. You can't
Speaker 1: leave that there. It's white people on this bus looking
Speaker 1: at you. And he was right. And I had to
Speaker 1: pick that up, and I had to stuff it in
Speaker 1: my pocket or whatever.
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 1: You know, it was many years ago. I was a child.
Speaker 1: But this is the reality for us. We cannot embarrass
Speaker 1: our people in front of the people with the power,
Speaker 1: because the people with the power will keep us subjugated
Speaker 1: because they have a cognitive bias. They see things that
Speaker 1: help confirm their reality. You were perhaps taught to fear
Speaker 1: black people. You were perhaps taught to think that black
Speaker 1: people are whatever. I knew a lady one time. She
Speaker 1: loved me so older white lady. Name was Betty Van Winkles.
Speaker 1: She's passed away long long ago. She'll take care of me.
Speaker 1: When I was little, she said that when she was
Speaker 1: growing up, she said that she was taught that black
Speaker 1: people had a natural odor to them, that we naturally smelled,
Speaker 1: and no matter how much we bathed, we could not
Speaker 1: get rid of that smell.
Speaker 4: She said.
Speaker 1: She grew up, she probably learned that that wasn't true.
Speaker 1: When she was in her mid thirties, right, this really happened.
Speaker 1: I knew this lady. I knew she used to take
Speaker 1: care of me and my sisters and my brother when
Speaker 1: we were little. She told me that when I was little.
Speaker 1: I might have been twelve or thirteen when I heard that.
Speaker 1: So these are the sorts of things that make these
Speaker 1: incidents feel heavy. Now. I do want to take a
Speaker 1: moment here to shout out Hip Hop Weekly Magazine. These
Speaker 1: videos that we're talking about, I believe to a large extent,
Speaker 1: were popularized by a site called world Star hip Hop.
Speaker 1: Not mad at world Star, but I do recognize that
Speaker 1: though sharing those fight videos and having them go viral
Speaker 1: before you know, the infrastructure was in place for things
Speaker 1: to go viral almost and on every social media site.
Speaker 1: World Star was the first, and one of the things
Speaker 1: that really got them there was these fight videos, and
Speaker 1: they unfortunately became synonymous with fight videos that people would
Speaker 1: get into fits and yell out world Star and anticipation
Speaker 1: for making it on the site exactly. So, I'm not
Speaker 1: mad at world Star, but I really wish that that
Speaker 1: didn't happen in that way. I wish there was another
Speaker 1: way that we didn't have to be like Mandingo Warriors
Speaker 1: in order to make money or to get the sort
Speaker 1: of social media or viral cloud or whatever it was.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were more options available to us that
Speaker 1: we had a little bit more dignity in them. But
Speaker 1: I do want to shout out Hip Hop Weekly Magazine
Speaker 1: because my understanding is that they have a philosophy about
Speaker 1: them that is decidedly more dignified and does not rely
Speaker 1: on the lowest common denominator. Plus, they sponsored the show,
Speaker 1: so big shout.
Speaker 2: Out to HIPPI for Hip Hop Weekly Magazine.
Speaker 1: Now rap beef. You and I both come from hip
Speaker 1: hop radio. There's a good chance if you're listening to
Speaker 1: us that you're listening to a hip hop radio station.
Speaker 1: And we didn't always do this show. Now this is
Speaker 1: primarily what we do, but we're both DJs. We both
Speaker 1: grew up loving hip hop. Is a part of our lives,
Speaker 1: part of our everything, you know, and beef in hip
Speaker 1: hop has been sort of a part of what comes
Speaker 1: with hip hop.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It started up more as like battling who can rap better,
Speaker 1: who can insult the other person better? You know, on
Speaker 1: and on, and then you know, as drugs and gang
Speaker 1: culture kind of took center stage and there's reasons for that.
Speaker 1: We've talked about it at length on the show The CIA.
Speaker 1: That's all I'm gonna say. But I don't have time
Speaker 1: to tell that story. But through hip hop music, drugs
Speaker 1: and gangs and that sort of stuff, or at least
Speaker 1: that culture kind of permeated hip hop culture, and the
Speaker 1: machismo that came along with this gang mentality also took
Speaker 1: center stage.
Speaker 2: And then adding excessive popularity and wealth and ego and testosterone,
Speaker 2: and you get a very very toxic cocktail.
Speaker 1: Right now, all the stories about rat beef and the
Speaker 1: stories about who got in what fight, and what a
Speaker 1: word show or what nightclub and who threw a bottle
Speaker 1: and all this and whatever videos and that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: all that stuff kind of is what it is, right
Speaker 1: But I want to make sure that I say that
Speaker 1: it's no different from the other things that we're talking
Speaker 1: about here insofar as I'm concerned. You know, I if
Speaker 1: people can see you and they are not culturally competent,
Speaker 1: they don't understand the culture right to them, it looks
Speaker 1: like chaos, It looks like insanity, It looks like violence,
Speaker 1: and it is in some cases, but it looks way
Speaker 1: more sinister and because they don't have a cultural context,
Speaker 1: it's more difficult to process. It has a lingering effect,
Speaker 1: and they have a tendency to paint with broader strokes
Speaker 1: right In other words, paint all of these people, all
Speaker 1: of this music, all of this culture. If you dress
Speaker 1: like this, then you are this type of person. If
Speaker 1: you sound like this, then you are this type of person.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, You're going to break into
Speaker 1: my home and do awful things with my daughter, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, you know what I mean. And so
Speaker 1: over the years, rap beef and you know, what is
Speaker 1: born out of it in some instances has been another
Speaker 1: thing where that's a weight that at least me, I
Speaker 1: carry it a bit differently, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about machine gun Kelly beefing with eminem,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, because that's not the same
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, you know, doctor dre and Easy when
Speaker 1: Easy was alive. You know, that was something that happened
Speaker 1: when I was like, you know, I'm from Compton, California,
Speaker 1: so that gang environment is something that I was born into.
Speaker 1: You know, my family was born into that, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. So I knew that that was real.
Speaker 1: You know, Tupac getting shot, Biggie getting shot, you know,
Speaker 1: all that sort of stuff, and other people on the
Speaker 1: outside look in and saying, oh my god. Now I
Speaker 1: will say this after thirty years, however long. It's been
Speaker 1: almost thirty years, give or take. You know, these stories
Speaker 1: are a part of our society. So the biggies in
Speaker 1: the Tupax and I stuff, it's not as scary anymore.
Speaker 1: It's you know, there's a million years ago right. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was taking a walk today and I saw a
Speaker 1: woman wealthy, woman clearly wealthy, with her husband. And you know,
Speaker 1: with the neighborhood where we take walks, they're all mansions.
Speaker 1: Everyone there is wealthy. She was wearing a Biggie shirt
Speaker 1: and ready to Die, you know, the first album cover,
Speaker 1: and then on the top of the shirt it said Notorious.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean. Wow.
Speaker 1: So I get that we've come a long way. But
Speaker 1: the point I'm trying to impress upon you is that again,
Speaker 1: we carry that differently, and carrying it differently is not fair.
Speaker 1: And and if there's anything that we can do to
Speaker 1: fix that, it's collectively us here and us black people
Speaker 1: and you listening, who may or may not be black,
Speaker 1: we all need to make sure that we are checking
Speaker 1: our stereotypes and not painting with broad strokes. And if
Speaker 1: people have an issue, it's those people, it's not everyone.
Speaker 1: And it's okay to make patterns and make connections. That's
Speaker 1: human nature. I'm not mad at you for that, but
Speaker 1: we can't let it go too far and define a
Speaker 1: reality for us that doesn't really exist right now. I
Speaker 1: know I've been talking a lot, so I do want
Speaker 1: to hear your thoughts on, of course, the Brat beef,
Speaker 1: the viral videos. I know we talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: hip Hop Weekly versus World Star hip Hop, all that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: So I think we have to be careful not to
Speaker 2: confuse causality and correlation. Okay, I think in general we
Speaker 2: do that a lot. Because this happened, and this happened,
Speaker 2: then this must have happened because this happened. And when
Speaker 2: it comes to painting with broad strokes and the conclusions
Speaker 2: that we reach with regards to black people, our culture,
Speaker 2: our hair, our way of dress, our music, the cities
Speaker 2: that we come from, the fear that is caused by
Speaker 2: the perpetuation of those stereotypes, we have to be careful
Speaker 2: with the dots that we connect, because sometimes those connections
Speaker 2: don't exist, we just put them there. Sure, coming from Detroit,
Speaker 2: Michigan and Compton, California, respectively, you know, you've seen our
Speaker 2: cities on the news for reasons that are not things
Speaker 2: that we're proud of. To be our age, to be
Speaker 2: in the space that we're in and coming from where
Speaker 2: we came from, it's something that we're both very, very
Speaker 2: proud of. So you know that there's another side to it.
Speaker 2: Of course, those things exist, the games, the drug that
Speaker 2: we're not blameless, violence, all that stuff actually happened. It's
Speaker 2: just not the only thing that happened singular or a
Speaker 2: monolith with regards to that. So it's very very complex
Speaker 2: to be from where we're from and be intellectual and
Speaker 2: be kind and be and not be tough guys, and
Speaker 2: to not have chosen the other path that people that
Speaker 2: we grew up with did. It wasn't easy to take
Speaker 2: the path that we took, but that other path isn't
Speaker 2: easy either, and sometimes it's circumstantial.
Speaker 1: And almost almost of the time it's born into those
Speaker 1: decisions you don't really have a choice sometimes, so you know,
Speaker 1: let's just have a bit more grace with each other.
Speaker 2: Final thoughts. Shout out to Hip Hop Weekly Magazine, You
Speaker 2: shout out to the culture in general.
Speaker 1: Hip hop, we love you. I want to say this too,
Speaker 1: Chris Rock, we love you. And Will Smith, we love
Speaker 1: you too. It doesn't mean that doesn't mean.
Speaker 2: You shouldn't do better.
Speaker 1: But I moved this way. You know this about me,
Speaker 1: Q and you're about to learn this if you're listening.
Speaker 1: Nobody is simply the worst thing they've ever done. That's
Speaker 1: not fair for anyone. Once upon a time, when I
Speaker 1: was five years old, I remember this. I stole, for
Speaker 1: all intents and purposes, a Ninja Turtles coloring book out
Speaker 1: of Toys r Us. This is in California. I had
Speaker 1: a nickel. That's how much it costs.
Speaker 2: Dang.
Speaker 1: I had a nickel, But I had two coloring books.
Speaker 1: One was inside of the other one, and I paid
Speaker 1: for the one and I had two of them. And
Speaker 1: then when I got outside, I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: there's two and I just didn't take the other one back.
Speaker 1: I was like, let me hurry up and go home
Speaker 1: because I got two coloring books. That was me stealing, right,
Speaker 1: I guess I kind of knew that was wrong. But
Speaker 1: I didn't know who I was yet I didn't I
Speaker 1: wasn't old enough to make a conscious choice of the
Speaker 1: type of person I wanted to be. Sounds like a
Speaker 1: get excuses for myself, which I don't want to do.
Speaker 1: But I am not a thief. If someone were to
Speaker 1: call me that, they would be absolutely wrong. In fact,
Speaker 1: if that toys rust still existed, I would go and
Speaker 1: give them their other nickel, you know, to make it right.
Speaker 2: But just whatever the inflation would be because.
Speaker 1: I give them a dollar doesn't matter me. But that's
Speaker 1: not fair to say that somebody is the worst thing
Speaker 1: that they are, simply so. I don't want to abandon
Speaker 1: Will Smith either. I just wanted to impress upon you
Speaker 1: the weight that we often carry as black people.
Speaker 2: Now it's before we move on, I'm gonna leave you
Speaker 2: guys with a question. If Will Smith got out of
Speaker 2: his seat, walked on stage and slapped Jimmy Kimmel, do
Speaker 2: you guys think he gets to walk back to his chair,
Speaker 2: sit down, watch the rest of the Oscars, and then
Speaker 2: win Best Actor and give a speech.
Speaker 1: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I'll let you guys figure out why I asked that
Speaker 2: question and why I think the result was different.
Speaker 1: That's a good question, all right.
Speaker 2: Way.
Speaker 1: Black history fact Hattie McDaniel June tenth, eighteen ninety three
Speaker 1: to October twenty sixth, nineteen fifty two. This comes from Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: She was an American actress, singer, songwriter, and comedian. For
Speaker 1: her role as Mammy and Gone with the Wind nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress,
Speaker 1: becoming the first African American to win an Oscar. She
Speaker 1: has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Was
Speaker 1: inducted into the Black Filmmaker's Hall of Fame in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, and in two thousand and six, she became
Speaker 1: the first black Oscar winner honored with the US Posters Stamp.
Speaker 1: In twenty ten, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame. In addition to acting, McDaniel, recording sixteen
Speaker 1: blue sides between nineteen twenty six and twenty nine, was
Speaker 1: a radio performer and television personality. She was the first
Speaker 1: black woman to sing on radio in the United States.
Speaker 1: Although she appeared in more than three hundred films, she
Speaker 1: received on screen credits for only eighty three McDaniel experienced
Speaker 1: racism and racism and racial segregation throughout her career, and
Speaker 1: was notably unable to attend the premiere of Gone with
Speaker 1: the Wind in Atlanta because it was held at a
Speaker 1: whites only theater. At the Oscar Ceremony in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: she sat at a segregated table at the side of
Speaker 1: the room. In nineteen fifty two, McDaniel died due to
Speaker 1: breast cancer. Her final wish to be buried in Hollywood
Speaker 1: Cemetery was denied due to the graveyard being restricted to
Speaker 1: whites only at the time. Nineteen thirty one, McDaniel moved
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles to join her brother Sam and sisters
Speaker 1: Eda and Orlina. When she could not get film work,
Speaker 1: she took jobs as a maid or cook. Sam was
Speaker 1: working on a KNX radio program, The Optimistic Don Hour,
Speaker 1: and was able to get a sister a spot. She
Speaker 1: performed on radio as High Hat Hattie, a bossi maid
Speaker 1: who often forgets her place. Her show became popular, but
Speaker 1: her salary was so low that she had to keep
Speaker 1: working as a maid. She made her first appearance in
Speaker 1: the Old and West in nineteen thirty two, in which
Speaker 1: she played a maid. Her second appearance came in the
Speaker 1: highly successful May West film I'm No Angel in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three, in which she played one of the maids
Speaker 1: with whom West camped Oh, sorry, camped camped it up backstage,
Speaker 1: written strangely, but I guess that's how they called it.
Speaker 1: Sorry about that. She received several other uncredited film roles
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen thirties, often singing in choruses. In
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four, McDaniel joined the Screen Actors Guilds. She
Speaker 1: began to attract the attention and landed larger film roles,
Speaker 1: which began to win her on screen credits. Fox Film
Speaker 1: Corporation put her under contract will appear in The Little
Speaker 1: Colonel with Shirley Temple, Bill Bojangles Robinson and Lionel Barrymore.
Speaker 1: The competition to win the part of Mammy and Gone
Speaker 1: with the Wind was almost as fierce as that for
Speaker 1: Scarlett O'Hara. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to film producer
Speaker 1: David O. Seals Nick to ask her to ask that
Speaker 1: her own maid, Elizabeth McDuffie, be given the part. McDaniel
Speaker 1: did not think she would be chosen because she had
Speaker 1: earned her reputation as a comedic actress. A comedic actress sorry.
Speaker 1: One source claim that Clark Gable recommended that the role
Speaker 1: be given to McDaniel. In any case, she went to
Speaker 1: our audition dressed in an authentic maid's uniform. Had won
Speaker 1: the part. Upon hearing of the planned film adaptation, the
Speaker 1: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that's CNAACP,
Speaker 1: the ones that gave me my award for being a
Speaker 1: media trailblazer. Media activist Trailblazer shout out to the NAACP.
Speaker 1: They fought hard to require the film's producer and director
Speaker 1: to delete racial epithets from the film, in particular the
Speaker 1: offensive slur nigger, and to alter scenes that might be
Speaker 1: incendiary and that, in their view, were historically inaccurate. A
Speaker 1: particular concern was a scene from the novel in which
Speaker 1: black men attacked scrl ot Olehira, after which the Ku
Speaker 1: Klux Klan, with this long history of provoking terror on
Speaker 1: black communities, is presented as a savior. Throughout the South,
Speaker 1: black men were being lynched based upon false allegations they
Speaker 1: had harmed white women. The attack scene was altered and
Speaker 1: some offensive language was modified, but another epithet Darky remained
Speaker 1: in the film. The film's message with respect to slavery
Speaker 1: remained essentially the same, consistent with the book. The film
Speaker 1: screenplay also referred to poor whites as white trash, and
Speaker 1: it ascribed these words equally to characters white and black.
Speaker 1: Lowe's Grand Theater on Peachtree Street and Atlanta, Georgia, was
Speaker 1: selected by the studio as a site for the Friday,
Speaker 1: December fifteenth, nineteen thirty nine premiere Have Gone with the Wind.
Speaker 1: Studio head David O'selznik asked that McDaniel be permitted to attend,
Speaker 1: but MGM advised him not to because Georgies because of
Speaker 1: Georgia's segregation loss. Clark Gable threatened to boycott the Atlanta
Speaker 1: premiere unless McDaniel was allowed to attend, but McDaniel convinced
Speaker 1: him to attend anyway. You know, shout out to Clark Gable.
Speaker 1: I never knew that about him. Most of Atlanta's three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand citizens crowded the route between the route of
Speaker 1: the seven mile Shout Out to seven motorcade that carried
Speaker 1: the film's other stars and executives from the airport to
Speaker 1: the Georgian Terrace Hotel, where they stayed while Jim Crow
Speaker 1: laws kept McDaniel from the Atlanta premiere. She did attend
Speaker 1: the film's Hollywood debut on December twenty eighth, nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: upon Selznick's insistence. Her picture was also featured prominently in
Speaker 1: the program, So shout out to Sealsnick as well for
Speaker 1: her performance as the house servant who reportedly scolds her
Speaker 1: own daughter Scarlett O'Hara Vivian Leigh and scoffs at rhet
Speaker 1: Butler Clark Gable. McDaniel won the nineteen thirty nine Academy
Speaker 1: Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first black actor to
Speaker 1: have been nominated and win. An oscar I loved Mammy,
Speaker 1: McDaniel said, when speaking to the White press about the character.
Speaker 1: I think I understood her because my own grandmother worked
Speaker 1: on a plantation, not unlike Tara. Now, this is the
Speaker 1: woman that played all of those made roles her and
Speaker 1: women like her. She played all those made roles that
Speaker 1: you remember when Star Trek came out, and oh man,
Speaker 1: I forget her name. She played Lieutenant O'Hara. I don't
Speaker 1: know how I know the character's name and not the
Speaker 1: actress's name, but the original Star Trek, the original series
Speaker 1: with Captain Kirk and mister Spock and all that was it,
Speaker 1: Diane Carroll, I don't think so. I know there was
Speaker 1: a black actress, forgive me, I should know her name,
Speaker 1: but she was the woman that WHOOPI Goldberg said, that's
Speaker 1: the first woman I saw not playing a servant, first
Speaker 1: black woman I saw not playing the servant on television.
Speaker 1: And so this kind of shows the lineage and the
Speaker 1: legacy of black folks getting from you know where we started,
Speaker 1: which was nowhere blackface essentially too. You know, Nachelle Nichols,
Speaker 1: we're the actress who portray There you go, Lieutenant Nyotahura.
Speaker 1: There we go on Star Trek. Thank you for that
Speaker 1: ce save me there. But that's that's it for us
Speaker 1: and our entertainment episodes. So thank you for tuning in
Speaker 1: once again. I'm your host, rams' jah.
Speaker 2: I'll go by the name q Ward. Keep y'all's eyes
Speaker 2: and ears open. We might do some online only content
Speaker 2: extras in the near future about this topic, because I
Speaker 2: think we both had a lot more to say, sure
Speaker 2: than we could fit in a single episode.
Speaker 1: Uh And in the meantime, ghet the website download this
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