Speaker 1: There are a handful of things that black people have
Speaker 1: mastered that probably have some sort of deeper long socio
Speaker 1: cultural or geopolitical reason for or an origin story that
Speaker 1: might have either came from I don't know, Africa, or
Speaker 1: slave ships, general oppression, and have become tools of survival
Speaker 1: that we have turned into an art form, like a mastery.
Speaker 1: We've mastered being cool. We've mastered cuss words, like, you know,
Speaker 1: nobody cussed like an old black man, old black woman,
Speaker 1: Like nobody cuss like us. Like we make cuss words
Speaker 1: sound like people say, e forty curs raps in cursive,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Like we make some old
Speaker 1: heads they cuss and sound like it's cursive. Bill Burr
Speaker 1: has this joke he did a while back about like
Speaker 1: black men and cussing that they've mastered the motherfucker because
Speaker 1: and you don't even notice that they do it, and
Speaker 1: the way that white people cuss it just sounds racist.
Speaker 1: And he's like, it's where you put the fuck. He
Speaker 1: was like, you're an old black man, tall, you like,
Speaker 1: hey man, how's at the start? Right?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Earlier and this age motherfucker told me, hey, age motherfucker
Speaker 1: was talking to this like talking to this Mexican motherfucker.
Speaker 1: It was just saying like, you know, blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. Right, it's just a descriptor. He goes, a
Speaker 1: white guy goes in there. I go, hey, I walk
Speaker 1: in there, and this fucking Asian guy says, He's like,
Speaker 1: it just sounds so much more racist the way I
Speaker 1: said it, And it's really just because I put the
Speaker 1: fuck before rather than after. He's like, I just said
Speaker 1: exactly what that guy said. I've just why am I? Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's an art form we've mastered that we have a
Speaker 1: mastery in sort of protecting you by our sense of humor.
Speaker 1: Like that's one of the ways that we sort of
Speaker 1: protect each other and build community is through our sense
Speaker 1: of humor. You know, if you're on the outs of
Speaker 1: our community, Like what I told you before is when
Speaker 1: you don't make our radar at all, Like if we
Speaker 1: dragging you part of partially because we love you and
Speaker 1: we know you could be better. So that's part of
Speaker 1: just this is something we've mastered. You know, we've mastered
Speaker 1: how to make something fashion. I don't care how hard
Speaker 1: people try. We know how to make things cool. It's
Speaker 1: just by our very presence. But what I want to
Speaker 1: zero in on today is our mastery of and how
Speaker 1: high of a value we place on mining your own business. Listen,
Speaker 1: if something is not your business, I cannot tell you
Speaker 1: how many phrases we have that are just really about
Speaker 1: just mine your own business and I take care of mine.
Speaker 1: I take care of my This is my business. That's
Speaker 1: your business. You don't stay out of my business. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stay out of yours. I remember, listen all the
Speaker 1: way back to the early eighties. Listen, my name is Bennett.
Speaker 1: Black folks, finish it, Thank you very much. Ask your neighbor.
Speaker 1: My name is we. That's that's a little more deep cut.
Speaker 1: I ain't in this mess. You Listen. If I'm telling
Speaker 1: you right now, you got co workers at your office,
Speaker 1: black co workers, I'm pretty sure you don't know anything
Speaker 1: about them, because that's their business. They know. Listen. They
Speaker 1: not asking you about your children. It depends you know
Speaker 1: how long you gotta work with somebody like that, work
Speaker 1: with somebody like from our from our community, from our code.
Speaker 1: How long you got to work with them before you
Speaker 1: know anything about them outside of this job. We show up,
Speaker 1: we do our job. No, I ain't going to get
Speaker 1: drinks with you after No, I ain't hitting no happy hour. No,
Speaker 1: I look, I'm y'all not my friends. I got friends. Well, listen,
Speaker 1: do you know what the phrase no new friends? Listen?
Speaker 1: That's about many your business like people that are in
Speaker 1: my business. They in my business. This is my squad,
Speaker 1: this is us. We done been through the trenches together.
Speaker 1: I don't trust nobody else coming that's not your business. Something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now I think about somebody may be coming out of
Speaker 1: like trust and you know in the FEDS bustle whatever.
Speaker 1: Either way, my yeah, that's not your business. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you something that your mama, your aunties. Every black
Speaker 1: child has heard from some older black woman. Ay, that
Speaker 1: is not your business. Stay out of grown folks business.
Speaker 1: You listen, you take care of you, You worry about you, mama.
Speaker 1: Where you going you will see. My daddy used to
Speaker 1: say something like now, granted this might be a whole
Speaker 1: different situation because he was doing outside activities, but I
Speaker 1: would say, pop, where you going see a man about
Speaker 1: a dog. But that basically meant, don't ask me. Don't
Speaker 1: ask me, there's none of your business. I used to
Speaker 1: ask my grandma. Grandma, Uh, what you're gonna do today?
Speaker 1: She say, I'm gonna mind my business. So you just
Speaker 1: you listen, Auntie, what are you doing right now? Mine
Speaker 1: in my business? Same thing you should be doing somebody you,
Speaker 1: you and the you in the office in the break room. Hey,
Speaker 1: what you're doing after work? Mine in my business. I'm
Speaker 1: that's not your business. Don't worry about it that Listen.
Speaker 1: If you ain't signing my check or marinate no chicken,
Speaker 1: I'm not worried about your business. You need to not
Speaker 1: be worried about mine. Let's talk about the Supreme Court today. Politics. Y'all. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to another episode HUD Politics. Hopefully you hearing this
Speaker 1: with all know ads because you're on the cooler zone media,
Speaker 1: because trust me, I could use the financial support from
Speaker 1: you dudes doing this anyway. Supreme Court's been in the
Speaker 1: news a lot, and I think it's important for y'all
Speaker 1: to understand, which is why I felt like I should
Speaker 1: do this episode that like the amount of attention they're
Speaker 1: getting in the past ten fifteen years is really not
Speaker 1: the way the Supreme Court was designed. Like this ain't
Speaker 1: this has become normal, but it is not supposed to
Speaker 1: be This ain't supposed to be normal, whether we were
Speaker 1: talking about even the confirmation hearings, all the way back
Speaker 1: to Clarence Thomas, who were going to talk about a
Speaker 1: lot later, but all the way up to him, to
Speaker 1: the Amy Cone Barretts, to the Brett Kavanaugh, and then
Speaker 1: these absolutely bizarre reports about you know, Clarence Thomas, like
Speaker 1: hanging with his billionaire friend Justice Alito out there partying,
Speaker 1: you know, like this is so new. The only time
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court was supposed to make the news was
Speaker 1: really just their writings, their opinions, their rulings. That's the
Speaker 1: only time you suposted to know anything about them. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to get into that design when things flipped
Speaker 1: and kind of what we're talking about now, because a
Speaker 1: lot of it really speaks to the way just American
Speaker 1: politics and culture has shifted, almost in the same way
Speaker 1: that the mob shifted when John Gotti became a thing,
Speaker 1: because remembered them G's moved in silence. You wasn't supposed
Speaker 1: to know who. Remember the rule about the mafia was,
Speaker 1: there is no mafia. What are you talking about? You
Speaker 1: move in silence, You ain't supposed to know anything. We're doing.
Speaker 1: That's our business. You keep your business to yourself, but
Speaker 1: you see the effects. But since the public don't sign
Speaker 1: my check, y'all not marinated my chicken. I don't care
Speaker 1: what you think. Your opinion don't matter to me. Let's
Speaker 1: get here too. Y'all don't sign.
Speaker 2: Y'all, don't sign should y'all don't sign shad shot, y'all,
Speaker 2: don't sign sad y'all don't sign.
Speaker 1: So some civics history here, which I think I may
Speaker 1: have covered before. You know, you got the three branches
Speaker 1: of government, the judicial, the legislative, and the executive, and
Speaker 1: you're supposed to have these checks and balances, balances of
Speaker 1: power to make sure that we don't become some sort
Speaker 1: of monarchy that we ran from very reaction formation. Out
Speaker 1: this mug just our country's foundation. Its origin story is
Speaker 1: really a case study in Freudian defense mechanisms. But we
Speaker 1: could talk about that later. Uh. The thing is, though,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, if once you start getting into it,
Speaker 1: you'd be surprised how little direction the Constitution gives us
Speaker 1: about that. All the Constitution says is you should have one.
Speaker 1: It don't say how many of them. It don't say
Speaker 1: where they office should be. It don't really even say
Speaker 1: they role. It just says you're supposed to have one.
Speaker 1: That's really surprising to people because listen, let me tell
Speaker 1: you why. You know what the Supreme Court function off
Speaker 1: maya business. They ain't even had no office and it's origin.
Speaker 1: Matter of fact, it was important for them to not
Speaker 1: have an office because they used to ride by a
Speaker 1: horse buggy to all the different colin needs to make
Speaker 1: sure that everybody was following, and they would ride into
Speaker 1: your city. They would listen to the thing, listen to
Speaker 1: your stories, listen to the court cases they would judge,
Speaker 1: and then they would go back you wasn't supposed to centralize.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until Marlbury versus Madison that there was non
Speaker 1: Supreme Court justices and that they got the power that
Speaker 1: we understand them as as we know it now. I
Speaker 1: think I said I covered this before Marlborough versus Madison.
Speaker 1: Y'all go ahead and google that, right. I'm teacher prop
Speaker 1: putting my putting my hat, putting my hat on right
Speaker 1: form the Supreme Court into the shape that we kind
Speaker 1: of see it as today. But still it didn't. What
Speaker 1: hasn't reached its final form. The form that it is
Speaker 1: that it's in now until a case in Memphis, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: which I'm gonna get into in a second. But before
Speaker 1: I get into that case, I need to stress I
Speaker 1: need you to understand why I'm talking about. You understand
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court if you understand what it means to
Speaker 1: my own business. When you learned about the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: if you learned about the Supreme Court in school, what
Speaker 1: did you learn exactly? You just learned that we have
Speaker 1: one and that when there are cases that other courts
Speaker 1: can't solve, you, it goes all the way up to them.
Speaker 1: So you know the big stuff, you know the desegregation,
Speaker 1: you know abortion, you know the big cases. You don't
Speaker 1: know all the cases they've been adjudicating on. You know why,
Speaker 1: because it's supposed to be boring. They were you know,
Speaker 1: the Marvel series that went straight to Disney plus, like
Speaker 1: the B and C characters in the comic book universe
Speaker 1: that you got to really be into comic books to
Speaker 1: know that that's what the Supreme Court was supposed to be.
Speaker 1: This is supposed to be so boring, and they're supposed
Speaker 1: to be so far removed from the public because they're
Speaker 1: the one part of our government that you don't vote for.
Speaker 1: They're chosen because they're supposed to be far from the
Speaker 1: democratic process, because they're supposed to be unswayable by public opinion.
Speaker 1: And I think in some ways the Supreme Court still
Speaker 1: kind of takes that very serious. If you look at
Speaker 1: these cases that we're going to get into a little later,
Speaker 1: that you know, they voted on one end to make
Speaker 1: sure that, like if you were adopting a Native American child,
Speaker 1: that that tribe or a similar tribe had first adoption
Speaker 1: rights to that Native child, which is like, damn, that's big,
Speaker 1: And then at the same time told the Navajo they
Speaker 1: can't have a water like you were, like, who do
Speaker 1: you work for? Here? You got a man like David Suters,
Speaker 1: who I'll probably brush on a little bit a little later,
Speaker 1: but like one of the most like quiet, reclusive. He's
Speaker 1: like the Kendrick Lamar of of Supreme Court justices. He's like, look, man,
Speaker 1: I don't want y'all write no books on me. Kendrick
Speaker 1: don't pop out, Like not in the sense that he's
Speaker 1: the greatest of all time, but in the sense that
Speaker 1: like Kendrick don't pop out, kenjo an't got on social media.
Speaker 1: He got a little burner account where he cracks jokes
Speaker 1: on but he don't be popping out. Don't like. I
Speaker 1: don't want like. I don't want those spotlights. I don't
Speaker 1: need to like. My work will speak for itself. And
Speaker 1: even though he was appointed by Republicans, he rarely votes
Speaker 1: along their party lines, or he rarely did because y'all
Speaker 1: don't sign my check. Y'all ain't marinate my chicken. That
Speaker 1: but that was the design. I'm not supposed to worry
Speaker 1: about what the public think because y'all ain't put you
Speaker 1: don't sign my check, y'all don't marinate my chicken. Don't
Speaker 1: ask questions. I don't ask questions of you, yo, jih lick.
Speaker 1: We come do our job. You spost come up here
Speaker 1: and ask us what we think. We tell you what
Speaker 1: we think, we interpreted law. We tell you what it is.
Speaker 1: Stay on my business. That's why they're supposed to move.
Speaker 1: And then you start. But then when you start saying,
Speaker 1: I wonder what the rules are about Supreme Court, which
Speaker 1: is how we got to the Justice of Leader in
Speaker 1: the clar Thomas situation, where it's like, yo, can they
Speaker 1: accept money, can y'all go on these like expensive trips.
Speaker 1: What's the rules about them? Except like, can y'all just
Speaker 1: accept brides? When does it become a bride?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: When is there a conflict of interest? Are you allowed
Speaker 1: to talk to lobbyists? How does any of this? Like?
Speaker 1: How do what do you?
Speaker 2: What do you like?
Speaker 1: What's the rules around friends? You clearly have power and
Speaker 1: authority over stuff, but you don't, but you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about being elected, so you kind of can
Speaker 1: do what you want. What are the rule Who was
Speaker 1: about that? Here's what you learned. They ain't none. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say it again, there's only norms. There's no rules.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you can find them, tell me. There's
Speaker 1: only Like it would suck if you it's a bad
Speaker 1: look when you We prefer that you know, if you're
Speaker 1: getting if you're getting gifts over a certain amount of
Speaker 1: money and say, you know, we prefer that you tell us,
Speaker 1: like just just be cool about it and disclose it.
Speaker 1: Like nobody saying you can't have it. We're just saying, like,
Speaker 1: just let us know, because it looks bad if you don't.
Speaker 1: Nigga them ain't rules them? Is that's just a code.
Speaker 1: They don't have rules, They just have a code. How
Speaker 1: come you don't know that? Because that's not your business.
Speaker 1: You don't sign a check. They ain't worried about what
Speaker 1: you think. Listen. If you're a parent and you got
Speaker 1: middle schoolers or high schoolers, this, please let them hear
Speaker 1: this part. This is coming from a form a teacher.
Speaker 1: I taught high school. I started off in the juvenile
Speaker 1: correctional facilities in East Lake. I started off teaching there.
Speaker 1: Then I taught in alternative education, and then finally I
Speaker 1: taught at a charter high school for the arts. But
Speaker 1: I did my student teaching at just straight up public schools, right,
Speaker 1: But all of these schools were they were alternative, but
Speaker 1: there were all public schools. Like I've never taught at
Speaker 1: a private institution anyway. I used to tell my students,
Speaker 1: who now are adults, so like it's a different story now.
Speaker 1: But yet, if your child listen, if you listening right now,
Speaker 1: little hommie, look it, leve Homie's a gender neutral so
Speaker 1: accept it, right, So love hommy. If you're not doing
Speaker 1: well in a class, you haven't behavioral issues, or you
Speaker 1: just your grades aren't where they should look or where
Speaker 1: they could look like you know you could do better
Speaker 1: in this class, like don't look it. Don't look at
Speaker 1: your mom, and don't look at your daddy, don't look
Speaker 1: at your aunty, don't look I'm talking to you, like,
Speaker 1: if you know you could do better than this and
Speaker 1: nobody everybody know, nobody know but you, you know if
Speaker 1: you really like if you half fass an it, like
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if you don't cuss at your kids right now,
Speaker 1: but I guarantee your kids cuss right so you know
Speaker 1: you phoned it in. You know you not. You're not
Speaker 1: giving them your egg game, you giving them your Sea game?
Speaker 1: You know it. And your reason is the teacher don't
Speaker 1: like me. The mean that woo don't like me. I
Speaker 1: want you to think about this for a second. This
Speaker 1: is coming from a teacher. Okay. I used to tell
Speaker 1: my students it's not that I don't like you. I
Speaker 1: don't think about you at all. I'm a grown man.
Speaker 1: Look it. If class let out at three at three
Speaker 1: oh two, I done forgot everything you said, everything that's
Speaker 1: so important to you. I don't You can't even go
Speaker 1: get a drink with me? Are you? We're not friends? Fam?
Speaker 1: What you mean? Like you and why do you care
Speaker 1: if I like you or not? You got your own friends?
Speaker 1: What are you gonna call me to play Call of duty?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What are we gonna fortnitey? We're little mall like you
Speaker 1: want me to go to six Flags with you? We're
Speaker 1: not What do you care? What do you care? What
Speaker 1: I think? And and you so mad at me for
Speaker 1: how I feel about you? Knowing listen, in June we
Speaker 1: never have to see each other again. What the hell
Speaker 1: you care? I think we don't ever see each other
Speaker 1: again in June. And to punish me for how you
Speaker 1: think I feel about you, you gonna give yourself summer
Speaker 1: school because if you so, because because you don't like
Speaker 1: me and I don't like you, you gonna fail my
Speaker 1: class and have to repeat it in summer school. And
Speaker 1: guess what if I want to make a little extra money,
Speaker 1: I might teach summer school. You have to see me again,
Speaker 1: do you? It's ridiculous. Listen, I don't sign your check.
Speaker 1: You don't sign my check. I feel show ain't marinating
Speaker 1: your chicken, you ain't marinating mine. Don't listen. Don't fail
Speaker 1: no class because you think the teacher don't like you.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you something. If your teacher is thinking
Speaker 1: about you when they get home, they need therapy. Now
Speaker 1: I'm saying that to help you understand that, Like you
Speaker 1: need to go in there take care of business for yourself.
Speaker 1: This like, don't worry about me, mind your own business,
Speaker 1: this your own future. What difference does it make what
Speaker 1: any of your instructors think of you? You do you
Speaker 1: there for you? Now? Of course I deeply cared about
Speaker 1: my students, you know, so of course I thought about
Speaker 1: them when I went home, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: And if anybody got under my skin. Here's what's crazy,
Speaker 1: is like now that we're adults, Like it's because I
Speaker 1: was such a young teacher at the time, Like we're
Speaker 1: all friends, Like I adore you. I've had. One of
Speaker 1: the biggest headaches in my class was this kid named
Speaker 1: Jamal who's actually a rapper. Now. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you heard of Xavier Wolf, but his partner is doing
Speaker 1: Eddie Baker. Like Eddie Baker was one of my students.
Speaker 1: He was He's on Rolling Loud, right, he was on
Speaker 1: the Rolling Loud Festival. I'm so proud of him. And
Speaker 1: it's not that I didn't like I actually liked him
Speaker 1: a lot. You know, he just he was just fourteen
Speaker 1: and now like no, we talk all the time like
Speaker 1: he's such a he's a great young man, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like it all works out and he's
Speaker 1: even k I remember I ran into him at a
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter protest and he came to me. He
Speaker 1: was like, man, I'm sorry I was being such a
Speaker 1: knuckleet at school. I was like, bro, you were me Like,
Speaker 1: you didn't get under my skin. Bro, I just I didn't. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I just knew you. I knew you was vibrating lowered
Speaker 1: than your potential. I just knew that, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. And that's what was frustrating to me, is
Speaker 1: like you vibrating lowered in your potential. You have a
Speaker 1: higher vibration in this and he stepped into it. And
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of him, you know. But I mean
Speaker 1: I've seen his nigas billboard, Like I'm so proud of
Speaker 1: this fool. But he was he was one of the
Speaker 1: was that thought he was hurting my feelings, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like what time we even like when
Speaker 1: he was a freshman, I battled him like, you know,
Speaker 1: because I was rapping at the time too. I served
Speaker 1: this little dude, and I served him because I knew
Speaker 1: he was talented. You know what I'm saying, I'm like, listen,
Speaker 1: man like you, you're more than this, you know anyway,
Speaker 1: This how any healthy teacher would function is that we
Speaker 1: have our own lives, we have our own friends, and
Speaker 1: of course sometimes work and be hard. But I ain't.
Speaker 1: I'm not losing sleep over no fifteen year old, over
Speaker 1: no twelve year old. That's not my child. That means
Speaker 1: that that child ain't my business. That's I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: my job. I'm gonna do it well, and then I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go home. Doesn't mean I don't care about your future.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean I won't want to do my job well,
Speaker 1: you know, because again, a good teacher is obviously invested
Speaker 1: in their students' future. But listen, man like y'all, whether
Speaker 1: you behave or not, my check every two weeks, okay, don't,
Speaker 1: you're not punishing me. You guys got it. So the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, y'all write whatever thing pieces you want. You
Speaker 1: could talk about, y'all say whatever y'all want about. Listen.
Speaker 1: Politicians being like, oh, this is a activist Court. Oh
Speaker 1: this guy, you cavin I ain't thinking about y'all. Amy, Connie,
Speaker 1: she ain't. She ain't thinking about you at all, which
Speaker 1: is why this season is so interesting. Let's keep going.
Speaker 1: So I want to take y'all back now to this
Speaker 1: case in Memphis that I wanted to bring up in
Speaker 1: the sixties. It's where we get to term the political thicket.
Speaker 1: This is the moment when, depending on who you asked,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court stopped minding its own business. This is big. Now,
Speaker 1: it's absurd to say that the courts have never been
Speaker 1: in the political ticket, because even though they're not elected
Speaker 1: or voted on, they're chosen and appointed by elected officials.
Speaker 1: So it's by nature a political process that gets you
Speaker 1: on the courts. However, this moment I'm about to teach
Speaker 1: y'all about almost makes the quiet thing come out loud
Speaker 1: and again, pinning who you ask got the court stuck
Speaker 1: in the in the muck and the mire that they
Speaker 1: in now, and that case is the Baker versus Car case. Now, look,
Speaker 1: it's nineteen sixty one. On the surface, it just seems
Speaker 1: like a voter district, you know, run of the mill case. Right,
Speaker 1: here's the situation Tennessee. In the city of Memphis, you know,
Speaker 1: had never re drawn their districts. Now granted between nineteen
Speaker 1: oho last on A Jude district was nineteen oh one.
Speaker 1: Now it's nineteen sixty one, which means that obviously Democrats
Speaker 1: have had changed. The cities are ginormous, right, there's way
Speaker 1: more people. And as you know, districting works, you get
Speaker 1: the amount of congressmen based on your population. You have
Speaker 1: more population, you have more congress people.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You remember every state has two senators, but you have
Speaker 1: but your congressmen are based on your your district's population. Right.
Speaker 1: Jerry Mandering's a whole different thing. That's how you draw
Speaker 1: the district lines. But what it's saying is like, yo,
Speaker 1: we need to we need to redraw these districts because
Speaker 1: we're not ruled no more. Like it's just the state's change.
Speaker 1: Tennessee is like, I ain't redrawing shit right in the
Speaker 1: City of Memphis is like, well, nigga, you have to.
Speaker 1: Here's how it breaks down. Think of it like a
Speaker 1: twenty three to one ratio. So think of it like this.
Speaker 1: If a rural area has one person, and for every
Speaker 1: one person, there's twenty three people in the city, right,
Speaker 1: that one person has all the power for voting that
Speaker 1: it would take twenty three people in the city to
Speaker 1: equal that one person's power. Think of that. So that
Speaker 1: means that same power for that one vote is split
Speaker 1: among twenty three people in the urban area because they
Speaker 1: have the same amount of representatives despite having twenty three
Speaker 1: more people. So it's like, if you live in a city,
Speaker 1: you have one twenty third the power of a person
Speaker 1: in the rural areas that but there's more of us, Like,
Speaker 1: don't you think because there's more of us, we should
Speaker 1: have more representation. And they was like, na, We're not
Speaker 1: finna do that. Obviously, what's going on here? Black people
Speaker 1: are in the city, Like so it's the Memphis is urban.
Speaker 1: The rural districts are generally white. They're not trying to
Speaker 1: lose their power. This, I mean is obvious. What's going on.
Speaker 1: They trying to hold on today power. And that is
Speaker 1: another way of like sort of disenfranchising African American votes. Right,
Speaker 1: Poverty is not the issue right now because everybody poor,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, it's this disenfranchising African American votes. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the case that's in front of the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. The hard part about the Supreme Court is
Speaker 1: state legislative districting is generally none of their business. They've
Speaker 1: never had to decide on how the districts are set
Speaker 1: up or not set up. That's never That's that's what's
Speaker 1: hard about being on a Supreme Court. If you're on
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, you're supposed to be looking at the cases
Speaker 1: and judging what the law would stay about the cases.
Speaker 1: But the problem is once it's at the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: that means that there is no law. We don't know
Speaker 1: what the law is. That's how I made it all
Speaker 1: the way up here. We can't decide what the actual
Speaker 1: law is, which is why sometimes you kind of have
Speaker 1: to have an idea lague. You have to have a
Speaker 1: philosophical position, which is why, even though it's not political,
Speaker 1: it's very political. You have to see the world in
Speaker 1: a certain way. So if you see the world from
Speaker 1: a conservative lens, right, you're gonna have a way to
Speaker 1: interpret a law that may not be there and what
Speaker 1: law might should be, or the other way around. You
Speaker 1: see the world in the liberal, liberal lens, you know,
Speaker 1: progressive lens, you're gonna say, okay, well this might be
Speaker 1: and say, well, what about the constitution? This are you
Speaker 1: listening to me? The Constitution? Don't say nothing about it.
Speaker 1: That's why I's in the court. Do you understand what
Speaker 1: I mean? So this is the situation that they face.
Speaker 1: And now there's two Supreme Court justices that I want
Speaker 1: you to meet right now. It's Justice Frank Footer. That's
Speaker 1: that man's name. It's Justice Frankfooter, right wing, brilliant asshole.
Speaker 1: Like there's even stories to where like if you was
Speaker 1: a clerk and you was bringing him papers, he would
Speaker 1: let you come in there, drop the paper on the ground,
Speaker 1: make you pick it up and hand it to him.
Speaker 1: Because he was just an asshole. He was known for
Speaker 1: like when it was tign for him to talk, he
Speaker 1: would talk. They was, I mean talk ninety minutes to
Speaker 1: two hours, three hours straight, just pontificating on the courts
Speaker 1: because he was trying to prove his point because he
Speaker 1: believed everybody's stupid. Justice Frankfurter. Then there's Justice William Douglas,
Speaker 1: his equalent opposite, left wing. I mean we're talking liberal
Speaker 1: mountain climber hunter, super forward thinker, absolute prick, just just
Speaker 1: as arrogant and just these are two of some of
Speaker 1: the most brilliant minds in the country at the time,
Speaker 1: and their dickheads okay, like just absolute dickhead okay, but
Speaker 1: they see the world differently, and apparently they had like
Speaker 1: a lot of respect for each other because they knew
Speaker 1: each other was brilliant. They just disagreed fundamentally at a
Speaker 1: philosophical level. You know why you never heard of this
Speaker 1: because it's not your business, That's what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: tell you. So then there's this third guy, right, Justice Whittaker.
Speaker 1: Now Justice Whittaker is so interesting to me. He never
Speaker 1: went to college. That nigga is self taught at that
Speaker 1: great like Justice Whittaker was self taught. Fam he just outworked, out,
Speaker 1: hustled just obviously you smart as a whip. But because
Speaker 1: he didn't go to no formal university, he really ain't
Speaker 1: had no like political ideology. He was like, yo, I mean,
Speaker 1: I read the books. I just want to hear like,
Speaker 1: I don't have no I don't have no leaning either way.
Speaker 1: I just I just think law is interesting. And so
Speaker 1: if that's the case, if he's that dude, then guess
Speaker 1: who everybody gunning for. Because he became what's called the
Speaker 1: swing vote. Right, That's why our supreme courts have odd numbers. Right,
Speaker 1: somebody need to be convinced to something else. He was
Speaker 1: the one everybody convinced because, as we know, if you
Speaker 1: already conservative, you're supposed to just vote an serve you
Speaker 1: righty liberally supposed to vote liberal. Now sometimes things change, right,
Speaker 1: but for the most point, he's the most valuable vote.
Speaker 1: Now in this case, it was even known to say, like, like,
Speaker 1: he's the type of dude that like, if he would
Speaker 1: sit down and talk to you for thirty minutes, he
Speaker 1: would listen to your case and be like, damn dude,
Speaker 1: your argument were you're like, damn man, that fool got
Speaker 1: a point. Then you go to the next office and
Speaker 1: here the opposite side and be like, damn man, that
Speaker 1: fool got a point. Like he was just so open
Speaker 1: to hear what everybody say, because again he had come
Speaker 1: from th like traditional sort of like route into the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court anyway, So like, in a perfect world, that's
Speaker 1: what you want from your judges, right, you want them
Speaker 1: to be open minded, to at least understand the law
Speaker 1: so well and be willing to despite whatever their positions.
Speaker 1: You would hope that they would have no position right
Speaker 1: that they would just honestly take the case by its merit. Clearly,
Speaker 1: that don't exist, not in our world, because again, you
Speaker 1: have to have a lens for a grid for which
Speaker 1: you put the world through. I remember I suggested a
Speaker 1: book called What is Justice? By Malcolm Sandow or Michael Sandow.
Speaker 1: This is a good time to refer back to that
Speaker 1: book because you have to what do you mean when
Speaker 1: you say just right? That's the question that comes up,
Speaker 1: especially when you're trying to interpret a law that ain't
Speaker 1: even there. Your whole job is about gray areas, and
Speaker 1: you would hope people would be fair and honest. But
Speaker 1: we have somehow convinced ourselves that fair and honest means
Speaker 1: a political and that's not the planet we exist on.
Speaker 1: This case, it's groundbreaking because it actually like it killed
Speaker 1: Justice Whitaker, do you hear me? Literally it killed him.
Speaker 1: He had to take a leave of absence. He developed
Speaker 1: like also because he just could not make a decision
Speaker 1: in this case. It just it broke him. Now, why
Speaker 1: couldn't he make this decision? Because scroll back a little
Speaker 1: bit and hear the merit of the case, right, this
Speaker 1: is clearly unjust. It is obviously a way to perpetuate racism.
Speaker 1: You are disenfranchising voters, and you know it. You are
Speaker 1: undermining constitutional rights, which was Justice William Douglas's position, like,
Speaker 1: I don't understand what the problem is. This is clearly unfair,
Speaker 1: this out of district's work. If there's more people, they
Speaker 1: give more representatives. I don't understand what we talk about
Speaker 1: here Tennessee. You trip it. You clearly need to fix this.
Speaker 1: Justice Frankfurter was like, be that as it may. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's our place to correct that. What
Speaker 1: it's like, dude, if we get into the political process,
Speaker 1: and what's scary is fast forward to Bush v. Gore
Speaker 1: to Trump. If we get in the middle of this shit,
Speaker 1: the courts are gonna be asked to adjudicate things that
Speaker 1: were supposed to be democratically voted on. We don't want
Speaker 1: this smoke, even if we think it's wrong, the courts
Speaker 1: are gonna be stuck. And by stuck, he uses that
Speaker 1: word picture I said earlier, the political thicket. If you
Speaker 1: know what the thicket is, it's almost like mangrols. It's
Speaker 1: just winding, twisty plant roots and branches that you just
Speaker 1: get stuck in and it's such an image. Dude, He's listen,
Speaker 1: these people ain't marinate, not chicken. Like you don't want
Speaker 1: to smoke. I don't want to be in this. Like
Speaker 1: my name is Bennett, Niggat, stay out their business. This
Speaker 1: shit gonna come get us. Stay out the tea. Don't
Speaker 1: sip this tea, y'all deciding votes forever. We can't listen.
Speaker 1: We don't want this smoke, y'all. I'm telling you principally,
Speaker 1: if we do this, nigga, we gonna be doing this forever.
Speaker 1: And they gonna blame elections on us. These politicians, these people,
Speaker 1: they gonna come look for us when they don't like
Speaker 1: the results. They gonna come make us beat a referee
Speaker 1: on some shit that we not equipped to nor is
Speaker 1: that our role, Like we're not even supposed to be
Speaker 1: in this. This is not our business. That was his position.
Speaker 1: And the other position, like I said, was like, we
Speaker 1: have a moral obligation. You see this is wrong, And
Speaker 1: how you gonna fast forward into the future to know
Speaker 1: what the hell is gonna happen? How do you know
Speaker 1: we are judging the case that's in front of us,
Speaker 1: and the case in front one of us is clearly unjust.
Speaker 1: Justice Whitaker was getting people at his house all the time,
Speaker 1: walking in with the Pappy van Winkel and the dope cigars,
Speaker 1: trying to convince this man what he needs to do
Speaker 1: on this because the courts were split. And listen, he
Speaker 1: never actually voted on it because he died before he could.
Speaker 1: It literally broke his brain. He agonized over this, and
Speaker 1: I think you guys know what happened if you live
Speaker 1: in current times. The Supreme Court decided this was unjust,
Speaker 1: and the courts have been in the political thicket ever since.
Speaker 1: Ain't that crazy? That moment? It changed everything?
Speaker 2: Yo?
Speaker 1: Ain't that crazy? Doug?
Speaker 2: Y'all don't sign by check should y'all don't sign by
Speaker 2: shoot y'all, don't.
Speaker 1: Sign by shad?
Speaker 2: Shoot y'all, don't sign y'all don't.
Speaker 1: Sign So all this prep make me realize I should
Speaker 1: probably turn this into a part too, because I need
Speaker 1: to talk about Clarence Thomas, his backstory and Justine Salita
Speaker 1: and yeah, there's some specific characters before I can even
Speaker 1: get to what the what the courts just actually decided,
Speaker 1: got dog man, But listen, so we're gonna do a
Speaker 1: mind yo, goddamn business Part two, uh next week, But
Speaker 1: until then, listen. If they ain't signing your check or
Speaker 1: marinating your chicken, none of your business. The politics, y'all.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know why I ain't thought of
Speaker 1: this before, but you know you could use promo code
Speaker 1: hood for fifteen percent off on terraform coolbrew dot com.
Speaker 1: Like I forgot I own that company and this is
Speaker 1: my pod, y'all, go ahead and punch it. Promo cold Hood.
Speaker 1: If you in the cold Brew, get you some cold Brew,
Speaker 1: gonna get you some coffee. Yeah, Like, I can't believe
Speaker 1: I ain't think of it. This still right now, yo, y'all.
Speaker 1: This thing right here was recorded by Me Propaganda and
Speaker 1: East Lows, boil Heights, Los Angeles, California. This thing was mixed, edited, mastered,
Speaker 1: and scored by the one and the only Matt Awsowski.
Speaker 1: Y'all check out this fool's music. I mean it's incredible.
Speaker 1: Executive produced by Sophie Lichterman for Cool Media. Man, and
Speaker 1: thank you for everybody who continue to tap in with us.
Speaker 1: Make sure you leaving reviews and five star ratings and
Speaker 1: sharing it with the homies so we could get this
Speaker 1: thing pushed up in the algorithm and listen. I just
Speaker 1: want to remind you these people is not smarter than you.
Speaker 1: If you understand city living, you understand politics, We'll see
Speaker 1: you next week.