Speaker 1: That's how.
Speaker 2: What's the family. It's your girl to me, Kaze Mallory.
Speaker 3: It's your boy, my son.
Speaker 1: And gentlemen, we.
Speaker 2: Are your host of street politicians, the place where the
Speaker 2: streets and politics met. Are you doing my song? We
Speaker 2: got a lot to get done today.
Speaker 3: Listen, man, I'm doing Guard's work and I'm a child
Speaker 3: of God. Shout out to my boy Robbie Rod for
Speaker 3: the shirt. See that child of Gods.
Speaker 1: They glowing.
Speaker 2: We're outside, that's very very where we were. We nice. Well,
Speaker 2: I'm glad you started talking about children, because I think
Speaker 2: our first topic today is something that is It's really troubling.
Speaker 2: I wrote up my Facebook page the other day that
Speaker 2: I don't get Fenton All. I get all the drugs,
Speaker 2: you know, Some of them I did when I was younger,
Speaker 2: Some of them my friends did. We hung out people
Speaker 2: who did all types of stuff, and I get it right,
Speaker 2: even though, of course, now at this big age, I
Speaker 2: realized we probably could have died, and or people even
Speaker 2: today who are still taking like I don't know what's
Speaker 2: those drugs ecstasy, and I don't even know if they
Speaker 2: make that stuff anymore, but the Mali's and all of that.
Speaker 2: It's a pretty dangerous mixture of a bunch of different drugs.
Speaker 2: But most people made it home alive by the skin
Speaker 2: of their teeth. But they've made it home a lot
Speaker 2: pretty bad shit, right. I know many family members and
Speaker 2: friends who were on drugs as kids or younger teens
Speaker 2: or what have you, and they got themselves straightened out
Speaker 2: later on, maybe in their twenties or thirties, and now
Speaker 2: it's as if that thing, whatever it was, is not
Speaker 2: even there. And I will say it's just one thing.
Speaker 2: It is true, though, that your body does experience some
Speaker 2: shift somewhere as a result of the overuse of any
Speaker 2: kind of drug. Definitely, so people who smoke a lot
Speaker 2: of weed, that there is a mental slowdown that happens,
Speaker 2: and other issues that you learn about as time goes on.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure from my drug abuse of prescription pills,
Speaker 2: I'm sure there is something that when I'm eighty five,
Speaker 2: I will learn there was an impact. So I don't
Speaker 2: want to get into make it seem like if you
Speaker 2: used it when you was young, you good now. There
Speaker 2: are people who are dealing with issues, sometimes severe, sometimes
Speaker 2: not so severe, but they do know or they have
Speaker 2: been told at a doctor's appointment that as a result
Speaker 2: of the use of this drug, it has impacted you
Speaker 2: an X y Z way. So all of it is bad,
Speaker 2: and all of it. We need to be real careful
Speaker 2: about what you're putting in your body, especially shit that's
Speaker 2: man made from the pharmaceutical companies to the street to
Speaker 2: street corners, right. So I just want to make that
Speaker 2: as a disclaimer. But the fentanyl thing, I don't be
Speaker 2: getting because every time I turn around, the people are
Speaker 2: talking about their dying. So I post it on my page.
Speaker 2: I don't get fentanyl now. I know it is a
Speaker 2: drug that is supposed to be used for severe pain.
Speaker 2: I know that severe severe pain. And it's also something
Speaker 2: that is administered when someone is close to the end,
Speaker 2: so it's an end of life, and they say that
Speaker 2: when a doctor is giving it to you. For some
Speaker 2: people it is very necessary, right. But somehow or another,
Speaker 2: it made it into the hands of Tink Tink them,
Speaker 2: you know, oh Billy Bob, and they are putting it
Speaker 2: in all kinds of other drugs and using fentanyl, and
Speaker 2: it's killing people literally left and right, of all racial backgrounds.
Speaker 3: To me, I think it's like that.
Speaker 2: Heroin did kill people. I'm not saying it didn't, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure there are stats somewhere that talks about how
Speaker 2: it was probably one of the worst drugs. I get it. However,
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two, fentanyl deaths out weighed heroin even
Speaker 2: with people using it at the same rate. One hundred
Speaker 2: thousand people. This is what's from the BBC. One hundred
Speaker 2: thousand people died from fentonyl use. And in the article,
Speaker 2: I was trying to understand it might just be my
Speaker 2: aded is it a small location or was it nationally?
Speaker 2: But it was they was. You know, sometimes you read
Speaker 2: these articles and they it's for super smart people because
Speaker 2: they'd be saying things and you kind of get mixed.
Speaker 2: So I couldn't figure it out, so I sent it
Speaker 2: to somebody to tell me what I'm reading, right if
Speaker 2: they but they were specifically talking about even heroin, they
Speaker 2: weren't saying heroin is good. They're saying heroin is dangerous
Speaker 2: as hell. But they're saying that it is even worse. Listen,
Speaker 2: I know that there is the stress and the desire
Speaker 2: to get higher or lower or whatever. I hear all that.
Speaker 2: I've watched documentaries, but I'm just really trying to understand
Speaker 2: if you are even a drug dealer, why would you
Speaker 2: want to sell something to kill the people that tell
Speaker 2: the dying. I think that I am. I am confused
Speaker 2: about the fentanyl.
Speaker 3: Now, I ain't gonna lie. You got they got me too,
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: I'm just as confused with heroin all of the Like,
Speaker 3: I hear what you're saying, But to me, I never
Speaker 3: seen somebody that was on the heroin look good. It's true,
Speaker 3: you know, I never seen them look healthy. I don't
Speaker 3: know how you look at somebody that's taking heroin and
Speaker 3: be like, oh shit, yeah this is all I want you.
Speaker 3: And and fetanol. I don't even know what somebody that
Speaker 3: takes fentanyl looks like, because most of the time you
Speaker 3: hear about them, they dad. So it's like to me,
Speaker 3: it's we are. We are in a society where we
Speaker 3: it's oxymoronic. We celebrate the ship that's most dangerous to us,
Speaker 3: that's most detrimental to us, Like we've rationalized the shit
Speaker 3: that's gonna kill us. You know, I was like, Yo,
Speaker 3: why would you know I have posted son about Nicki
Speaker 3: Minaj and them, you know, and the situation, and I
Speaker 3: was talking about it and I said, why would two
Speaker 3: multi millionaire people be beefing with situations that can get
Speaker 3: you killed or go to jail. And the dude was like, yo, man,
Speaker 3: she said, he said, you don't know what he said
Speaker 3: to her, said, so you're trying to tell me that
Speaker 3: there was a word that somebody said that you said,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm gonna throw away all of these
Speaker 3: millions of dollars and my freedom and possibly my life.
Speaker 3: And you rationalize that at a big age you're grown,
Speaker 3: not no, fifteen sixteen where you know, thirteen for where
Speaker 3: that makes sense to you, where you like that's the
Speaker 3: grown age, like grown or pushing this It's just like
Speaker 3: to myself, it's like I don't even understand. So it
Speaker 3: goes hand in hand with this situation like and in
Speaker 3: mind people's mind is like I want to do the worship.
Speaker 3: I want to put myself close to as possible. I
Speaker 3: want to I want to either die or almost feel
Speaker 3: like I'm dying right Like it's the weirdest shit that
Speaker 3: I've ever we had a time, like everybody always says, yo,
Speaker 3: I've never seen nothing like this, And my mother used
Speaker 3: to say it, but and now I get it. If
Speaker 3: we were anywhere like this generation and the shit that
Speaker 3: I see now. I realized why he was really confused,
Speaker 3: because I can't even make sense of the shit can't
Speaker 3: I can't make And I pride myself on being someone
Speaker 3: who's rational, who you know, deals with common sense. It's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I can understand why that happened, even though it might
Speaker 3: not be good to everybody. I kind of understand this
Speaker 3: shit I don't get for the life of me.
Speaker 2: Fence and all is really one of those things that
Speaker 2: has and I want to give. I want to give,
Speaker 2: and we should you know what we should interview him
Speaker 2: Stefante Clark Stefan Clark's brother. So you know, when families
Speaker 2: experience police violence or some other traumatic situation, a lot
Speaker 2: of times people think they're going to just stay on
Speaker 2: police issues. But Stefante is growing in his activism and
Speaker 2: I see him talking more. His brother was killed by police.
Speaker 2: Just for folks who don't know. His brother was going
Speaker 2: into his grandmother's house, his grandparents' house, and he jumped
Speaker 2: over a fence. This was in California. He jumped over
Speaker 2: the fence, which is probably you know, Grandma would be like,
Speaker 2: listen at night, I don't have my hearing aiden or whatever.
Speaker 2: I'm being funny about that part, but I can't hear
Speaker 2: what's going on in the front. So you want to
Speaker 2: get in, you got to jump over this gate and
Speaker 2: come to the back window. That's been going on since forever.
Speaker 2: The police saw him jumping across the gate, told him,
Speaker 2: I guess to put his hands up, which he did
Speaker 2: based upon the findings, didn't have a weapon. They shot
Speaker 2: him to death in his grandmother's yard. So Fonte, his brother,
Speaker 2: has been an activist since you know his brother's passing,
Speaker 2: of course, fighting for justice for his brother, also working
Speaker 2: with other families, showing up and being a support system
Speaker 2: for people around the country. But I noticed that as
Speaker 2: of late, he has been talking a lot about fentanyl
Speaker 2: abuse and engaging in the movement to try to reduce
Speaker 2: fentanyl usage in his community and around the country. And
Speaker 2: I thought to myself, Wow, for Stefonte to go from
Speaker 2: what we know him for to this right here, it
Speaker 2: means that he sees a serious and desperate need to
Speaker 2: get involved in this issue. And they just dropped in
Speaker 2: a station, just dropped into our chat here that fentanyl
Speaker 2: is up to fifty times stronger than hero and one
Speaker 2: hundred times stronger than morphine. So to go back to
Speaker 2: the point, I'm not saying that you don't die, because
Speaker 2: I know people was on crack. They died a lot
Speaker 2: of crackheads that or people who use crack, I don't know,
Speaker 2: we supposed to call them cracked heads. But people who
Speaker 2: use crack and they well whatever, they died. Cocaine addicted
Speaker 2: people who that hit messed them up, messed up their membranes,
Speaker 2: and they died. So we know that people who smoke
Speaker 2: weed every day something the weed doesn't go well, and
Speaker 2: they got sick and had internal issues and died. Not
Speaker 2: as many, of course, of any of those things. But
Speaker 2: still it's bad. The overusge of anything or dangerous, especially
Speaker 2: man made drugs. Anything can happen. But fenton All, they're
Speaker 2: saying it's up to fifty times stronger than heroin fifty times.
Speaker 2: I just ain't gonna give it.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 2: You going through severe mental health issues, even though you
Speaker 2: might not know it and you may not identify with it.
Speaker 2: But if you choose to take fenton All, which you
Speaker 2: see it on the news every day, they telling you
Speaker 2: that it could kill you quick. Some wrong you numbing
Speaker 2: something that is so deep, or you a child who
Speaker 2: is really misguided. I don't always understand or I don't
Speaker 2: always take into account. I do understand the power of
Speaker 2: my influence and my platform, but I don't always take
Speaker 2: it into accounts sometimes when I say things. So I
Speaker 2: wrote a post because it was in my heart. And
Speaker 2: the post that I wrote was about Krishan Brock, And
Speaker 2: the reason why I wrote it publicly was because when
Speaker 2: I'm in my rabbit hole at two and three o'clock
Speaker 2: in the morning, when I can't sleep, or one o'clock
Speaker 2: in the morning, I will go to certain posts, certain
Speaker 2: places and just kind of try to get a feel
Speaker 2: for what's going on in the cold because all day
Speaker 2: long there's like no way to monitor comments and thoughts
Speaker 2: and look at the feed of every blog. I don't
Speaker 2: have that type of time, So I usually do that
Speaker 2: when I'm narrowing the day down, and I kept seeing
Speaker 2: like I cannot get Blue Face and Krashan Rock off
Speaker 2: of my timeline. So no matter if I wanted to
Speaker 2: ignore it or not, it is ever present in your
Speaker 2: face all day long, even in this day that we
Speaker 2: sit here now, from the morning until now at one
Speaker 2: forty eight, there have been at least five to six
Speaker 2: posts about them, okay, different things. What he said was
Speaker 2: she said with this, that and the third the doctor's appointment,
Speaker 2: the blah blah blah blah blah, all the stuff that's
Speaker 2: going on. And I saw it and said to myself,
Speaker 2: this is like really serious because that that baby does something.
Speaker 2: It shifts people, you know what I'm saying. When it
Speaker 2: was just the two of them, I prayed for them,
Speaker 2: God bless you and moved on. I said, I know
Speaker 2: this is crazy, and we talked about it before. I'm like,
Speaker 2: what is zeus and who owns it? And what is
Speaker 2: going on? This is craziness, But I've moved on because
Speaker 2: there's an appetite for it and nothing. All that comes
Speaker 2: of me saying that you know it's bad or it's
Speaker 2: wrong or whatever is a bunch of people getting frustrated
Speaker 2: and telling me to mind my business. And you don't
Speaker 2: this and you would hate blah blah blah. So I
Speaker 2: don't have time to fight that fight. I gotta stop
Speaker 2: a man from becoming governor and to tell me we
Speaker 2: have to do that. So when I saw this situation
Speaker 2: with the baby, it made me feel something. And at
Speaker 2: first I felt the immediate like, what the fuck? You
Speaker 2: know that? Which is judgment is judgment? And then what
Speaker 2: I always try to do is sit with myself for
Speaker 2: a moment, especially when I'm thinking about younger people. And
Speaker 2: I got this somewhat from you when you said you
Speaker 2: always try to think of what does the young you
Speaker 2: want to hear or what would you have listened to?
Speaker 2: So I kind of slowed down and sat with damn,
Speaker 2: remember this, remember that remembering stories when I was young,
Speaker 2: young with my baby, I might not have been as
Speaker 2: far to the left as what you see with the
Speaker 2: two of them. But also everything looked magnified and worse.
Speaker 2: When it's on social media or in front of a screen,
Speaker 2: every day looks worse. So my same shit, the basements
Speaker 2: that I lived in, the craziness, the fighting with my
Speaker 2: baby father, all of the drama that I went through,
Speaker 2: if it was on TV or on social media, it
Speaker 2: would have looked very similar. The screaming, the yelling, the fighting,
Speaker 2: the carrying on with my son being there with us
Speaker 2: at times, it would have looked similar. And when I
Speaker 2: checked myself in that way, I begin to write. I
Speaker 2: spoke to Yande about it first. She was like, girls
Speaker 2: been on my mind too, blah blah blah, and then
Speaker 2: I begin to write and so I posted it and
Speaker 2: then it ended up on this blog and that blog,
Speaker 2: in this place and that place. And I appreciate all
Speaker 2: of that support because most of the blogs wrote that,
Speaker 2: you know, Tamika Mallory, you know, they said positive things
Speaker 2: about it, and then the comments section is overwhelmingly folks
Speaker 2: who are in there that have been very very you know,
Speaker 2: moved by the gesture to say that we will help
Speaker 2: in some way. And it's not financial help, but it's
Speaker 2: looking at how can we pair her with the right
Speaker 2: black duelas that can work with her, that can help
Speaker 2: her to manage the postpartum and motherhood and learn some
Speaker 2: of the things that she may not be able to
Speaker 2: get from, you know, her, from her upbringing or her
Speaker 2: family or her community or whatever it is. She may
Speaker 2: never ever, ever Krashwan say that she wants to talk
Speaker 2: to us, and that's okay. Sometimes just knowing that people
Speaker 2: are watching and they're telling you that they care, or
Speaker 2: that they are that they will help you, that they
Speaker 2: will try to provide you with some type of support,
Speaker 2: it's enough to make you be like, damn, how do.
Speaker 1: I Look, you.
Speaker 2: Know that these people feel the need. And we're not
Speaker 2: talking about just you. You know all these people in
Speaker 2: the comment section like, oh, she said, y'all's broken this
Speaker 2: and that. Yeah, that's because it's toxic people all having
Speaker 2: a conversation at one time. You telling us she ain't shit,
Speaker 2: and she's telling you you broken so and so and
Speaker 2: saying whatever dirty things that she can say to deflect
Speaker 2: from what she feels. It's a total different thing when
Speaker 2: you and you know what I know because the first
Speaker 2: place she took her baby was church days later. That
Speaker 2: means that somewhere inside is a young girl who is
Speaker 2: really crying out for help, who really knows that I'm
Speaker 2: so far to this side, but I really need somebody
Speaker 2: to help me with this baby and help me with me,
Speaker 2: help me with me.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I also understand, and I'm done with it. But I
Speaker 2: also understand that there are people who will say all
Speaker 2: she really wants is her man to act right. And
Speaker 2: I've been there, I've been through that. I've been through that.
Speaker 2: You just want the man that you want to be
Speaker 2: with or feel is you know your savior all or
Speaker 2: this or the healing to your soft and painful spots
Speaker 2: to come. It's like a drug. It's almost like fentonol.
Speaker 2: That's what you want is for you think that that's
Speaker 2: going to heal the problem. But it took strong women
Speaker 2: to be around me. And I mean strong women. I'm
Speaker 2: not talking about some chicks I know, or just because
Speaker 2: it's a family member, it makes that person qualified. Family
Speaker 2: member don't necessarily make you qualified to help somebody through
Speaker 2: their challenges when you suffer room with your own, but
Speaker 2: when you surround yourself with strong women and men who
Speaker 2: can help you see other perspectives without judging you in
Speaker 2: or going back to the world and blasting your most
Speaker 2: vulnerable spaces and places and exploiting you. Because, by the way,
Speaker 2: many of the people who she works with and talks
Speaker 2: to are exploiting her pain and her baby father's plane
Speaker 2: for their own purposes, regardless of whether she puts it
Speaker 2: on social media. So I'm very passionate about it. I
Speaker 2: don't expect I have no expectations, and I don't have
Speaker 2: to because I have the world is going on that this,
Speaker 2: you know, young woman will hopefully, and I believe that
Speaker 2: she will. I have to believe that, like we have
Speaker 2: to live in a society where we believe that there
Speaker 2: is healing, even for Kashan, even for a person who
Speaker 2: might not even know, understand or feel they need support.
Speaker 2: I have to live in that world, and there are
Speaker 2: people who many of them, and I don't even think
Speaker 2: they're wrong. Their quick immediate response is you want to
Speaker 2: help this chick instead of because she's a celebrity, instead
Speaker 2: of all these other people that need help. And let
Speaker 2: me tell you why that's important to me or why
Speaker 2: I understand the question. And I have a very specific answer.
Speaker 2: I already told people about all the work that I
Speaker 2: do with folks you ain't never seen or heard of,
Speaker 2: and the support of our village around young people who
Speaker 2: are having issues, challenges, young mothers, so on and so forth.
Speaker 2: If I wanted to, I could call the roles. Some
Speaker 2: of them don't want that. Others who may want, who
Speaker 2: do want because they say it all the time. But
Speaker 2: because Kashan is a celebrity, she the reason why I
Speaker 2: was posted. It wasn't about me. It's not like people
Speaker 2: are constantly posting on all of these blogs and in
Speaker 2: other places everything we do. They post some things for me,
Speaker 2: they don't necessarily they don't post the things that you
Speaker 2: talk about often enough, and we know that and we've
Speaker 2: challenged that. But they do post some of my work,
Speaker 2: they post my comments or things that I've said at times,
Speaker 2: but there are not many opportunities because number one, the
Speaker 2: comments section or even the response from the people, if
Speaker 2: you will, is not even the same. So most of
Speaker 2: the sites, the blog sites or whatever, they are posting
Speaker 2: things where they know there's going to be interaction, and
Speaker 2: if they're just putting up that Tamika Mallory is working
Speaker 2: with college students and helping them, more than likely, even
Speaker 2: the same people who are challenging why I don't help
Speaker 2: young women, which I do, or young mothers other mothers
Speaker 2: that are not celebrities, you ain't got nothing to say.
Speaker 2: You ain't in a comment section celebrating that sharing it,
Speaker 2: giving comments. That's not the case. We don't engage in
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. So the reason why it's getting
Speaker 2: the attention that it's getting is because of who she
Speaker 2: is and the fact that you all are already tapped
Speaker 2: into her. But let me say this last thing and
Speaker 2: I'm done with it. One thing I know about life
Speaker 2: right and capacity, is that we don't always have the
Speaker 2: type of capacity that we want to do everything we
Speaker 2: want to do, and it's often frustrating. But Krashan's healing
Speaker 2: has the potential to heal millions. So if she can,
Speaker 2: she becomes an example. Sometimes we're not able to work
Speaker 2: on seventy eighty one hundred thousand people because we don't
Speaker 2: have the capacity to do so. But if you can
Speaker 2: work on one individual that appears to be at her
Speaker 2: bottom or at her lowest moment, which I don't even
Speaker 2: believe that that's true, because there's always under, there's always
Speaker 2: lower until you are under the gun, literally, And I
Speaker 2: believe that she can find healing, whether it's about me
Speaker 2: or not, just in her own ways, it has the
Speaker 2: potential to spread to millions of young women and men
Speaker 2: everywhere and show them that there is a path for redemption.
Speaker 2: Even though you might be in the worst situations, the
Speaker 2: worst toxic relationships, you might be most toxic to yourself,
Speaker 2: there is a path for grace and for there to
Speaker 2: be redemption for you. So that's all I have to say.
Speaker 2: I know it's a lot, but I think people need
Speaker 2: to know that, No, you know, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: let you make me feel like I shouldn't do or
Speaker 2: or somebody else is more worthy. I think all of us,
Speaker 2: even Krashan, is worthy of love and support.
Speaker 3: Ain't really much for me to say after you said that,
Speaker 3: That's pretty much what it is, man. I think we
Speaker 3: all deserve grace. I think a lot of us, you know,
Speaker 3: we look from a hierarchy, like you said, we look
Speaker 3: from where we are instead of where we've been. And
Speaker 3: when you when you start to judge somebody from your
Speaker 3: evolved self, then you're given you're given a poor judgment
Speaker 3: because you're not even thinking about the reality of what
Speaker 3: that individual is probably dealing with, especially if you actually
Speaker 3: had to deal with that. A lot of us come
Speaker 3: from this hierarchy, to come from this moral high ground
Speaker 3: about oh, you can't do this, and you're this, and
Speaker 3: you're the worst type of person, you're this, look at
Speaker 3: what you've done, look at what you've done. Not acknowledging
Speaker 3: that we've done. Worship ourselves and somebody cared for us,
Speaker 3: and somebody loved us, and somebody walked us through that,
Speaker 3: somebody stood by us at our worst times. And we
Speaker 3: want people to just forget everybody during their worst times
Speaker 3: because we've because we figured it out, you know, And
Speaker 3: I don't I think that's that's what we deal with
Speaker 3: a lot in this society, especially in these times. Everybody's
Speaker 3: coming from a moral high ground that they don't really
Speaker 3: have the right to come from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Not perfect people, but it's perfect.
Speaker 3: Work, that's right.
Speaker 2: So now we're going to bring on our guests because listen,
Speaker 2: America is going to shit, and I mean, and it's already.
Speaker 2: Some people would say it's already and things is pretty rough.
Speaker 2: And you know, I've been working and in the process
Speaker 2: of doing some more stuff on these companies that are
Speaker 2: hiding in playing sight, and Panini was one of them.
Speaker 2: In the last few free weeks or the last few months,
Speaker 2: we found out that Panini, a company, a three billion
Speaker 2: dollar company that uses the faces and images of black
Speaker 2: and brown players, sports players were making were through their
Speaker 2: memorabilia and their trading cards, didn't have any black people
Speaker 2: in positions of power in their company, no senior level executives.
Speaker 2: And so they have hired someone now to consult with
Speaker 2: them to make changes within the company. But it's been
Speaker 2: enough months I believe that we should now, especially this
Speaker 2: summer is over. We're into the fall or coming up there.
Speaker 2: We're into the fall. We should be able to receive
Speaker 2: feedback from them about what has happened as there again
Speaker 2: same thing Like Krashan, I might not be able to
Speaker 2: have the capacity to go after seventy companies at the
Speaker 2: same time, but we can shure enough make sure one
Speaker 2: company is an example of how we will expose what
Speaker 2: they are doing. Again, they're hiding in playing site. It's
Speaker 2: not like you can't find these things out. You just
Speaker 2: need a quick search and ask some questions. And when
Speaker 2: we did that, we found out that this company was
Speaker 2: really doing something that I believe is bad business practice.
Speaker 2: And so you know, we will continue to work on that.
Speaker 2: And now we're going to reach back out to them
Speaker 2: to find out what is the update since they from
Speaker 2: our work. From our work because until we raise the
Speaker 2: issue with Panini, they did not have a consultant working
Speaker 2: with them on diversity, equity and inclusion practices within their company.
Speaker 3: They didn't have no black people. There was no black people.
Speaker 2: Work on the forward tiers of the course.
Speaker 3: You know what, you you don't got nobody that's running
Speaker 3: the shots, calling the shots, and you got the main
Speaker 3: the main faces and memorabilia you selling come from black people.
Speaker 3: Don't even make sense that we always say nothing about.
Speaker 2: Us without us, that's right, and so you know, until
Speaker 2: we spoke up, there was zero happening. And now they
Speaker 2: have a consultant. So we'll see what that consultant has
Speaker 2: accomplished with their company, because we certainly want to we
Speaker 2: want we want a response, right so on a update
Speaker 2: we didn't We don't just y'all might not hear about it,
Speaker 2: but there's always wills still turning on the things that
Speaker 2: we're working on. Let's bring our next guest on so
Speaker 2: he can talk about d I because I don't think
Speaker 2: people really understand what's happening. This isn't all out of salt.
Speaker 2: It's really serious.
Speaker 3: They trying to get Trump back fifty two. It's tough out.
Speaker 2: They don't pull all of our people. I don't even
Speaker 2: pay attention to those polls anyway. My son is referring
Speaker 2: to a poll that came out yesterday saying Trump has
Speaker 2: edged bided out and you know whatever, I don't.
Speaker 3: Believe post fake dudes, man, Oh, I don't.
Speaker 2: Think he posts fake news. The Trump the.
Speaker 3: Article says a pretty reliable source.
Speaker 2: The article itself is correct in whatever it has stated,
Speaker 2: but the problem is that it has not been done
Speaker 2: across a large enough scale of individuals, because ain't nobody
Speaker 2: never pulled me? Now, I don't really answer my house
Speaker 2: phone because the last time I answered my house phone
Speaker 2: was some woman calling my phone, some crazy person telling
Speaker 2: me why she hate me, and I don't even know
Speaker 2: how she got a phone number. So so so i'll
Speaker 2: answer my phone. Tesla told me don't ever answer the
Speaker 2: phone again, and so I don't. But when I was
Speaker 2: answering my phone, it wasn't nobody calling to pold me
Speaker 2: at all. Okay, So now listen, y'all. We got somebody,
Speaker 2: super super smart on here today that knows a lot.
Speaker 2: And you know, lately we've been talking about DEI and
Speaker 2: the challenges around diversity, equity and inclusion, and I think
Speaker 2: people really need to be paying attention to how just
Speaker 2: because it's not on the TV every day doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that there's not something spreading across this nation that is really, really,
Speaker 2: really dangerous. And we've got to be aware that right now,
Speaker 2: being black in certain spaces is not sexy, and people
Speaker 2: are actually trying to diminish our value and our worth.
Speaker 2: And so this gentleman that is coming on with us
Speaker 2: today is a new friend to UH street politicians. But
Speaker 2: he also is someone who is very very qualified to
Speaker 2: talk about diversity and equity and inclusion. So let me
Speaker 2: just usually I don't read bios to y'all, but I
Speaker 2: got a few sentences that I think right on my
Speaker 2: son that we should probably go over today, so you'll
Speaker 2: know more about who doctor Sean Harper is. He holds
Speaker 2: the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership at
Speaker 2: the University of Southern California. In twenty twenty two, he
Speaker 2: was appointed University Professor. Doctor Harper has published twelve books
Speaker 2: and is author of more than one hundred peer reviewed
Speaker 2: articles and other academic publications. He is a recipient of
Speaker 2: dozens of top honors in his field and four honorary degrees.
Speaker 2: A prolific and energizing speaker on a range of diversity,
Speaker 2: equity and inclusion topics, he has delivered hundreds of keynote
Speaker 2: addresses around the world, many audiences comprised of thousands in
Speaker 2: his DEI work. I mean, I think that is something
Speaker 2: to be really really proud of as a black man.
Speaker 2: You're working in this space and also right now to
Speaker 2: be tuned into what you do. So why don't you
Speaker 2: get started? First of all, welcome to street politicians, Doctor
Speaker 2: Sean Harper. Why don't you get started by telling us
Speaker 2: about your upbringing, the things that are not here in
Speaker 2: your bio, and how you made it to the DEI space.
Speaker 1: Sure, but before I do that, let me do two
Speaker 1: quick things that are really important. First, express my sincereous
Speaker 1: gratitude to you for having me as a guest. You
Speaker 1: mentioned that I'm a new friend, but honestly, already it
Speaker 1: feels like we're old friends. So I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: a great conversation. I did want to go back and
Speaker 1: revise something you said though, about being blacks and always sexy.
Speaker 1: Please says who Being black is sexy for me every
Speaker 1: day in every space. There's nothing I would rather be
Speaker 1: than black hints It really frustrates me, right, the palpabole, pervasive,
Speaker 1: perverted sense of anti blackness that we see in you know,
Speaker 1: just about every corner of America. But you know, despite
Speaker 1: those attacks on our black lives and black cells, we're
Speaker 1: gonna keep being black unapologetically, and we're gonna keep making
Speaker 1: black sexy. So you asked about my upbringing. I grew
Speaker 1: up in Thomasville, Georgia. It's a small, rural, racially segregated
Speaker 1: town on the Georgia Florida border. It is a place
Speaker 1: where the racial politics are ever present and incredibly intense,
Speaker 1: but yet nobody really talks about them, at least not
Speaker 1: out loud. People talk, you know, within their family units,
Speaker 1: perhaps within their church communities, but there's never really a
Speaker 1: multi racial common conversation about, you know, just the crazy
Speaker 1: racism that placed itself out, you know, in plain sight.
Speaker 1: So those were the things that got me really interested
Speaker 1: as a youngster. Really, I mean, honestly, I think back
Speaker 1: to when I was like five years old. I noticed
Speaker 1: that most of the people who were black, like my family,
Speaker 1: were incredibly poor, and most of the people who were
Speaker 1: rich and who ran things and who were in charge
Speaker 1: of things were white. So I've been on a lifelong
Speaker 1: quest to understand why those racial inequities exist. I ruled
Speaker 1: out several things. I ruled out that we weren't poor
Speaker 1: because we were lazy. My mother cleaned white people's homes
Speaker 1: as a housekeeper when I was a kid, so it
Speaker 1: definitely wasn't because we were lazy. I also ruled out
Speaker 1: that we were not poor because we wanted to be,
Speaker 1: and I ruled out that we were not poor because
Speaker 1: we were somehow inferior intellectually to white people. There were
Speaker 1: a deeper set of structural and systemic explanations. So, you know,
Speaker 1: for the past forty eight years, I've been on a
Speaker 1: quest to find those answers and more importantly, provide solutions.
Speaker 1: You know, not just to Thomasville, where I'm from, but
Speaker 1: really to the whole United States of America and really
Speaker 1: to every place around the globe where anti black racism exists.
Speaker 3: So during the murder of George Floyd and you know,
Speaker 3: the multiple protests and the daily outrage, there was everybody
Speaker 3: wanted to be involved in diversity, equity and inclusions. There
Speaker 3: was an uprise billions of dollars poured in I want
Speaker 3: to do that. Do you see that same support anywhere
Speaker 3: near close to it? Because I don't feel it. I
Speaker 3: feel like that was a moment that everybody wanted to
Speaker 3: be Oh, I'm with the black people, and now we're
Speaker 3: just like they're trying to go back to business as usual.
Speaker 1: Man, that moment lasted for seven weeks at most, at most, right,
Speaker 1: So you're absolutely right. Following Derek Chauvin's murder of George Floyd.
Speaker 1: As protests ensued across America and around the globe, we
Speaker 1: saw lots of corporations and the people who lead them
Speaker 1: do all sorts of performative gestures to declare that black
Speaker 1: lives matter. You are absolutely right that collectively, businesses pledged
Speaker 1: more than two hundred billion dollars in the name of
Speaker 1: George Floyd and in the name of racial justice. Notice
Speaker 1: I said pledged. So you asked if that same intensity
Speaker 1: is still there from June twenty twenty. Nah, not only
Speaker 1: is the intensity not there, but those people also haven't
Speaker 1: paid up. They haven't paid the two hundred billion dollars
Speaker 1: that they pledged. You See, the thing about a pledge
Speaker 1: is that, you know, you make it usually over like
Speaker 1: some time span, Right, So for most of these companies
Speaker 1: that were like, yeah, over the next four years, we're
Speaker 1: gonna give one hundred million dollars to black folks and
Speaker 1: to black things. Yeah. At this point, we're about three
Speaker 1: and a half years in and yo, like the money
Speaker 1: still hadn't reached the accounts of black people with black
Speaker 1: black organizations, black communities. So I'm waiting on the money
Speaker 1: that was pledged to be paid yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think that we know
Speaker 2: it right because we have a small grassroots organization that
Speaker 2: is constantly raising funds and we feel it, we see
Speaker 2: that it is, and not that we were ever a
Speaker 2: group that took a lot of corporate money, corporate dollars.
Speaker 2: But what we know and why I use the word
Speaker 2: sexy earlier, is not because it's sexy or not to me,
Speaker 2: because I think we're more than sexy. We're you for it,
Speaker 2: We're whatever it is the top feeling that you could
Speaker 2: have black folks give that. But what I mean by
Speaker 2: it is that the energy in the room, the space,
Speaker 2: it is not about focusing on black folks the way
Speaker 2: that it was just so many years ago, which makes
Speaker 2: it so much harder for us to continue to put
Speaker 2: us back in the center of the conversation. Every time
Speaker 2: they try to rear in a different direction, we have
Speaker 2: to constantly bring it back. And what happens in those
Speaker 2: moments is that when corporations and the media and others
Speaker 2: are not covering us even the dollars that we depend on,
Speaker 2: which is generally successful people, people who have resources to
Speaker 2: give because they feel inspired by the moment. That moment
Speaker 2: has diminished. And it is even other black people who
Speaker 2: have resources that it's like pulling teeth to get support
Speaker 2: from them. And so you know, I agree with you
Speaker 2: one hundred percent, So tell us this are there since
Speaker 2: twenty twenty? Are there companies that you can continue to
Speaker 2: work with? You see, their commitment has been something real
Speaker 2: and you know a way that they are truly focused
Speaker 2: on this because I got to ask you about all
Speaker 2: the black folks leaving DEI positions in these companies. But
Speaker 2: first tell me do you know any good companies? Because
Speaker 2: they'll say, we never talk about the good stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, listen, I am a person who very much amplifies
Speaker 1: the goodness and attempt to learn from you know, scalable, adaptable,
Speaker 1: replicable models of success. I think if you had asked
Speaker 1: me this question fifteen months ago, I would have had
Speaker 1: a very different response for you. I would have been
Speaker 1: able to name at least one. I can no longer
Speaker 1: do that because honestly, I can't wait until we get
Speaker 1: to the part about the black folks and other people
Speaker 1: of color departing these these DEI positions. I got a
Speaker 1: lot to say about that, But honestly, companies that in
Speaker 1: my heart and soul felt so committed. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is it? Like this is great. Even they have
Speaker 1: fallen victim to I suppose that's just that something happened
Speaker 1: to them, as opposed to them consciously deciding not to
Speaker 1: be courageous. But even those companies have walked back many
Speaker 1: of their DEI commitments and have began to unravel the
Speaker 1: DEI infrastructure. So no, I don't have a name for you. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it's sad. It's real sad because so many companies profited
Speaker 1: reputationally from these declarations that they were making about how
Speaker 1: committed they were to black folks. Again, that stuff lasted
Speaker 1: in most places for a maximum of seven weeks. Our
Speaker 1: brother Van Jones gave us language for this. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take us all the way back when Donald Trump was
Speaker 1: elected president. It was Van Jones who tearfully said live
Speaker 1: on CNN that what we're seeing here is whitelash to
Speaker 1: the eight years of the Obama administration in a very
Speaker 1: like pornographically analogous way. What we're seeing right now in
Speaker 1: the attacks on DEI is whitelash to the progress that
Speaker 1: was made in summer twenty twenty. You know, it was
Speaker 1: only it was less than three months after George Floyd's
Speaker 1: murder that Donald Trump issued an executive order banning DEI
Speaker 1: trainings in government agencies and in the military. Right now,
Speaker 1: I was on the team that helped Biden and Harris
Speaker 1: get elected, and part of our work, I was on
Speaker 1: the education policy team. The thing that was super important
Speaker 1: to us was on day one a President Biden has
Speaker 1: to undo that executive order that Trump signed, right because
Speaker 1: it was having a chilling effect on DEI in education.
Speaker 1: We succeeded. On day one, President Biden rescinded that executive order.
Speaker 1: But at that point, the damage was already done. Right,
Speaker 1: the strategy of unraveling all of this stuff, all of
Speaker 1: the momentum had already the traff had been set, The
Speaker 1: strategy had already.
Speaker 2: Been They say, the fly was already in the in
Speaker 2: the flower exactly.
Speaker 1: Exactly. So here we are years later, right, that same
Speaker 1: playbook is still being passed around from state to state,
Speaker 1: community to community, you know, attacking diversity, equity, inclusion, and
Speaker 1: black folks.
Speaker 3: I see all the work you've done. What are you
Speaker 3: doing any work around what Governor Decantis is doing in Florida?
Speaker 3: You know, the black history band on you know, the
Speaker 3: knowledge of slavery in the books in Florida? Are you
Speaker 3: doing any work around that?
Speaker 1: Every day? So here at the University of Southern California,
Speaker 1: I'm a faculty member in two schools, education and business.
Speaker 1: So in my education work, I'm working with literally thousands
Speaker 1: of educators in any given week on these very issues,
Speaker 1: helping them to understand that there is a politicized, you know,
Speaker 1: attack on black folks, on black history, on people of color,
Speaker 1: on queer people, and so on, and that you know,
Speaker 1: Ron de Santis, Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, and others
Speaker 1: are succeeding in making the American people fall for the okido,
Speaker 1: the okidote that things are actually happening in schools that
Speaker 1: are not happening right. So, yeah, I'm on this. I'm
Speaker 1: on it every single day. Earlier this summer, back in June,
Speaker 1: the USC Race and Equity Center, the organization I lead,
Speaker 1: launched what we call the National DEI Defense Fund, and
Speaker 1: we're using that as a fundraising mechanism to help buy
Speaker 1: books in communities where books have been banned, to help
Speaker 1: support teachers who are very generously creating after school and
Speaker 1: out of school programs where they can teach black history
Speaker 1: and other things that have been banned in the formal curriculum.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a whole bunch of other stuff that
Speaker 1: we're using the funds for. It's just one of at
Speaker 1: least one hundred ways that my center colleagues and I
Speaker 1: are attempting to save our democracy from the ridiculousness.
Speaker 2: What do you think the results will be of the
Speaker 2: rollback of DEI and the attacks that we see on
Speaker 2: information and education about black history and black studies and
Speaker 2: black life.
Speaker 1: I can make at least three predictions quite comfortably. First is,
Speaker 1: they're going to be a whole bunch of miseducated Americans.
Speaker 1: Some of them are going to be Black folks, but
Speaker 1: the overwhelming majority of them are going to be white
Speaker 1: people and people who are not Black, who live in
Speaker 1: segregated communities, who don't have a lot of access to
Speaker 1: black culture and black people. We're going to send millions
Speaker 1: and millions and millions of miseducated people into our industries,
Speaker 1: into our workforce, and they are going to create cultures
Speaker 1: that are anti black. They are going to not hire
Speaker 1: and promote black people equitably. Right, So it's going to
Speaker 1: have a real negative impact on black professionals, for sure.
Speaker 1: That's one second. It's going to lead to a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of racial tension as people of color and white
Speaker 1: people are on you know, two different sides of the
Speaker 1: American experience, and one side consistently misunderstands the experiential realities
Speaker 1: of the other. That other side is going to get
Speaker 1: increasingly frustrated by those misunderstandings, by the devaluation of our
Speaker 1: lives and our experiences. You see, when people don't learn
Speaker 1: about each other's cultures, histories, and realities, right, it makes
Speaker 1: them susceptible to eruption and misunderstandings. Right. So that's my
Speaker 1: second prediction. The third prediction that I'll make is that
Speaker 1: I honestly believe that our democracy as a whole is
Speaker 1: going to be susceptible, vulnerable to all sorts of attacks,
Speaker 1: both domestic and foreign. I know that I'm talking like
Speaker 1: I'm speaking to a group of military officers. Well, actually
Speaker 1: it's because just last week I spoke to hundreds of
Speaker 1: military officers and I reminded them of the military oath
Speaker 1: of office that includes language of them pledging themselves to
Speaker 1: protect America against enemies both foreign and domestic. The most
Speaker 1: dangerous domestic enemy right now in the United States of
Speaker 1: America is misinformation and disinformation. Those things are only going
Speaker 1: to be exacerbated by these attacks on diversity at what
Speaker 1: are you an inclusion right those attacks that are fueled
Speaker 1: by disinformation and misinformation. So it is really going to
Speaker 1: make our country weak and really susceptible to all sorts
Speaker 1: of breakdowns and attacks.
Speaker 2: And when you say attacks, I mean I think about
Speaker 2: you know, why we have not heard the reasons why
Speaker 2: Roslyn Brewer left Walgreens as CEO, and I don't know
Speaker 2: all of the reasons why. So there's been this mass exodus,
Speaker 2: if you will, of black executives and other people of
Speaker 2: color and DEI positions and other leadership positions within companies.
Speaker 2: But I have to imagine that somewhere in there it
Speaker 2: feels like people are being fired without maybe saying it publicly,
Speaker 2: just by them the way that they feel marginalized at work,
Speaker 2: or maybe it's a lack of support that they are
Speaker 2: also feeling in the environment. So what do you think
Speaker 2: is causing people to run? And or are they just
Speaker 2: being terminated and we just don't hear much about how
Speaker 2: it ends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I've thought about both of these. I write
Speaker 1: for Forbes, and I've written a pair of Forbes articles
Speaker 1: on you know, both parts of the question. So I
Speaker 1: still don't yet know the reason why Rosalind Brewer left Walgreens.
Speaker 1: What I will say, though, right, is that that sister
Speaker 1: had been CEO of that company for such a short
Speaker 1: time period. And you know, I mentioned in my Forbes
Speaker 1: article that the same thing happens in college and professional
Speaker 1: sports to black coaches, black head coaches, that they get
Speaker 1: less of a runway to build their team, to show results,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth, before you know, they're pushed
Speaker 1: out or fired or whatever. You know. So there is
Speaker 1: a chance that that is part of the Rosslyn Brewer experience.
Speaker 1: We got to find out from her, right, she needs
Speaker 1: for herself, right, But I think the larger point is
Speaker 1: that Rosslyn Brewer was one of only two black women
Speaker 1: Fortune five hundred CEOs. That's not okay, that's not okay, right,
Speaker 1: So we got to understand the intersectionality of race and
Speaker 1: gender for black women and the ways in which that
Speaker 1: intersectionality undermines their day to day experiences within corporate environments,
Speaker 1: but also undermines their climbing of the corporate ladder, and
Speaker 1: then ultimately when they get there to the top, right,
Speaker 1: the attacks and the unreasonable expectations on them that are
Speaker 1: not placed on certainly not on their white male colleagues
Speaker 1: or counterparts, right, who are CEOs? Now with the diversity
Speaker 1: officers chief diversity officers. I wrote a piece and Forbes
Speaker 1: back in January explaining twelve ways in which CEOs and
Speaker 1: companies fail chief diversity officers. You know, it really is
Speaker 1: the combination of those twelve forces factors that explains in
Speaker 1: the largest part the turnover in the CEO role. We
Speaker 1: ain't got time for me to talk about twelve, so
Speaker 1: I'll just like lift up three. One one of these
Speaker 1: is not like the other in many companies. So in
Speaker 1: many companies, the chief diversity officer is if I'm being honest,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean to disrespect our brothers and sisters
Speaker 1: and gender queer colleagues and family members who are in
Speaker 1: those roles, but they don't have the same seat at
Speaker 1: the table as the CFO, or as the chief marketing officer,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth, the chief legal officer. In fact,
Speaker 1: in way too many organizations I supposed to, I should say,
Speaker 1: and way too few organizations they ain't got a seat
Speaker 1: at the corporate table at all. Right, they have like
Speaker 1: a vice president title, they're called the chief diversity officer,
Speaker 1: but they never ever ever get to talk to the CEO, right,
Speaker 1: because my friends, I mean, are chief diversity officers.
Speaker 2: When there's a problem, they absolutely talk to them. The
Speaker 2: rest of the time, they don't really get to interface
Speaker 2: with leadership at all. So they do talk to them
Speaker 2: whenever black people are upset or there's some issue with
Speaker 2: the community that the company is trying to serve. Oh,
Speaker 2: here comes you know, we need to meet. And then,
Speaker 2: as you said, the expectations at that point of the
Speaker 2: DEI person to be able to do something for the
Speaker 2: company's brand that is not a part of anything in
Speaker 2: the culture is unreasonable, you know, So go ahead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think two things are simultaneously true. I
Speaker 1: totally rock with you, and you know, totally honor your
Speaker 1: friends experience that in some situations, You're right, like, the
Speaker 1: CEO only relies on the chief diversity officer in a
Speaker 1: moment of a crisis. But I have way, way, way
Speaker 1: too many examples where companies have literally been on the news,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm talking like in the New York
Speaker 1: Times or CNN and other places on fire for you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of racial problem or sexual harassment problem or whatever,
Speaker 1: and the CDO is not at the table. The CDO
Speaker 1: finds out when the rest of us finds out right,
Speaker 1: and the person's like, uh, hello, you got a whole
Speaker 1: in house expert that you haven't, that you don't even
Speaker 1: have enough respect for to call to the crisis resolution table.
Speaker 1: So I do know for sure that both things are
Speaker 1: simultaneously true. Let me go a little bit faster, So
Speaker 1: I promise people three, let me tell you two more reasons.
Speaker 1: Chief diversity officers often have way too little money in
Speaker 1: their budgets, way too few staff members, and way too
Speaker 1: little authority decision making authority. You know, folks are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I fail for it. I thought I was like gonna
Speaker 1: be an actual vice president and I came here and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like me and two staff members for a
Speaker 1: massive corporation. Here's the third explanation. In summer twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: lots and lots of CEOs and other C suite executives
Speaker 1: contacted me directly personally given the work I do, saying hey,
Speaker 1: we want to think about hiring our first chief diversity
Speaker 1: officer In almost every instance, I told those folks, no,
Speaker 1: don't do that, y'all just bandwagoning. You're just doing the
Speaker 1: thing right now that is popular that everybody else seems
Speaker 1: to be doing. But you know, a lot of those
Speaker 1: folks rejected that advice and went ahead and very haphazardly
Speaker 1: hired chief diversity officers without an actual job description, without
Speaker 1: an actual, real you know, sort of complex understanding of
Speaker 1: what we want this person to do. Hire the people
Speaker 1: without onboarding them properly, so on and so forth. So
Speaker 1: it shouldn't surprise us that so few of those people
Speaker 1: lasted for more than eighteen.
Speaker 2: Months, Right, that's true, that's real.
Speaker 3: So when I want to close with asking this question,
Speaker 3: because we realized, you know, diversity and inclusion and equity
Speaker 3: is a big, big issue in the black community, and
Speaker 3: you know, in workspaces, in school spaces and educational spaces,
Speaker 3: all those spaces. Do you notice that there are a
Speaker 3: lot of other races or do you work with people
Speaker 3: who from other raceists who are dealing with the same issues,
Speaker 3: And if so, do you think it is in comparison
Speaker 3: or even worse.
Speaker 1: Well, so, at the USC Race and Equity Center, we
Speaker 1: pride ourselves on focusing on all dimensions of diversity, equity,
Speaker 1: and inclusion, right racist foremost for us, it's at the
Speaker 1: epicenter of our work. But we also obviously do tons
Speaker 1: of work on homophobia and hetero sexism, and transphobia and
Speaker 1: Islamophobia and anti semitism and sexism and misogyny and misogyn war,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. So I just want to
Speaker 1: make sure that your listeners recognize that I'm a multifaceted
Speaker 1: DEI expert, so to are the twenty nine people who
Speaker 1: work at the center that I lead in terms of
Speaker 1: other racial groups. I'm really glad you asked this question, right,
Speaker 1: because we've talked a lot in this conversation in this
Speaker 1: episode about black people and black professionals. Latin X or
Speaker 1: Latino or Hispanic professionals also experienced tremendous racism in workplaces.
Speaker 1: About a month or two ago, I was watching Eva
Speaker 1: Longoria's film Flaming Hot, which is, you know, a screenplay,
Speaker 1: a film about the guy, the Latino guy Janitor, who
Speaker 1: created who had the idea for flaming Hot Cheetos, Right,
Speaker 1: So you know, I was thinking, Yo, this is going
Speaker 1: to be just like a little fun movie. But actually,
Speaker 1: as I watched that movie and I watched Richard Montagnez's
Speaker 1: experience as a Latino janitor, so much of it resonated
Speaker 1: with my research and what I hear from Latino professionals
Speaker 1: about their workplace realities. So I wrote a Forbes article
Speaker 1: about it that night because really it was such a
Speaker 1: familiar experience to me as I watch it play out
Speaker 1: in Eva's film. And let me also just say quickly,
Speaker 1: for our Asian American Pacific islander and Indigenous brothers and
Speaker 1: sisters and gender queer people in workplaces, those folks experienced
Speaker 1: tremendous erasure, meaning just like an ever present feeling of unimportance.
Speaker 1: And it's not just a feeling, right, there are everyday
Speaker 1: reminders that now y'all ain't important here, right, and that's
Speaker 1: not okay. We often talk about the underrepresentation of black
Speaker 1: and Latino folks in executive level roles in organizations, Asian
Speaker 1: Americans are also severely underpresented, underrepresented. So to our indigenous.
Speaker 2: Professionals, absolutely well, let me say, we have to let
Speaker 2: you go so we can honor your time as well.
Speaker 2: But what I will say is that it seems to
Speaker 2: me and sometimes for black folks who are going through hell,
Speaker 2: it's hard to hear that there are other people groups
Speaker 2: also experiencing some of the same things that we go through.
Speaker 2: And of course, because you're a black man and two
Speaker 2: of us are also black people, it hits us. We
Speaker 2: know we feel it. But as you said, we're at
Speaker 2: the intersection of many communities. You got you youth that
Speaker 2: are also locked out of many positions around this nation,
Speaker 2: where you know, younger people being able to get into
Speaker 2: these companies and make the salaries that they deserve. I mean,
Speaker 2: there are so many layers of issues because the bottom
Speaker 2: line is that white men have created an environment that
Speaker 2: they want to maintain within their companies, their corporations that
Speaker 2: they've used so many people who are black, brown and
Speaker 2: others to build. And so it would seem to me
Speaker 2: that we would all be working together right like that.
Speaker 2: That is the metropolis, if you will, of folks that
Speaker 2: need to be pushing back against this and not so
Speaker 2: much being in our silos. Seems like it should be
Speaker 2: something that's bigger, but that is often not the case
Speaker 2: because there is so much divisiveness in our movements. But
Speaker 2: I think that we get a bigger bang for our buck,
Speaker 2: if you will, if we are able to join together
Speaker 2: to push back on some of these narratives and to
Speaker 2: make sure that we're holding the line line within these
Speaker 2: companies to provide opportunities for others.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Look, I know we got to wrap the episode,
Speaker 1: but I want to take I want to quickly take
Speaker 1: two things that you just said and amplify them.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, we need solidarity and coalitions across racial and ethnic lines. Right,
Speaker 1: we need the people of color to come together in
Speaker 1: support of each other's interests and advancement, not just within
Speaker 1: our own individual community. So you're spot on. We also
Speaker 1: need some some white allies and some white folks to
Speaker 1: also join us, right in those interracial coalitions. The other
Speaker 1: thing that you said that it's just I think this
Speaker 1: is such an important way to end. I want to
Speaker 1: end on a beautiful note, but honestly, this is a
Speaker 1: painful note to end on because it's just important for
Speaker 1: listeners to to understand this. I over the course of
Speaker 1: my career, have had the privilege of working with more
Speaker 1: than four four hundred companies, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and
Speaker 1: educational institutions on diversity, equity, and inclusion. More than four hundred.
Speaker 1: One of the most painful discoveries of mine is that
Speaker 1: black folks are catching hell everywhere everywhere, across sectors, across geographies,
Speaker 1: across age groups, so on and so forth. So in
Speaker 1: addition to those interracial coalitions with other racial groups, we
Speaker 1: also need black folks to come together across industries across
Speaker 1: age groups to collectively heal from the collective trauma that
Speaker 1: we've experienced historically and contemporarily at work, to share navigational
Speaker 1: strategies with each other as deliberate acts of self care,
Speaker 1: and to collectively determine strategies for resistance regardless of where
Speaker 1: one works. To disrupt and dismantle racism and anti blackness.
Speaker 1: We need black folks across industries to come together for that.
Speaker 2: Well, the first thing black folks have to know is
Speaker 2: that the problem exists right because so many people are
Speaker 2: head down in grocery bills, gas bills, rent bills, dealing
Speaker 2: with their community issues. DEI. That concept is like, what
Speaker 2: are you talking about, you know.
Speaker 3: Saying it's it's the last on the average person's list.
Speaker 3: You know, they're just trying to get a regular paycheck,
Speaker 3: and they deal with a lot of people in our
Speaker 3: communities have normalized racism. They don't even see it as racist,
Speaker 3: part of the normal. They're like, what do you mean? So, well,
Speaker 3: I know we can't do this. We're not supposed to
Speaker 3: do this. He's going to say this to me. I
Speaker 3: know the white girl's gonna be able to do the
Speaker 3: stuff I can't do, so I have to. We have
Speaker 3: normalized abnormalities inside of this culture. So unfortunately, until we
Speaker 3: stop normalized being treated wrong, until we understand that, there
Speaker 3: has to be a unified front in which we address this.
Speaker 3: First we got to unify within us and then we
Speaker 3: unify with everybody else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. So we've definitely normalized, but
Speaker 1: we've also individualized, right, I mean it's black folks. We
Speaker 1: tend to be a collective people, but when these things
Speaker 1: are happening to us at work, we're thinking, this is
Speaker 1: just happening.
Speaker 2: To me, absolutely absolutely, So we got to.
Speaker 1: Make Yeah, we got to make space right for black professionals,
Speaker 1: especially to hear that nonsense. It ain't just you like,
Speaker 1: this is a full scale attack on black women that
Speaker 1: happens to block.
Speaker 2: That's why you're here, and that's why we want to
Speaker 2: put this episode out there, and I think that you
Speaker 2: need to come back because this is this issue I know,
Speaker 2: I feel that I think about it every day. We
Speaker 2: deal with so many smoking gun problems. You know, someone
Speaker 2: was killed, this happening in that governor's race or whatever.
Speaker 2: But DEI is sitting on me heavy because I know
Speaker 2: that if we think we're dealing with poverty now, if
Speaker 2: we think we're dealing with challenges now, when AI becomes
Speaker 2: even more of a corporate strategy that they begin to use,
Speaker 2: we're going to see violence and crime and depression rise
Speaker 2: in our communities like we have never ever, ever ever
Speaker 2: seen before. This is about to be a time that
Speaker 2: we can't even manage if we don't understand the problem.
Speaker 2: And I think it is incumbent upon those of us
Speaker 2: who have our ears to the streets, someone like my
Speaker 2: son and I who might not be well versed in
Speaker 2: all of it, but being able to meet and talk
Speaker 2: with people like you who can help break it down
Speaker 2: and bite sizes so that are people who are moving fast,
Speaker 2: who are stressed to or all the things, have an
Speaker 2: opportunity to grasp that the problem you're having at work
Speaker 2: with this white woman that continuously writes you up and
Speaker 2: continuously treats you bad and you know, continuously get you
Speaker 2: in corners and steals your work and lies on you.
Speaker 2: All of that is not a problem just because there's
Speaker 2: something wrong with you, but there's something wrong with the industry.
Speaker 2: And to my son's point, until we work together, we're
Speaker 2: never going to be able to change it. So thank
Speaker 2: you very much for joining us on street politicians today,
Speaker 2: Doctor harper.
Speaker 3: Help me back.
Speaker 1: Anytime we are new old friends.
Speaker 3: Being regular, we might have to bring you up being
Speaker 3: told bowl we might be.
Speaker 2: If that's you know, we should talk about it. Thanks
Speaker 2: a lot, thanks.
Speaker 3: For joining us.
Speaker 1: Appreciate you can't thank you appreciate y'all.
Speaker 3: Shout out to doctor harper Man. What he said is
Speaker 3: so so much real. You know, we deal with so
Speaker 3: much racism in this country, and like I said, we've
Speaker 3: normalized and the way he broke it down in sectors
Speaker 3: and how each individual thing plays apart and people don't
Speaker 3: think that and how you know, the elimination of diversity,
Speaker 3: equity inclusion is gonna be an even bigger problem because
Speaker 3: we think we ain't get got jobs now, then they
Speaker 3: definitely gonna not have jobs because they don't have no
Speaker 3: reason to give you a job. They're not forced like
Speaker 3: people think, oh affirmative action on. No, these things only
Speaker 3: made sure that people who were qualified got opportunities. It
Speaker 3: wasn't They didn't bring unqualified. People will say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: you gotta a sixty, you know, you gotta a C minus. No,
Speaker 3: they took the top of the battle from communities of
Speaker 3: people who weren't able to afford and gave them education.
Speaker 3: That's what these things provided, and that's what de does.
Speaker 3: It gives people who are qualified the opportunity to actually
Speaker 3: get heard. And then it says there's a certain amount
Speaker 3: of these people that are overly qualified that actually have
Speaker 3: to hire. And I don't understand why people think that's
Speaker 3: such a big thing. But you know, that's a whole
Speaker 3: other thing. Man shout out to doctor Harper. You know,
Speaker 3: his take on that is phenomenal, and I think we
Speaker 3: definitely should have him back. But being having that be said,
Speaker 3: it brings me to my I don't get it. I
Speaker 3: posted something on social media the other day and it
Speaker 3: was a young boy who was fifteen years old and
Speaker 3: judge who's actually a black lady was sentenced to him,
Speaker 3: sentencing him for doing I think it was arm robbery,
Speaker 3: take stealing cars, walking up with guns and stealing cars.
Speaker 3: He was actually ultimately sentenced to about thirty years in prison.
Speaker 3: And there were so many people like, that's good, he
Speaker 3: needed to be in jail, lock him up, this and
Speaker 3: that and this and that, and I was and I
Speaker 3: was listening, and you know, and I understand a lot
Speaker 3: of people think people need to be held accountable. There
Speaker 3: is accountability, right, But there's two things that I thought about, right.
Speaker 3: The first thing that I thought about is that you
Speaker 3: people think that there are people who think that this
Speaker 3: fifteen year old is unredeemable, that this action he does,
Speaker 3: he's done makes him unfit to be in society, that
Speaker 3: he's just gonna be out here. He can't turn it around.
Speaker 3: He just needs to be in jail for thirty years.
Speaker 3: And I said to myself, I know people who've literally
Speaker 3: committed crimes that are henious, that have robbed people, that
Speaker 3: have stolen people and got away. That are CEOs of companies. Now.
Speaker 3: There are CEOs of businesses now that never did that.
Speaker 3: Those things again, that run corporations who are millionaires and
Speaker 3: billionaires that sit in these rooms every day. They didn't
Speaker 3: get caught. There's so many people whose story especially that
Speaker 3: come from our communities, who they just didn't get caught.
Speaker 3: It's not that they didn't do these crimes. It's not
Speaker 3: that they you know, they were poverty strict, and poverty
Speaker 3: is you know, people don't look at when you look
Speaker 3: at robbery, it is a crime of poverty, right, It is.
Speaker 2: A people A lot of sometimes nine out of.
Speaker 3: Ten times people rob people because they don't have things
Speaker 3: that they want. There's very rarely that somebody who is
Speaker 3: able and will, who has the resources to buy things
Speaker 3: that they want, just rob somebody at gouverny. I don't
Speaker 3: think I've never heard somebody said, oh, this person come
Speaker 3: from well to do family, they got a bunch of
Speaker 3: money and they robbing somebody at gunpoint. I've seen people.
Speaker 2: Depends on what type of robber when we talk about it.
Speaker 2: But if you're talking about street crime.
Speaker 3: About regular street crime where people are robbing and they
Speaker 3: stealing and taking items and car jacket that's not a
Speaker 3: thing that comes from somebody who just wants to rob
Speaker 3: That's usually because a person lacks the resources. Right. So
Speaker 3: when we talk about those things, a lot of people
Speaker 3: come from those those realities, right, And I just didn't understand.
Speaker 3: And then the second thing I said to myself was,
Speaker 3: if a young boy has thirty years in prison, right,
Speaker 3: if we don't think that they are redeemable at fifteen,
Speaker 3: if we don't think that we can sit that there's
Speaker 3: no alternative to visit. We look in different communities, if
Speaker 3: we look in different people violence, I mean alternative to incarcerations. Right.
Speaker 3: If we look around this world the reality of incarceration,
Speaker 3: it's not working. Right. We incarceerate people at high rates
Speaker 3: and just about everybody, and we still have higher crime rates. Rights.
Speaker 3: It's places around this world where they don't incarceraate people
Speaker 3: nowhere near as much as we do in America, and
Speaker 3: they have lower crime rates. Right. And when you look
Speaker 3: at if you look at the situation, if you look
Speaker 3: at the places where these crimes will come from, the
Speaker 3: usually we're poor people, right, and they're usually black and
Speaker 3: brown people are the people that they locking up. And
Speaker 3: it's so so confusing to me that we see these
Speaker 3: people from our communities that really think that this is
Speaker 3: the best course of action, that given this fifty year boy,
Speaker 3: thirty years is the best course of action. And it's
Speaker 3: so mind boggling to me how we don't understand how
Speaker 3: it hasn't worked, you know, the experiment of incarceration. For
Speaker 3: I believe there should be accountability. I believe there should
Speaker 3: be some level of you know, maybe he does some
Speaker 3: jail time, but thirty years, what you've pretty much done
Speaker 3: is made him a hardened criminal. You kept him in
Speaker 3: prison around people who are criminal minded. He's learning criminal mentality.
Speaker 3: Even worse, he comes out here with less opportunities, less
Speaker 3: access to anything. He's forty years old with nothing, and
Speaker 3: now you expect him to become a conductive of a
Speaker 3: constructive and a productive, productive member of society. It just
Speaker 3: doesn't make sense to me. And it's our people. And
Speaker 3: that's why when people say get mad and say yo,
Speaker 3: Joe Biden wrote the crime bill, I have to really
Speaker 3: push back and say, I get it is the worst
Speaker 3: shit ever. But a lot of our people wanted that
Speaker 3: crime built. It was our people in the community and
Speaker 3: said lock them people up. They the worst ship, get
Speaker 3: them up. And this is what happens when you look
Speaker 3: at when you go online and you see the responses
Speaker 3: of all these people saying, put this little boy in
Speaker 3: jail for thirty one.
Speaker 2: We're gearing up as a community for a crime build
Speaker 2: to come down again because we are pushing and I'm
Speaker 2: talking about from elected officials and leaders and pastors and
Speaker 2: people with influence all the way to folks on social media,
Speaker 2: which is a mixture of people we know and people
Speaker 2: who are acting like there are us and they're not.
Speaker 2: We are gearing up to towards another crime build type
Speaker 2: of situation around violence, interruption and drugs and what have you.
Speaker 2: I would say that what you are speaking to right now, yes,
Speaker 2: I think it's important for you to keep saying it,
Speaker 2: But I don't think many people who are the ones
Speaker 2: who are pushing back against what you're saying, or those
Speaker 2: who are just basically saying lock them up, I personally
Speaker 2: don't think that they will ever get it or shift
Speaker 2: their mindset to understand that the people you're talking about
Speaker 2: who wanted the crime buil in whatever year that was,
Speaker 2: those people didn't want a crime build. They wanted to
Speaker 2: be safe. And we've been taught that unitive punishment is
Speaker 2: the only answer. We have not been taught to advocate
Speaker 2: for stronger communities to deal with violence, drugs, and other
Speaker 2: issues that relate to poverty. We've been taught that the
Speaker 2: immediate response is to go towards law enforcement and again
Speaker 2: punitive measures. That is a result of being enslaved, and
Speaker 2: an enslavement if you did something, no matter what it was,
Speaker 2: you could just suck your teeth and get slapped, beat,
Speaker 2: locked away, raped. We still carry that mindset. It has
Speaker 2: been taught to us. When we went to Africa, we
Speaker 2: learned about the villages and it does not mean that
Speaker 2: if someone committed an egregious act in the village that
Speaker 2: there was not war, fights and punishment that existed. But
Speaker 2: that was not the way of raising children, beating them.
Speaker 2: And the first thing that comes to mind is what
Speaker 2: is the harshest response that you can have to the
Speaker 2: things that young people or all people do that's wrong.
Speaker 2: And we've been disconnected from our culture so much that
Speaker 2: we don't even know what it looks like to be
Speaker 2: a community that takes a child who looks challenged and
Speaker 2: try to work on dealing with their issues among ourselves.
Speaker 2: It doesn't mean that there should not be consequences, but
Speaker 2: we jump to consequences before even finding out what are
Speaker 2: the circumstances, so we are beyond. It's the same thing
Speaker 2: with the Krishan rock thing. We are beyond circumstances and
Speaker 2: already at consequences. That's the way in which we have
Speaker 2: been taught. And it is something that you know, it's
Speaker 2: a chain that's been around our next for a long
Speaker 2: time that even I, even you, all of us fall
Speaker 2: into sometimes believing that, oh you disrespected me. So now
Speaker 2: I'm going to lash out in these different ways. And
Speaker 2: it is it is, It is an unlearning that we're
Speaker 2: all trying to do to say or not we all
Speaker 2: of it, I mean, in our space and until freedom,
Speaker 2: we're trying to unlearn that where we can actually have
Speaker 2: communication or understanding that puts us it makes us on comfortable,
Speaker 2: but it's necessary. So you know, I don't think those
Speaker 2: people will change from that because they don't know, because
Speaker 2: they have not well let me say again, going back
Speaker 2: to for Sean, it's not that they don't know, because
Speaker 2: they've been many of them given grace. Carl Russell, same situation.
Speaker 2: People want grace for the Pooky Ray Ray and their
Speaker 2: family members t T and Leelee.
Speaker 3: They want to free Jojo, to free my grandson. Please
Speaker 3: bring let my grandson come o Carley.
Speaker 2: And the grandson shot somebody and the person was harmed
Speaker 2: and they still want there to be grace.
Speaker 3: For those The crazy things to me is that Another
Speaker 3: thing I wanted to say is there are people who
Speaker 3: have committed murder that they let I went to I
Speaker 3: was in the courthouse, you know, for my friend the
Speaker 3: other day, and it was it was like five or different,
Speaker 3: six different murder cases where they knew the people committed
Speaker 3: murder and they let them say that, Well, we'll give
Speaker 3: you twenty years, we'll let you get fifteen for manslaughter.
Speaker 3: But you want a kid who didn't shoot nobody, didn't
Speaker 3: physically harm anybody, who probably was stealing out of desperation,
Speaker 3: to do thirty years, And you think that makes sense?
Speaker 3: How does the justice? How do people rationalize those things?
Speaker 3: It doesn't. It doesn't even make sense. It's not even
Speaker 3: a rational thought in.
Speaker 2: America has never made sense. So you know, for our kids,
Speaker 2: I promise you this. I promised you this. While they
Speaker 2: are absolutely white kids and white men and women in prison,
Speaker 2: we know the numbers are far and few between. And
Speaker 2: I promise you that the same robberies, the same drugs,
Speaker 2: the same violence, the same shit has happened. Has somebody
Speaker 2: found grace for their own, for their own and so
Speaker 2: please anyway. I you know, I don't have I lose
Speaker 2: faith in people every now and then it comes back,
Speaker 2: but I lose it as.
Speaker 3: I do too it. I just get so confused just looking,
Speaker 3: you know, because I would I my my My major
Speaker 3: reason for posting it's actually giving a warning to kids,
Speaker 3: letting them know what's going on, Like this is what
Speaker 3: they'll do to you, Like you're out here running around
Speaker 3: doing this, They're gonna roof you. You know. They they
Speaker 3: don't give it. They don't give a damn about you,
Speaker 3: you know. And so and I understood that, but just
Speaker 3: see how many of our people that was like, that's
Speaker 3: good for him, that's right, Lock them up. He ain't
Speaker 3: no good anywhere. I blame his mama. But and I'm
Speaker 3: just like, damn, we don't have any level just for
Speaker 3: a child who's who's front two lover is not even developed.
Speaker 3: I don't even the ship that I was doing at fifteen,
Speaker 3: I don't even understand. Like when I sit there and
Speaker 3: thinking about shit I've done at fifteen, I'm it's no
Speaker 3: way that I would have done even remotely did some
Speaker 3: shit like that five years later, you know what I stand.
Speaker 3: I'm saying. So when we as grown people actually take
Speaker 3: ourselves out of our own reality to we can't look
Speaker 3: back and say, damn, I did a lot of dumb
Speaker 3: shit at fourteen and fifteen, I just dumb shit at
Speaker 3: nineteen and twenty, you know, when we can't say that
Speaker 3: and we're wishing all of that shit on somebody. Fifteen
Speaker 3: because we were able to either rise above it get
Speaker 3: away with the ship we did. Nobody caught us all, like,
Speaker 3: it's so crazy to me, the mind state that we
Speaker 3: deal with, it's just fucked up. But like you said,
Speaker 3: that's what we are. And with that said, you know,
Speaker 3: another brilliant episode. Shout out to doctor Harper and his
Speaker 3: insight on DEI. You know, we definitely got to pay
Speaker 3: attention to that because.
Speaker 2: Than sob said, DEI means diversity, equity and inclusion, which
Speaker 2: is generally a practice in corporations and in education.
Speaker 3: They try to pacify us what they wanted to pacify us.
Speaker 3: Everybody had a DEI job during the George Floyd murder,
Speaker 3: everybody we're gonna get, come on, we're gonna hire everybody had.
Speaker 2: They also fire people that a lot of them are
Speaker 2: not qualify for the world exactly.
Speaker 3: They did everything they just wanted to appease everybody. But
Speaker 3: now you know they don't care if it's you know, diversity, equity,
Speaker 3: inclusion of more. Fuck y'all we got, We're going for Trump.
Speaker 3: We got the scientists we want. That's I'm telling you,
Speaker 3: that's all that we're going back to ship make America great.
Speaker 3: America was great when it wasn't. No dr That's how
Speaker 3: they feel and that's that's what we are right now.
Speaker 3: So reality's situation. Man, we gotta give up and buckle up. Man.
Speaker 3: So with that said, man, another episode, brilliant episode. I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna always be right, Tamika D. Mallories and I
Speaker 3: could always be wrong, but we will both always and
Speaker 3: I mean always be authentic.
Speaker 2: Listen to Street Politicians on the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: And catch us every single Wednesday for the video version
Speaker 3: of Street Politicians on Eyewomen dot TV. That's how we
Speaker 3: need