Speaker 1: Hello, I'm Shannon Sharp, host of Club Sha Shay. I
Speaker 1: am the proprietor and the host of Club Sha Shay.
Speaker 1: And my guest really doesn't need any introduction. He's a
Speaker 1: sociology professor. He's a reverend. He's a friend. He can
Speaker 1: watch politically, about religion, about race, about the hip hop culture.
Speaker 1: And he's also the author of the book Tears. I
Speaker 1: cannot stop, Doctor Michael Eric Dyson. All my life, the grinding,
Speaker 1: all my life, sacrifice, hustle beck Price, one slice got
Speaker 1: the dice, swap all my life. I've been grinding all
Speaker 1: my life, rush all my life and grinning all my life. Sacrifice,
Speaker 1: hustle back Price, one slice got the dice, swap all
Speaker 1: my life. I've been grinding all my life. Hello, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Club Sha Shay. I am your host, Shannon Sharp,
Speaker 1: and today's guest is extraordinary. He's a sociology professor at
Speaker 1: Georgetown University. He's hippop culture, he's sports culture. He's a minister.
Speaker 1: He's a pastor. He's a reverend. Doc When you when
Speaker 1: I prefer when I refer to you, do you prefer
Speaker 1: to be called a minister, a pastor, or reverend. Cha's friends. Friend.
Speaker 1: That's good enough for me. Great friend, and I don't
Speaker 1: use the word I don't use that word friend lightly.
Speaker 1: Great friend. We have conversation, we pick up the phone
Speaker 1: and talk to each other. We're just not friends because
Speaker 1: we're doing this interview. We actually converse all the telephone
Speaker 1: frequently often, so people need to understand the depth of
Speaker 1: our relationship. Absolutely, I'm so honored. And that is telling
Speaker 1: the absolute truth. And we talk back and forth. I
Speaker 1: learned so much. I get it off for free. I
Speaker 1: ain't gotta pay for it. And look at I get
Speaker 1: it off for free. Like I said, Doc, thanks for
Speaker 1: coming on the day. And let's jump right into it.
Speaker 1: The current state of America. And I think the biggest
Speaker 1: thing that we see is the racial divide between the
Speaker 1: black minority community and our white counterparts. And we see
Speaker 1: the unarmed killing of black men and women in America.
Speaker 1: George Floyd tipped it off. And then we see the
Speaker 1: Blake situation. We see all my Brooks, we see Sandra Bland,
Speaker 1: we see Walter Scott dot We can go on and on.
Speaker 1: What do you think got us here? No, it's a
Speaker 1: great point, and you laid them out there. Richard Brooks
Speaker 1: I'm an our very George Floyd. I mean, and and
Speaker 1: unfortunately and tragically, I mean, when we add Sandra Blake
Speaker 1: or he of Boyd or Brianna Taylor, we can We're
Speaker 1: gonna add more names after this appears. That's part of
Speaker 1: the tragedy, right right. And what God is here is
Speaker 1: the persistence of white supremacy. What God is here is
Speaker 1: that from the slave plantation, when the slave patrols were
Speaker 1: sent out after black bodies, bring him back if they escape,
Speaker 1: bring them back if they're out late at night, because
Speaker 1: you know, black people could get a pass to go
Speaker 1: to visit their girlfriends or wives or husbands and the
Speaker 1: like from plantation to plantation, but if they were disobeying
Speaker 1: any rules, or if the slave owner didn't like what
Speaker 1: they were doing, they would send those darned slave patrols out.
Speaker 1: They were the predecessors to the police. So in early
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds in Virginia and other places, the police have
Speaker 1: essentially been trying to arrest black mobility and to stop
Speaker 1: black freedom. And as bad as that sounds, we've been
Speaker 1: there from day one seventeen hundred to what's going on
Speaker 1: now in twenty to twenty. But doc then they didn't
Speaker 1: have rules and regulation, get them back by any means necessary,
Speaker 1: and if they disobeyed, you have the right to use forth,
Speaker 1: even if that fourth is deadly forth. Now, you would
Speaker 1: think that as we progressed as a society, at least
Speaker 1: I'd like to think we've progressed as a society, that
Speaker 1: the rules would not be in today's society like it
Speaker 1: was back But back then, why can't they see us
Speaker 1: as equal? Why can't they treat us it's equal? Why
Speaker 1: must they use deadly forth as a first option instead
Speaker 1: of a last resort? You and I, as you eloquently
Speaker 1: just put it there, you framed it. We should be
Speaker 1: able to have evolution and progress of the perception of
Speaker 1: white people of black people. But is it really any progress?
Speaker 1: Is there? I mean, they're still killing us in the
Speaker 1: same way. Yeah, as you said, back on the plantation,
Speaker 1: they had some ostensible rules, but not really. You know, now,
Speaker 1: if the slave master got mad you killed one of
Speaker 1: my best negroes, I'm gonna you better you owe me.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you what. The only time reparations has
Speaker 1: basically been paid is for that you cost me some
Speaker 1: labor with this negro that you messed up and you
Speaker 1: hurt his arm, you hurt his leg, or you killed him.
Speaker 1: I want reparations. Ain't that a trip? So the reality
Speaker 1: is is that we've been dealing with this from the
Speaker 1: get goal that you would think there would be rules,
Speaker 1: but qualified immunity means is back on slave plantation side.
Speaker 1: Qualified immunity means that the Constitution gives to local authorities,
Speaker 1: especially police people, an exemption from personally being liable for,
Speaker 1: say a murder or police brutality. So even when these
Speaker 1: cops do it, people keep asking, don't they know they're
Speaker 1: being recorded? What difference do it make if at the
Speaker 1: end of the day they know that there is no
Speaker 1: prosecutor that is really going to hold them to account,
Speaker 1: and that very few people in the government are willing
Speaker 1: to step up and to suggest that what they do
Speaker 1: is murder or manslaughter or the like. So we know
Speaker 1: we're living in a society where, yes, you're absolutely right,
Speaker 1: the rules, the conventions, the laws, what police are supposed
Speaker 1: to do and not do. We are supposed to be
Speaker 1: recognized as full citizens of the American polity. We are
Speaker 1: supposed to be recipients of the full benefits of American society.
Speaker 1: But it ain't so, as my man said, it ain't
Speaker 1: necessarily so. The things in the Bible, they just might
Speaker 1: be libel, and that's what he was saying. Play and
Speaker 1: the stuff in the law books might just be something
Speaker 1: you cooked up because it doesn't apply to black people.
Speaker 1: And even if it's on the books, if it doesn't
Speaker 1: get applied when you are a face to face to
Speaker 1: a police person, it's a piece of paper that has
Speaker 1: no meaning. Because when you mentioned qualified immunity and you
Speaker 1: laid it out, it means that the servant, a civil servant,
Speaker 1: can't be held libel unless you can prove that it
Speaker 1: was so egregious that he that he violated you in
Speaker 1: the most in the most heinous of terms. But they've
Speaker 1: made that burden so hot dog, there's no way on
Speaker 1: a consistent basis that you'll be able to clear that bar.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't clear the bar, You can't clear
Speaker 1: the drinks, you can't clear the bartender, you claim't clear
Speaker 1: the darn establishment. Ain't none you gonna clear. To give
Speaker 1: you an example, tell us when it has been done.
Speaker 1: I mean, if it has been, it's extremely rare. The
Speaker 1: bottom line is, it's been very rare that cops have
Speaker 1: been held to account. When they fired those four cops
Speaker 1: that killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, that was a rare thing.
Speaker 1: A few of the cops have been fired here and there,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, qualified immunity has exempted them
Speaker 1: from the kind of stringent barriers that you and I
Speaker 1: would face and stringent penalties that we would confront if
Speaker 1: we had done something even looking like you heard a
Speaker 1: police person, boy, if you heard a copy in this society,
Speaker 1: and God bless them. I don't want anybody to be hurt.
Speaker 1: I don't want cops to be hurt. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, if they if you hurt their eyelashes, there
Speaker 1: is a hunt throughout the land. One of them hurts
Speaker 1: our children, our mothers, our fathers, our brothers, our sisters,
Speaker 1: our aunts, our uncles, our cousins, there is hardly anything
Speaker 1: to be done, and they go on with impunity and
Speaker 1: go back to work and continue to all their salaries. Doc.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was when I was a kid
Speaker 1: growing up, and I would hear about these because this
Speaker 1: was never and this was in Chicago. You hear about
Speaker 1: it in in la you hear it about it in Detroit.
Speaker 1: And I remember when my grandmother my grandfather would watch
Speaker 1: something like this on television. The first thing they would
Speaker 1: say is what did he do to cause the police
Speaker 1: to do that? And now that since we've had the
Speaker 1: advent of cell phone, we know now there are a
Speaker 1: lot of times they didn't do anything to justify dyeing.
Speaker 1: They didn't do anything to justify the treatment at the
Speaker 1: hands of the police industry. I so disagree with you.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you what they did. They breathe, They breathe,
Speaker 1: They existed. They were black and speaking. They were black
Speaker 1: and human. They were black and half the nerve to
Speaker 1: look at a cop. They were black and halth the
Speaker 1: nerve to inhale an exhale they were And my god,
Speaker 1: don't get to the point of I can't breathe, let
Speaker 1: me breathe. Oh my god, you're off limits. And I'm
Speaker 1: being facetious, brother Shannon, But you know, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: There is no provocation. There is no you know, thing
Speaker 1: that they've done to precipitate or warrant the kind of nastiness,
Speaker 1: the vicious reprisal, the hatred, the taser, the gun, the
Speaker 1: stun gun, the rubber bullet, the baton. Nothing you and
Speaker 1: I both have been subject to that. I know I
Speaker 1: have been. I know you have been. I mean for
Speaker 1: no good reason, stopping us, throwing me against the car,
Speaker 1: calling me the N word, putting the gun to my head,
Speaker 1: knocking me on the ground. And I'm a well behaved negro.
Speaker 1: I'm not one of these causing no trouble, you know.
Speaker 1: And what difference does it make though? The ones who
Speaker 1: quote cause trouble get treated the same way as those
Speaker 1: who don't. So you're absolutely right, no provocation and what
Speaker 1: these films show, you know. And I get so upset
Speaker 1: with some of my white brothers and sisters. I wish
Speaker 1: you would just obey. Let me show you the white
Speaker 1: people who didn't obey you, mother, yell and up. We
Speaker 1: saw that the other day, white boys getting in his
Speaker 1: getting in this trunk, and the man with the with
Speaker 1: the gun. If that would pa, Pa, Pa pa, that
Speaker 1: would have held his to white T shirt and then
Speaker 1: shot him in the back seven times. I know that
Speaker 1: would never happen, that a cop would hold a white
Speaker 1: T shirt and then shoot the guy seven times. And
Speaker 1: God bless him, he lives, but he's paralyzed. Members waist down,
Speaker 1: white boys, white men, white girls, white people, white women,
Speaker 1: white white folk with impunity. They have qualified immunity, it
Speaker 1: seems themselves that no matter how horribly they misbehaved, most
Speaker 1: cops are not going to over respond, shoot them, or
Speaker 1: engage in other nefarious and violent activities that would cost
Speaker 1: them their lives or make them more vulnerable. I've seen
Speaker 1: white boys with machetes, right, I mean literal white boys.
Speaker 1: I know I don't want white men to get upset
Speaker 1: his he called us a white boy, Mike all him.
Speaker 1: I'm talking white boys under seventeen. I've seen white men
Speaker 1: with machetes and knives come at police people and have
Speaker 1: no reprisal, no consequence. They try to talk to them,
Speaker 1: or they run. I've seen cops run. You saw that
Speaker 1: that's in the car and runs because he's so afraid
Speaker 1: because he doesn't want to hurt the person. And you
Speaker 1: got the gun. You could have shot that person. So
Speaker 1: we know that there's a different standard of perception. We
Speaker 1: are existing in different universes of perception, rotating on different
Speaker 1: act seas. And you know, we saw this in the O. J.
Speaker 1: Simpson case. Y'all saw one thing, we saw another thing.
Speaker 1: Y'all hear this, we hear that, and never the Twain
Speaker 1: show meet. And I'm afraid we haven't progressed too much
Speaker 1: more even since then in ninety five. Why is it
Speaker 1: is that they're able to show such great with strength
Speaker 1: at strength as you mentioned it, when dealing with our
Speaker 1: white comma parts as opposed to it's hard for the well.
Speaker 1: And the thing that it hearns me, it makes me
Speaker 1: seeth is that when they say I don't see color,
Speaker 1: stop lying, because if you don't see color, you don't
Speaker 1: need to be a policeman. You can't drive because that
Speaker 1: means you're color blife and you run stop size and
Speaker 1: you run red lights. So we know that you see color,
Speaker 1: knowledge that you see the color, and the stimuli black
Speaker 1: skin versus white skin trigger something different. It's a collective unconscious.
Speaker 1: It's muscle memory. I wasn't joking when I said this
Speaker 1: tracks back to seventeen hundreds. If you've been doing that
Speaker 1: stuff repetitively and repeatedly over a couple three centuries, you
Speaker 1: know it's deeply ingrained. And then you pass on those
Speaker 1: stories and you see what your grandfather did and your
Speaker 1: great grandfather did, and they tell you stories, and your
Speaker 1: great great great great grandfather told your great great great
Speaker 1: grandfather and your grandfather what the deal was, and they
Speaker 1: pass that on to you. It's a collective inheritance. It's
Speaker 1: like the Declaration of Independence. It's a document that articulates
Speaker 1: noble ideals, and in this case it articulates ignoble ideals,
Speaker 1: and people absorb that stuff. Man. And as you said,
Speaker 1: the stimuli of the skin, you know whether it's conscious
Speaker 1: or not. And at this point, what difference does it
Speaker 1: make whether you are unconsciously biased or consciously biased. The
Speaker 1: thing is, you still got the same results. Your intentionality
Speaker 1: doesn't exhaust consequence. What your intent was. My past used
Speaker 1: to tell me a mosquito don't want nothing but blood,
Speaker 1: but it can end up giving you malaria. It's intent,
Speaker 1: draw blood, it's consequence fill your body with malaria. So
Speaker 1: the reality is is that many of these cops don't
Speaker 1: even understand that when they say I don't see color.
Speaker 1: First of all, you lying, as you said. Secondly, if
Speaker 1: you don't see color, that means you don't see responsibility,
Speaker 1: because if you saw racial color and racial identity, you'd
Speaker 1: have to see the way in which white and black
Speaker 1: and brown and yellow have been mistreated in this country
Speaker 1: or treated differently, that white people have been treated differently
Speaker 1: than black, brown, red, and yellow people. So how convenient
Speaker 1: you know, I don't see color, Oh, when it comes
Speaker 1: time to taking care of your responsibility, I don't see color.
Speaker 1: So therefore I don't believe in a firm devection. I
Speaker 1: don't see color. Therefore I don't believe in reparations. I
Speaker 1: don't see color. Therefore I don't believe in compensating for
Speaker 1: historical forms of oppression that have been directed toward African
Speaker 1: American people. So how convenient. When you don't see color,
Speaker 1: you don't see responsibility, you don't see culpability, you don't
Speaker 1: see complicity, and you don't see how you've benefited from
Speaker 1: being a white guy or a white woman for four
Speaker 1: hundred and some odd years. So when you don't see color,
Speaker 1: it's a way of denying your responsibility as a citizen
Speaker 1: of these United States of America. But doc, how do
Speaker 1: we get them to see when you brought when you
Speaker 1: brought the slaves here in sixteen nineteen, and you told
Speaker 1: him he was less than, you treated him less than.
Speaker 1: You robbed him of his dignity, you robbed him of
Speaker 1: his humanity, You put him in Chaine. You said this
Speaker 1: is what you are, and then you told him, no
Speaker 1: matter what, you can never be equal. Two Roger twenty
Speaker 1: drest Scott said a slave can never be a citizen.
Speaker 1: That's what he said. Plessy versus Ferguson said, you can
Speaker 1: have separate, we can do, we do equal, but it's
Speaker 1: got to be separate. So it's like when I tell
Speaker 1: people a TV is only gonna be a TV because
Speaker 1: that's what we've been told for seventy five years. That's
Speaker 1: what it is. Well, if you tell someone they're less there,
Speaker 1: they're treated less there for four hundred years, how do
Speaker 1: you ever see that person as equal to You can't.
Speaker 1: That's the point. And people try to deny it. They
Speaker 1: try to put it away as a fallacy or a mythology.
Speaker 1: Is not true, it's not real, But it is how
Speaker 1: you gonna tell folk all of a sudden to treat
Speaker 1: people like equals who were never seen as equals, the
Speaker 1: people who were never seen as you know, regarded as
Speaker 1: your peer. And as you said the Supreme Court justice
Speaker 1: in the mid eighteen hundreds, he said in that Dress
Speaker 1: Scott case that black people have no rights, that white
Speaker 1: people are boundary respect and he said, this ain't for you.
Speaker 1: The Constitution wasn't written for you. Declaration of Independence wasn't
Speaker 1: written for you. You You don't he didn't lie. He didn't lie.
Speaker 1: The up wait wait line, Where where the lie? Thatt?
Speaker 1: I mean? Because first of all, the Folding Fathers they
Speaker 1: were all white. They all owned land, and the majority
Speaker 1: of them had slaves. So when they wrote the Constitution,
Speaker 1: they were writing the constitution for people that looked like Bill,
Speaker 1: that were like Bill slave had no land. They weren't,
Speaker 1: They weren't free for the most part. So how am
Speaker 1: I going to write a document for you when I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about you? You better believe it. And they
Speaker 1: and they promoted it. When they wrote that Declaration Independence,
Speaker 1: they put it on Plantation Graham. They didn't have Instagram
Speaker 1: back then. They had Plantation Graham on Plantation Graham and
Speaker 1: on Twitter. And they and they sent that darn thing
Speaker 1: out there with their quills and their pins and their documents,
Speaker 1: and they articulated their beliefs that black people were subserving.
Speaker 1: Read the Declaration of Independence where it talks about savages
Speaker 1: that are Indians and black people who are disloyal. This
Speaker 1: is in the document itself. So when you read the
Speaker 1: founding documents. As you said, three fourths of the signers
Speaker 1: of the Declaration of Independence owned enslaved people. And not
Speaker 1: only did they own the enslaved people, they denied black
Speaker 1: people and all women and people who are non property
Speaker 1: holders the ability to vote. So you you wrote the
Speaker 1: darned document all people are created equal, all men, but
Speaker 1: all women. All people create all except women, and except
Speaker 1: black people and except nonproperty holders. You were you were
Speaker 1: putting an asterisk on there to begin with. And whenever
Speaker 1: you read something with an asterist, you know your ass
Speaker 1: is at risk. So you know you're the one. If
Speaker 1: you're the one who is the victim of that asterisk,
Speaker 1: you are vulnerable and you will not be able to
Speaker 1: sustain an argument about the necessity for your equal treatment.
Speaker 1: So from the very beginning, it's been deeply entrenched and
Speaker 1: deeply rooted. So of course people are not going to
Speaker 1: just know overnight that hey, we're supposed to treat them equally.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to regard them with equal passion and equal
Speaker 1: observation and equal regard that they are our brothers and sisters,
Speaker 1: and what we have they should have naw, naw. And
Speaker 1: even when it formally ended with Jim Crow and the
Speaker 1: sixty four Voting sixty four Civil Rights Bill, sixty five
Speaker 1: Voting Rights Act, sixty eight Housing Act, all kind of
Speaker 1: informal stuff, all kinds of stuff. Even if you're denied
Speaker 1: the law, the Old Testament, the law, you still had
Speaker 1: the spiritual realities that were persistent. Although even up north
Speaker 1: people think, oh they had it better than those down south.
Speaker 1: They were doing horrible things up north as well. So
Speaker 1: to be black in America met you caught hell. White
Speaker 1: people didn't see you differently, And to this day look
Speaker 1: at that. I don't know if you saw that. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was on Twitter or some social
Speaker 1: media where the two white guys are because you in word,
Speaker 1: you in word, you in don't come this far you
Speaker 1: in word, I mean use it about nineteen to twenty times.
Speaker 1: The cop is sitting right there. The cop doesn't say
Speaker 1: stop calling these people the in word. The cop doesn't intervene.
Speaker 1: This is one of them. I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was either Portland or maybe no. I was outside of Kenosha,
Speaker 1: I think where the bac of Blake happened, and there
Speaker 1: was no attempt to interrupt this. Why because the cop
Speaker 1: is part and parcel, woof and warp of the same
Speaker 1: system and structure that reinforces white supremacy. We see it
Speaker 1: from the White House with Stephen Miller and white nationalism
Speaker 1: down to the everyday level of the cop. We see
Speaker 1: it from Donald Trump who goes to Kenosha and doesn't
Speaker 1: meet with Jacob Blake, lies and said he met with
Speaker 1: their past to day, got one dog, they don't go.
Speaker 1: Jared's sorry, he got one and you're lied about that.
Speaker 1: And then you you justify a seventeen year old allegedly
Speaker 1: who who murdered who allegedly murdered two people and shot
Speaker 1: a third, and you defend him, but you call black
Speaker 1: protesters thugs. Yes, look at the inability of many white
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters to separate themselves from the vicious white
Speaker 1: supremacist ideology that permeates their unconscious. Can't even help it, do.
Speaker 1: You said something very interesting that people thought the North
Speaker 1: was different than a South. But what they failed to
Speaker 1: realize that it was America. In America treated everybody the same.
Speaker 1: And they tried to deny blacks, not try to, they
Speaker 1: did deny blacks the right for fair work, to vote,
Speaker 1: fair housing, civil rights, civil liberties. So this notion that,
Speaker 1: oh everybody, because I read where doctor King he really
Speaker 1: apartment in nineteen sixty six in Chicago, and he said
Speaker 1: the bitry all that he got in the North was
Speaker 1: worse than what he got in the South, and he
Speaker 1: didn't know if the non violent protests in the north
Speaker 1: would work like he did in the south. Come on
Speaker 1: head back. He got hit up head, hit up side
Speaker 1: the head with a rock. He was out there, and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember that, Cicero. I've never in my
Speaker 1: life seen such violence as I've seen in Chicago. I'm
Speaker 1: eating there. It was Doc. He had been in Mississippi, Alabama,
Speaker 1: George bull Connor done debt with all these and up south,
Speaker 1: because that's where he was up south, in the north,
Speaker 1: running an apartment on the west side of Chicago, trying
Speaker 1: to highlight the criminal levels of poverty that were in
Speaker 1: this particular area and showing that black people were not
Speaker 1: capable of enjoying the same freedoms as their white brothers
Speaker 1: and sisters up up north, in a way that was
Speaker 1: proclaimed even though we know down south they didn't get much,
Speaker 1: but they were honest about it. Up north, they led
Speaker 1: about it. Remember what they used to say that down
Speaker 1: south they love black people as individuals but not a group.
Speaker 1: But up north they love you as a group but
Speaker 1: not individuals to my wife. So it's very interesting how
Speaker 1: that played itself out in the physical geography, in the
Speaker 1: political geography of discrimination and racism in this country. You
Speaker 1: know what doctor I find very interesting is that we
Speaker 1: hear our white counterparts said, okay, as long as your
Speaker 1: peace were protesting, that's fine. What doctor King peacefully protests.
Speaker 1: He still had water cannons turned on him, he still
Speaker 1: had dogs unleashed on him. He's still got set upside
Speaker 1: his head. And then when black started riding about what
Speaker 1: happened in Harlem and what happened in Detroit and what
Speaker 1: happened in the la, well, we won't hear you because
Speaker 1: you're destroyed. So what is it that we can to
Speaker 1: get your attention, attention to help us advance, to give
Speaker 1: us equality, to see that we get justice when we've
Speaker 1: been wrong. That's what we can do. Just kill ourselves,
Speaker 1: because the point is they don't want us, they don't
Speaker 1: want to deal with us, They want to grapple with us.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about all white brothers and sister, I'm
Speaker 1: talk about the ones with power. I'm tired of white
Speaker 1: people saying, well, it ain't all of us. It's enough
Speaker 1: for you to make our lives miserable. Though, it's enough
Speaker 1: of you who are in positions of power. The ones
Speaker 1: who love us don't seem never be the cops. The
Speaker 1: ones who love us don't ever seem to be the
Speaker 1: president you know in many instances, or the constable or
Speaker 1: the senator. I mean, the ones who seem to have
Speaker 1: a problem with us always seem to have the power,
Speaker 1: and the ones who seem to love us don't. So
Speaker 1: the reality is that when we talk about this country
Speaker 1: and making an argument about, oh my god, if you
Speaker 1: people would protest in the right way. Note to white
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters, if the protest is making you nervous,
Speaker 1: it is effective. If you're trying to tell us how
Speaker 1: to protest, that's not an effective protest. Right. Colin Kaepernick
Speaker 1: got on your nerves, and he was effective because he
Speaker 1: got your attention because he bowed down and he talked
Speaker 1: about something that was critical to him, and y'all got upset.
Speaker 1: They treated Colin Kaepernick whords, and they treated dudes who
Speaker 1: had been he was a rape and came back in
Speaker 1: the league, or violence in the in the league, or
Speaker 1: killed somebody in the league. I mean, it's amazing. And
Speaker 1: many of those white gms really felt that he was
Speaker 1: one of the most horrible people in the NFL. This
Speaker 1: is the consequence of white blindness, white privilege, not seeing color.
Speaker 1: And so when you say, oh, if y'all would be
Speaker 1: less violent, like you said, doctor King wasn't violent at all.
Speaker 1: He taught people how to take the nastiness, to take
Speaker 1: the blows. He taught people how to take the bows.
Speaker 1: Think about this. Normally we had what we call self present.
Speaker 1: If somebody is hitting on you, I'm gonna try and
Speaker 1: fight you back. I'm trying to get you off me
Speaker 1: by any means necessary. So if I'm close to a brick,
Speaker 1: i won't pick that brick up, and I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: to stop you from hitting me upside my head. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to get you to turn that water Canada.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to get that dog to unleash me.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do that. But that's not what he taught
Speaker 1: those That's not what they did. No, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: He taught them discipline, moral, and ethical self regard restraint
Speaker 1: they practice. White people would come and call them in
Speaker 1: words and all that and unleashed dogs. And they were practicing.
Speaker 1: So then when they really felt it, it's like y'all
Speaker 1: when you were out there Hall of Famer, out there
Speaker 1: on y'all were on the on the on the practice
Speaker 1: squad I had doing your thing, and every day on
Speaker 1: the gridird. You know, two days they were running, two
Speaker 1: days suicide seals. Basically, uh, to try to be able
Speaker 1: to deal with white folks who would come at them.
Speaker 1: So where is this notion that if you do it
Speaker 1: the right way it will be accepted. The white ministers
Speaker 1: of Birmingham, Alabama, one rabbi and seven I think Protestant
Speaker 1: ministers wrote a letter to King. You're going too fast,
Speaker 1: You're asking for too much. Don't don't, don't come into
Speaker 1: our neighborhood. This is non violent, so that proves your point.
Speaker 1: The letter to Birmingham Jail was written from King in
Speaker 1: a response to eight clergymen seven or eight clergymen who
Speaker 1: were upset with the non violent protests of the black
Speaker 1: folk in Birmingham. Son, no matter what you do, they
Speaker 1: gonna be upset. They gonna write letters, they're gonna say
Speaker 1: they ain't the right way. And the bottom line is
Speaker 1: that often white brothers and sisters didn't do anything about
Speaker 1: our suffering until there was looting in violence. That's the tragedy.
Speaker 1: And that's not on the backs of those who were
Speaker 1: so upset that they did that. That's on the backs
Speaker 1: who claim to be American, who claim to be citizens
Speaker 1: of conscience, but who can't hear Black people unless a
Speaker 1: building is burning. And then you try to pathologize them
Speaker 1: and say that they are ridiculous and that they have
Speaker 1: no morals. And yet every day you are sustaining a
Speaker 1: culture that disregards their humanity and that provokes them ultimately
Speaker 1: to engage in sometimes rather desperate activities because they've done
Speaker 1: a great job of portraying blacks by their worst, by
Speaker 1: want us, but want us to look at the cops
Speaker 1: by their best. I say, you can't have it like that.
Speaker 1: You can't say, because someone has done something, all blacks
Speaker 1: are like that. But you want us to take the
Speaker 1: cop that helps someone cross the road, or changes the tire,
Speaker 1: or buys diapers for a family that needs. That is
Speaker 1: the need. You can't expect us to judge you by
Speaker 1: your best. Why you judge us by worst? That's brilliant,
Speaker 1: and that's what they do. You see, the bad things
Speaker 1: that black people do under you know, are seen as
Speaker 1: representative of black people. Correct. The great stuff we do
Speaker 1: is seen as exceptional. Oh that's Shannon Sharp. He's a
Speaker 1: genius and you are. He's amazing and you are. But
Speaker 1: the thing is is that you know that that Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: he's great. There are a lot of Barack Obama's. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of black people who have been doing
Speaker 1: the kind of things that he did, and he's an
Speaker 1: extraordinary man. But there were people before him who were
Speaker 1: capable of being president. Jesse Jackson could have been president,
Speaker 1: Kara Mosley Broun could have been president, Charlot Chisholm could
Speaker 1: have been president. So that there are many other black
Speaker 1: people who are capable of doing great things, but they
Speaker 1: don't get the opportunity. So the great stuff we do
Speaker 1: is seen as exceptional. The bad stuff we do is
Speaker 1: seen as representative, whereas, as you said, is exactly opposite
Speaker 1: with white brothers and sisters. Hey, it's a bad apphole.
Speaker 1: It's not the tree. Nah, your tree is jacked up
Speaker 1: and you're gonna have to cut it down or get
Speaker 1: some different limbs to be sold off of there, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to plan in more fertile ground. Do
Speaker 1: help me understand this, doc, and your sociology professor. You've
Speaker 1: studied this a long time. Why is it that my
Speaker 1: black skin and I and I've said this. I said,
Speaker 1: if you look at my black skin as a threat,
Speaker 1: you will never see me as non threatening. If you
Speaker 1: see me as and that's true. If you think my
Speaker 1: black skin is it puts you at fear. But you're
Speaker 1: more fearful of me being black than a seventeen year
Speaker 1: old white kid walking down the streets with an a
Speaker 1: R fifteen. Now it's being reported that when they attacked him,
Speaker 1: he had already shot the individuals they were trying to
Speaker 1: get the gun from him. First of all, he's seventeen.
Speaker 1: He shouldn't have an AR fifteen. Second of all, how
Speaker 1: did he get there? Mama brought him right? I mean, here,
Speaker 1: here's the point. You're point is so well taken that
Speaker 1: Trump and him said, well, he's trying to trying to
Speaker 1: protect himself, trying to protect himself, trying to keep himself
Speaker 1: from hers away. And as you've already pointed out, he's
Speaker 1: already done the dastardly deed. The police let him walk
Speaker 1: right by. They got up to another black man right,
Speaker 1: look at it. Look at it. A representative Clay I
Speaker 1: can't think of his last name now who. Facebook had
Speaker 1: to remove his post because he said, you come here
Speaker 1: with your guns, and he put a picture of black
Speaker 1: men up the ones that the Black militia down in
Speaker 1: Kentucky that was defending those who were protesting for Brianna Taylor.
Speaker 1: He said, well, I'll have no conscience about laying you down.
Speaker 1: This is a sitting congressman. And wait a minute. You're
Speaker 1: in an open carry state, but they have guns, so
Speaker 1: now you're gonna kill them. You're going to advertise killing them.
Speaker 1: This lets you know your point was right. You are
Speaker 1: the threat, not what you do who you are. In
Speaker 1: an open carry state where black people should be able
Speaker 1: to hold guns like anybody else. Congressman is threatening black
Speaker 1: people by saying if you come here protect and particularly
Speaker 1: black men, if you come here armed to the teeth,
Speaker 1: we will lay you down. We will not have any
Speaker 1: conscience and we will not have any regard for you
Speaker 1: because you will not be able to carry what you
Speaker 1: are duly licensed, and we are sworn to uphold your
Speaker 1: ability to do so. That just lets you know it
Speaker 1: doesn't apply to us. Let me give another example, since
Speaker 1: people might think, well, that's a theory. How about in
Speaker 1: an open carry state of Ohio, you roll up on
Speaker 1: a twelve year old kid. You roll up on a
Speaker 1: twelve year old kids out right, Tami right, you are
Speaker 1: out playing and you have a right. So if you
Speaker 1: roll up on this kid and you see as a gun,
Speaker 1: first of all, it's an open carry state, so why
Speaker 1: are you shooting him immediately? Secondly, did you ask the
Speaker 1: question whether it was a toy gun or not? Thirdly,
Speaker 1: they said, I think when they called the reporting, I
Speaker 1: think it's a toy gun. I don't think it's real.
Speaker 1: And he's a twelve year old kid. But this lets
Speaker 1: us know that those studies that have been done to
Speaker 1: suggest that black kids are always seen as older. If
Speaker 1: they're twelve, they're seen as eighteen. And so treat him
Speaker 1: as an adult. The grown black men like Obama, they
Speaker 1: try to treat like a kid. The kids they try
Speaker 1: to treat like an adult. I want to sit there
Speaker 1: benefit and advantage, and this is part of the tragedy
Speaker 1: and we're dealing with in America. Doc helped me understand this.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out what made a seventeen year
Speaker 1: old drive thirty minutes forty five minutes to protect buildings
Speaker 1: that work head for his family. Doc. I love whole Food,
Speaker 1: I love Target, but if they're burning it down, I
Speaker 1: ain't going down to the standing attention with my gun.
Speaker 1: They're not insurance. I let them have that unless you
Speaker 1: to walt my family, unless you vally, unless you're the
Speaker 1: Walden family. And name if my name is Shannon Bezos,
Speaker 1: I felt so right. Worth two hundred billion now first
Speaker 1: a billion man in America, So that's absolutely right. But see,
Speaker 1: this is the sense, this is the sense of elective enterprise,
Speaker 1: of whiteness. It's not about whether you own it or not.
Speaker 1: It's not about whether you own that store. What is
Speaker 1: really at stake is whiteness itself, the mythological property of
Speaker 1: white identity, and so he's there to protect it. In
Speaker 1: the same way that Dylan Ruth went to South Carolina
Speaker 1: and shot nine people in a church, saying that you
Speaker 1: people are taking over where prisons. Maybe we ain't taking
Speaker 1: over the presidency, we ain't taking over fortune five hundred companies.
Speaker 1: We ain't CEOs of those places. We don't run most
Speaker 1: colleges or universities. Where are we taking over being imprisoned
Speaker 1: in America? Disproportioned numbers of us. We might let I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, we might be in basketball, but Luke
Speaker 1: Anantius is trying to get y'all some conversation right now.
Speaker 1: Lucas said, Oh, I'm gonna hang with the brothers up
Speaker 1: in here exactly, although that Jamal were is killing the game.
Speaker 1: So so what's interesting is that is that it was
Speaker 1: this identification as a white person that under a song
Speaker 1: and listening to the President of the United States of
Speaker 1: America who is fomenting violence in this country by unleashing
Speaker 1: some of the worst, most intemperate racial beliefs, that we
Speaker 1: might be able to imagine that stuff together is a
Speaker 1: lethal cocktail. Doc what hold on? I thought that he
Speaker 1: said anytime he tweets something from his official official page,
Speaker 1: that's that's fact, that's an official statement. And then why
Speaker 1: is it that when he tweets things, when he says things,
Speaker 1: if people come out and says, well, that's not what
Speaker 1: he meant, Well, he didn't mean that, that's not true.
Speaker 1: I mean, he said, Okay, vote by in North Carolina
Speaker 1: yesterday he said, vote by mail and then go to
Speaker 1: the ballot box and vote again. Well, you can't vote twice.
Speaker 1: He was he was just playing, okay when he said
Speaker 1: when he told Sarah Sandus Huckabee that she needs to
Speaker 1: take one for the team, he was just joking. I said,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what you do. If you're on a job,
Speaker 1: if you're the boss, go tell one of your employees
Speaker 1: or tell someone. Y'all need to take one for the
Speaker 1: team so we can close this deal and see what
Speaker 1: happens to you. Come on, brother, I don't know if
Speaker 1: they knew what take one for the team means, but
Speaker 1: you and I know what take one for the team means.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's exactly right. We know what the nuanced
Speaker 1: interpretation of that is. And the thing is again they
Speaker 1: just be lying. And then Attorney General Barr said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the particular rules of that state are.
Speaker 1: You can't vote twice. Nowhere, Barr, what world are you
Speaker 1: living in? What country are you living in? There is
Speaker 1: no American state, city, or municipality where you can vote twice.
Speaker 1: This is the level of corruption and the willingness to
Speaker 1: defend Donald Trump. Well, well, we already knew what Barr
Speaker 1: when he gave his his seventeen page resume to get
Speaker 1: the job, because he believed that he believes President Trump
Speaker 1: should have absolute power, that he should be beyond reproach,
Speaker 1: and that no matter what he does, is that because
Speaker 1: he's in charge of the executive brand, he can do
Speaker 1: anything without without without persecution, without condemnation. And that's just
Speaker 1: absolutely not true. That's why they braced, that's why they
Speaker 1: got away from British rule. They didn't want the king.
Speaker 1: They hated that the king had all the power. And
Speaker 1: now this man is trying to replicate being the king.
Speaker 1: I know, Harry and Megan came over here, God bless him,
Speaker 1: but he he thinks that the king came over here
Speaker 1: and he's gonna be King George or whatever. He thinks
Speaker 1: he's gonna do what he's got to do and figure
Speaker 1: out how to do it, and that he has aught,
Speaker 1: you know, total power. But wasn't it the historian, the
Speaker 1: Lord Acton who said Howard tends to grow up absolute
Speaker 1: power corrupts absolutely at seeing this before our eyes, that
Speaker 1: this man is a neo fascist engaging in public policy
Speaker 1: as the prerogative of a personal predilection. He believes that
Speaker 1: he should be able to set the standards, do what
Speaker 1: he wants to do, and not be held to account
Speaker 1: by the law. He literally thinks he's above, beneath, beyond,
Speaker 1: and way way above the law that the rest of
Speaker 1: us have to abide by. Well, I think the thing is,
Speaker 1: this is why one of the reasons why he loved dictators.
Speaker 1: He loved President g of China, he loved Putin, he
Speaker 1: loved Ehran, he loved Bella sorrow because they have what
Speaker 1: he wants, and that is absolute power. He wants that.
Speaker 1: He craves that. Kim Jong North Korea, he that's what
Speaker 1: he wants. He wants to be that, and that's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen. No, we gotta make sure it doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: But he's trying to make it happen. Yeah, absolutely talks
Speaker 1: about a third term. Son, you gotta win the second
Speaker 1: one first, and we hope that is well. Let me
Speaker 1: speaking for myself, I think it would be a disaster
Speaker 1: for this country should this president get re elected. But
Speaker 1: we have to do our part to make certain that
Speaker 1: that doesn't occur. And even white Republicans who are conservative
Speaker 1: are going, my god, this is enough. What this man
Speaker 1: is doing is ridiculous and horrendous. So yeah, he is
Speaker 1: seeking to be a kind of dictatorial force, a fascist force,
Speaker 1: a monarchical force that will embody the aspirations of these
Speaker 1: dictators throughout the world who do what they want to
Speaker 1: do without legal compunction or moral redress. When we when
Speaker 1: I look at when I look at this, and we
Speaker 1: all know and I have I don't know if they're
Speaker 1: empirical data, but I believe we know why President Trump
Speaker 1: was elected. And this is what I don't understand. They
Speaker 1: said that we because of economic anxiety. But during President
Speaker 1: Obama's term, the average household income rolls greater than in
Speaker 1: any other president in US history, and he inherited. He
Speaker 1: entered the presidency and the second greatest recession behind the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, unemployment went down, everybody's income went up. And
Speaker 1: from where it went to where President Trump took it to,
Speaker 1: from where President Obama inherited, it's not even closed. So
Speaker 1: don't give me this about economic anxiety, because he didn't
Speaker 1: create the economic anxiety. He created. He inherited something from
Speaker 1: a Republican president and he took it the heights we
Speaker 1: didn't even think he could ascend to. I mean in
Speaker 1: the missle of that. He saved the economy, he saved
Speaker 1: the automobile industry, He gave the tart money. He figured
Speaker 1: out how the banks didn't fail. I know a lot
Speaker 1: of people critical, but imagine the headlines. If the first
Speaker 1: black president allows the banks to fail, you ain't gonna
Speaker 1: get no second term. You might not get a second day.
Speaker 1: It wasn't gonna happen. So he did nearly the impossible
Speaker 1: and still was not accorded the respect and to due
Speaker 1: recognition that white brothers and sisters want to give Donald
Speaker 1: Trump for inheriting. But born on third base thinks he
Speaker 1: hit a triple. Obama truly was trying to do something
Speaker 1: that was nearly impossible and saved this economy and dug
Speaker 1: it out in such a serious fashion, dug back to
Speaker 1: the Bibles, the art armed killing of unarmed black men
Speaker 1: and women being caught on tape. How do you think
Speaker 1: the cell phone has helped or create and become a
Speaker 1: lot of people like, well, it's not that bad. Well,
Speaker 1: it just seems to happen that we always catch the
Speaker 1: bad right, right, right, no, you're absolutely, but it is bad.
Speaker 1: And the reality is that the cell phone has revolutionized
Speaker 1: policing in this country. At least our arguments that what
Speaker 1: we said was true, that we don't have to do anything.
Speaker 1: We can just stop. Hello, officer, Hey, how are you
Speaker 1: look at raych Shard Brooks that you've mentioned in Atlanta?
Speaker 1: Forty minutes? Nice conversation talking back and forth. Supposed to
Speaker 1: go meet this girl, you know my wife, I don't
Speaker 1: want to, you know, was drunk here, I'm chilled out.
Speaker 1: Let me just just all man and man good stuff.
Speaker 1: Then you get into it, you end up, you know,
Speaker 1: shooting this man. Yes, he took your tasering, Randy, what
Speaker 1: he gonna do. He ain't gonna kill you with no taser.
Speaker 1: He fired a taser that you can't even it can't
Speaker 1: even go five six feet. And then you shot him
Speaker 1: in his back, so he was not a threat. He
Speaker 1: was running from you. And then what did you say?
Speaker 1: Got him? And then what did you do? Kicked him
Speaker 1: in his face. The level of disregard for black humanity
Speaker 1: is astonishing. But it is a law, it seems, it
Speaker 1: is practice, it is convention. It is the rule by
Speaker 1: which so many people regulate and governing black life in
Speaker 1: this country. And the tragedy and trauma is that black
Speaker 1: life does not matter, that we will not be respected,
Speaker 1: that no matter what we do, no matter what we say,
Speaker 1: no matter how well behaved we are, there doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be a tolerance for us as human beings on
Speaker 1: this earth. And I wasn't joking. What many people would
Speaker 1: prefer for us to do was to not exist, not
Speaker 1: be just un exist, kill ourselves, lose ourselves, not present
Speaker 1: a problem through our breathing in this country. That's how
Speaker 1: many many people feel about us. You mentioned all my brooks,
Speaker 1: and although he offered, he says, look, I will leave
Speaker 1: the car here, I would walk home. I just saw
Speaker 1: a video that was shot on Tuesday of a guy
Speaker 1: that's so drunk he gets three part four part cars.
Speaker 1: He's falling down, he's so drunk. Doc he's laying on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk. Let him go. Not only does they do,
Speaker 1: they let him go with his life. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying they should have killed him. They didn't even give
Speaker 1: him a ticket. So how are you so you hit
Speaker 1: four part cars? You're so drunk, you're stumbling, you're lying
Speaker 1: on the sidewalk. Let you go without a ticket? My god,
Speaker 1: I mean this is this is the living example. This
Speaker 1: is the very example of what we what we mean
Speaker 1: when we talk about white privilege. White privilege ain't about
Speaker 1: having a bunch of money alone. White privilege ain't about
Speaker 1: being able to send all your kids to school without bills.
Speaker 1: White privilege means that you're able to engage in activities
Speaker 1: that otherwise might be seen as rendering other people vulnerable,
Speaker 1: like talking to the cops, like engaging them in a stop.
Speaker 1: You know, when when only white people could go to Harvard,
Speaker 1: it didn't mean that every white person could go to Harvard.
Speaker 1: It meant that the only people going to Harvard were white. Right,
Speaker 1: So what we're saying about privileges. It doesn't mean every
Speaker 1: white person will be rich. It means the likelihood of
Speaker 1: those who will be rich will be white. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that every white guy who played in the NBA
Speaker 1: will become a coach. It means the likelihood is that
Speaker 1: even if black players who become coaches and win championships
Speaker 1: and then get released by one team have to catch
Speaker 1: on as an assistant coach in one place, whereas a
Speaker 1: white guy who never won a championship, gets a chance
Speaker 1: to sign a four year contract, and a coach two
Speaker 1: of the greatest players in the history of the league.
Speaker 1: These are the kinds of you know, contrasts that we
Speaker 1: have to speak about when we talk about white privilege
Speaker 1: in America. Let's talk about John Thompson. You're in DC,
Speaker 1: you know Gon and what he meant to Georgetown. What's
Speaker 1: his place in college basketball? I believe he's more than
Speaker 1: a coach. Oh, John Thompson is one of the greatest
Speaker 1: figures that American sport has ever produced. Number one, Number two.
Speaker 1: You're younger than me. But when I was coming up
Speaker 1: and Georgetown was playing, let me tell you what that was.
Speaker 1: That was Black America's team, just like if the Dallas
Speaker 1: Cowboys are America's team right, so to speak, Georgetown was
Speaker 1: a Black America's team. The way they played that Hoya paranoia,
Speaker 1: that any defense, that the way in which you know
Speaker 1: Alonzo Mourning or Patrick Ewing or Dicombe Mutumbo and the
Speaker 1: great Alan Iverson. You know, if he's six feet, I'm
Speaker 1: twenty five feet, he might be five eleven out here
Speaker 1: doing the thing. And he saved their lives and especially
Speaker 1: Allen Iverson, I mean, but a remarkable man and made
Speaker 1: them go to class, made them go get their degrees,
Speaker 1: made them study hard, made them right become productive members
Speaker 1: of the academic community. And then he was a mentor
Speaker 1: to so many more, a loving patriarch. Yeah, he gonna
Speaker 1: cut you out, now, make no mistake about that. Doc.
Speaker 1: I heard the story about rapher Edmund and they said
Speaker 1: he was responsible for sixty sixty percent of the narcotics
Speaker 1: being moved through DC. But he had befriended some of
Speaker 1: the Georgetown players. They said Big coach Thompson, Big John
Speaker 1: called him in and say, stayed the elp away from
Speaker 1: my players, and he did it. Brother. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you what, John Thompson wasn't no joke. Six of Thunder
Speaker 1: and Chocolate. You think chocolate Thunder was the first one,
Speaker 1: Darrel Dog, No, no, no, Doc. This backup center for
Speaker 1: Bill Russell with the Boston Celtics was a man of
Speaker 1: his word. He was to be feared and respected and
Speaker 1: people understood he was no joke and he wanted his
Speaker 1: players to be protected and not only from thugs in
Speaker 1: the street or other you know, big drug dealers. He
Speaker 1: also when he went to opposing teams, and they were
Speaker 1: disrespectful with their racist vitriol against the bodies of say
Speaker 1: and Alan Iverson or his other players, Colin Patrick ewing
Speaker 1: an Athan on that he held the team accountable. On
Speaker 1: the other side, see what none of this on you.
Speaker 1: That's horrible, that's that's that's just saying. That's kids being kids.
Speaker 1: You are gonna be I'm gonna forfeit the game if
Speaker 1: you don't kick their butts out. Now, John Thompson used
Speaker 1: his authority in a way that should have been used
Speaker 1: and that many others were afraid to do. But he
Speaker 1: did it with a plumb and discretion but also power.
Speaker 1: A great man and a great coach, a great inspirational figure,
Speaker 1: a great mentor, a man who was able to make
Speaker 1: sure his kids were going to be protected, and a
Speaker 1: man who saw promise where there was none. Remember, Allen
Speaker 1: Iverson had been in prison, and he shouldn't have been.
Speaker 1: First of all, he should have never been there. Maiming
Speaker 1: by chair was the literal, you know, accusation made against
Speaker 1: him for which he was in prison, which is nuts
Speaker 1: because he didn't even throw a chair. But you're in
Speaker 1: the vicinity, your guys and the white people and black
Speaker 1: people thought stuff. They ain't putt none of white people
Speaker 1: in jail, but they put the black superstar in jail.
Speaker 1: And if it were not for you know, Douglas Wilder,
Speaker 1: Jesse Jackson, and you know, maybe Spike Lee, but certainly
Speaker 1: John Thompson who saved him, who took him on, this man,
Speaker 1: would we would have never seen one of the greatest
Speaker 1: players ever? And was it? Kobe and other people said,
Speaker 1: if Allan Iverson was six six, ain't no conversation by
Speaker 1: who the greatest of all time would have been? Bro
Speaker 1: Because the man's heart was incredible, his will, his skill,
Speaker 1: his ability to score unbelievable, all of that because of
Speaker 1: the great John Thompson. I love what Coach Thompson said
Speaker 1: when they told him he when and I'm sure he
Speaker 1: knew this, that he was the first black coach to
Speaker 1: win a national championship in basketball. He said, I might
Speaker 1: have been the first black person who has provided the
Speaker 1: opportunity to compete with this prize, But you have discriminated
Speaker 1: against thousands of my ancestors and denied them this opportunity.
Speaker 1: That's what he said. He could have said, thank you,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate that. He was said, no, no, he said,
Speaker 1: I might have been the first that was afforded this opportunity.
Speaker 1: But don't forget you denied thousand people just like me.
Speaker 1: That was just its qualified as me, the opportunity, the
Speaker 1: same opportunity that I have. You denied them. See that
Speaker 1: that's beautiful, and look how gracious that is. He could
Speaker 1: have said, like you said, yeah, I'm the stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: the only brother he knows that where other brothers are
Speaker 1: gonna have won had they had the opportunity. That's what
Speaker 1: we meant when we said Barack Obama as great as
Speaker 1: he is, one of the greatest presidents ever top ten,
Speaker 1: but there are some other brothers and sisters could have
Speaker 1: been president. There are other black people who could have
Speaker 1: been first if we had permitted them the opportunity. Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris ain't the first black woman who is capable of
Speaker 1: having been, you know, nominated as a vice president. Barbara
Speaker 1: Jordan could have done this. I mean, there's so many
Speaker 1: others who could have been elected or nominated as great
Speaker 1: as Kamala Harris is. So yeah, I mean, I love
Speaker 1: that response because I put the burden back on the
Speaker 1: white folks who trying to congratulate him in a way,
Speaker 1: and he was saying, no, y'are messed up. Y'all would
Speaker 1: have had others. But oh look, look, Josh Gibson, Josh White,
Speaker 1: you celebrating Babe Ruth, Babe Ruth having the greatest ball player.
Speaker 1: He was the greatest white white ball player. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: what great he Because he didn't play against the brothers.
Speaker 1: Because he played against the brothers, that have been a
Speaker 1: different story. He wasn't playing against that black Chritch pitching.
Speaker 1: They said Josh was the Gibson or White was the
Speaker 1: greatest home run here to ever. Died very early, one
Speaker 1: of the greatest ever. Let's see him square off against
Speaker 1: a Babe Rute, right, It's not like it was open
Speaker 1: like with Tom Terrific who just died. One of the
Speaker 1: greatest pitchers ever top ten. Mister met himself. That was
Speaker 1: a bad man. And he was pitching against Ye Mayerson
Speaker 1: Bob Gibson, and we know and Bob Gibson won the
Speaker 1: cold has ever flame throwers. He was, I mean, man,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's my that he ten years old when
Speaker 1: I saw him out here beating my team in Detroit. Right,
Speaker 1: I was nine years old in Detroit and he's throwing
Speaker 1: that fire. I went down to the to the to
Speaker 1: my ghet old sandlight at the end of the block
Speaker 1: and started throwing that ball because Bob Gibson was inspiring
Speaker 1: me to do that. So, yes, there are many other
Speaker 1: black people. And John Thompson was as gracious as they
Speaker 1: come by saying many others could have been able to
Speaker 1: do this had they've been afforded the opportunity to do so.
Speaker 1: You talked about President Obama. I remember growing up and
Speaker 1: my grandfather told you. He would always tell me he's
Speaker 1: a son. You could be anything you want to, but
Speaker 1: you will never be president because they're not gonna let
Speaker 1: no black man in the White House. Wow, that's what
Speaker 1: I just remember him saying that so vividly. You can
Speaker 1: be anything. You can be a scientist, you could be
Speaker 1: a doctor, you can be a lawyer, you could be
Speaker 1: a professional athlete. But forget put president out of your mind.
Speaker 1: They are not letting that happen. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: what Tupac said way after you You know that that
Speaker 1: you know it seems have been said, but they ain't
Speaker 1: ready for a black president, right, We're saying that, and
Speaker 1: that was the that was the limit. That was the
Speaker 1: That was the ceiling that was placed on it. You
Speaker 1: can do anything. You can be Olympic champion, you can
Speaker 1: be baseball start, you can be a football star, wide receiver,
Speaker 1: Hall of Famer. Uh, what's your own show on Fox
Speaker 1: foot Skip, But you can't be the president of the
Speaker 1: United of America. And when that barrier got lowered, my god,
Speaker 1: that's why they back Obama so hard. That's why they
Speaker 1: attacked him so viciously because they understood that's a real barrier. Now,
Speaker 1: now you can't maintain other lies. If you maintain lines
Speaker 1: that black people can't do X when he's president, that
Speaker 1: then you can be a nuclear physicist. You can be
Speaker 1: a theoretical physicist. You can be a scientist. You can
Speaker 1: be an engineer, you can be a you know, a creator,
Speaker 1: an inventor. You can do whatever you want to do
Speaker 1: if you can do that. And that was the signal
Speaker 1: barrier that was dropped. And again John Thompson understood the
Speaker 1: necessity of speaking honestly about the barriers that were imposed
Speaker 1: upon black people in this country. Well, that's what they
Speaker 1: did with the schools. Man, you can't go to Harvard.
Speaker 1: Harvard's too hard yell, it's too hard. Once you get
Speaker 1: your own institution and go there. Well, if you let
Speaker 1: me go in there, let me see if I can
Speaker 1: do the school. Let me see if I can do
Speaker 1: the curriculum. I don't need you to tell me what.
Speaker 1: I'll give me an opportunity. It's easy for you to
Speaker 1: say I can't do the curriculum if you don't allow
Speaker 1: me access to it. But give me an opportunity, and
Speaker 1: let me see, no doubt. And Number one, some of
Speaker 1: them boys and girls at Howard are gonna kick the
Speaker 1: butts of those at Harvard. Number two, some of them
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters at Talladega and Spellman and Moorehouse are
Speaker 1: gonna whip the butts of those who are at Yale.
Speaker 1: How do we know? Look at the movie with Denzel
Speaker 1: the Great Debaters, and when we know that that actually occurred,
Speaker 1: that Harvard Debaters got beat by HBCUs. So we know,
Speaker 1: first of all y'all are denying our tremendous talent. I mean, Howard,
Speaker 1: Howard Thurman, the great Mystic was there at what Howard
Speaker 1: think about? Third Good Marshall, a Supreme Court justice, was
Speaker 1: at Howard University. Martin Luther King Junior, the greatest American
Speaker 1: whoever lived, as far as I'm concerned, out of Morehouse College.
Speaker 1: So first of all, stop hating on what we're producing
Speaker 1: out of our institutions. But secondly, you're absolutely right. Let
Speaker 1: us see what we can do. Let's see what we
Speaker 1: can compete with. And even when they let us go
Speaker 1: to the Harvard Dubois, Rayford Logan I think Carter G.
Speaker 1: Woodson and Stuffing, they wouldn't let us teach there. Oh
Speaker 1: we can go there and get the PhD. But then
Speaker 1: you ain't gonna let us teach to some of these schools.
Speaker 1: So they denied us opportunity at every level, blocking us,
Speaker 1: preventing us from flourishing when we have the capacity to
Speaker 1: exhibit the most profound irreudition and learning that could be
Speaker 1: possibly shown in this culture. Dog help me on this.
Speaker 1: Explain this to us. When you when we hear the
Speaker 1: term defund the police, what does that actually mean? Because
Speaker 1: I think people are confusing to choose. They think that
Speaker 1: it means we're gonna abolish the police. What does actually
Speaker 1: defund the police? What does that actually mean? Right? That's great. Now,
Speaker 1: there are some abolitionists who are out here saying, like
Speaker 1: get rid of at and who can let me start
Speaker 1: right there first of all, who could blame them even
Speaker 1: if we disagree, even if you think, oh my god,
Speaker 1: we need him. The point is, give the amount of
Speaker 1: black people who have died, of poor yellow, brown, red,
Speaker 1: and other people of color would die. Why why why
Speaker 1: would you be mad at black people and others of
Speaker 1: their allies saying and even some white people about ast
Speaker 1: the police. So don't even act like you don't understand
Speaker 1: what that's about. Well, secondly, defund the police. You're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: What they're saying is, let's reassign monies to other departments
Speaker 1: where we defund the police and refund that money to
Speaker 1: other organizations. For instance. Look at that tape and I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've seen it, and if not, you'll see it.
Speaker 1: So them where the black man who's clearly mentally ills
Speaker 1: and give me that gun, give me this, give me
Speaker 1: he's on the ground. Just watched the last name Daniel Prude,
Speaker 1: and I think it's Rochester, New York. Here's the thing, man,
Speaker 1: your treat is worse than animals. We can't even say
Speaker 1: treat us like animals because you treat animals so fine.
Speaker 1: Some of y'all will put your dogs in care in
Speaker 1: ways you will deny the black people. So you see
Speaker 1: this man who is clearly mentally ill, and you put
Speaker 1: a white bag, a spit bag over his face and
Speaker 1: essentially suffocate him. And you're asking us why we want
Speaker 1: to abolish the police or why we want to defund it,
Speaker 1: Because defunding police at that level means give the money
Speaker 1: to those who deal with mental health because a mental
Speaker 1: health person goes out there. Yes, maybe we have some
Speaker 1: safety insecurity. We'll grant that there are other ways to
Speaker 1: do it besides the police department. So we reassign the
Speaker 1: policeman to departments where they can exercise safety, but not
Speaker 1: with the concentrated power of the cops with the police department.
Speaker 1: With these police unions that undercut the ability of American
Speaker 1: democratic institutions to hold them to look count. They are
Speaker 1: ruthlessly out of order, they are well funded, and they
Speaker 1: seem to act against the best democratic interests of the state.
Speaker 1: So when we say defund the police, we're saying take
Speaker 1: the money from the police department, give a bunch of
Speaker 1: money to other social services that will serve the community.
Speaker 1: Because guess what, only about four percent of the duties
Speaker 1: of the police are what leads to the death of
Speaker 1: black people, the kind of violent interactions going out in homes.
Speaker 1: This no knock warrant that killed Brianna Taylor and her
Speaker 1: murderers still have not been arrested. The killers of Brianna
Speaker 1: Taylor need to be arrested, even though one of them
Speaker 1: has been fired. But it had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: his horrible behavior that night. So did you see what happened?
Speaker 1: Not the guy that her boyfriend that she was living
Speaker 1: with that they barked in all, but the ex boyfriend,
Speaker 1: right that is being reported. They for him a plea.
Speaker 1: If you lift, if you say she was a co conspirator,
Speaker 1: you get probation. If you don't, we're gonna give you
Speaker 1: ten years. So, in other words, this is why we
Speaker 1: bars then, this is why we killed her. Even if
Speaker 1: she even if she was slinging more dope than El
Speaker 1: Chapo Guzman and Pablo F. Cabar combined, she didn't deserve
Speaker 1: to die. That's not your role. Your role is to
Speaker 1: bring them in and then let the court system the
Speaker 1: d eight you let them handle it from there. That's
Speaker 1: not your role, right, And they ain't even arrest someone,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right, but they were saying it was
Speaker 1: the present boyfriend, right, So they got the ex boyfriend
Speaker 1: and now the present one who was there with her.
Speaker 1: They arrested him the other day for drugs. So this
Speaker 1: is amazing. So you can get the quote drug dealers,
Speaker 1: but not to kill people who killed Brianna Taylor, whose
Speaker 1: things we know? So right? Why is it that black
Speaker 1: people have to be perfect? We don't have to be
Speaker 1: perfect because if we go killing every white person who's
Speaker 1: selling drugs and be a lot of dead white people.
Speaker 1: If we go around killing every white person who is
Speaker 1: wielding a gun and shouldn't be a lot of dead
Speaker 1: white people. If we go around killing every white person
Speaker 1: who offends the law, if that's going to be your standard,
Speaker 1: they will be dead. So the reality is is that
Speaker 1: as you say, let's not allow the police to be
Speaker 1: judge and jury. Let's allow the police to do what
Speaker 1: they're supposed to do. But this is why we should
Speaker 1: defund them. If we assign the responsibility of public safety
Speaker 1: to police people in different departments and don't concentrate it
Speaker 1: in those departments, then we could deal with qualified immunity
Speaker 1: because the department would be disassembled and we would be
Speaker 1: able to challenge it in a certain way. We'd be
Speaker 1: able to get different people onto the courts who see
Speaker 1: the value of holding public servants to account. In what
Speaker 1: other area of public service do they get qualified immunity
Speaker 1: where if they do some day imaging thing then will
Speaker 1: be automatically exempt. I mean people Richard Nixon had to
Speaker 1: get off the get out of the presidency because he
Speaker 1: was being threatened with some kind of potential legal action.
Speaker 1: So so, my friend, it is necessary for us to
Speaker 1: understand the police cannot be the judge and the jury
Speaker 1: defund them. I mean, LA gave up what one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty million dollars of the budget, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean right San Francisco about one hundred and twenty five million.
Speaker 1: So yeah, let's reassign moneies to departments which can more
Speaker 1: effectively intervene in socially distressed situations that permit black and
Speaker 1: brown and red and yellow, and for that matter, white
Speaker 1: people to live without the lethal consequences of police people
Speaker 1: who exercise their authority with ravaging intensity. Dog was it
Speaker 1: that our passed? If you look at George Floyd, they
Speaker 1: talk about what he had gone to prison. If you
Speaker 1: look at allmar Brooke, and you talk about if I listen,
Speaker 1: if I commit a crime, I go pay my debt,
Speaker 1: just aside be going through the pedal penal system and
Speaker 1: maybe possibly paying a fine. What does that have to
Speaker 1: do with right then, I wasn't committing the crime that
Speaker 1: I went to privole for at that time which led
Speaker 1: you to kill me. So I don't get It's like
Speaker 1: our pass always live with us, but our counterparts they
Speaker 1: get to move beyond their past. I mean, you've laid
Speaker 1: it out there, and like you said, first of all,
Speaker 1: you ain't know it that minute, So why are you
Speaker 1: trying to imposthumously and retroactively kill me and justify by
Speaker 1: some stuff you ain't even know? So we know that's poppycock.
Speaker 1: And as we said, if we did this to white people,
Speaker 1: would be a lot more dead white people, white brothers
Speaker 1: and sisters who would be subjected. But you're right, we
Speaker 1: are held to a different standard, a different account that
Speaker 1: consistently are trying to viciously assault us, hold us to
Speaker 1: a dual and triple standard. And then, you know, try
Speaker 1: to justify after the fact our quote murder, our quote assault,
Speaker 1: our quote legal apprehension or being put to death because
Speaker 1: it was a justifiable homicide, whatever they do, using the
Speaker 1: facts of our existence because we weren't perfect, nobody is,
Speaker 1: and then trying to use and that imperfect pass as justification.
Speaker 1: As you said, when again, if we try to apply
Speaker 1: the same standard to white folk, that would be a
Speaker 1: lot more of them in prison or dead in their graves.
Speaker 1: Right now, what role does the athlete play? And I
Speaker 1: commend any athlete that's willing to use their platform and
Speaker 1: speak up, but that's not what they signed up for.
Speaker 1: Guys that went into civil service, the guys that went
Speaker 1: into to be a politician, the Chuck Schumer's, the Nassy Pelosis,
Speaker 1: the Lindsey Grail, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, that's what you
Speaker 1: signed up for. But it seems to me it's always
Speaker 1: been the athlete that's normally been at the forefront of
Speaker 1: these movements, especially ours African American people. I mean, other
Speaker 1: athletes have been credible and on the front lines, but
Speaker 1: for black people, it's because when we didn't have black politicians,
Speaker 1: we had black musicians, and we had black athletes. Before
Speaker 1: we had William Dawson or Adam Clayton Powell, we had
Speaker 1: Duke Gallington, and Louis Armstrong, right, And so we were
Speaker 1: those athletes, right, we had Joe Louis. We didn't have
Speaker 1: no United States senator in the Senate when Joe Louis
Speaker 1: was fighting, Jackie Robinson was playing. But but Jackie Robinson
Speaker 1: was a senator and Joe Louis was an ambassador and
Speaker 1: a congress person, if you will, for our interests for
Speaker 1: the black community. So they were our mouthpieces. They were
Speaker 1: our vocal, articulate spokespeople to try to defend us, to
Speaker 1: try to stand up and speak for us. So when
Speaker 1: Sam or Aretha Franklin or you know, Ray Charles came along,
Speaker 1: even as we were gaining a burgeoning political power, they
Speaker 1: were the voice pieces because white people admired them, and
Speaker 1: they were able to seize the authority to articulate our
Speaker 1: viewpoints and represent our interests because white people loved and
Speaker 1: admired them. So that's why we've turned to them. Even
Speaker 1: after we've gotten political representation, we still depend upon conscientious
Speaker 1: you know, entertainers and athletes to articulate our noble ideals
Speaker 1: and aspirations. Do you know what I've noticed is that
Speaker 1: if a black man or woman becomes successful and they
Speaker 1: speak about, speak out against inequality or racial and social
Speaker 1: injustice and things of systemic racism. They like, you made it,
Speaker 1: why are you complaining? But when whites, our counterparts, try
Speaker 1: to help their community, they never say, well, why are
Speaker 1: you complaining? If Jeff Bevos were to give two billion
Speaker 1: dollars to help causse for his community, nobody would say
Speaker 1: a word. But if Lebron James speaks out, shut up
Speaker 1: and dribble stick the basketball, stick the sports why do
Speaker 1: you care trade places? What is that about? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's about white supremacists, about white privilege. It is about
Speaker 1: failing to understand why complicity. It's about refusing to acknowledge
Speaker 1: the double standard. And it's again it's failing to acknowledge
Speaker 1: that those athletes had to speak up and out in
Speaker 1: the past in order for any interests of black people
Speaker 1: to be expressed or articulated. And so, yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: be grateful. Why is Michelle Obama man? This country gave
Speaker 1: you the ability to make a living. He gave you
Speaker 1: one too. He gave you ability to steal my stuff,
Speaker 1: and it gave you ability to loot and rob and
Speaker 1: be you know, thieves of black opportunity. And upward mobility.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you're right. They never asked them that question.
Speaker 1: If they help their neighborhoods. Oh, they're being looked despite
Speaker 1: the fact that they're rich. They're reaching back, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that they have tremendous money. They're speaking out. Look,
Speaker 1: when Donald Trump was speaking up and speaking out, nobody
Speaker 1: said he's a billionaire, why is he talking about the
Speaker 1: working class white people? They said, thank god, we finally
Speaker 1: got somebody speaking for us. So a white billionaire who really,
Speaker 1: in truth, doesn't give a darn a fly in flip
Speaker 1: about poor white people. It's seen as their hero. But
Speaker 1: Lebron James can't even speak up for his people and
Speaker 1: be and be seen as a person who identifies with
Speaker 1: his people. That's the double standard that continues to prevail
Speaker 1: in this country. So you believe the athlete is really
Speaker 1: important in this movement for equality and injustice. And you
Speaker 1: Lebron has his a referendum, like he's trying to register
Speaker 1: people to get to vote and get people to vote
Speaker 1: and understand your vote, is that your vote matter. Because
Speaker 1: for the longest time, doc I was one of those
Speaker 1: my vote doesn't matter. It does matter because when you
Speaker 1: get five six seven million people saying my boat matters. Well,
Speaker 1: that's just not one vote vote. That's five or six
Speaker 1: million people voting, and it does matter. It does matter
Speaker 1: big time. And God blessing, I'm glad you changed your mind.
Speaker 1: That's that's the kind of great man you are. You
Speaker 1: can admit that you were wrong, Yes, Sky for that vote.
Speaker 1: People ship blood for that vote. People got hit in
Speaker 1: the face for that vote. John and Lewis got beat
Speaker 1: down for that vote. So yeah, let's let's be real here.
Speaker 1: Who are the three guys probably in the conversation for
Speaker 1: the goat, Jordan Kobe, Lebron, Right, I know who your
Speaker 1: goat is, yep. But when you when you put social
Speaker 1: conscience on the platform, when you put out spokenness like that,
Speaker 1: And I love Jordan Kobe, that's my Kobe. You know
Speaker 1: my feeling about code. Yeah, Kobe, your guy like this,
Speaker 1: If you're gonna put it all together. Lebron had been
Speaker 1: the goat. Lebron the stallion, heat a horse, he depended
Speaker 1: the cow, the dog, he a farm, I mean dog.
Speaker 1: It ain't even no comparison for what that man has done.
Speaker 1: And so you know, the comparison to anybody when standing
Speaker 1: up against him is to me feeble, and so I
Speaker 1: mean Jabbar was great, Jim Brown was great. But to
Speaker 1: have that peak performers thirty five years old, seventeen years
Speaker 1: in the league, still playing like you five years in,
Speaker 1: still an incredible shape, Still should be the MVP. I
Speaker 1: don't care what nobody says, still playing the greatest, incredible,
Speaker 1: and you love black people without apology or excuse bruh.
Speaker 1: There's nobody near you, and so I think we need him.
Speaker 1: When Lebron sat down and said this, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Black people are scared, Black women, black men, black kids.
Speaker 1: He said, we're terrifying. We don't know if that guy
Speaker 1: got up on the right side of the bed, the
Speaker 1: wrong side of the bed at that cop. We don't know,
Speaker 1: if that cop had a horrible argument, was his kid
Speaker 1: and went out the house steaming, he said, or if
Speaker 1: the cop basically said this is the day I'm going
Speaker 1: in one of their lives. He said, this is this
Speaker 1: is how it feels now. Lebron ain't got no access
Speaker 1: to these people. He don't know. This point is this
Speaker 1: is what it feels like to us when the greatest
Speaker 1: athlete on the globe, right along with Serena when the
Speaker 1: greatest athlete on the globe says that and identifies what
Speaker 1: black people saying, we're terrified and scared. Do you know
Speaker 1: what that does to articulate our meaning? A politician can't
Speaker 1: say it that way. I don't care who, I don't
Speaker 1: care what politician you are. That Lebron James, who ain't
Speaker 1: got no office. Anybody put him in office. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: flip your argument. Ain't nobody he ain't went to the polls.
Speaker 1: The poles were in the people who love him because
Speaker 1: of what he did, the affirmation of him as an
Speaker 1: extraordinary figure. It's even purer right. He didn to run
Speaker 1: no campaign. He showed up and did what he did,
Speaker 1: and he's won the hearts of the masses. That's remarkable.
Speaker 1: So yeah, when you when Joe Lewis was fighting Max
Speaker 1: Schmelling in the ring in the forties, late thirties, early forties,
Speaker 1: he's fighting fascism. He's fighting Nazism, not Nazism, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: not just another white guy who's from Germany. It's two
Speaker 1: different systems, democracy versus Nazism on display there. These black
Speaker 1: athletes have been representative not only of their people, but
Speaker 1: of their nation in a way that the nation didn't
Speaker 1: deserve because when we went to fight in foreign wars
Speaker 1: and came back in our uniforms, they launched us, they
Speaker 1: killed us, they murdered us. So yeah, a Lebron, James Carmelo, Anthony,
Speaker 1: Chris Paul, all of the w NBA. My got a
Speaker 1: Candice Parker, Diana Ross. When you think about all of them,
Speaker 1: as great as the men have been, I mean Lebron
Speaker 1: will standing up above anybody, but right under him Maya
Speaker 1: Moore and all those great black athletes in the w NBA.
Speaker 1: They've been ahead of this game. They got gunshot wounds
Speaker 1: where Blake was shot in the exact space in his
Speaker 1: name on the front of their They weighed beyond what
Speaker 1: the guys collectively are doing. But I'm loving what the
Speaker 1: guys are doing as well. So yes, to answer your question,
Speaker 1: we still need them out there. Do you believe that
Speaker 1: the NBA and the potential boycott of the season, and
Speaker 1: how do you think it's going to impact the NFL,
Speaker 1: because yes, they have bigger superstars in the NBA, but
Speaker 1: nobody but football is it in America. Football is the sport.
Speaker 1: So how do you think the carriers are gonna be
Speaker 1: from the NBA to the NFL. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: Jerry Jones might have to look at her, Dak Prescott.
Speaker 1: I don't know what up Dak as a company man.
Speaker 1: I signed my tender. I mean, you know, I took
Speaker 1: your you know, I got designated for this year, so
Speaker 1: they can give me for this year if you want
Speaker 1: to give me that thirty eight million, and you know,
Speaker 1: shut up and throw the pigskin. As might as well
Speaker 1: with Jerry Jones might as well have said, and but
Speaker 1: Dad came out. He was one of the ones who
Speaker 1: spoke out on the Black Lives Matter stuff when they
Speaker 1: sent the the videos to Roger Goodell. I think it
Speaker 1: might be a brewing, you know, if not an outright rebellion.
Speaker 1: There is certainly the desire of these football players to
Speaker 1: take it to the next level. Now. I don't think
Speaker 1: they'll be as necessarily explicit as the NFL NBA, but
Speaker 1: I think we've been surprised so far miss some of
Speaker 1: them have been. And I think they won't be as
Speaker 1: widespread even though what sixty nine percent of the players
Speaker 1: in the NFL are black, Yes, And yet at the
Speaker 1: same time, you know, uh, these white owners almost feel
Speaker 1: like they're running plantations out here, right. That's why the
Speaker 1: NBA has been able to get over because all you
Speaker 1: have to be is not Jerry Jones. You have to
Speaker 1: be great yourself, just not as bad as that dude.
Speaker 1: But with what the potential strike, that strike that one
Speaker 1: day of the NBA, what did I say to them,
Speaker 1: ain't good enough. Don't tell me who you Ain't tell
Speaker 1: me who you are, tell me what you represent, tell
Speaker 1: me the values you hup hold. You know when the
Speaker 1: Godfather when they come around the table and you know,
Speaker 1: they're arguing after both of the sons have been killed,
Speaker 1: and the Godfather, you know, is talking and I think
Speaker 1: it was, you know, is one of the other godfathers,
Speaker 1: and he was like Barzini. That's what it was. Barzini
Speaker 1: all along. Barzinia is sitting there. He says, we want
Speaker 1: you to share, Godfather, those those those politicians that you
Speaker 1: carry around in your pocket like so many coins. And
Speaker 1: he says, well, did I not accommodate anybody? Right, That's
Speaker 1: how it feels for the NFL owners, like they got
Speaker 1: so many trinkets, so many negroes in their pockets, like
Speaker 1: plantation syndrome. The NBA has been forced now with its owners,
Speaker 1: to do more. Show us those politicians you have relationships with,
Speaker 1: Let's get them in some of this public policy. Let's
Speaker 1: get them on some of these law rewriting. Let's get
Speaker 1: them in some of this you know, argument about how
Speaker 1: the police have to be held to account. It a
Speaker 1: different way. Let's let's use your influence, not just the
Speaker 1: money you've given us. We grateful, but we made that
Speaker 1: money you use splitting the pie because we all made
Speaker 1: the dough. We want you to use your influence to
Speaker 1: be far more significantly invested in trying to argue on
Speaker 1: behalf of racial and social justice for black people in America.
Speaker 1: I think those those those ballplayers, that women and the
Speaker 1: men are extraordinary and exemplary, and they did a great thing. Dog,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you think Colin Kaepernick will
Speaker 1: be remembered? I remember having this conversation in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: and I said, I believe in twenty thirty years he
Speaker 1: will be looked at as one of these one of
Speaker 1: these mythical one of these mythical human beings. I see
Speaker 1: what you have to understand. I say, we look at
Speaker 1: Rosa Parks, Miss Parks, we look at Muhammad Ali. We
Speaker 1: look at some of those guys in today's terms, but
Speaker 1: let's remember when they were doing what they're doing, they
Speaker 1: weren't thought of like they were thought of now being.
Speaker 1: And I believe it's going to be the same thing
Speaker 1: for Colin Kaepernick, no doubt. Yeah, and probably not even
Speaker 1: that long. Look look at the difference between four years
Speaker 1: ago now true, he's already been seen as even Roger
Speaker 1: Goodelle saying I'm sorry, we didn't listen to him. Didn't
Speaker 1: you know you didn't think four years later Roger Goodale
Speaker 1: would be forced to say, we did not listen to him,
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry. And even though they may never be
Speaker 1: able to get their individual thing together, I mean, between
Speaker 1: Colin and the league, he's already been validated, he's already
Speaker 1: been affirmed. He's already been, you know, seriously seen as
Speaker 1: the person doing the right thing. And again for all
Speaker 1: these white people, when I don't be violent, what was
Speaker 1: violent about putting your knee on the ground. Because Nate Bowyer,
Speaker 1: a veteran, told you, Colin Kaepernick, hey, don't take a seat.
Speaker 1: That's disrespectful. Why don't you sit down? And if Colin
Speaker 1: Kaepernick wasn't respectful. You know what he would have said
Speaker 1: later for you, Homie, I'm gonna do it the way
Speaker 1: I want. What did he say, I don't want to
Speaker 1: disrespect you. Let me do that. That showed you the
Speaker 1: man's heart. That showed you the man was willing to
Speaker 1: do the right thing. He didn't want to disrespect He
Speaker 1: want to distort his message. So he got on his
Speaker 1: knee as the veteran, the white veteran suggested, and still
Speaker 1: wasn't good enough. Because you know why, it's never good enough.
Speaker 1: You can never please the people you were trying to
Speaker 1: get off their plantation. You can't get a scholarship to
Speaker 1: Freedom School on fay Roe scholarship Favoroe ain't gonna get
Speaker 1: a Noose scholarship for you to go to Freedom School.
Speaker 1: It ain't gonna happen, homie. And so I think he
Speaker 1: will be respected as an ali kind of figure in
Speaker 1: the sense that he gave up everything to be able
Speaker 1: to make his argument. I think he's one of the
Speaker 1: greatest athletic performers to do that. But let me tell
Speaker 1: you about why lebron to me is even more effective,
Speaker 1: because you see, when you can't deny the talent, when
Speaker 1: if you thought, or we're gonna pull Lebron off if
Speaker 1: he's doing stuff. If that was Tom Brady as a
Speaker 1: black person, let me see who If that was Patrick
Speaker 1: Mahomes taking a knee, tell me you think that man
Speaker 1: would have been out of that league? Oh no, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: So part of it had to do with the talent level, right,
Speaker 1: we know Colin Kaepernick at his height. I was at
Speaker 1: that that game in New Orleans where Beyonce turned to
Speaker 1: power off because she was so hot, I mean doing
Speaker 1: her things, doing her things, Jay, I didn't mean hot
Speaker 1: like I met you know a second. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: was there where he was one catch away from frigging
Speaker 1: being a Super Bowl champion. I was right there. That's
Speaker 1: where ye what Baltimore one, didn't they? I think with
Speaker 1: CBS at the time, absolutely yes. So so he was
Speaker 1: great and at his height he would have been undenied.
Speaker 1: But when he was declining a little bit, that just
Speaker 1: shows you Lebron is using his athletic genius and part
Speaker 1: of the reason he's able to stay on court. It's
Speaker 1: a different sport, but he's at his height still, he's
Speaker 1: still doing great things. And when you do great things,
Speaker 1: you can leverage that to your benefit. So I think
Speaker 1: nobody is going to be like Lebron. But I think
Speaker 1: what Calin Kaepernick is doing is remarkable. It is historic,
Speaker 1: it will be legendary, and rightfully so, because he gave
Speaker 1: up his career to do what he's got to do,
Speaker 1: and yet the Lord has blessed him because he's done
Speaker 1: called on to another career that's gonna last much longer
Speaker 1: than your football career would have lasted as a social activist.
Speaker 1: So you and if evil They said about Joseph with
Speaker 1: his coat of many colors, My brothers put me in
Speaker 1: a pit, but God raised me up and put me
Speaker 1: in a palace. So so so so he went from
Speaker 1: a pit to a palace, and he's able to extend
Speaker 1: his career and tell the truth about social injustice. I
Speaker 1: think well into his forties and fifties and sixties, should
Speaker 1: he decided to do so. Yeah, I think. I think
Speaker 1: cap ability has slipped just enough for them to use
Speaker 1: that against him because they didn't want to hear what
Speaker 1: he was saying. That's Lebron James, that's any of these
Speaker 1: prominent NBA players taking that knee. They're not gonna be
Speaker 1: white ball. I used to turn white ball, because the
Speaker 1: negative connotation that comes along with seems like everything that's
Speaker 1: bad is black black market, you know, black Monday. Every
Speaker 1: everything that's negative black magic, black sheet. So I said,
Speaker 1: used to turn white ball because it was it was
Speaker 1: those thirty two even though Commissioner Goodell it issued apologist
Speaker 1: say we should have listened. He works at the behest
Speaker 1: of the owners. No, he's thinking that he's getting forty
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars a year to those arrows that everybody's
Speaker 1: froy He gets to stand up, everybody booze while they
Speaker 1: applaud the owners. That's cashing three hundred million dollars checks
Speaker 1: every year. So that's what he's getting paid for. There's
Speaker 1: no question about it. The only good thing I guess
Speaker 1: would be uh Ken Chanot when he named it the
Speaker 1: black card. So the highest American Express is the black card.
Speaker 1: So we appreciate you got one. You've got one, doc,
Speaker 1: I know it where it take this out. Mine was
Speaker 1: green last night, but I painted that thing because I
Speaker 1: know I was gonna be talking to you, So I said,
Speaker 1: I might have a black card, but baby, I put
Speaker 1: some shoe polos on that, and that might be the
Speaker 1: only because that's the highest credit card that you could
Speaker 1: possibly get. It's a black card. Come on, bro, you
Speaker 1: know what that might be. The only good thing was
Speaker 1: a black man running a running American Express. Is the
Speaker 1: one who did it? Look at the subliminal effect of
Speaker 1: that brouh. Yes, I actually I know Ken. Now, I
Speaker 1: may or may not have a black card. That's not here, doc, Doc,
Speaker 1: you grew up. You grew up in the Midwest. You
Speaker 1: grew up in Detroit. What is your memory of Detroit?
Speaker 1: Because Detroit was a part of the Great Migration, and
Speaker 1: I remember my you know, my aunts and my uncle,
Speaker 1: my grandparents saying a lot of their relatives left the South.
Speaker 1: So I just can't deal with anymore. I cannot take
Speaker 1: the sharecropping, I can't take this picking cord, and I
Speaker 1: can't take the field, this manual labor. I'm going to Detroit.
Speaker 1: I'm going to Chicago. I'm going to New York. And
Speaker 1: with Detroit was a part of the Great Migration. What
Speaker 1: do you remember about your childhood growing up in Detroit? Oh, Man,
Speaker 1: I had a great time speaking about black as positive brother.
Speaker 1: I was born in nineteen fifty eight, Man, I'm born
Speaker 1: during Jim Crow right. My mom was from Alabama, Daddy
Speaker 1: from Georgia. We used to go down south. Why South,
Speaker 1: Why can't we stop at the at the darn you
Speaker 1: know restaurant like everybody else doing. We got we got
Speaker 1: brown pain for bag sandwiches, and I got to relieve myself.
Speaker 1: I can't even stop and go to the bathroom. I
Speaker 1: got to have a Mason jar under the darn seat
Speaker 1: of the car. And I didn't understand that we were
Speaker 1: victims of white supremacy and racial injustice. And Jim Crow
Speaker 1: as we went down beneath the Mason Dixon line, and
Speaker 1: so I remember that. I remember going, you know, saying,
Speaker 1: can we stopped? Cany stopped, Camy stopped, finally stopping, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: go up in there with my mama. Didn't take my
Speaker 1: daddy and he driving, you know why they wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: take the black man in there, went in there. I said,
Speaker 1: we don't serve niggas in there. And I asked my mama,
Speaker 1: what's in there? Right? She said, don't tell your father.
Speaker 1: That's what he said, because I knew my father was
Speaker 1: going there and go off. So, you know, having that
Speaker 1: experience was amazing. Going down to my grandfather's farm was
Speaker 1: amazing in Alabama, but growing up in the Troit was magical.
Speaker 1: Black magic and the beautiful sense of that word. I mean,
Speaker 1: we had incredible, you know, black society, the Black church.
Speaker 1: I went to an all black church, went to an
Speaker 1: all Black school High excellence. Now, they tried to start
Speaker 1: of us of resources. We were in the hood. We
Speaker 1: didn't have the resources of the white schools. But those
Speaker 1: teachers made us the lead. We could do anything. My
Speaker 1: first grade teacher, Missus Jefferson, third grade teacher, Missus Harvey,
Speaker 1: fourth grade teacher, Miss Read, fifth grade teacher, Missus James,
Speaker 1: who gave us a sense of history, Black history man
Speaker 1: taught us everything changed my life. Missus James did sixth
Speaker 1: grade teacher, Missus Mars, seventh grade, Mister Birdad, Miss Stewart,
Speaker 1: eighth grade, Miss click Man. I'm at miss Rade tenth grade.
Speaker 1: Those teachers were gods to us, right, They were demiurgies.
Speaker 1: They were tremendous superheroes who gave us a sense of
Speaker 1: who we were. And they told us that we could
Speaker 1: do anything. And I believed it, man, And so that
Speaker 1: was magical. Before Johnny Cochrane, the Great Johnny Cochrane, one
Speaker 1: of my friends, I loved him. But there was a
Speaker 1: guy there named Kenneth Cockroll who cussed out the white judge,
Speaker 1: called him a old faye and some other words. I'm
Speaker 1: just telling you and lived to tell about it and
Speaker 1: didn't get disbarred and use big old words. I remember
Speaker 1: when I heard him, and I had heard doctor King
Speaker 1: when I was nine years old when he got shot,
Speaker 1: and I was sitting in the living room watching television.
Speaker 1: You know, the news was on, and then they announced
Speaker 1: that doctor King was shot. They interrupted the regular program
Speaker 1: and to indicate that Doctor King was shot. I may
Speaker 1: not get there with you, but I want you to
Speaker 1: know tonight, weaves of people will get to the Promised Land.
Speaker 1: I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man.
Speaker 1: My eyes I see. Then he turns around and falls
Speaker 1: into the arms of Jesse Jackson on one side and
Speaker 1: Ralph Abernathy on the other. I mean, that's my childhood.
Speaker 1: Bob Gibson knocking out striking out seventeen batters in the
Speaker 1: first game of the nineteen sixty eight World Series, The
Speaker 1: Riots of Detroit. The Urban Rebellion nineteen sixty seven. Dark
Speaker 1: Trails of Smoke going up into the clouds. I'm asking
Speaker 1: my mama what is that? And she said it's a riot.
Speaker 1: I said, what is that? And then she said it's
Speaker 1: because of a you know, a blind pig. And I said,
Speaker 1: what does a sightless mammo have to do with the
Speaker 1: dark riot and a blind pig. Of course, after I
Speaker 1: was joint, you know, in Detroit, and then the police
Speaker 1: rated it, and it just then as now black people
Speaker 1: being hurt and abused and shot by the police, and
Speaker 1: we had had enough and it erupted. So I grew
Speaker 1: up in a black universe where the blackness was the norm,
Speaker 1: where black excellence was the expectation, where black genius was
Speaker 1: the normative expression of talent, and we believed that we
Speaker 1: could do anything. Now. I learned quickly in the riots
Speaker 1: about racism when Doctor King got killed, about racism. In fact,
Speaker 1: when doctor King got shot, we had an upstairs rooms
Speaker 1: the Five Boys three or so seven episode of the
Speaker 1: House Small Holes, But we worked it out. We had
Speaker 1: a little balcony off the upper you know, the upstairs bathroom,
Speaker 1: and I was scared to wash my face for two
Speaker 1: years in front of that window because I figured if
Speaker 1: they killed him and he didn't do nothing, and he
Speaker 1: died on a balcony. They killed me too. Now my
Speaker 1: brother was like, crazy man, anybody even know you? You
Speaker 1: ain't famous. I said, it made me vulnerable. So I
Speaker 1: had a great time, a great experience, and blackness is
Speaker 1: a norm. But then I faced the reality of whiteness
Speaker 1: and the white supremacy as well, well, Doc, so being
Speaker 1: born in fifty eight, so you remember the Harlem riots,
Speaker 1: I think in sixty four, the La ris in sixty five,
Speaker 1: Wise and sixty seven, Doctor King sixty eight. I knew
Speaker 1: what knew Jersey sixty seven. That's right, Oh yeah, And
Speaker 1: if Doc, what's the reoccurring theme of all the time,
Speaker 1: the blacks of riot in America? The lunderlife theme, Doc,
Speaker 1: Police after police after police, coming straight from the underground.
Speaker 1: A young brother got it bad, cousin brown and not
Speaker 1: the other color. So police think they have the authority,
Speaker 1: the killer minority. It's been a constant theme, the police
Speaker 1: mistreat and the black people. Watch nineteen sixty five, Detroit
Speaker 1: sixty seven, Brouh forty nine. I mean Tulsa, Oklahoma, they're
Speaker 1: dropping bombs on us right as since. But nineteen nineteen
Speaker 1: Chicago of the cops, I mean, when you think about
Speaker 1: what's going on. The mistreatment of black people has been extraordinary.
Speaker 1: That's why King in his nineteen sixty three I Have
Speaker 1: a Dream speech, talked about the marvelous new buildings inc
Speaker 1: and some of us have come straight where you know,
Speaker 1: and he talks about police brutality. He mentions it in
Speaker 1: his speech because it's so central to the experience of
Speaker 1: black people. So that is the common denominator of our
Speaker 1: experiences as black people in this country with the police.
Speaker 1: That has led often to urban rebellions and social uprisings
Speaker 1: and riots in this country. Doctor, let's get back. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about your education. You matriculated, you went to an
Speaker 1: Ivy League school, you went to Princeton. You a sociology
Speaker 1: professor at Georgetown University. What made you pursue academia? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I was seen as a bright kid. I
Speaker 1: got a scholarship about to a suburban school. There's one
Speaker 1: of the top schools in the country, top ten prep schools,
Speaker 1: maybe top five. Cranbrook went out there, never going to
Speaker 1: school with white kids before got jacked up. Racism got
Speaker 1: jacked up, man. Racism was out there big time, even
Speaker 1: among the elite, the affluent. I mean on my door
Speaker 1: at night in the dorm room. This is when Roots
Speaker 1: was first coming out, and it was like blank word
Speaker 1: go home. Then they made a video audio tape, We're
Speaker 1: going cigar fishing today. Roops, No, we're not. We're going
Speaker 1: niggar fishing. What's debate? Hominy grits. So this is the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, nineteen seventy six, you know, seventy seven, I
Speaker 1: mean Roofs came out seventy seven. Yeah, so nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: when it's coming out, I think I went. You know,
Speaker 1: I went there, had that experience. It was horrible, got
Speaker 1: kicked out, came back, went to night school. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: got a girl pregnant. I ain't saying it was a
Speaker 1: shotgun wedding, but a revolver wasn't in the room. I was.
Speaker 1: I was, uh what eighteen, she was twenty six? What? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I ain't gonna speak on on on on what that
Speaker 1: was about. But anyway, you tried eight like the wall,
Speaker 1: people say you being a fast dog, you be a
Speaker 1: man of shot there? What's this? What's it? Yellow niggas
Speaker 1: got some surprises too, But anyway, so I had a son,
Speaker 1: I was a teen father get quickly got divorced. Woman
Speaker 1: said she didn't even loved me. I was like, dang,
Speaker 1: you could have told me this before we got married.
Speaker 1: But didn't go to college. So I was twenty one,
Speaker 1: I said, I was an emergency substitute janitor. I hustled
Speaker 1: on the street. I picked up still with my father
Speaker 1: so we could wait downtown. I painted houses, I shovel snow.
Speaker 1: I did whatever it took to support my family. To
Speaker 1: twenty one, I said, I got to go back to
Speaker 1: college to support my son. Went to Knoxville College, historically
Speaker 1: black college down in Knoxville, and then you know, became
Speaker 1: I was an ordained minister at the same time, and
Speaker 1: I thought I was going to be a preacher. I
Speaker 1: am a preacher, but I thought I was gonna be
Speaker 1: an ordained minister. I've be an ordained minister forty one years.
Speaker 1: But I thought I was gonna pass her. I passed
Speaker 1: the three different churches in Tennessee. But when the third
Speaker 1: one put me out because I was trying to ordain
Speaker 1: black women, I was way ahead of the game. I
Speaker 1: wasn't just talking to talk. That was in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: eighty three, Yeah, that was that was that was That
Speaker 1: was really a no no back then, doctor, they didn't
Speaker 1: really allow women in the pulpit, let alone, not not
Speaker 1: at all. But I wasn't stupid, so I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go here first, and I'm a teacher for
Speaker 1: a year and and teach them how to just so
Speaker 1: they could become deacons. So I wasn't trying to ordain
Speaker 1: women as ministers. I was just trying to ordain them
Speaker 1: as deacons. That was still a no no. Two. But
Speaker 1: I think I started right there now. I already got
Speaker 1: kicked out of school for not going. I got kicked
Speaker 1: out of school. I was straight as in philosophy because
Speaker 1: I was protesting the fact they only had one speaker year,
Speaker 1: And I said why, they said, giving your number, son,
Speaker 1: that's all you deserve. That's the percentage of black people here.
Speaker 1: You only deserve one speaker a year. I was like,
Speaker 1: man later for all that, So I protested, you have
Speaker 1: to go to a chapel every Tuesday. And I got
Speaker 1: kicked out of school. So then I went to pastor.
Speaker 1: Then they got kicked out of pastor, and I got it.
Speaker 1: One Sunday morning, I went to church because keys wouldn't
Speaker 1: fit the door I was like, oh, okay, they give
Speaker 1: me some new new keys. Okay, I went to my office.
Speaker 1: Keys didn't fit. I said, oh okay, they're gonna look
Speaker 1: me able to new office. Man, these people are good.
Speaker 1: When I did when I did a preach, I said, man,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of people out here I ain't never
Speaker 1: seen before. I said, I must be getting good. Dog.
Speaker 1: The members of the church, they called there to try
Speaker 1: to put my black bud out of there, and they voted.
Speaker 1: They got up after I priested. They said, Pastor, there's
Speaker 1: a problem in the church. I said, well, let's deal
Speaker 1: with a deacon. He said, the problem is you and man.
Speaker 1: They voted that day putting my black bud out, gave
Speaker 1: me one month severance pay, and told me to hit
Speaker 1: the road. Brother, and I had a wife and a child,
Speaker 1: So you know, I know that it ain't just black
Speaker 1: and white. It's right and wrong. Bro, that's what the
Speaker 1: bottom line is. Right. So I got kicked out of school,
Speaker 1: went to pastor, got kicked out of church, went back
Speaker 1: to school. I said, well I might as well finished
Speaker 1: went the wife folk. I'm thinking my degree, and while
Speaker 1: doing that, I said, I don't think I want a
Speaker 1: pastor I think I want to teach. The Lord has
Speaker 1: revealed to me that might be my strength. Right, So
Speaker 1: you know, I got into Vanderbilt, tremendous school, got into Brown,
Speaker 1: tremendous school, got into Princeton. So I ended up going
Speaker 1: to Princeton, ut of those three schools. And as they say,
Speaker 1: the rest is history, man. And I, you know, I
Speaker 1: and I didn't go to college house of twenty one.
Speaker 1: So I made it for lost time and try to
Speaker 1: do a lot of things, and you know, sail through school,
Speaker 1: you know, become a full professor. I got my I
Speaker 1: got my PhD. One year. The next year, I had
Speaker 1: tenure and a full professorship at University of North Carolina Chapel.
Speaker 1: I left Brown, where I was already teaching. They were
Speaker 1: gonna give me tenure there, but I got overnight in
Speaker 1: one year. What it takes people eighteen twenty years due
Speaker 1: I got a tenure and full professorship. So I said,
Speaker 1: let me make up for the last time I had
Speaker 1: out there and do what I gotta do. And I said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna write books, I'm gonna teach young people. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to use my platform to tell the truth
Speaker 1: and to fight for justice, and that's what I've tried
Speaker 1: to do. God is, what do you think is HBC's
Speaker 1: role in this? Obviously they do not have the financial backing.
Speaker 1: They don't have. I mean, they have some alumni, but
Speaker 1: the alumni is not like a Bill Gates or Warren Buffet,
Speaker 1: one of these guys that's gonna give a billion and
Speaker 1: two billion dollars to the endowment fund. So what role
Speaker 1: does HBCU play in educating, educating the the black America. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a great that's a great point and a great question.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're they're critical, they're they're they're serious. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're gonnad No, Roberts Smith going to Morehouse for giving
Speaker 1: forty three million dollars a debt. It just ain't gonna happen.
Speaker 1: That's a drop in the book, it right, because what
Speaker 1: you're thinking about, I mean, as incredible as that gesture was,
Speaker 1: but you know, think about the endowment of Harvard is what,
Speaker 1: I don't know, seven eight billion dollars maybe more's maybe
Speaker 1: up to twenty billion by now, you know, so Princeton
Speaker 1: where I went to twenty twenty three billion, I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, man, So but a high percentage of black
Speaker 1: people who graduate from college still graduate from HBCUs. And
Speaker 1: I'm you know, people say, why is that you go
Speaker 1: to these white schools p wis that didn't mean that's
Speaker 1: not PWT with Michael Jackson, pretty young things predominantly white institution.
Speaker 1: Sometimes black people and brown people and red and yellow
Speaker 1: people are so tired after four years. They don't beat
Speaker 1: my bus so bad. I want to seeing those schools.
Speaker 1: I'm done. Where As you go to Howard more House, Palladay, Spellman,
Speaker 1: you go, I'm the stuff, I can do anything, I'm
Speaker 1: smart to anybody. And then they go on to graduate schools.
Speaker 1: They go on to get graduate degrees and terminal degrees.
Speaker 1: So they've been supported and stood up for four years.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, treat it in a way where
Speaker 1: they become upstanding citizens. I mean, and they are backed
Speaker 1: and undergirded by the belief that they are doing something extraordinary,
Speaker 1: whereas they're beat down at the white schools. So those
Speaker 1: black schools serve a critical function. All three of my
Speaker 1: kids went there, Son more House, other Son Hampton, and
Speaker 1: my daughter Spellman. I started a nice school house. Those
Speaker 1: schools are extremely important in valuing black life, supporting black
Speaker 1: knowledge in supporting black people who will do tremendous things
Speaker 1: and giving them a sense that what their value and
Speaker 1: goal and struggle is is worthy of support, and that
Speaker 1: those institutions continue to play a key role in the
Speaker 1: education and the support of black people in this nation.
Speaker 1: I myself went to HBCUs, says you the Tigers, And
Speaker 1: like you said, Doc, I really believe that was the
Speaker 1: best thing for me, because I believe my professors sincerely
Speaker 1: cared about me. I don't really know how many of
Speaker 1: them knew I played football, because I don't remember seeing
Speaker 1: any of them at the game. But they educated me.
Speaker 1: They saw something in me. They wanted me to do well,
Speaker 1: even if the football aspect, because they're on my resume.
Speaker 1: They're professors, they're doctors at Savannah State. They're on my resume.
Speaker 1: So if I go out into the world and I
Speaker 1: don't do well well where you graduate from son SSU.
Speaker 1: So they needed to prepare me to make sure I
Speaker 1: made them look good. And I like to think I've
Speaker 1: done a great job of that. You've done a hell
Speaker 1: of a job. You've made them so proud. I mean
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame, but more than that, A better man
Speaker 1: than the Hall of fame, a deep and insightful thinker,
Speaker 1: a man who's desire for self improvement has driven you
Speaker 1: to the heights of yet another profession. That's remarkable, that's
Speaker 1: an incredible and that's a testimony not onto your own
Speaker 1: internal drive and desire, but to the kind of pedigree
Speaker 1: of those teachers who took you underwing and mentored you
Speaker 1: in a fundamental fashion. Do you like I said when
Speaker 1: I introduced you, you're obviously you're a sociology professor. You
Speaker 1: got all these degrees, you taught all of your classes.
Speaker 1: You can watch politically about sports, you can watch politically
Speaker 1: about religion, the hip hop culture. Jay Z. You taught
Speaker 1: a class on jay Z. Your clue, you wrote a
Speaker 1: book on jay Z. You're close to jay Z. Give
Speaker 1: us some insight, give the people some insight into jay
Speaker 1: Z and what makes them great. I mean, just like you.
Speaker 1: He's a humble and self possessed brother. Now, when he's
Speaker 1: got to talk about his greatness on record, he's gonna
Speaker 1: do that because he can hang with the best of him.
Speaker 1: But as an individual and a human being, this is
Speaker 1: not an arrogant dude, This is a He's a confident man.
Speaker 1: Beautiful spirit. People think, you know, he's very reserved in
Speaker 1: the sense that you know he does. He's cool, he's
Speaker 1: got passion, but he's able to articulate his ideas with eloquence,
Speaker 1: with intelligence. You know, anybody who sits down when jay
Speaker 1: Z will discover within one minute of how smart he is,
Speaker 1: how well read he is, how he understands the complicated,
Speaker 1: nuanced perspectives of a variety of fields, including business and entrepreneurship,
Speaker 1: but also committed deeply to social justice. I can't tell
Speaker 1: you how many meetings I've been in with him where
Speaker 1: he's trying to leverage his authority as a billionaire in
Speaker 1: this country and Tyler or just joined him. What up, Tyler?
Speaker 1: What's up? Media is not so when you think about that,
Speaker 1: all that he possesses, he can still keep it read,
Speaker 1: it can still spit with the best of him. He's
Speaker 1: like Lebron fifty years old and he's still you know,
Speaker 1: he's still out there doing it on the internet. They're like,
Speaker 1: you should spit it. I'm like, you should buy it, brother,
Speaker 1: that's good business. So he's still out there doing his thing.
Speaker 1: Just dropped the song with Farrell fifty years old making
Speaker 1: relevant rap music understanding his place and position of authority
Speaker 1: in this culture. Married to Beyonce and as partners they have,
Speaker 1: you know, produced three beautiful children. They are magnificent parents.
Speaker 1: He's a remarkable human being and people don't understand. I
Speaker 1: know they got mad at the NFL deal. Look, it's
Speaker 1: star Ski and Hutch, it's inside outside, It's three point
Speaker 1: shot is baseline. We need both and not either or.
Speaker 1: And what he has done to encourage Roger Goodell in
Speaker 1: the NFL to do some stuff they would have never done.
Speaker 1: Where do you think though that campaign for all those
Speaker 1: commercials came from and indeed, even though it didn't work out,
Speaker 1: there was pressure from him in this you know, within
Speaker 1: the house of the NFL to grant you know, Colin
Speaker 1: Knick a trial, So a lot of stuff people don't understand.
Speaker 1: Jay Z has been behind and is an extraordinary figure.
Speaker 1: And he's got a woman running his company, Desiree Perez,
Speaker 1: the CEO. He's never given. People don't even mentioned that
Speaker 1: kind of credit to jay Z. For credit in the
Speaker 1: sense that he understands that regardless of your gender or
Speaker 1: your sexual orientation. Look how he spoke about that his
Speaker 1: mother coming out the closet and embracing the full beauty
Speaker 1: of her identity as a lesbian. So so, this man
Speaker 1: has been through a lot, has written about it, has
Speaker 1: talked about it, has made great music about it, and
Speaker 1: continues to be an inspiration musically, but also has evolved
Speaker 1: to an epic businessman, a global entrepreneur, and a kind
Speaker 1: of advocate for justice. Who's strong and who's consistent? Who
Speaker 1: to go? I didn't even know who to go? I'll
Speaker 1: be calling your golden basketball. I don't know who you
Speaker 1: gold in football? You go back and forth. I mean,
Speaker 1: one minute is Tom Brady and then you like Jared Rice,
Speaker 1: And so I don't know. I know if basketball, but
Speaker 1: I need to know who the golden hip hop right
Speaker 1: in his rap ban as a as a football player,
Speaker 1: I'd still say Jerry Rice. But I don't know, but but,
Speaker 1: but but I don't know Tom Brady. Is Tom Brady
Speaker 1: greatest quarterback ever? Ain't no doubt about that. I mean
Speaker 1: the goat. It's like what Jordan says about different genres
Speaker 1: and eras. Right, You think about think about standing by
Speaker 1: the speaker. Suddenly I heard of fever. It wasn't me
Speaker 1: or either summer madness. You think about rock him Rocky.
Speaker 1: You think about rock him doing his thing, but then
Speaker 1: the game changed up. But look, it'd be hard to
Speaker 1: put anybody above Jay and Nas. Who's going Who's above Jay?
Speaker 1: And who's above Jay and Nas? Bro? Who's above Jay
Speaker 1: and Nas? I just and I love, I love Bidget Tupac,
Speaker 1: I love Biggie and Tupac, But I'm talking about skill, longevity,
Speaker 1: the ability to produce over space and time, to even
Speaker 1: be seen as having not a hit record and then
Speaker 1: coming back. I mean, man, Jay and Nas, those guys there,
Speaker 1: to me are unparalleled in terms of what they're able
Speaker 1: to do. So jay Z is in a class by
Speaker 1: himself and as an entrepreneur who's become a billionaire and
Speaker 1: an artist. And look at what Nas has done by
Speaker 1: leveraging his own artistic New Year and his genius as
Speaker 1: a rhetorician not only to great businesses, but also as
Speaker 1: a socially conscientious, you know, above ground, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: positive conscious rapper. So both of I mean, Jay and
Speaker 1: Nahs are just incredible. It would be hard, it would
Speaker 1: be hard to outrank them. And then there are a
Speaker 1: lot of other great people like you said, Biggie Cock.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, scarface, common you know black thought is
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many of Lauren Hill krs one Okay,
Speaker 1: doc Light, I mean, you know, come on, you watch
Speaker 1: you watch this versus battle. We saw Ludicrous and Nelly,
Speaker 1: We saw Erica Badou and Jill Scott, we saw Snoop
Speaker 1: and Da Mex. We just saw Monica and Brandy. So okay,
Speaker 1: it's so if it's gonna be jay versus not, who's
Speaker 1: the next versus battle you'd like to see? Oh man,
Speaker 1: the jay Nas would be off the chain really because
Speaker 1: they're friends. Because those things, those verses are not really
Speaker 1: versus against anybody else. It's just really sharing your catalog people,
Speaker 1: even though peoplere gonna make judgments. Uh. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the Monica and Brandy was dope. I mean both
Speaker 1: of them are amazing. Uh. I would love to see
Speaker 1: Queen Latifa MC like that would because they're both of
Speaker 1: them are so dope. Yes, they are so dope. That
Speaker 1: would be amazing. If you think about a scarface who's
Speaker 1: one of the greatest slept one of all time versus
Speaker 1: maybe a Beanie Seguel, you know, I think that would
Speaker 1: be off the chain too, because the density or a
Speaker 1: black thought, you know, versus a Royster to five nine.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, these are geniuses. Everybody I've mentioned
Speaker 1: to you are rhetorical masters of their art form. I
Speaker 1: got one if they were both alive. Prince Michael Jackson,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, yeah who you got? I mean Prince
Speaker 1: is Duke Ellington and Michael Jackson is Louis Armstrong. So
Speaker 1: so you know, Duke Ellington played instrument, yes, you know,
Speaker 1: could compose, yes, play, he could do the whole thing right,
Speaker 1: and I mean he didn't sing, but he might have,
Speaker 1: you know, did a couple of things. But then Louis Armstrong, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that Sashmo, but he played that harm right, he
Speaker 1: composed him, but he was you know, so they had
Speaker 1: different and I remember once I think it was you know,
Speaker 1: uh went Marcellis who made that comparison between Jordan and
Speaker 1: Magic Johnson. Or wasn't Magic Johnson and Bird I don't know,
Speaker 1: but he was talking about the difference between Armstrong and
Speaker 1: between uh Louis Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. So both
Speaker 1: I mean, and I look, I knew Prince better. I
Speaker 1: met him a few times. He brought me to his compound.
Speaker 1: A genius. One time I met Michael Jackson in the
Speaker 1: bathroom at the funeral of Johnny Cochrane and he's getting
Speaker 1: his washing his hands. This is before COVID. Clearly, I
Speaker 1: like how you talk on TV. I said, uh, I
Speaker 1: like how you sang on stage. I mean Michael Jackson
Speaker 1: as a as a as a performer is until Beyonce.
Speaker 1: I know, people gonna get mad out there. I don't
Speaker 1: care what y'all say. Ain't nobody doing what Beyonce do
Speaker 1: it for two hours? Stop Michael Jackson, take a break.
Speaker 1: I ain't mad. You know, you do your little thing,
Speaker 1: you do the moonwalk and all that other stuff, and
Speaker 1: he was great. Then you take a little break and
Speaker 1: do some other stuff. This woman is singing straight for
Speaker 1: two hours, at the height of her vocal capacity and performing.
Speaker 1: Greatest entertainer of all time. But before her it was
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson. And Michael still number two, you know to me,
Speaker 1: But I mean greatest entertainer at his point. I mean,
Speaker 1: Prince is a phenomenal entertainer. But I'm gonna take Prince.
Speaker 1: Doc you get all that run around, I'm taking Prince.
Speaker 1: He gonna play the guitar, he gonna sing, he gonna dance.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to on man, concert is
Speaker 1: gonna be him, no question about it. So I can't
Speaker 1: be mad at that. But they're both geniuses. Okay, well
Speaker 1: my body of work, I don't know it. If you say,
Speaker 1: you said Beyonce is the great? So who you want
Speaker 1: to see Beyonce go against? Or I think anybody worth
Speaker 1: you're going against Beyonce? I mean, who could Beyonce? Really?
Speaker 1: I guess Taylor Swift? I don't know. I mean maybe maybe,
Speaker 1: but none of them. Ain't nobody got her catalog? I mean,
Speaker 1: ain'tybody fooling would be anybody fooling would be like that?
Speaker 1: How about this if she was alive, Whitneys Houston Mariah carry, Oh,
Speaker 1: that would be a hell of a one. Yeah, that'd
Speaker 1: be a hell of a one. You know, you hey,
Speaker 1: Because both of them had unbelievable range, Oh, no doubt.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about from here to here, but no doubt.
Speaker 1: Now Mariah's range was greater in terms of those notes.
Speaker 1: But passion and color of what Whitney did is so powerful.
Speaker 1: I mean, and they loved each other and their boys.
Speaker 1: You know, people try to compare them, but there's you know,
Speaker 1: no comparison in terms who did in his or her
Speaker 1: I mean her own length, but both of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would that would be doper than dope man, Doc bro,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate your time. You laid it down for
Speaker 1: us today. I know, I know you're a busy man.
Speaker 1: You got a busy schedule. You're in the process of
Speaker 1: writing enough finishing up another book, and you gave me
Speaker 1: a few hours of your time today, Doc, I really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. You're Shannon Sharp. You're sharper than most people.
Speaker 1: You you you cast a broad shadow of your humanity.
Speaker 1: I love your ability to talk, you and skip you know,
Speaker 1: inspire me a black man, a white man on television
Speaker 1: every day, telling the truth about race in ways that
Speaker 1: we don't get in most arenas. So I honor you.
Speaker 1: I celebrate you, your desire to get better and the
Speaker 1: extraordinary talent you have exhibited. You're just the best, brother.
Speaker 1: So it's always an honor to hang out with you
Speaker 1: and with you Sharp and to do this program. Thank you, brother,
Speaker 1: Thank you. I appreciate it. I see you down the road, Doc.
Speaker 1: Word to it all my life and running all my life. Sacrifice,
Speaker 1: Hustle Bay, the Price, Wanna Slice, Got the Broller Dice
Speaker 1: to swap all my life. I've been running all my life,
Speaker 1: all my life, then running all my life. Sacrifice, hustle,
Speaker 1: bade the price. Wanna slice, got the brother of Dice
Speaker 1: to swap all my life. I've been running all my life.