Speaker 1: I'm Barton day Thurston and this is Spit and I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio podcast with twenty three and me. This is
Speaker 1: the podcast that explores how DNA is changing our lives
Speaker 1: and the world around us. Today. We talk about race,
Speaker 1: the stories that define it, and how the science matches up,
Speaker 1: if at all. And my life's work is to have
Speaker 1: a world where it looks like Star Trek. You know,
Speaker 1: Star Trek. Everyone has got these different sort of skin
Speaker 1: colors and you're from these different planets and everybody notices it,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't define who you are morally. We have
Speaker 1: so much more in common than you could even imagine.
Speaker 1: The basic thing you put two kids together, They're gonna
Speaker 1: want to wake up, They're gonna want to play, They're
Speaker 1: gonna want to have a good time. As they get older,
Speaker 1: they're gonna want to fall in love, have opinions. This
Speaker 1: is every kid and they all have a heart. We
Speaker 1: are here for another session of Spit in the room.
Speaker 1: He has so many possible titles and accolades, but he
Speaker 1: prefers that you know that he was the kid who
Speaker 1: took the donkey to school. Facts why cleft gen. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much man for pronouncing my name right
Speaker 1: through the years, they've I've been like waiting to get awards,
Speaker 1: and they'd be like, the next award goes to why
Speaker 1: cleft gene like man, you know, so thank you. My
Speaker 1: French teacher would be ashamed if I did not get
Speaker 1: Jean correct. And he is the director of the Center
Speaker 1: for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University,
Speaker 1: doctor Al Tillery. How you doing, brothers, Good to see you.
Speaker 1: Good to see you two. At point of full disclosure,
Speaker 1: Al was like a resident assistant in my dorm in college.
Speaker 1: So this is a little bit of a about five
Speaker 1: years ago. Yeah, I say four or five years ago,
Speaker 1: something like that, give or take a couple of decades.
Speaker 1: So so we're here to continue our conversation about genetics,
Speaker 1: about our history, about who we are and what science
Speaker 1: can tell us about that, and why cleft. I'd like
Speaker 1: to start with you. It is the story that you
Speaker 1: know in terms of who you are, into your ancestry,
Speaker 1: your your racial makeup, your genetic makeup, what were you
Speaker 1: born into? What was the story you've got man? So
Speaker 1: I would say for me, it started off in Haiti.
Speaker 1: I was born in Haiti and a small place called
Speaker 1: kadet Bukea and uh inside of kwaidet bout is even
Speaker 1: a smaller village inside of that called Lisa. And in
Speaker 1: this village, the chances of you getting out is like
Speaker 1: really rare. My father, of course, similar to other parents,
Speaker 1: got a chance to come to America before me. My
Speaker 1: daddy left me when I was one. He came to
Speaker 1: the United States and the idea of a possible dream
Speaker 1: on making things better to get his kids over to America.
Speaker 1: And my dad he had a gift. He was a minister.
Speaker 1: He was a man of the cloth. He was a
Speaker 1: Nazarian minister. But now peep the catch. My grandfather was
Speaker 1: a voodoo priest, right, so the story definitely gets interesting.
Speaker 1: So my father basically defied the teachings of my grandfather
Speaker 1: was like, yo, I'm going to be a minister. And
Speaker 1: then years later, of course, he brings me to the States.
Speaker 1: My dad brings us to the States. But but growing
Speaker 1: up the Haitian Revolution eighteen o four, the first black
Speaker 1: general towsnt loverture and this is coming out of Haiti.
Speaker 1: So the fascinating thing to me, you gotta understand. By
Speaker 1: the time I got to the United States and I
Speaker 1: was reading history in school. Something bothered me because when
Speaker 1: it was going back to black history, I was like, man,
Speaker 1: I did you know we're talking about Mark Luther King.
Speaker 1: We're talking about um Harriet Tubman, right, and who who
Speaker 1: I idolized. But I'm like, Yo, how come nobody talking
Speaker 1: about two sons Lovertu're like, we have to explain to
Speaker 1: these people in this class that you had Haitians that
Speaker 1: basically were free while you had Black Americans that was
Speaker 1: slave in America, and the idea of keeping them separated
Speaker 1: and making sure that these people, um never got together.
Speaker 1: So my dad always told me, don't forget you are
Speaker 1: a descendant of eighteen o four two cent lovature. So
Speaker 1: this was like how I was brought up with a
Speaker 1: very fearless attitude, almost like at times I think it
Speaker 1: was stupid. You know what I'm saying. You'd be like, yo, duld,
Speaker 1: be like, yo, get off the block. I am not
Speaker 1: getting off the block. I am. I descended them to,
Speaker 1: you can shoot if you want me. I will not
Speaker 1: get shot. You know, I am exactly Haitian black man.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that that's what they instilled in me in
Speaker 1: the very beginning, that you are part of a revolution.
Speaker 1: So for me, um, I've never understood like the idea
Speaker 1: of not making it, Like in my brain ten years old,
Speaker 1: I get to America, I can't speak no English. By
Speaker 1: the time I'm barely fourteen years old, I'm in the
Speaker 1: studio with Curtis Blow like that typical immigrant story. And
Speaker 1: then it was always bigger than music because I was like, look,
Speaker 1: you know before you rode the the audio and he
Speaker 1: was like, yo, how you want to be introduced? And
Speaker 1: I was like, yo, just why Cleft Young? Because I
Speaker 1: think to anyone who's listening to it, okay, we can say, oh,
Speaker 1: why Cleft Young? He wrote My Loves Your Love for
Speaker 1: Whitney Houston. Why Cleft Young? He's the guy who wrote
Speaker 1: Shakira Shakira, Hips Don't Lie, breaking Michael Jackson and Elvis
Speaker 1: record with the biggest song in airplay. But to a
Speaker 1: kid like my daughter is thirteen, she's like, so what,
Speaker 1: Like you know what am I going to get out
Speaker 1: of this? So I think the idea of saying, well,
Speaker 1: we started from nothing, like coming from a place where
Speaker 1: it looks like impossible to make it and then actually
Speaker 1: making it is more of a bigger story. So for me,
Speaker 1: like just the idea of growing up and understanding a
Speaker 1: Haitian revolution. It taught me a lot, Thank you, man Al.
Speaker 1: This is a nice segue to some of your work
Speaker 1: and in politics and race and how do you come
Speaker 1: to a conversation about genetics and history, especially given the
Speaker 1: context that Wide Cleft has given us, where he's already
Speaker 1: laid out some Transatlantic slavery and the different forks in
Speaker 1: the road that that has led to some of our folks.
Speaker 1: What's so amazing about White Left story is he's telling
Speaker 1: an individual story, right, about his family, about how he
Speaker 1: was able to climb out of a certain socio economic
Speaker 1: situation to where he is today. And of course there's
Speaker 1: some God given talent mixed up in there, and I
Speaker 1: love the part about him being a preacher's kid, right,
Speaker 1: But but what I hear in that story is a
Speaker 1: story that is shaped by structures, by you know, the
Speaker 1: structure of the world, and there's a racial structure to
Speaker 1: that world. His narrative about the Haitian Revolution, that's a
Speaker 1: sort of group based narrative that we tell ourselves and
Speaker 1: our family and we all have them, right. His is
Speaker 1: one that valorizes black freedom and black rebellion. And I
Speaker 1: bet that that's something that helped him propel forward. Right.
Speaker 1: Not everyone achieves that kind of success just because they
Speaker 1: have that story in their background. And what's so interesting
Speaker 1: about the sort of DNA ancestry work is that it's
Speaker 1: opening us up to new stories that we weren't aware of, right,
Speaker 1: And it's opening us up to the possibility of learning
Speaker 1: new stories that we can tell ourselves. But you know,
Speaker 1: I've got to say and challenge him a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, as a black American growing up in a
Speaker 1: in a pro black household, I knew about Toussaint, I
Speaker 1: knew about Christoph right has an historian of these times.
Speaker 1: I know that the Gabriel Rebellion in Virginia, those brothers
Speaker 1: were trying to get to Haiti, right because they had
Speaker 1: heard what had happened there. So it's really is a
Speaker 1: kind of story that transcends boundaries and so, but it
Speaker 1: is still a story that is shaped by the realities
Speaker 1: of the slave trade and the racial structures that we
Speaker 1: all live with. And what we tried to do with
Speaker 1: the twenty three and Me project was figure out how
Speaker 1: much of those stories matter for the stories that Americans
Speaker 1: tell themselves about their identities and their race even when
Speaker 1: they do the genetic testing. And I would like to
Speaker 1: intervene for a second if I may. So you definitely
Speaker 1: made a strong point and about you you understanding and
Speaker 1: you knowing the fact of history. But what was going
Speaker 1: on right at the time was within a school system
Speaker 1: that we was in, within a public school system, within
Speaker 1: structure of academics, and what we were getting these stories
Speaker 1: were not told, and of course in parts of America,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that it was. But living in the projects
Speaker 1: and and and growing up, so the way that a
Speaker 1: lot of my friends found these stories, which was funny,
Speaker 1: was through the vendors in the streets. So a lot
Speaker 1: of this knowledge. I wanted to throw that in there.
Speaker 1: So you had two parts of education going on. You
Speaker 1: had that formal and then you had the brothers and
Speaker 1: the sisters on the street, like yo, this is the
Speaker 1: part of it. That So when I'm listening to like
Speaker 1: nas illmatic, you know, and we talked about different books
Speaker 1: like you know, Egyptian Book of the Dead or you
Speaker 1: know the israel Lights that will keep you on the
Speaker 1: street and debate for you with you for like a
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars. Yeah, you like it. It's too hot.
Speaker 1: But and at the same time, though it's like this
Speaker 1: was it was, it's so important, like within this so
Speaker 1: when we're talking about like DNA structure and everything, and
Speaker 1: where did it come from? So class wise, there was
Speaker 1: two forms of education. There was one going on in
Speaker 1: institution for us, and then one going on outside, which
Speaker 1: was the streets. I totally agree. Where I found out
Speaker 1: about the Hasty Revolution was from that same informal, uh
Speaker 1: sort of education West Philadelphia. My parents household the books
Speaker 1: that were there. It wasn't in the school system. And
Speaker 1: that's exactly the point that I'm making is that that absence,
Speaker 1: that lack of information was intentional, as intentional as the
Speaker 1: billion dollars that Haiti had to pay in reparations after
Speaker 1: defeating the French, which is still the reason today that
Speaker 1: Haiti's poor. Right, it's all part of the same and
Speaker 1: I shared a lot of the same story. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I have a Nigerian name, We're not Nigerian, right. My
Speaker 1: mom was like a very woke woman back in the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies and wanted to reclaim some part of
Speaker 1: our own African narrative and story, and so I heard
Speaker 1: some of these things outside of the classroom, getting quizzed
Speaker 1: on all the nations of Africa, and I'm like eight
Speaker 1: years old to make sure I entered this world with
Speaker 1: a dual set of skills. So I appreciate both of
Speaker 1: these perspectives, which aren't even different perspectives. Al you made
Speaker 1: reference to a project, and I want to go a
Speaker 1: little deeper on this survey that you've done that examines
Speaker 1: American's attitude towards race and genetics. Can you describe the
Speaker 1: study and and tell us some highlights of what you
Speaker 1: found out, especially things that we might not expect. Sure, well,
Speaker 1: you know we're living in tense times when it comes
Speaker 1: to racial and ethnic issues. All of the surveys that
Speaker 1: we see in the media that academics like my self
Speaker 1: conduct show that tensions are on the rise. Americans are
Speaker 1: deeply concerned about the way our politics is spilling over
Speaker 1: into our social interactions, our neighborhood interactions. And it's a
Speaker 1: very tense moment in our in our republic, in our democracy.
Speaker 1: And so what twenty three and me wanted to know,
Speaker 1: what Joanna Mountain and an which I you wanted to know,
Speaker 1: was how much is an idea of the genetic race
Speaker 1: concept playing in these rising tensions. And also, how is
Speaker 1: the work that they're doing at their company affecting the climate?
Speaker 1: Is it sort of leading to positive self understanding where
Speaker 1: people can bridge some of these differences, or you know,
Speaker 1: is it reafying race? Is it? Is it making making
Speaker 1: it worse? Right? And and and I give Joanna and
Speaker 1: An a lot of credit for just wanting to know.
Speaker 1: I mean, they came to me and said, you know,
Speaker 1: you know about race relations. How can we design a
Speaker 1: study where we can see what Americans think about the
Speaker 1: relationship between genetics and race. So, spoiler force, what's the answer.
Speaker 1: Are we better? Are we worse with what's going on?
Speaker 1: We're a hell of a lot better than I thought
Speaker 1: we were. So so what I expected as the expert
Speaker 1: on race is that about two thirds of Americans would believe,
Speaker 1: uh that race and genetics are tightly bound together. We
Speaker 1: actually found the opposite. Only about a third of Americans
Speaker 1: nationally see a strong connection. But you know, if you
Speaker 1: think about our popular parlance or are are common everyday talk,
Speaker 1: we hear things like, oh man, he can't jump he's white,
Speaker 1: or let's think about the news stories. The reason we
Speaker 1: need affirmative action at places like M. I. T. And
Speaker 1: Yale or Stanford is because Latino kids, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we're black kids. They can't get these test scores. And
Speaker 1: this is the Bell curve argument, Charles Murray. And so
Speaker 1: we expected these types of scientific understandings of race to
Speaker 1: be widely distributed in the popular consciousness, and they're not.
Speaker 1: And that's good news because it means it's all social.
Speaker 1: Is it that people don't think that race is defined
Speaker 1: by genetics or they don't think that the stereotypes of
Speaker 1: racial performance and superiority are defined by It's both. It's
Speaker 1: more the first, but we did test for the second
Speaker 1: thing as well. So about a third of Americans and
Speaker 1: all of the big census demographic categories believe that race
Speaker 1: is defined by genetics. But there are variations. So white
Speaker 1: Americans believe in that that third and you know that's white,
Speaker 1: they believe in it slightly more strongly than the other groups. Right,
Speaker 1: But then when you start to ask people questions about
Speaker 1: realms of human possibility or the way that we behave
Speaker 1: in the world athletics, cooking, dancezing, all things that you
Speaker 1: and white you know, our world champions at right, we
Speaker 1: see sort of a creeping up of black and Latino
Speaker 1: and Asian responses in the belief that so so Blacks
Speaker 1: believe that there's a little bit more genetic mix with sports, right,
Speaker 1: Latinos believe it with the cooking, or right, and so
Speaker 1: so the things in which the group has narratives of dominance.
Speaker 1: That third creeps up a little bit. And I think
Speaker 1: that there's a scientific, scientific explanation for it, but overall,
Speaker 1: most people in all these groups don't see the science
Speaker 1: as part of an explanation. So we've established in this series,
Speaker 1: and I think anyone who starts to look at genetics,
Speaker 1: we'll discover this interesting statistics and whack left. I love
Speaker 1: your take onto someone who seen so much in the world.
Speaker 1: We're not to that point genetically the same. There's zero
Speaker 1: point five percent difference between all humans that genetically explains
Speaker 1: how we're not quite like each other. And we spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time focusing on that zero point five
Speaker 1: percent difference. First of all, what's your reaction to that
Speaker 1: idea white left? Well, I mean, first, I'm excited. I
Speaker 1: just took my DNA test. I'm waiting for the results.
Speaker 1: My daughter said, I'm one percent white so why should
Speaker 1: say that I don't know, we gotta I don't know. Um. So,
Speaker 1: once again, it's very interesting just listening to the overall statistics,
Speaker 1: Like I'm very surprised, I would say, like traveling probably
Speaker 1: half of the globe. I think it's something that everyone
Speaker 1: should know, Like we have so much more in common
Speaker 1: then you could even imagine. It's like the basic thing.
Speaker 1: You put two kids together, They're gonna want to wake up,
Speaker 1: They're gonna want to play, they're gonna want to have
Speaker 1: a good time, they're gonna have as they get older,
Speaker 1: they're gonna want to fall in love, they're gonna have opinions.
Speaker 1: This is every kid like, and they all have a heart.
Speaker 1: Within this heart, it's going to be shaped. And I
Speaker 1: just think that a lot of times we just forget that,
Speaker 1: right and because I just think like through the idea
Speaker 1: of politics and religion at times, these two things. At
Speaker 1: times it separates the fact that from a cell we become,
Speaker 1: and so this is important, From a cell we become.
Speaker 1: And I always go back to that because I mean,
Speaker 1: science will prove it. So this cell, like, however you
Speaker 1: want to look at it any part of the world,
Speaker 1: it's not like it doesn't appear as some like holy grail,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like this coming from this
Speaker 1: side of the region, it's a holy grail cell, you know,
Speaker 1: coming from So whether we're in the Middle East, we're
Speaker 1: in Africa, we're in Haiti, and in all parts of
Speaker 1: the world, we find common ground within the structure of
Speaker 1: the youth no matter what. And I always tell people like,
Speaker 1: this is part of it that you should definitely think of.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you a case studies. So before I
Speaker 1: was here, I was in uh Georgia right next to Russia,
Speaker 1: then Turkey, then Switzerland. Right then I come back all
Speaker 1: the way on this side, and I'm in Alburquerque. I'm
Speaker 1: in New Mexico, and I'm in the six oh six
Speaker 1: and I'm chilling in the six h six and man,
Speaker 1: like yo, man, do you know this is where Billy
Speaker 1: the Kid hung out at and they used to and
Speaker 1: he got killed three hours from here. Right now, they're
Speaker 1: having a conversation about Billy the Kid, and then it
Speaker 1: goes beyond Billy the Kid to a conversation about mighty
Speaker 1: warrior Indians. And within this conversation, now you can see
Speaker 1: the conversation is happening amongst the youth, right, and then
Speaker 1: you have Mexicans, you have Americans, you have but within
Speaker 1: the youth there's no fire arms. It's this ideology of conversation.
Speaker 1: So I always think like past the point of science, right,
Speaker 1: even nostro diamonds right, the idea of saying like, okay,
Speaker 1: he has the gift, and then who who is Christian
Speaker 1: in heart right understands like they still have to be
Speaker 1: a bigger explanation of things. And I think sometimes we
Speaker 1: cry at death. We cry when when people die, we cry,
Speaker 1: But the idea of birth, which is the greater miracle,
Speaker 1: like we don't really pay attention to that. And I
Speaker 1: think that we're selfish when we're leaving po. You don't
Speaker 1: want to see somebody leave you. You love the idea
Speaker 1: of them being born, but you don't want to see
Speaker 1: them leave. And I think that when we are born
Speaker 1: right and from this cell we become. I think the
Speaker 1: unification as the world moves forward, it's understand that the
Speaker 1: kids are more unified then we are as adults. It's
Speaker 1: so important to understand that all you know something that
Speaker 1: that white left was talking about with the politics and
Speaker 1: the religion. It reminds me a bit of your study
Speaker 1: and the survey. You have this people looking for the
Speaker 1: scientific explanation of race, but it turns out it's more
Speaker 1: of a social explanation. And what we cling to is
Speaker 1: not based in science. It's based in our behavior and
Speaker 1: how we live together. Does that give you more concern
Speaker 1: or more hope? Well, it makes me more hopeful, right,
Speaker 1: I mean again, starting from my knowledge of how Americans
Speaker 1: think about race and the ways in which powerful institutions, government,
Speaker 1: sort of financial, sort of our geared towards structuring our lives.
Speaker 1: To disrupt the beautiful narrative that white cleft is talking about.
Speaker 1: White cleft is absolutely right. If you go to a
Speaker 1: classroom of children below the age of five, they have
Speaker 1: no consciousness of what races. They know that you know,
Speaker 1: my friend Isaac or Johnny skin maybe brown or white,
Speaker 1: and mind is different, but they have they attached no
Speaker 1: moral judgments and whatsoever to those differences. So they're taught
Speaker 1: by adults. It's all around them. They're taught by institutions. Right,
Speaker 1: and so has someone that's spent their life. I spent
Speaker 1: my entire life combating sort of racial inequalities and trying
Speaker 1: to bring us together. The idea that this is one
Speaker 1: less front that I have to fight on, that we
Speaker 1: as a society have to fight on, is incredibly hopeful
Speaker 1: to me, because, of course, you know, we in the
Speaker 1: social sciences and sciences, we've we've known for thirty years
Speaker 1: that it's not genetic, but we were worried about what
Speaker 1: the man on the street with the woman on the
Speaker 1: street things, because, as I said, all these inequalities that
Speaker 1: we live with today, that Haiti lives with today started
Speaker 1: with taking narratives about that point five skin color difference
Speaker 1: that we have that makes us these visible differences and
Speaker 1: giving them the weight of science. So people are brought
Speaker 1: from Congo and Benin to Haiti and Georgia and Virginia,
Speaker 1: where my people are from, because the slavers believe that
Speaker 1: their brown and black skin would make them better suited
Speaker 1: to work on plantations in the hot sun. Right. That's
Speaker 1: a scientific explanation, pseudo scientific, it's a cultural explanation for
Speaker 1: cruelty that is freighted with science. Right. And so you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that we have one less front to disrupt
Speaker 1: this narrative on is very very hopeful to me. It's
Speaker 1: good news. This survey is good news. We have a
Speaker 1: lot more that we need to find out, but this
Speaker 1: is a fantastic start. So let me test a pseudo
Speaker 1: scientific theory on you. As we saw the fast paced,
Speaker 1: relatively recent, fast paced acceptance of marriage equality in this country,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons offered was more of us started
Speaker 1: realizing we have gay and lesbian brothers and sisters within
Speaker 1: our own families, like they are part of us. We
Speaker 1: are part of them, and so they're not so distant.
Speaker 1: It's not a whole other. It's like, oh, that's my cousin.
Speaker 1: As we start to do more of these different genetic
Speaker 1: tests and find out, oh, I gotta got a little
Speaker 1: congo in me, got a little banine in me, do
Speaker 1: you see any similar possibility or is that just way
Speaker 1: too naive and hopeful. No, it's not not even hopeful
Speaker 1: at all. We we don't know. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the next enterprise for for the Center for the Study
Speaker 1: of Diversity and Democracy in twenty three to take on.
Speaker 1: We can get at that with experimental research, and we
Speaker 1: hope to figure that out. But but there is a
Speaker 1: worry that you know, for example, the testing can cut
Speaker 1: both ways. You can have someone saying I am you know,
Speaker 1: one percent Congolese, and so I should get the same
Speaker 1: type of consideration in universe see emissions or or employment
Speaker 1: that someone who is ninety nine nine percent Congolese and
Speaker 1: lived in you know the projects in New Work or
Speaker 1: you know Westfielle. You know. So this is coming right,
Speaker 1: and so there are dangers there. But but the hope
Speaker 1: is that it is like the story in the twenty
Speaker 1: three and Me commercial where the young woman's I think
Speaker 1: her name is McKinney, she's got this very genomic scan
Speaker 1: up and she's she says, I'm going to Cultivoir, where
Speaker 1: my wife is from. By the way, shout out to
Speaker 1: the Ivorians or and so you know, this this idea
Speaker 1: that that of her that's Ivorian makes her want to
Speaker 1: go to Ivory Coast, but she had a lot of
Speaker 1: other things that she's not choosing right. And so my
Speaker 1: concern is that as we get into these tests, people
Speaker 1: will choose to stress the parts of their genetic makeup
Speaker 1: that they identify with already from stories or the ones
Speaker 1: that will give them some sort of advantage, and that
Speaker 1: something that our society has no idea how to mediate. Yet,
Speaker 1: So white left, if your daughter is right that you
Speaker 1: that your one percent white? Will you use that for
Speaker 1: financial advantage? No? Actually, white officers, my daughter, I had
Speaker 1: my right here. You can just let me. It's not
Speaker 1: gonna work. I mean, I gotta work. I'm black and
Speaker 1: I'm a rapper. That's actually how I start my class
Speaker 1: self there today, because I've been using my own scan
Speaker 1: for fifteen years. And uh, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you know the smelling, but I'm actually a lynching survivor.
Speaker 1: When I when I integrated my bus stop in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: some high school kids decided that they were going to
Speaker 1: hang me in a tree and kill me at nine
Speaker 1: years old. And thank god the bus driver was one
Speaker 1: time and cut me down and I made it. And
Speaker 1: that's why I do this work every day. Right, So
Speaker 1: I always thinking back to what it was like being
Speaker 1: in that tree. Right. So the first question I asked
Speaker 1: my class I say, I put up my scan that
Speaker 1: shows that I'm thirty percent Scottish, right, And I say,
Speaker 1: so what does this mean? This cat is Scottish? What
Speaker 1: does he look like? Well, he probably can pass for white, well,
Speaker 1: you know, And then I reveal at the end that
Speaker 1: you know, this is my scan and they're like shocked, right,
Speaker 1: And I think the testimony to those boys when I
Speaker 1: was nine years old that hey, I'm thirty Scottish wouldn't
Speaker 1: have made any difference. And that's what you know. You know,
Speaker 1: the institutions that are policing all of these differences, the
Speaker 1: people that are policing all of these differences, there's no
Speaker 1: evidence they're going to be swede by the genetic scan, right,
Speaker 1: but we we just don't know where it's going. Yes,
Speaker 1: you have so sports, yeah, music right? Food? Right? Does
Speaker 1: your genetics matter for that? Like for example, of a
Speaker 1: dude's like, yo, I'm supposed to play golf. You know,
Speaker 1: the idea of brothers. It's only like when we see
Speaker 1: them playing golf, we get so excited because we'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's only a couple of them. Or women, for example,
Speaker 1: when we see them doing certain sports we like holy criddle, right,
Speaker 1: or earlier when you was like white man, cand jump,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So I really want to understand,
Speaker 1: like scientifically genetic wise does display part of the DNA.
Speaker 1: So it's really interesting that you you go there, white left, because,
Speaker 1: as I said in the survey, when you get to
Speaker 1: food and sports, the sort of Black and Latino and
Speaker 1: Asian acceptance of a kind of genetic explanation for race
Speaker 1: creeps up. So let's say it moves from like thirty
Speaker 1: to on those questions, right, So still the majority of
Speaker 1: people don't believe that it's an explanation. But but you know,
Speaker 1: in our full community, when I'm in my barbershop, you know,
Speaker 1: cats are talking about you know, you know, why would
Speaker 1: they pick a white boy in an NBA draft? Or
Speaker 1: you know, can this guy you know who's Asian? Can
Speaker 1: he actually be the point guard for the Knicks? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, these are the questions that we live with
Speaker 1: every day. And the reality is we only see one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they'd be going to them places and they'd be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: out of all of them, it looks like this one
Speaker 1: he can surpass the norm. Right So that so, well,
Speaker 1: these are social stories, is what I'm gonna say. So,
Speaker 1: if so, basketball is the sport that black men in
Speaker 1: my age, Cohort grew up believing was there's football and basketball,
Speaker 1: not baseball. You go back fifty years, the sport that
Speaker 1: my grandfather believed was the sport of black men was baseball.
Speaker 1: Jackie Robinson integrating the Major Leagues was the huge monumental achievement. Right,
Speaker 1: So what changed in that fifty years Neighborhood poverty in
Speaker 1: Black America gets worse. City government start closing down baseball
Speaker 1: fields and they replaced them with basketball hoops, and then
Speaker 1: you get a revolution. My grandfather broke his heart that
Speaker 1: I didn't want to play any baseball, right, So so
Speaker 1: that's part of it. But there is a genetic story
Speaker 1: whe left. So you you you take people, you steal
Speaker 1: people from western Central Africa, Nigeria, Congo, and you bring
Speaker 1: them over to the United States, Haiti, Jamaica, Antigua, and
Speaker 1: you isolate them genetically. You say you cannot have sex
Speaker 1: or marry anyone except the people that have that skin color.
Speaker 1: You're gonna reproduce a taller genetic population, right, Nigeria, Congo,
Speaker 1: these are all among the tallest countries in the world.
Speaker 1: So you bring people over, you isolated for five years. Yes,
Speaker 1: Black Americans are on average taller than others. My Scottish
Speaker 1: ancestry is holding me back at five nine. This is
Speaker 1: where I wish, I wish things are different, right, But
Speaker 1: so so you do that and then you put basketball
Speaker 1: hoops in these communities where people are on average taller,
Speaker 1: it's not surprising that we have an NBA that looks
Speaker 1: the way it looks. So the stories, the culture, social forces,
Speaker 1: the genetics all come together, but the indability doesn't track
Speaker 1: the genetics. That was so and and I overstand that.
Speaker 1: So I guess through failed policies through the past, what
Speaker 1: seventy eight years have shaped a rebirth of genetics? Right?
Speaker 1: I'm I'm also fascinated by this idea that even what
Speaker 1: is explained by genetics still needs some social environmental consideration. Right.
Speaker 1: I may have certain genes that lead me to be
Speaker 1: predisposed for certain things, but if it's not activated by
Speaker 1: my environment, if it's not reinforced by the community, I
Speaker 1: may never expressed that um and so you know, when
Speaker 1: the society pushes you in that direction, we may activate
Speaker 1: those things a little bit more. Why cleft, I want
Speaker 1: to abruptly change because I just want to get this out.
Speaker 1: You mentioned this beforehand. What are you working on right now?
Speaker 1: So what's interesting about this theory of everything that's going on.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give a music theory to the world on genetics,
Speaker 1: just based on all this conversation, because just listening to
Speaker 1: the style. So coming inside of the music industry at
Speaker 1: the age of seventeen years old, right from the gate,
Speaker 1: they let you know like, okay, if you're a black man,
Speaker 1: certain forms of music don't even step in the field
Speaker 1: because of the way these charts are set up. Right,
Speaker 1: music genome, yes, so music geno. So what I did
Speaker 1: was I defied that because I don't I didn't believe
Speaker 1: in that. So I'll take you through a few albums.
Speaker 1: So the idea of the fuji's creating a score and
Speaker 1: going into as a producer. What was I listening to
Speaker 1: when I was listening to doing the score as a
Speaker 1: studio engineer. Now, if I was to tell anybody who's
Speaker 1: listening now, why Cleps Young a hip hop artists, right
Speaker 1: at the age of nineteen, how was he crafting the score?
Speaker 1: And then I would tell you I was listening to
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd and I was telling you I was listening
Speaker 1: to the Wall. Now, a lot of people is probably like,
Speaker 1: holy sh it, we would have never guessed that. But
Speaker 1: hold on, why would you have not guessed that, because
Speaker 1: you'd be like, hold up, this kid is from Haiti,
Speaker 1: he grew up in the projects of Brooklyn. How did
Speaker 1: he discover Pink Floyd. So once again, right, so we
Speaker 1: defied the idea of you saying we must listen to
Speaker 1: this because we are in that certain environment. Also, I
Speaker 1: want people that are listening to this, um the youth
Speaker 1: challenge your environment, right because statistically we are put in
Speaker 1: these environments through all of these years, like you said,
Speaker 1: through failed policies, so we're supposed to be taller, were
Speaker 1: supposed But at the same time, I want them to
Speaker 1: understand that you are the masters of your own destiny.
Speaker 1: So after the score and this is all proven theory, right,
Speaker 1: So I went on to create an album called The Carnival.
Speaker 1: The Carnival is in more than five languages. Now if
Speaker 1: anyone from Sony Music is listening to this from the
Speaker 1: headman in charge at the time, that was Donnie Einer
Speaker 1: Tommy Mattola, the score cells over eighteen million right now.
Speaker 1: Why Cleve Jon has an idea because you know the
Speaker 1: the label one another eighteen millions. You show up and
Speaker 1: you're like, yo, this is my new album. It's called
Speaker 1: the Carnival. And they put this thing on It has English, French, crayon, Spanish, right,
Speaker 1: and they're like, what the hell is this? Because once again,
Speaker 1: it's not supposed to fit within the geo space of saying, well,
Speaker 1: which chart are we gonna put this on? Because if
Speaker 1: you sing and gone to November, this sounds like a
Speaker 1: grassroots record. And then you turn around and then you're
Speaker 1: doing b GS that sounds like this go then you
Speaker 1: turn around and you're singing one Thana meta like dude,
Speaker 1: like you're all over the place. Why can't I be
Speaker 1: all over the place? Literally? Yeah? But what? But what
Speaker 1: what defines you? Why must you just be in one space?
Speaker 1: How am I able to understand the bigs and at
Speaker 1: the same time understand sell your cruise? So it's important.
Speaker 1: Now I feel we're in modern time and I feel
Speaker 1: like streaming has disrupted that. So what streaming has done
Speaker 1: now is it has proven my theory of the carnivore.
Speaker 1: Because now my daughter she listened to what the hell
Speaker 1: she want to listen to? Nobody could tell her don't
Speaker 1: go to a tell us swift to me goes to
Speaker 1: whatever she does, whatever she wants. So now streaming has
Speaker 1: allowed the youth and the internet now the revolution as
Speaker 1: the Internet has allowed each individual to define themselves, like
Speaker 1: now you can't put no kid in the geo category
Speaker 1: and say, oh, you can't listen to this right. So
Speaker 1: then we had The Eclectic and I called up Kenny
Speaker 1: Rogers and I was like, yo, Kenny um, I need
Speaker 1: you to do a drop for my album, The Eclectic,
Speaker 1: And people go you from Haiti man, what the hell
Speaker 1: do you know about country music? Then I go into well,
Speaker 1: people from the Caribbean, this is common, like country music
Speaker 1: is one of the most natural form of music, and
Speaker 1: they go white cleft, we don't get it. So here
Speaker 1: it is. So back in the days before we even
Speaker 1: was born, you had the evangelists that were bringing the
Speaker 1: faith over to the Caribbean. So when that was bringing
Speaker 1: the idea of the faith to the Caribbean, there were
Speaker 1: radio stations and there was antennas. So a lot of
Speaker 1: these antennas were bought by people that love country music
Speaker 1: because there's a part that people don't understand. Country music
Speaker 1: is storytelling, but at the same time, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of Bible versus the original country music. So the idea
Speaker 1: would be, okay, we would bring country to the islands.
Speaker 1: So now when I'm in the projects in Marlboro and
Speaker 1: it's a Sunday afternoon and my mother's listened to Devil
Speaker 1: went down to Georgia to find a soda stale, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, yeah, that's Charlie Daniels. What what I
Speaker 1: don't get a Cleft. So I just want everyone to
Speaker 1: to to really understand. So at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I don't know what my DNA is. My daughter says,
Speaker 1: I'm one percent white, I might be British. I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on. But I only say that to say,
Speaker 1: do not limit yourself to putting yourself in a box
Speaker 1: like challenge that. So, for example, like the next Wild
Speaker 1: Cleft album, it's gonna be a country album, right, who
Speaker 1: is Who's gonna tell me I can't do a country album.
Speaker 1: I sang at the Johnny Cash tribute and if y'all
Speaker 1: look at this is gonna trip people out once again,
Speaker 1: there's still a stereotype fact the right. So they're like,
Speaker 1: my man is like, okay, the next artist coming up,
Speaker 1: why class young? Um, he's about to do a Johnny
Speaker 1: Cash and dude, the place was startled and I'm not.
Speaker 1: And when I'm standing up to sing Johnny Cash, what
Speaker 1: tripped everybody out? I'm not doing a popular Johnny Cash song.
Speaker 1: I'm doing a song that they wouldn't even know, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying that. So, what I want people
Speaker 1: to understand is, at the end of the day, do
Speaker 1: not limit yourself like to a box. Yes, through policies,
Speaker 1: we've been structured to say, Okay, you know what, the
Speaker 1: baseball fields are going down, we're putting up basketball courts.
Speaker 1: But I really want as we move forward, I really
Speaker 1: want the kids to understand that you could defy that,
Speaker 1: you can still rise up beyond that and say this
Speaker 1: is what I'm gonna want my future to be, you know,
Speaker 1: clean with the Johnny Cash deep cut. You already gone, baby, already.
Speaker 1: There's a consistent theme that comes up in these do
Speaker 1: that at conversations and and almost any scientific conversation. You
Speaker 1: see science and this basis as a limit, as a prescription,
Speaker 1: or as a possible foundation, as a partial description, and
Speaker 1: grow from there. Al what what have you seen in
Speaker 1: your work, maybe in the survey results that might be
Speaker 1: consistent with this advice that wide Cleft is offering young people. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's fantastic advice. And I think no matter
Speaker 1: what your positionality is in this society, adopting that why
Speaker 1: Cleft Sean uh you know, Haitian revolution attitude. We're all
Speaker 1: eighteen o four, it's the way to go for it.
Speaker 1: There there, there, there's a real like sort of you know,
Speaker 1: motivational book in there right at the sort of eighteen
Speaker 1: o four attitude, right. But at the same time, what
Speaker 1: I would like to see is a society that turns
Speaker 1: on the possibility that the structures that put these divisions
Speaker 1: in place begin to work to unravel them. If everyone
Speaker 1: has that a ten o four mentality, it's a glide
Speaker 1: path to a fully realized democracy where you're not geo
Speaker 1: coded into basketball players or soccer players, country music listeners
Speaker 1: or hip hop listeners. Right, And that's what we really
Speaker 1: have the work to do. And that what I think
Speaker 1: is great about the twenty three and Me project is
Speaker 1: that they're trying to leverage their power in this space
Speaker 1: to push in that direction. And and my life's work
Speaker 1: is to have a world where it looks like Star Trek.
Speaker 1: You know, Star Trek. Everyone has got these different sort
Speaker 1: of skin colors, and you're from these different planets and
Speaker 1: everybody notices it, but it doesn't define who you are morally,
Speaker 1: And in that system, you're shaped much more by take
Speaker 1: easts and interest in the hybridity that is a fundamental
Speaker 1: part of the kind of cultural experience that Wycleft is
Speaker 1: talking about, and we're a very long way away from that. Right,
Speaker 1: we didn't even start on this path until about ninety,
Speaker 1: about six years before I was born. Right, we don't
Speaker 1: even get laws to say that you can live wherever
Speaker 1: you want until right, And so what we've done is
Speaker 1: we've passed the laws and then we've forgotten about it,
Speaker 1: and people are still living mostly isolated, racially geo coded life.
Speaker 1: We're still living in the world of the charts, and
Speaker 1: we're still living in the world of the charts. And
Speaker 1: so it's going to take incredible cultural capital, incredible investment
Speaker 1: on the part of massive institutions and governments to move
Speaker 1: us in a direction where everyone has the kind of
Speaker 1: space to flow in any way they want. Well, I
Speaker 1: feel very fortunate that we have cultural capitalists like white
Speaker 1: Cliffs Gan in the room, that we have powerful institutions
Speaker 1: like Northwestern University in the room, and that we can
Speaker 1: keep having conversations like these two break down those charts,
Speaker 1: to think outside of the genetic box, but also understanding
Speaker 1: the value of those and to get to a more
Speaker 1: diverse and democratic future. Thank you both so much for
Speaker 1: being here. Thank you, and I just have to say
Speaker 1: I'm so proud of you man. See where you've come from,
Speaker 1: and uh, I remember many days on the stoop with
Speaker 1: you in front of Claverley Hall, and I'm just incredibly
Speaker 1: proud of you. Thanks Dad. I want to dig in
Speaker 1: more on today's topics and guests. Check our show notes
Speaker 1: and if you enjoyed the episode, share it with a
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