14: Victimization Mentailty

00:05 Mo Facts with Adam Curry for November 12th, 2019. This is episode number 14. And it's been too long, Mo. 14 days, 14th show. I'm ready. Yeah, and I got to apologize. I had to rush off to Europe. Had an opportunity to see my daughter who lives in Rotterdam. And Mo and I have kind of one agreement amongst the two of us is Family First. Family First. Family First, yeah. And then what happened? And then I had Family First yesterday because my father was in town.

00:47 All right. Celebrating Veterans Day. Yes, indeed. And he's a vet, right? Yes. Served in the Navy. And so Family First again. So, but we're here. We're back. Yes. Let me ask you a question before we get into the episode. And I'm very excited, of course, because I know you've had two weeks to get something ready. And I see we have a number of cliplets. Yes. Ready in the waiting. I want to remind everybody that the work that you hear here, here, is done on the value for value system, which means after you listen to a Mo Facts, was it worth your time? What is your time worth? All you have to do is let us know what you think by sending

01:29 a donation to MoFax with Adam Curry. You can do that at mofax.com or a direct link, mofundme.com, moefundme.com, and that would be highly appreciated, especially because there's a lot of work that goes into this, Mo, and I'm going to lay that down at your feet. You've got another, I presume, fantastic topic and episode lined up. I mean, I see clips from CBS to Fox to God knows where from. This has got to be a doozy. What are we doing? All right. So as we talked about, sometimes you know what the top is going to be, and sometimes it is a surprise. So I would like to unwrap this show topic with the ISO.

02:12 Victimization mentality. Woo! Top of the list. Victimization mentality. Nice. So this is a bleed over from the last episode we had talking about Mr. Kanye West. And that was one of the sound bites we got from him. And I have to be honest with you, after the last show, a lot of things stuck with me. Brought up some great topics. One being the term black, we coined the term called black guilt. Yes, first time you've ever heard it said in public between in mixed company. I think it might be the first time it was said ever. Ever. You heard it here first.

02:56 Did you get any feedback on that specifically? Actually, I did not. Interesting. I did not. Interesting. So I think it is a real phenomenon. And it was something else you brought up too that stuck with me. The apologetic, subconscious, apologetic thing that I did. Right, which led into you saying that this was a version of black guilt. Yes, exactly. Yes. And by the way, the responses I got from people was, oh my God, that's so interesting that both as kids, although we weren't in the same situation, but as kids, we both kind of were conditioned by

03:38 our own families and culture and background to be very uncomfortable with each other, which wasn't really necessary when you think about it. It wasn't, but it's the unknown. Of course. Of course. When you live with expectations. And I think that's what the, I don't think that's what this show is going to really go into is understanding how that victimization mentality is formed and how it's received across, you know, across the spectrum of both groups of people. So we got, like you said, we have a bunch of clips here. So from the last show, I had a clip slip.

04:21 And I want to show an example of how victimization mentality manifests itself. Jag Dorsey, Steve Jobs, Adidas, don't forget about us. So that is Big Boy talking to Kanye. Right. And Kanye was riling off the people that he's come in contact with. And Big Boy says, don't forget about it. That's kind of interesting. Yes. If it's such a short clip, let's just, because I didn't set that up well. Can we run that back one more time so we can just hear the pain and anguish in his voice when he said that? Jag Dorsey. Dorsey, Steve Jobs, Adidas, don't forget about us.

05:05 Yeah, you know, wow, in context, it's kind of like saying, you know, all the big boys, they're not part of your family or something like that, I guess. Yeah, it's like, don't, um, you're moving on. By the way, major, you know, major shareholder of Apple, of course, is Dre with his beats, beats acquisition. So, you know, it's not like it's just some old white gay dude at the top. It's the thought process that they're worried about. Right on. And that's why I want to talk about where the apology comes from. That apology comes from not out of

05:48 I feel sorry that I'm offending you. It's I feel sorry that I'm free and you're not. Oof. That's I really I thought about this for 14 days. And because when you said, and that's why I love this show, I love doing it because we get into places where no man has gone before. Yes. Especially in my mind. I mean, because I was like, I do do that. I do apologize. But like I said, it's not out of, oh, I'm sorry. It's not out of a sense of political, it's empathy and sympathy because it's like, wow, you can't mentally get free.

06:37 I'm off of the quote unquote, and I'm not going to make it political, but thought plantation. I'll refuse to be a victim anymore, but I can't bring you with me. So this is what Kanye means when he's talking about free man, free man talking? Yes. Gotcha. And so let's get into the show topic explained. What a great drug dealer does is they make the people who buy the paraphernalia from them feel like they're friends or they're buddies. It's not just a business transaction. I also care about you. And we see that same dynamic between the so-called black man and woman and the super liberal Caucasian here in Western society, especially here in America.

07:22 Well, what the super liberal Caucasian will tend to do is to try to make the so-called black male and female, but especially the so-called black male, believe that he should always resort to his emotions when it comes to evaluating what is going on in society around him. Because what the super liberal Caucasian knows is that by doing that, he will always ensure that the so-called black man remains a vassal to him and a servant of his. And that is what the quote-unquote drug dealer does with those who buy the product from him or her. They always want to make you feel like you need what they have to offer you. You cannot replace that sensation or that high anywhere else, especially in some way, shape, or form that's actually going to be lifting you up and constructing you and building you up rather than tearing you down incrementally.

08:08 Wow, that's a great analogy. Who said this? Who was that speaking? This is Chronicles of Julia. He's a popular YouTuber, and I think he has some very great takes. And I think he explained it with this analogy between the unfree black, and I don't want to say slave because I mean, no, no, it's completely different. It's unfree. You don't untethered. No, it's actually still. It's still pulled away. Yeah. No, it's actually they're still tethered. You're tethered. Yeah, so I said, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, they can't pull themselves away from the dynamic that's been created for them. And it's like, you're a victim, you're a victim, you're a victim.

08:54 Yeah. And the only way you'll be heard is to be a victim. I just wanted to, my own reflection on the Kanye show was it's kind of sad that the way things are going today, neither of us are really allowed to have our own culture and to have our own background and to have our own things. You know, it's like, yeah, everybody's equal, but no, we're different. We're distinctly different in a whole bunch of things, but it doesn't mean that we're not equal, but somehow that's gotten convoluted. And it's like, well, you have to have to all think the same and be the same. And one of the most, as I'm older now, one of the most enjoyable things is the differences and the oddities.

09:39 That's what I love about this show. It's like, I'm learning all kinds of stuff about my friend Mo, who has an American, has a different background. Hey, Ladio, you could be from the Midwest and you'd have a different, regardless of skin color. So that was, you know, that was kind of my reflection on. on all of this. Is it seems like society is not willing to just say, hey, you know what? Black people, white people, red people, yellow people, brown people, they're all different, but we have some common things that make us Americans. Where your culture is replaced, it's not like you're not, it's void. We do have a culture here in America, and it's not the American culture, but it's a culture of consumerism.

10:20 Yes. Wow. That we replace. Yes, you're right. That we replace because the reason why I noticed this is where I work is a high-tech company, and we bring a lot of people in from outside of America. Yeah, probably India, China, other parts of Asia. Yes. So when they first get there, they bring their culture. And now we're starting to hire more second-gen American/slash wherever they're from. Yeah, so they were born Indian American. And there's a total, there's this distinction there between the new hires that come straight from whatever country and the ones that are second gen from here in America.

11:06 Sure. The second gen hold no like, okay, we had a cultural festival, and the ones that came here directly from their home country dressed up in their traditional attire. Second gen, no, no, not at all. Right. So I don't think it's a distinct, it's not distinct just the black or white Americans. I think you have to give up whatever culture you had to take part in the corporate culture that we have here in America. Okay. So with that said,

11:48 there were some going ons while we were away. Something on sabbatical. Some shit went down, yo. So Barack Obama, he was at his Obama con or Obama Foundation Foundation. Summit. Yeah, I just call it Obamacare. I like ObamaCon. That has a nice connotation. Very good. Right. So, and he had a clip where he called out the woke culture. You know, this idea of purity and you're never compromised and you're always politically woke and all that stuff.

12:31 You should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids. May. And, you know, share certain things with you. And I think that one danger I see among young people, particularly on college campuses, Mali and I talk about this. Yara goes to school with my daughter.

13:11 But I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media. There is this sense sometimes of the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people. And that's enough. Like if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn't do something right or used the word wrong verb or then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself because man, you see how woke I was. I called you out. You know, I had an initial response to this, which you probably heard on no agenda, but

13:53 the more I hear it, the more questions I have about it. But for me, initially, it was like, oh, all right, good on you, Barack. I mean, there's some weird stuff in there, like using a verb. I was pretty sure he meant pronoun, but maybe I was wrong. But in general, to say, hey, man, you used coming out of college, you in college, do this calling people out and then, you know, thinking that you've done your job. I kind of like that. I call bullshit. Woo! All right, lay it on me. The reason why I say that is one, he wanted to say pronoun, but he knows he would have got canceled by certain demographics. Yeah. So his brain, his brain did a quick

14:40 inserted another word. Right. It started another word. And you know what? The people that will be that would possibly cancel him. I did a quick. search on the social media, you know, across social media platforms, and they picked up on it. They were like, we know what you wanted to say. Okay. All right, good. A wrong, wrong verb. I mean, what is that? I mean, who calls out the, but I won't go there. Okay, well, except that's what I thought too, is that he was like, whatever. Yeah. But the reason why, the main reason I call bullshit is they created the woke monster.

15:18 Yeah. Him. Yes. And the whole council culture was bred out of this self-righteousness that we've talked about on previous shows. They're very idealistic. And now what happens is these monsters, these little monsters that you created, that you raised, you think the kids that were 10 years old when Barack Obama took office. Well, what, that's 10 plus 8 plus 3 or 11. So you got kids, what, just ready to vote that were maybe six, seven, eight years old. I mean, if my math's correct, I'm just doing off the top of my head, but you created these little monsters and now you're trying to corral them back in to vote.

16:02 That's what this is all about. I know Biden might not be, you know, the hippest guy and know all the terminology, but we look past that. We need you to go vote. That's what this is all about. Well, yes. And I agree. I think it was in retrospect, it does sound like he was talking more about Joe Biden than anything. And that's why I totally picked up on, and like I said, my BS meter is, you know what I'm saying, pegged. It's pegged. But that wasn't the biggest takeaway from ObamaCon.

16:44 For people that's not familiar, we have to remind them who the new Holy Trinity is in Black America. I want to start by just giving you a little perspective of my household in the 70s. If you were like me growing up in the 70s, the portraits of MLK, JFK, and Jesus hung on a lot of folks' walls. That was the Trinity. Today, the Trinity of Oprah, Beyonce, Michelle Obama could almost replace them. You know, I could have done that from memory, but I'm glad you did it on a clip. It's more powerful. But I've been trained now.

17:25 I know the old and the new Holy Trinity. I know them now. I know them. I mean. So one of the new Holy Trinity spoke, Miss Michelle Obama. And let's just hear what she had to say at ObamaCon. Our family wasn't unique. And that's as we talk about Chicago and the South Side. You know, mom always says, she's the one that'll keep our little heads down. It will keep us humble. She's like, there are a million Craig and Michelle and Brocks out there. It's just that our stories don't get told. We get caricatured because of the color of our skin, because of fear, because of a whole lot of stuff, because we don't know each other.

18:10 We think that this family, this beautiful portrait, was the portrait of everybody in our neighborhood and of all of our family members. This was not unique. Everyone we knew got up every day and did what they were supposed to. They held down jobs. They kept their lawns mowed. They strived to give their kids good values and access to better things, which is one of the reasons we moved from Martin Luther King Drive to 74th and Euclid because my mom wanted us to have access to then what were better schools. But unbeknownst to us, we grew up in the period, as I write, called white flight.

18:55 Okay. White flight. White flight, yes. Are you familiar with that term? You know, I have heard this. I could not define it for you. Okay. White flight, just in very simple terms, that's when black families start to move into a white community and then the white people start moving out. Oh, okay. Or as we say in Archie Bunkerland, there goes the neighborhood. So, yeah. So when I heard this, I'm like, you're talking about white flight. White flight hasn't happened in God 30, 40 years.

19:36 I mean, we're talking about the 60s here when white flight really happened. Yeah, just before Archie Bunker came on TV, exactly that period. So, what we have to do is unpack what she really said. One, she said she left MLK Boulevard, I guess, and moved into another neighborhood to access better schools. Who were you leaving? What's she doing? Black flight? I mean, yes, of course that's black flight. That's moving on. Right. So, I'm just saying, I mean, when we hear these terms,

20:18 and then also on the clip, she says, Well, all the families were like, what I lived around were the same. We're the same. But then, as they always do, the more you let them talk, she's going to talk about the picture that they took and who took the picture. And just see if you can catch the discrepancy in this next clip than previous to what she said in the previous clip. Where was that? What was going on? How did that picture come to be? What do you remember about it? Well, it was that's in our backyard on 74th and Euclid. And these are some of my favorite pictures because this is the first time I remember us having what was a formal photography session, but it was really the daughter of our Uncle Terry.

21:07 Robbie and Terry didn't have children. He had a previous marriage. He had a daughter that was in school. And I think she had a photography project where she had to photograph a family. And I think she picked us because we were the only sort of full family she knew with mom, dad, two kids. Oh, so much for every family being like us. She was the only family with a full family and two kids, and the yard was nice. It's very, very different from what she said. Absolutely. And this is in the same talk. Yeah. Sure. In the same flow of the same interview or sound, whatever you want to call it with her.

21:45 Who was there with her, her brother, and the interviewer? Well, I will say, just referring briefly back to the previous clip, she says, we get caricatured because people don't know, basically through ignorance. And I would say there's some, I think that's fair to say. I wasn't against what she was saying there, but then this whole rap is bullcrap. She's just contradicting herself. And that's what they do. The more you listen to them, the more they go back and forth. And I want you to bookmark that caricature thing because that's going to be a common theme. And as we go on for it, too, of how is that caricature created?

22:24 Who shapes that? Because if you don't, like you said, you didn't know. I mean, before you began to talk to me every day, you didn't know the inner workings of the black, no, quote-unquote, black community. No. So the only thing you had was what the mainstream media presented to you. Right through a little bit from college, you know, my thoughts. Right, right, right. I'm just saying, but the inner workings, totally, totally. So from the Jeffersons and from the Cosbys. Oh, yeah. I admit that freely. Absolutely. Right. And that's how we learn because if you don't have the personal associations, but she goes on to talk more about white flight.

23:08 That is families like ours, upstanding families like ours, you know, who were doing everything we were supposed to do and better. As we moved in, white folks moved out because they were afraid of what our families represented. And I always stop there when I talk about this out in the world because, you know, I want to remind white folks that y'all were running from us, you know, because this family. This family. This family with all the values that you read about. Yeah. You were running from us. And you're still running because we're no different than the immigrant families that are moving in, the families in Pilsen, the families that are coming from other places to try to do better.

23:58 But because we can so easily wash over who we really were because of the color of our skin, because of the texture of our hair, you know, that's what divides countries. Artificially as well. Artificial things that don't even touch on the values that people bring to life. And so, yeah, I felt, I feel a sense of injustice. And you know this when you're young. You know, people are running from you, you know, and you can see it. You can see it all of a sudden. We, because we grew up with friends of all races. When we first moved in, Rachel Dempsey and Susan Yaker and I, you know, you had.

24:39 had friends of all races. We played together. There were no gang fights. There were no territorial battles. But yet, one by one, they packed their bags and they ran from us. And they left communities in shambles. Wow, it's quite the accusation there. What happened if everyone was hanging out and having a good time, then all of a sudden they started moving out? It's confusing to me. We're going to get there. Oh, we're going to get there. But let's just unpack the logic of what she's saying. So she lived in one community. It had to be all black. I mean, we had to make that before she moved into the white community.

25:22 So it was okay for her and her parents to leave one community behind because of that element that was in that community to move to another community, right? And then you say, well, we moved here, us good, upstanding black folks, you know, salt of the earth black folks, which they, which they are. I'm not saying poo-pooing that. But then the white people just suddenly moved because they saw you coming. Okay, so if they left, who replaced them? Well, had to be black people. Logically, yeah, logically, it would have to be black people, yes. So now you're uncomfortable with being around your own kind again that you tried to run away from.

26:09 Who really has? I mean, like I said, we need to use some logic here. I think she's ran from your own people, which, I mean, like I said, if you live in a poor neighborhood, I'm not sure if you're a person. Well, stop, stop, stop. Because you just said the keyword. Because the Obamas now live in a predominantly white neighborhood in Washington, D.C., and no one's running away from them. This is the difference between poor and rich. It's a class. It's an income. It's a wealth issue. I don't think it's much of a race issue. It certainly doesn't seem that way when people are all fat and happy. Well, what she's saying is about in the 1960s and 70s when she was a child.

26:51 This is this era. That's why I said she's going back. I don't understand why she's going back that far, but we do because exactly what her husband was talking about, this, you know, this virtue signaling and all, you know, she goes and feeds the animals. She feeds it red meat. Yeah. Like, oh, I remember white flight when they ran from us. You know, but okay, well, if you want to hold people by the same standard, you did the same thing. Yeah. Because the minute it filled up with black people, apparently it was time to leave. Right. And then soon as the vacant spots that were left, white people left behind filled up with black people, the neighborhood became bad again

27:30 by her definition. Yeah. I mean, you just got to listen to her. So as I always do, you got to go back. Here we go. We have to get context to white flight in Chicago in 1969. The Cabrini Green Project is what public housing has come to symbolize in Chicago for more than a quarter of a century. But in an effort to disperse the city's poor, who are mostly black, the new public housing proposals call for construction of duplexes, two-story townhouses, three-story apartment buildings, all to be scattered in the predominantly white areas of Chicago. This lot on Kamiski Avenue is one of 275 sites identified under federal court order by the Chicago Housing Authority for low-income families.

28:13 It would have a duplex on a street of single-family homes, and the homeowners are obviously upset. All I got to say is all the do-gooders, all the people are always telling us what to do. They don't practice what they preach. Why don't they go over there and put them by their neighborhoods? They won't do it. They're always telling us what to do. Well, we have a few rights of our own, too. That's going to bring down the value of everybody's property. Why do you think that? Because I don't know why. Just, you see those other projects they have, they don't take care of them. Where are we going to go, Tommy? You have to stay. If you're going to go there, they're going to go there too. They might as well get used to them and live with them.

28:57 What else can you say? Wow, I'm having like a time warp. I'm hearing this same report today. This exact same report could be played today. If you didn't, if you left that guy out of it, but it's this same report. And this is the problem I have with forced integration. If you want to fix a problem, let me, I know that triggered a lot of people when I said that, but instead of the fixing the communities that the black people were in, they're like, oh, this is spread out, you know, spread them out amongst into white communities.

29:33 How would that, how does that work? work? I don't understand how that solves the problem. If the schools are bad in the black, quote-unquote, black communities, why don't you put the resources there to fix the schools? Why would you want to? This is whole thing with busing. And the reason why I say that is I have a personal perspective of this because my father went to all black schools up until his senior year. And then they forced him and his classmates to integrate. Right. He hated it. Yeah, that's kind of universally accepted that there was not a great idea what was going on.

30:16 But that's not the vision that we always talk about what fact is and what they paint as the story. The story is all black kids are dying to go to white schools, you know. And that just wasn't the case. Be like white. People just say, it's not. People just said we want to have equal resources in our schools. Like my dad was saying, we just want better textbooks and not being shipped off into some other hood. Absolutely. It makes no sense. And that's what they did with this case in Chicago. But let me just say, this is early white guilt. And I recognize this. Not that I have it, but I recognize this. This, I recognize, is, well,

31:01 we should be sharing our wealth with the poor black people. We should bring them here, give them equal opportunity. It's completely, I mean, it's, we say, we'd say crooked thinking in the Netherlands. It's a bad translation, but it's, it's, it's, it just makes it's dumb. It's dumb. I can, go ahead. Well, here's the logic, I think. And like I said, I'm not a white person. So I think the white people that have that thought of if we they're too concentrated, if we can dilute them out, you know, that then they'll assimilate better. I think that's the real, that's a very unpopular thought.

31:46 No, no, no. That's the real. If we could, you know, if we can, you know, if we can spread them out, you know, we can influence them. We'll be right back. We'll be a good influence on them. You watch. Right. They can change. It can get better. We can civilize them. We can civilize them. Yes, they're just feral over there. Let's bring them. Oh, my God, Mo. That's horrible now that you've exposed me to this fallacy. That's nasty. And that's the real racism. Yes. Yes, yes. Victimization mentality. Totally. It's not that if we give them chalk and blackboards and take the lead paint out of their schools and, you know, give them.

32:28 Hey, I ate some lead paint too as a kid. Yeah, but give them proper resources, then they can't thrive. No, no, no. No, no, no. Let's we'll have none of that. No. Oh, wow. Yeah. This is this is very racist. It's very well you systemic. And that's what systemic racism. And it's to this day, they're still doing this shit in Austin. And it's, and yeah, sometimes it's black people, sometimes it's homeless people. It's still the same. It's the same thinking. Yes. All I can say is, yes. Yes, exactly. And we can, like I said, civilize them. We got, you know, we got, you know, they're too concentrated. But when you have people run away, that's the part I don't understand.

33:11 You, and we'll get there, but let's just get to what the tenements were like at the time in Chicago. Most of the adults who live in the tenement on South Ellis Avenue were born in rural areas of the South. They came to Chicago looking for a better way of life. They came to the south side of the city because they found that this was a place where Negroes were permitted to live. They came here without much education or sophistication in the ways of the city. They came here poor. About all that they brought with them were their hopes and their dreams. Bill Staples and his wife Gloria came from Alabama. Well, I mean, every man got a dream, you know.

33:56 Everybody have a dream. And you dream of going anyplace to make good, you know, to make it better for my family, better education for my kids. These are the prime reasons I came up on. Now, is this true? This is the tenements where all the were quote-unquote poor black people from the South? Yes. So what you had was you had three mass movements of black people over maybe a 40-year period from the the south to the north. I think beginning in 1914, I want to say because I did a video on this a long time ago, so I'm going off memory here.

34:37 But it was called the Great Migration. So, what happened was the change in agriculture in the South and then also the rise in racial tensions that were inflamed drove a lot of people, black people, out of the South. Right. And into the North, cities like Detroit, Chicago. I mean, after all, wasn't it the North that really freed everybody? And we have compassion for you, slaves. Yes, that's the myth. And I, like I said, I did a video on this. And the North, and just a sidebar. Everybody knows the story about Emmett Till, right?

35:19 I mean, he was killed and the cotton fan was put around his neck. He was thrown into the river for whistling at a white woman, right? Yeah. Everybody knows that narrative. That's because he was in the South. But in the North, nobody talks about the black kid that was stoned to death on a segregated beach in Chicago. He actually floated on his raft from the colored section to the white section, and white people threw stones at him in the water, and he drowned. But that just goes to show you. That's not, let's keep that under a nice little box. Yes, Chicago. We're not going to talk about that.

35:57 We're better than that. We're better than that. Yeah. Right. So I'm just going to show you that. But yes, we had a lot of people moving for the South and they didn't find the opportunities that they were looking for because what happened is that they were moved to these slums. You were separated from your family with a total different change in culture because you have people from the South. They have a background in strong family structure and units. And you're segregated and you're isolated in these tenements. So just give you a perspective of what was going on at the Chicago at the time. Yeah, and add a little no man in the house to it and you got a beautiful situation.

36:37 Well, that was the thing about even in this story of the tenements. This is a CBS news special from 1967. It was on like two black fathers out of seven families in that, and it was really like a rundown multiplex is what you want to call it. But yeah, it was like only two of the families and this was one of the fathers. And, you know, and these guys, they work hard. I mean, they didn't have a lot of education, but they work hard and they move their families up, which I'm not saying that, but we always, the people that should be fighting for us run and they try to force their way into white society or

37:21 the liberal mindset tries to force them into white society. There you go. So at the Obama Foundation, ObamaCon, they also had another guest, Miss Avra Duvernay. And she had a very interesting take on media. Film lover. And for me, it really goes beyond the idea of cinema. It goes into the idea of the image. You know, there's a reason why we use the term your mind's eye. You know, we think and remember in images, in pictures, right? And so film is just an artificial rendering of what's actually inside here. You know what I mean?

38:02 It's a little different than music. It's a little different than, you know, than even sculpture. We're recreating life in cinema. We're recreating stories that you remember, things that you're tapping into, things that really seep into your DNA and become a part of you. And so, you know, the power of images, it's been used to distort and malnourish, but it also can be used to nourish and to grow us. And so that's what I'm looking for whenever I start a project. Well, okay. Hard to argue that that takes place, but I would add some propaganda and other things into it when it comes to this. Yeah, that's what it's used for, propaganda. And like she said, it's used to

38:50 recreate life. No, but she said corrupt. She said to use the nourish. She did, yes. But, you know, and this is the caricature that was spoke of. A lot of the images that we see of quote-unquote black people are negative. But who signs up to play those roles? Us. I mean, if we would just start saying, no, I'm not going to play a robber and law and law and order a murderer or, you know, those kind of roles. Stereotypical roles, yeah. The stereotypes. stereotypical roles, but we

39:28 it's people that's always willing to take that. So, the reason why I brought this clip up is this white flight black people moving into white spaces was a popular theme of a very popular play turn movie called A Raisin in the Sun. In Lorraine Hansbury's Raisin in the Sun, a younger family of five lives in a tiny, dark, infested apartment on Chicago's South Side, sometime between 1945 and the present of 1959. The whole family eagerly awaits a $10,000 life insurance check for the work-related death of Big Walter, Mama's husband and the family's patriarch.

40:10 Walter Lee Younger, a dissatisfied chauffeur in his mid-30s, wants to invest in a liquor store. In the introduction, he mentions news of another bombing and he talks finances with his wife, Ruth. Ruth and Benetha, Walter's younger sister, both recognize Mama as the one in charge of the insurance money. As the rising action begins, Walter tries to convince her to finance his investment, but Mama's against selling liquor. She wants to support Benetha's plan to attend medical school. She's also thinking about buying a house. The family encourages Benetha to pursue her wealthy suitor, George Murchison, but Benetha finds him shallow.

40:50 Another suitor, Nigerian classmate Joseph Asagai, helps Benetha explore her African heritage. The check arrives, and Ruth reveals she's pregnant with an unplanned child. To Mama's dismay, Ruth has scheduled an abortion. In the climax, Mama uses part of the settlement money to make a down payment on a house. Ruth is at first overjoyed, but then shocked to learn the house is in Clyborne Park, a white neighborhood. Is this a play that you're exposed to growing up? Oh, yeah, so much so that my father actually played in a

41:35 community at the community arts center. He played Walter in this play. Okay. So they redone it. They redone it, I think, three times. The latest being with Puff Daddy playing Walter. Oh, man. So this is on Netflix. I can just watch this after the show. It should be on Netflix. I know it's on YouTube. So I wanted to find it. I'll find it. Yeah. But the original one has Sydney Poitier in it. So it was a very big deal. It won, let's see. A Chony. It won awards. A Chony. A Chony Award.

42:17 It won a. Actually, let's see. I have my notes. Yeah, it was an award-winning play. And it was based off Langston Hughes's famous poem, A Dream Deferred, from the line, what happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? So that's, it came from that era. And Miss Lorraine Hansberry, the one that wrote this play, she has a history with actually dealing with trying to integrate into white communities.

42:57 She was actually part of the Supreme Court case, Hansbury versus Lee. And this is where the Hansbury family, they were struggling to move into the Washington Park subdivision in Chicago. So all of this is connected in a way. This is really like one of the driving forces to say, oh, yeah, we can move into these communities. And let's just go to clip two. Mrs. Johnson, the neighbor, stops by excited for the youngers' move, but also scared of the violence they'll likely face from Chicago's white folks.

43:38 Walter stops going to work and he drinks. When Mama sees his deterioration, she gives him control over the remainder of the money. She tells him to put some aside for Benetha's education and to decide himself what to do with the rest. We see an immediate change in Walter, and Ruth decides to keep her baby. While the youngers excitedly pack, Carl Lindner visits a white representative of the Clyborne Park Welcoming Committee. In the falling action, an uncomfortable but polite Lindner says he wants to start a dialogue. But it's soon clear the neighborhood residents want to buy back the house to prevent integration. Walter, Ruth, and Benetha angrily reject the offer. and ask Lindner to leave.

44:22 Soon after, Walter's fellow investor Bobo reports that Willie Harris has skipped town with their investment money. Walters, as well as Benetha's share, enraged, Mama begins to beat Walter. The family, now in need of cash, considers staying in the apartment. An upbeat, hopeful Asagai debates the possibility of progress with Benetha. Asagai asks her to move with him to Africa to work with him to help improve the lives of his people. At his lowest, Walter calls Carl Lindner to accept the buyout. Benetha's ready to disown her brother. But Mama insists Walter needs their love now more than ever.

45:03 In the resolution, Walter instead tells Lindner they plan to move into the house after all. As movers load the truck, Benetha says she's thinking about going to Africa. Mama tells Ruth that Walter's finally come into his manhood. With hope, as well as dark uncertainty about integration, the play closes with the youngers vacating their apartment and going to their new house. So, uh, so this is a comedy. No, man, depressing. It's a melodrama. Depressing.

45:46 Yeah, you have these pieces of quote-unquote art. Every generation, I spoke of a color purple that was in the 80s that shapes and molds black culture in a certain way. This came out. This play was in the 19 or late 1950s. This movie was in 1961. And like I said, this was a play that was done. I had to be six, seven years old. And 1986, my dad played the role of Walter in the community center in play.

46:28 So it had real sticking power and it had real cultural impact of black people not wanting to build up their own communities. No, the talented 10th, the top, you know, achievers move out. And that's how you get the ghetto, as people say, I said it that way. I like how you said that. Yeah. The ghetto. The ghetto. That's how you get it because it's like, okay, no child left. What was it? No child left behind. If you're a top performer, we move you to a good school. Affirmative action.

47:11 Affirmative action. Yeah. So it's like, and then you self-segregate. I mean, you self. Yes, I guess segregate from your own kind based official. So the point the point you make here is how influential media and a play is media, a book is media, how influential artistic culture is. And of course, it's the same for white people. There's a lot of influence from artistic culture. But it sounds like, and I can't wait to, I can't wait to see you raising in the sun. It sounds like there's a lot of similarities with a modern day version, which I mentioned it before, would be the Jeffersons. I mean, this was what I grew up watching.

47:54 Yeah, that's exactly. I mean, it's not exactly the same, but it's similar. Similar as in, we're moving on up to the east side. You know, George Jefferson's got a big, big-ass chip on his shoulder. You know, it's kind of a version of that. I think the time is the only thing that would be different because these people would force themselves into environments where they were not wanted. And that's what I can't say I fully understand it because I didn't live it. But why would you want to force yourself to somewhere where you know you're not wanted? You're going to be faced with violence and hate. From a white perspective, I'm going to give you this because this is how I was taught.

48:35 From a white perspective, I was taught to view someone who did that as heroic and brave and righteous. That makes sense. I can understand how people can look at that, but I'm just telling you, that's my background in this particular story. Not how I feel today, but how I was brought up. The part I can't understand, I don't want to stick on this point too long, but and this is what perplexed a lot of us. Do you hate being around your own that much that you would go? would go into harm's way just for better schools.

49:20 I mean, that's just like when you see the line, and it's like this is common scene in civil rights videos of a little girl walking and it's white people yelling on both sides, you know what I'm saying? And like, just like a bloodlust. Yes. Would you suspect your children to that over instead of improving your own community? That's the part I can't understand. But like I said, I don't want to belabor that point too much. But even on the set of raising their son, there was trouble. In the play, the story was told from the mother's perspective, which Poitier disagreed with from the start.

49:59 His character makes a few decisions which he felt could show a black man in a negative light if the audience couldn't understand where he was coming from. Poitier voiced his opinion, and this led to a clash between him and Claudia McNeil. We argued constantly, he later said, claiming that McNeil hated him. Yeah, well, Sidney Poitier was a smart man. He had a lot to say. Yeah. And they understand only a black man can understand how things are going to be viewed. But as I've said on previous shows, we're the sacrificial lamb. It's like, yeah, they get shot dead in the street.

50:43 But then when people make protests, they talk about intersexuality and all these other topics. It's like, no. Or they'll, like I said, go back to color purple. They'll paint the black male as the oppressor or the problem. And I think Sidney Poirier picked up on this that they actually treated Walter as a child, really. I mean, I mean, because if you listen to the previous clip, they said, oh, yeah, he finally came into his manhood. He was a 30-year-old man. Right. Right, right. So, so your question is, and of course, you know, I was alive back then, but you know, in the 67, not much before that, is

51:27 what was going on? Why was it, I mean, I guess you're saying it must have been really bad in the ghetto. Well, I would say this, and I have to disclose this one piece of information. Miss Hansberry was close with Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois of the NAACP that was ran by the FBI agent Spingard. It's propaganda. I mean, it is. It's totally propaganda. Yes.

52:06 When you start tracing these threads back, as more people listen to this show, sometimes go back and listen to old shows because then you'll get context of what we're saying now. These things don't happen in a vacuum. No, another show. And I just got it's as if, and maybe I'm jumping ahead, so stop me before I kill again. But you and I have both been propagandized by a big media machine that in all likelihood was in collusion and had this grand idea. And I got propagandized, you got propagandized, and it really created a bunch of shit out of everything.

52:48 And then the, was that the last show where we talked about how the civil rights movement, or two shows ago, I'll lose track, but how the civil rights movement was televised in a way that didn't even shape it as propaganda. Yeah, I mean, it didn't even, Claudette, you know, didn't even show the real first person who sat in the front of the bus. I mean, all of this stuff is completely manipulated or selectively presented. Yes. So these memes and thought patterns are shaped through media and fed to people that are looking for themselves on the screen. Ideally, we all do that.

53:32 That's why we have different genres of music. That's why we have different television shows because we want to see somebody that we can identify with. One of those shows being Good Times. And we'll see one meme that was pushed in this next clip on Good Times. Honey, you never walked away from a test before. Tell us what's really bothering you. Mama, they don't know it. But that IQ exam was nothing but a white racist test. Oh, Michael, how could it be a white racist test? All school children take it of all colors. Yeah, but this one was given by the white people, made up by white people, and even graded by white people. It don't tell you how smart you are. just how white you are. That's why they ask questions on a test like this.

54:14 Complete the following phrase: cup and. And you have to choose from four words: wall, saucer, table, and window. You know what my friend Eddie put down? Cup and table. Because in his house, they don't have no saucers to put under the cups. You know, something when I was a kid, we didn't have no saucers to put on the table either. And get this question: A mother and father and two children live in a five-bedroom residence. The mother and father sleep in one bedroom, and each of the two children has a room to himself. How many guest bedrooms are there left? Now, how many kids in the ghetto even know what a guest bedroom is? Yeah. I had just moved to the Netherlands, so I never really saw good times.

54:57 Of course, I've seen some. This is very, very telling, especially knowing who produced all this. Well, we're going to get there. For the people that this is your first time listening, but John Amos, this is a throwback clip. And similar to Sydney Poitier, when he brought up negative images of how black people were being shown on these TV shows, or as Sydney Poitier said, on the status of Raising the Sun, they were met with pushback. The differences we had on that show, and we had a number of differences, as evidenced by my early departure from the show, was I felt that with two other younger children, one of whom

55:44 aspired to become a Supreme Court justice, that would be Ralph Carter or Michael, and the other, Bernadette Stennis, I think she aspired to become a surgeon. And the differences I had with the producers of the show was that I felt too much emphasis was being put on JJ and his chicken hat and saying dynamite at his third page, when just as much emphasis and mileage could have been gotten out of my other two children and the concomitant jokes and humor that could have come out of that. But I wasn't the most diplomatic guy, like I said, in those days, and they got tired of having their lives threatened over jokes.

56:25 So they said, I'll tell you what, why don't we kill him off and we'll get on with our, we'll all get on with our lives. Life's too short. So that taught me a lesson that I wasn't as important as I thought I was to the show or to Norman Lear's plans. And he was not about to have a disruptive factor. That wasn't a disruptive factor. Yeah, and I do want to mention this is a throwback clip. This is one of the few podcasts that I would say it's worth going back and listening to every single one we've done because they do kind of build on each other. And it's just everyone is worth it by itself. So that aside, thank you, Norman Lear. Still active today. And the

57:07 meme that they pushed in the previous clip of the good times is standardized tests are cautiously biased. And that thing has legs. We've heard it even up until when I got ready to take the SAT that the SAT was cautiously biased. And before we play the next clip, I heard you chuckle at chicken hat. Yeah. And before we did, when we did the show, you didn't chuckle. So that goes to show you people, when you listen to the older shows, then you understand you pick up stuff. Why that was a problem to James Amos. I mean, excuse me, John Amos. But as I said before, even me growing up,

57:49 when I was growing up, the SAT was seen as a racist or biased test. And now the SAT has done things to overcome that. And the college board will start assigning an adversity score to all students taking the SAT to capture their social and economic background. It's meant to help admissions officers account for any disadvantage stemming from those factors. The score is calculated using 15 factors, including the crime rate and poverty levels from the student's neighborhood. The formula does not consider race. Colleges will see the scores when reviewing applications. 150 institutions are expected to use this test this fall.

58:33 David Coleman is the CEO of the College Board. He is here to discuss the organization's new approach and its response to the massive college admissions scandal. Good morning. Good morning. Good to see you. So you've probably seen this. One critic in the New York Times said: if the SAT needed a sophisticated conventional or contextual framework to make it valid, then that's a sign that it's not a good test. So why did the college board decide to create the adversity test? What the SAT is, is a valid measure of your achievement. What have you learned in reading and math? How ready are you for college? But what it doesn't measure alone is it doesn't measure what you've overcome, the situation that you achieved that in. What we can do with this context data is see how resourceful you are. Have you done more with less?

59:17 So, to be clear, it's not really a personalized adversity score, it's the general context of your school and neighborhood. And what it's really aiming to do is highlight those resourceful students. Let me give you an example: a college that we partnered with just let in a young woman from Mississippi. She happens to be a rural white young woman in a very small school. And her SAT score was pretty much average with the other applicants. But what they found when they looked at it in context is it was 400 points higher than any other kid scored at her school. The neighborhood, the world she lived in, was rife with poverty. It's a small school without a lot of advanced opportunities, but she made the most of it. So we're saying the SAT shows you achievement, but what it can't show alone is your resourcefulness, doing more with less.

1:00:00 You know, whenever I hear someone talking like this, it sounds to me like they're just an incredible douchebag. Man, oh man, geez. That guy could run for any political office as a Democrat right there. So the adversity score. So if you get a just say a 1,200 and you come from a decent background, and another person comes from a poor neighborhood with high crime and they get a 1,200, they're graded on a curve. Right. How does that help? I don't understand how that helps. What that does is feed into the victimization mentality. Exactly.

1:00:43 Because when you go, when you go off to school. Yeah. So I'm so sorry. We'll give you a chance. And yeah, the thought process is, I'm sure, lining good intentions. But when you get to that school, they'll be like, oh, what you making on the SATs? Oh, yeah, I got a 1,200. And the average score there is like a 15. I don't know what the scores are now, but just say the average score is 15, 1,600. What are you doing here? You don't belong. Right. So you're creating an environment for that person to be ostracized instead of taking the data and saying, okay, these communities are the poor communities with high crime.

1:01:27 Let's fix the source of the problem. Oh, no, no, no. We'll just take the cream of the crop. The cream of the crop. We'll just, ooh, shoot, we'll just skim that off. Here we go. Come here. Yep. So that means the only people that are allowed to make it out of those poor crime-ridden communities are the academic elite. Yes. Now, who's the real elitist? Who's the real? I mean, that's a bigoted mindset to say, oh, well, you couldn't make the threshold. So you're doomed to poor schools.

1:02:06 This is the flip side of that coin of victimization mentality, the people that support this thought process. And that, oh, well, you said something important. Important is I think that the people who are speaking about this and who put these programs in place, sadly, I think a lot of them were of good heart. They meant well. But, you know, what bugs me, and you know, I'm not, I'm not going to say it anymore, is that I see this same thing happening and we have the results, historical data to show that this is just not the way to do it. So that's really weird. It's like, you know, it's the definition of insanity.

1:02:51 Okay, let me. All right. So I'm going to give you my perspective on why I think this deadly combination of good intentions from the good-hearted, liberal people. And then you have the elite of the said group. It works for them because it's like, oh, yeah, help us. And then we'll, you know, we'll help the people down there. Oh, definitely. We just want to trickle down. It's trickled down. Yeah, no, I totally. Yeah, no. Yes, I completely understand what you're saying. So it's trickled down. And it's like the good, and that's why I was saying before.

1:03:33 If you get the middleman out of the way, that's why people wonder why, oh, why he's focused so much energy on the boolay, quote-unquote Boulet or the black elite, because they're running the show on the jar. Yeah, they're running the show. They are the lid on the jar and they function. They're the gatekeeper or whatever you want to call it. It's like the only way you make it. it out is through us. It's through us. Through us. And you had to be exceptional. That's the only way if you're exceptional at putting a ball through the hole or running a ball or dancing or singing or intelligence or whatever, you can't get into the club.

1:04:18 If not, screw you. Stay down there. You'll be the victim that we'll lobby off of. It's the same thing with homeless. We don't want to fix the homeless problem. We got a million dollar, billion dollar scheme going here. We don't want to fix global warming. We got a billion-dollar scheme going here. It's like we need the problem. Yeah. As we say, problem reaction solution. Yes. So Gail from the show, she chimes in about the SAT. Yeah, so, and that's the point you're trying to make. I hear is that it's really about putting it all in context.

1:05:00 That's it. Calling it the adversity score. Some people say it should be called the privilege score. Yeah, I think calling it a score is kind of a mistake, if you don't mind. It's really a general background. So every kid in the same school or same neighborhood gets the same background information. We use no personal data. Don't colleges have access to that information already? They have some data, and you're right. This is really making what colleges already do a lot better. We've long agreed in American education that we should recognize students who have defied the odds to accomplish enormous things. And so they try to use school profiles, they try to use a jumble of evidence. And all we're doing is providing it in a more fair way.

1:05:36 So schools that might not have as much resources to make their profile and might not be as well known to admissions officers can be seen in the same light so that they can witness the neighborhood in which students grow up. And really, all this is about is there is so much more talent than we can see than by using scores alone. David, you say it's a valid measure of achievement. A lot of people would think, and these are people who would probably not have adversity that could count against them, they think it's a valid measure of your ability to cram for an idiosyncratic test. And so they get their kids into the various study programs. People are thumbing through books, going crazy. What about that criticism of the SAT? It's a pretty old-fashioned picture of the old SAT.

1:06:17 In 2014, we revised the test and partnered with Khan Academy to make the best of test preparation free for the world. Now, 30 seconds after taking an exam like the PSAT, you get a personalized study plan for free and you practice just what you need to get better at in reading and math. This is not a mysterious test. It tests a few core math skills you use over and over again and your ability to read with confidence. Oh man. What a program. So how is the test racist when the man just said it tests core math, right? And your confidence in reading.

1:06:59 Core math and your confidence in reading. But when you have things like what we saw with the IQ test, then these standardized tests are causally biased. They grow legs. They evolve over time. Then it becomes SAT is racist. Now, Adam, I want to ask you something. Axe your way, my friend. You axe all the hell you want, my brother. What would be the one subject of education that you would think is universal? Well, there can only be one truth. And the only truth I've been taught is in numbers.

1:07:43 Mathematics is truth. One is one. Zero is zero. And that's it. There's just truth in mathematics. No, math is racist. The opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math. Andrew Yang may want to rethink that catchphrase because apparently math is racist. Seattle's public schools are considering a proposal that would mix social justice in with math, including studying how math has been appropriated by Western culture and that math itself is racist.

1:08:26 And Delesio Parson is a sociologist and educator who agrees with the premise of the proposal and joins me now. All right. So, and let me just see where I'm confused so you understand what's going on. I am bad at math. And if math is racist, then I'm also white. Does that make me too dumb to be racist or no? not racist enough to be good at math, not racist enough. Jesse, that's such a long conversation. First of all, remember Dr.

1:09:07 Delasio Parson. Yes, Dr. President. So please don't refer to me by Anne, but I appreciate it. Okay. I apologize. Whoa. Whoa, back off. Okay. So is she black, this doctor? No. Okay. Even better. What's wrong with her? Okay. So math is racist. Yeah, I still don't know why. I mean, hopefully I'll learn. I'd love to understand. And before we get into clip two, just another personal my father, he would not tolerate a bad grade in math because he would say the one thing

1:09:52 you can say language or, you know, you can make these cases or, you know, context, language, and it could be subjective. But math is pure. You said it yourself. One plus is plus one plus one is two, whether in China, India, wherever, you have one egg, you give a person another egg, they have two eggs. Seems logical. But math is racist too. Tell me why math is racist, doctor. Yes. So you, it's funny. On November 6th, 2016, I was at a conference on statistics and I raised my hand and I was like, are you telling me statistics are racist?

1:10:38 And that was, what, almost three years ago? And I was really confused when I asked the question and spent years reading about many different things. Have you, Jesse, read Native Sun, which I gave you last time we met? I read it in high school, but I have not reread it since the last time you gave it to me. But what does that have to do with is math racist? So the critical race theory is a framework for understanding the world that helps us understand that this entire country is racist, right? We have a white supremacist caste, racial caste system in the United States. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

1:11:20 Can you just stop for one second? Are you saying that all white people in America are racist? Yeah, I am too. Sometimes it happens. We were socialized, right? The process of socialization and learning about social norms. So your race? You're a racist. Occasionally, it happens. I usually apologize when I realize it. How are you a racist? What do you think makes you superior? Jesse, that question doesn't make sense. Well, isn't racism the belief that one race is inherently superior than another race, and then you discriminate against other races?

1:12:00 That is a piece of racism, but you gave a definition that's really old. Oh. And language evolves over time. Race and white supremacy. What are race and white supremacy today? Yeah, okay. They are structures that affect us all. So people do things that are racist all the time, myself included, because we don't realize that's happening. Like microaggressions. Okay. Oh, okay. Well, that makes sense. I'm sorry. I didn't get the memo. I still go by the Merriam-Webster definition of racism, which I will quote: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

1:12:45 Well, now I understand why everyone's being called a racist. It's different now. I just can't find the actual definition, but all right, what is it? And did you catch the irony here? Because it's very, very rich. If you didn't, I'll tell you what. Go ahead, there was a lot going on there. Go ahead. Tell me. The irony of what she's saying validates why the SAT language portion of it will be racist. By definition. By definition. New definition. Because when you change the definition of words at a whim, people don't get the memo.

1:13:24 I go into thinking you mean one thing that I'm studying on and you change it to mean something else. I'm out of the loop of what is in vogue. Oh my God. This is, I mean, this is so current for me. I mean, I just got called out for being a misogynist and a racist for making fun of the way some, in particular, particular, the way some people talk. Important, I made a joke about it. I'll still make a joke about it because apparently, old white man must shut the F up because language change and you're in the way. I'm like, okay, well, let's, if that's settled science, like, you know, there's words that change.

1:14:09 Gay used to mean something else. You know, eventually we all accept it, but it has to go through a little process. And then we have these crazy things called dictionaries, which then define it and say, okay, here's the new meaning of the word. And I'm okay with that, but you can't just do that and say, you're just, you're just old-fashioned. That's an old definition. You don't know what you're talking about. This is an outrage. And you know what? She coined a new term. Oh, boy. The occasional racist. I'm occasionally racist, you know. Occasionally. I expect to only be racist on Saturdays, but I'm working on Sundays as well.

1:14:51 It explains it. Well, hopefully that she can give us a little better explanation of what racist is because I know what it's not now. So it's not, it doesn't occur when you just think that you are superior to a different race. It happens apparently in other cases. So I'm going to continue on. Oh, boy. How is two plus two equals four? How does that discriminate against black people or brown people? One stick plus two stick. Humans were like, hey, here's a stick, here's another. I just did some math. That was not racist. We're on the same page with that. Okay.

1:15:29 One plus one equals two. Yes. Okay. Humans have then used math and numbers and statistics in all sorts of ways, from counting black and brown bodies as they made them property and brought them over to these lands to much more recently, scholars who said that white people were more intelligent than people of color. That's called scientific racism, the use of statistics and tools to construct the idea. It's like something deep in our brains. It's hard to recognize. And that's why it requires time, Jesse. I asked your question just because more than three years to get here. If slavery doesn't make counting racist. Do you understand? Something can be related to each other, but not a causation.

1:16:14 You understand what I mean? Do you understand what statistics is? I think I do. I'm not understanding, though, if you understand. That's the point. Doctor, I've got to say that. I have to run. I have to run. Doctor, maybe we could do this again sometime and you could explain it to me. I would love to come to the Democratic debate in Milwaukee next year. Thank you. Oh, okay. She's just there. Oh, F her. Hold on a second. Stop this show. Now you've got me. You got me all riled up now. And thank God Waters said, wait a minute, is counting racist. Thank you. I was going to ask about that. But here's what she did. She brought in, and it's the second clip she did it.

1:16:55 She brought in statistics. And what I've learned about statistics is there's lies, damn lies, and statistics. And statistics is not just math. It's math based on variables and known as the, well, the N factor is what I'd call it. Interesting in this context where you have an N, which is a number that will offset your margin of error, which is how polling is done. And we know how polling works. It sometimes doesn't work very well at all, ergo the 2016 election. And then it turns out that all she's here is to do like Epstein didn't kill himself and yell out at the end, put me on the debate.

1:17:40 I want to be there. All right, I'll shut up for a second. That got me riled up, Mo. Damn. Hey, black man. Yes. One stick plus two stick equals three sticks. It's like, now let me count the black man. Now we're getting racist. I know that's hard for you to understand with your three-fifths of a brain. Oh, man, man, man, man, man. So, okay. So this is. This is what I hear when I hear crap like this. It's like, why are you talking to me like I'm an idiot? Who can't learn math? Especially we're talking about basic arithmetic.

1:18:20 We're not talking about when you get into calculus and those things because, you know, it's something totally different, but basic math. But no, math is racist. And you can see the decline. And we went from the IQ score, the IQ test to the SAT. Now, all the math is racist. I mean, because the poor brown and black man, he can't get his head around, oh, one place, one stick plus one stick, you can two stick. I mean. I mean, it's, I'm laughing, but I'm laughing kind of out of severe sadness that this is going on. This is new. This is now. This is what? Maybe, maybe two months ago. I don't know when this. Yeah, this is two months ago.

1:19:00 This is crazy. So we're in the present right now. So we went to the past, just so everybody knows along the timeline. We're out of the 60s, we're out of the 70s. Now we're in real time. But this is what happens when you get a bunch of intellectuals sitting around, you know, just throwing smoke. For whom, by the way, white guilt has been jammed up their butthole all their life, apparently. I mean, and this happens in colleges, universities, everywhere. That's the breeding ground. Yes. That is the breeding ground of the

1:19:42 I wonder what it could be. I wonder why the colored kid can't learn. Must be my fault. Right. But I will say this is not a white phenomenon because we have Miss Amani Perry. She's a fame author. She wrote a song, Breathe, a Letter to My Sons. So I'm just going to read really briefly and then we'll jump into conversation. And this is in the midst of writing to my sons. There are fingers itching to have a reason to cage or even slaughter you.

1:20:21 My God, what hate for beauty this world breeds. They say they are afraid. I do not believe it is fear. It is bloodlust. People will say I'm being melodramatic. They have. But police kill middle-class black children and adults too. Not with the same frequency, but class is no prevention. It is a reduction of the odds at best. As a black mother, when I read about one of those children whose lives have been snatched, at first blush, I think that could have been my child.

1:21:00 Did you take all that in? Yeah, you might. You know, I'm already kind of full. I don't know if I can fit anything else in here. Okay. So, Miss Amani Perry is a black woman. She works at Princeton. And, like I said, she's the famed author. And she writes this, I guess, a letter to her sons about how there's a bloodlust that wants to kill them around every corner. That's setting your kids up. That's really, that's a good way to get them going. Get them on good push in life. All right. So what they do is, yeah. So what they do is they see these stories on the news.

1:21:43 And what she said was, that could have been one of my children. We've heard somebody say this before. Can I just say something? All my life, and I would say that the best period to compare this to was when I was in New Jersey. And we were in Montclair, very, very elite neighborhood, right next to East Orange. But whenever, and my kid was born in 1990, whenever I saw shit on the news, black, white, yellow, gray, I don't care. I always thought that could be my kid, but not just if it was a white or a black kid. It was every kid. Every kid. Holy shit. How can this happen to our kids?

1:22:28 Right. So we've heard this before. With Mr. President Obama speaking on Trayvon Martin. Well, I'm the head of the executive branch, and the attorney general reports to me. So I've got to be careful about my statements to make sure that we're not impairing any investigation that's taking place right now. But obviously, this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids. And

1:23:14 I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and that everybody pulls together, federal, state, and local, to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened. So I'm glad that not only. only is the Justice Department looking into it, I understand now that the governor of the state of Florida has formed a task force to investigate what's taking place. I think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how something like this happened. And that means that we examine the laws and the context for what happened, as well as the specifics of the incident.

1:24:03 But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon. Yeah, he was really good up until that last bit. You know, every parent in America, all that. Yeah, totally. Yeah. But if I had a son, he would look like a son. He looked like Trayvon. And we're still waiting on that investigation just so you know. I was going to say, do we have any outcome of that finally? I mean, do we know? No. So we see how these memes, even in literature, oh, it could be my son, Obama.

1:24:44 It could be my son. These things, they travel. And this is the talk gone wrong. We've talked about this before: of one, yeah, it's some things out there that we need to be worried about and how you interact with certain people. But when you friggin' traumatize your children, there's a bloodlust out there that wants to take your life every second. You know, that's very harmful. No kidding. That's very harmful. No kidding. So, Miss Imani Perry, she continues on with her book, Breathe. There's this particular sort of motif of black mothers is long suffering, right? And everything is sacrifice, which in some ways is true.

1:25:28 But then it's also, but how do you educate your children or the young people in your life to have the kind of care for you fully as a person that you have for them? Because you want them to be that way with the people and their lives, right? It's interesting because when you think about the disciplines that we, you know, we love and we live in and we've studied our way through, and even the sense, the means toward a kind of stability and authority, like STEM, as we see it. All of those things are buying into a particular kind of order and

1:26:15 belief that this will pay off. This is going to convince the world of what is right. This is going to make a stable life for you and keep you safe. Yes. The world we live in shows us that is not true. It's not true. And what's so beautiful about this book is that you call on so much that is outside of that, that to me feels undeniably rooted in blackness. The belief in the spirit and the sense of, you know, yes, there is a way that suffering and love are inextricable. Yes. So it's exciting to me that in addition to being a book that's really practical and loving, it's also kind of this archival celebration of the things that come from blackness that we haven't yet fully categorized.

1:27:03 Does that make sense? Absolutely. Oh, well, I'm glad I have a black friend to explain it to me. I wanted to clip it because in there she said, that's not true. Yeah, I heard it. I heard it. I heard it. I heard it. So is there a milieu there? I don't know. But yeah, like she brought up one point: there's this suffering of a black mother. Suffering and love go hand in hand. Oh, man. It's this continuation of you have to be a victim. You have to suffer. You know, you have, you know, this is what we do.

1:27:43 So much so, even when Michelle Obama was in office, she slipped up and said she's, but wait, I'm going to let you, you want to carry and guess what she said she was? Because I didn't finish the clip. I said dot dot dot. Well, oh, you just want to go to that. I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is that she would say she was a victim of something. That's the only thing that came to mind. I don't know if I'm right. All right, let's see what she says. We've been looking at new models of getting farmers' markets to, you know, create buses and drive into communities that are underserved. So we have to deal with the question of access. And believe me, as a busy single mother, or I should say single, as a busy mother, sometimes when you've got the husband who's president, it can feel a little single, but he's there.

1:28:33 But as a busy board. working mom, and before coming to the White House, I was in that position, you know, as well, working, driving kids to practice, you know, not having enough time to shop or cook, not having the energy. You know, the resources weren't the issue, but time and energy is key. Of course, I remember this, and I should have remembered that she had said that because we played this clip a lot. Yeah, that, and of course, I didn't look at that in any of this context. All I looked at it in the context was, you're a dude. We had no other way to look at what she was saying than you're not married. You know, what is going on? But actually, and I, and I think I understand what she was trying to say. You know, when you have a politician,

1:29:20 when you want to play the victim card, it slips out. That's right. That's right. Mentally, you may, oh, I want you want to identify as this, you know, as a single mother. You know, he's Brock's there. He's running the country. I mean, what do you mean? He's there. I mean, like, I mean, he's around. Seriously. Yeah, he's there. You know, he's somewhere in the white house. He's smoking cigarettes in the back. Yeah. Wow. But when you want to get in on the pity party, you have to identify. When you want to, like I said, play your victim card, sometimes it slips out. And she played her victim card. But of these two, of

1:30:02 Monty Perry and Michelle Obama, we're going to go back into a throwback clip of from Madame Noir. This was the panel of black women talking about the struggles of raising black boys. What do you think the hardest thing is to do as a mom in 2017 parenting? What are the things you worried about the most? Raising black children. Did I have boys? Yeah. I have two boys. I have two boys. I have two boys, and how do I like prepare them for that life and for the stress? And it's a lot of stress that I don't know as a woman. Because we have stress, but we also can navigate circles a little bit better because we're women.

1:30:42 Because we're women. And how do I prepare for those moments when he comes home and something has gone awry in the street and he doesn't know how to deal with it? Right. Or yeah. So now you see that mindset is being set in elite circles. But I can't believe that you're even doing a podcast with me. How come you're not dead in the street? I mean, it's obvious your future. Just how did this change? This is not possible. Hey, man, I was lucky. It's math, bro. And the bloodlust, I mean, and it's still out there. What are you talking about? The bloodlust. And the bloodlust is going to hunt me down. I mean, so I mean, it's a great title for a movie.

1:31:25 Bloodlust. So you see the mindset. And the second part is a two-part of that from the Madame Noir. They speak on fear. And it's hard to let them be free when we're fearful. Yeah. Because, you know, because my best friend all the time, she said, let that boy be free. Yeah, he wants to take off his shoes. Let him take off his shoes. It's hard for them to be free when we're a little fearful. And I think that's the tension of like, I want him to grow. I want him to explore and try to step out. But like, I'm a little scared. Well, that kind of says. It's hard for them to be free. Yep. That says it all right there. What did Kanye say? Free man talking. I'm a free man talking.

1:32:10 Yep. Once you break out of that victim mentality and say, you know what? I'm going to do what I'm going to do. Wherever it lands, it lands. And, you know, I said something. Oh, I think the very first podcast we did, when I said Trump won, he let a black man nuts dropped. And you laughed. Yeah. Well, I laughed out of understanding, I think. I know, I know. I know, but what I'm saying is that was that freedom. It's like, like, I mean, here's a dude who's just going up there and saying whatever comes through his mind. Whatever. Right. And it made us all a little freer.

1:32:51 Because it, you know, it, it, and that's, and even Kanye said that himself. I don't keep harming my, but he's a very interesting subject to it was so disappointing. I mean, I left after, you know, I went, I was in Europe, but I saw a few new shows and, you know, and they all just look at no one's really listening. They just look at Kanye and go, he's nuts. I mean, exactly what he said would happen. You know, he's nuts. He's got mental issues. He's, you know, he clearly, oh my God, now he's into Jesus. Oh, no, no, this guy's off the rails. Instead of just listening to what the guy's been saying, you know, the propaganda from all sides, Fox the worst, I might add.

1:33:34 I'm looking at you, five. They're just sitting there like laughing like he's a nut job. Where the man, I mean, free man talking is a very powerful statement. You know, it was powerful. Okay, I digress. I got time in my hands. Maybe that's it. I'm old. I got time to listen to people. But you wear skinny jeans. I mean, you eat fish to get speaking. You eat fish because he wears skinny jeans. Yeah. So I mean, it's like that's what they took away from him. So we understand the fear. By the way, we see no one. No one understood that either. Very few people under because you got to know the South Park thing. You got to understand a little bit of cultural background.

1:34:12 But okay. Yeah, exactly. So now we've seen the loop. It starts in wherever the media, where it's a book, it's a movie. It feeds down into the pop culture, and then it becomes part of the mindset. So I just had this little clip, final clip from the Imani Perry interview, and it's just hilarious. I want to hear some of your beautiful language. Is that okay? Yes. I want to hear it in your voice. Okay, that's okay. Tally Redica. I want you to go to the bottom of 66. Yes, I am asking you to do something difficult. Oh, yes. Hold on. The bottom of 66?

1:34:55 Yeah, you were waiting for me to not know what the hell that was all about. The bottom of hold on a second. What is this? You're tricking me, Mo. Hold on. Let me just do it again. I'm not Googling anything. I'm just listening. I want to hear some of your beautiful language. Okay. Is that okay? Yes. I want to hear it in your voice. Okay. Okay. I want you to go to the bottom of 66. Yes, I am asking you to do something difficult. Oh, yes. Okay. The only here's the only sixes I know. Route 66. That's one. You got three sixes as BL's above the devil, but she said the bottom is 66. I have no clue what that's about. It's nothing. It's the page number.

1:35:43 You fucker. I'm like, coded messages. What's going on? How come I don't know this reference? Bottom of this. Oh, 66. I'm racist. There you go. I'm racist. Did you hear? Did you hear how they were talking to each other? Oh, yes. I want you to do something good. These are supposed to be two career. Oh, man. So I couldn't let that one go past because he's like, what are y'all talking about? In your voice. You know, yours. That unique voice. That is yours. Yes. Bottom 6. Can I give that one more talk? But from now on, this is our code, Mo.

1:36:26 Whenever you and I say to each other, bottom of 66, man. All right, gotcha. Gotcha. We know what's going on. All right. So, sorry, I'm such a dweed. I'm like conspiracy theorists connecting dots. Like, where am I? I wanted to stop you, but I was like, I'm just going to say that. Did you even know I was going to do that? Were you waiting for me? No, I didn't. I thought she was going to comment on the way they were talking. I was, but then I heard the bottom of 66. I'm like, shit, that's some black shit. I don't know, man. What's going on? Okay. All right. All right. So with this all being about the Obamas,

1:37:08 I've never really discussed who he was or what he was. So we have Mr. Judge Joe Brown. Are you familiar with Mr. Judge Joe Brown? No, I know a lot of Joe Brown's in history, but not Mr. Joe Judge Joe. Judge Joe Brown was the black judge from Texas that was on the Judge Judy type show. Okay, that's what I figured. You know, he talked like this. He was like, yeah, you know what I'm saying? Judge Joe Brown. Okay, got it. Right, right. So he, once you get to a certain age, the truth, you just don't care about it. You're just going to say what you're going to say. Hell yeah. So he breaks down who Barry really is. Has anybody black ever gone and checked out who it is in the way, huh?

1:37:51 He went through school as Barry Sotoro. His stepfather and adopted father. Lolo, L O L O Sotoro. Died as one of the 20 richest men on the planet Earth. Obama is beneficiary of a trust fund along with his two half siblings. He is probably the richest man to ever occupy the White House. Lolo Sotoro was a major in the Indonesian army and a contractor with the CEO. CIA. What Daddy did was run death squads for the Indonesian government.

1:38:31 He was an executive vice president for Standard Oil. And when he decided to set up his own company in Indonesia, where possibly the world's largest oil reserves are located, I imagine he used his position of having an active death squad at his proposal to facilitate some of his business deals. And now, interestingly enough, there are documented moments between George Herbert Walker Bush, who was head of the CIA at the time, and Lolo Sotoro have certain arrangements and they were frequent golf partners.

1:39:14 And Lolo Sotoro used Goldman Sachs as his American financier or financial banking institution. Okay, so this is new. So the Sotero name and Indonesian, all of that is very familiar to me. What I never have heard, and while that was running, I was consulting the book of knowledge. There's no mention of this great wealth. Of course, that's been scrubbed. The CIA connection we had a long time ago, we've always known that Obama was tied at the hip to Brennan, director of CIA.

1:39:55 But this, that he's actually probably wanting that he's a trust fund baby. Yes. That is insane. But he's this poor black kid from the south side of Chicago. Well, no, we know he's not, but that's that's just been scrubbed from history. I mean, we, you know, and by the way, bringing that up, most racist thing you can do. Of course it is. Yeah. And that was a protective thing. No, no, no, don't look into his background. So nobody ever looked at, and like I said, he, right, a reason why I bring this up is he used the victimization

1:40:36 cloak. Totally. Totally. To blend in. So what we're going to do is, I mean, from that clip, we're going to go down and get into the American story, Obama on Netflix. You guys could do whatever you want. Why did you decide to do what you're doing? One way of looking at what we've both been doing for the last 20 years, maybe most of our careers once we left law, you know, was to tell stories. Oh, you're good, Mo. We tell stories and we tell fables. Wicked on the mic and on the turntables.

1:41:21 So that's what they do. They tell stories. You know, they get up there. She told her story about white guilt. Now we have to ask, what was the reason? Because she even said herself, you know, why would you bring up white guilt? Jackson Park 1. This is the future. Yeah, we were talking about this in the car right over. Yeah. This has been in our family and growing up, this has been an underutilized park.

1:41:59 For those of you who don't know, Jackson Park was, for us, we lived maybe a mile from it. And I tell you, they have a golf course there. Which means you have to golf. You have to golf. I mean, you couldn't just walk around on the golf course. But this is one of the parks, like the parks we talked about that we lived near, that people just didn't congregate at. There wasn't like an outdoor access where you did stuff in this park. On a regular basis. On a regular basis. It wasn't that close. It was not a place that was the closest to you.

1:42:41 It wasn't. It was the closest big park. You know, like Washington Park and Douglas Park and Brad Park. Those are big parks where people come and they congregate and they have resources thrown in to do stuff. This was one of those parks that had a lot of real estate, but there wasn't a whole lot going on unless you golfed. Okay. And the context of Jackson Park? Jackson Park 2. Well, there's power in the selection of Jackson Park. You know, this, you know, it's just like Barack and I don't do things incidentally. I mean, there's. there's a strategy, you know.

1:43:21 Barack's presidential library could have been anywhere in the world because there's so many people who feel like he is their president all over the world. All right, so you know, New York wanted it, Hawaii wants it, you know, because it's also an economic engine, right? Because it will be a visited presidential library because it's going to be alive, it's going to be a first. So, we had to think: where do we put this resource? Because it will be a resource. But, what better place to put it than in our backyard? You know, Jackson Park is like that juxtaposition of everything in our lives. Except we never went to visit it.

1:44:04 Now, do you get it? Yeah, no, I got it. I got it. It's uh, it's kind of disheartening when you rip it open like that, Mo. White folks, it's safe to come on back to Jackson Park. We're going to build a library, it's going to be a nice community. Yeah, gentrification. Yep, that's exactly what it is. The whole set, like I said, we tell stories. She set this whole thing up about white guild, I mean, white flight and this is the payoff. There it is, and there is your payoff.

1:44:47 Oh, man, it's sick, man. Now, do you have other people in your life who you can talk to this talk to about this stuff? Am I it? I mean, no, actually, actually, we cling together. It's like a unknown, uh, unit like a sixth sense. Uh-huh. Oh, it's like, hey, hey, hey, um, oh, once you drop it, it's a dance, it's a dance, you got to feel it out, you got to feel it out, right? And then, once you, once you drop the old, hey, bottom of the bottom of 66, then you're all right. I got you. Yes, yes. Well, that's kind of

1:45:30 well, I mean, that's no different, I guess, than a lot of people who support or have voted for Trump. I think there's a lot of the same thing that goes on, a dance and sussing around. You know, it's like with my neighbor, you know, it's because No Agenda looks at all kinds of stuff. We say many things that are unpopular for different groups. And the first thing I'm trying to suss out is, hey, man, are you cool? Are you like going to be rabid if I even say anything positive about Trump? You know, it's a dance. So it's kind of like that, I guess. And that's exactly why the no agenda meetups are so important. Are so important. Yeah. Because you don't have to do that dance. Yeah.

1:46:14 Yeah, but that's exactly what it is. Like, is he cool? You know, and you throw little fillers out there. It's like, so what about this? And you see people's reactions. Like, oh, yeah. All right, man. Look at the side of a sigh of relief when you're like, oh, you're traveling brother, Hans. I got that one. Well, I'm happy we can laugh about it, but it's really quite sad that you have now laid out expertly once again.

1:46:53 You have laid out, you know, that everything is the same. It's just, it's just now we have more algorithms to amplify all the bull crap. And of course, people, I always look for the good in everything. And I think that deep down inside, people know things are wrong. And I think this is where this, you know, social media illness comes from people yelling at each other and just going going nuts and just completely off the rails. And really at the core of all of it is this unpublished memo about the redefinition of racism. If only I had known, if only I could find the approved version, it would be so much better for us.

1:47:35 Now I know why everyone's called a racist because it means something else. This whole thing is, and then, yeah, it totally feeds into the victimization, which you, my friend, you show zero, zero victimization. You've never shown any of that to me. I refuse to be not free. Of course. Of course. You are Freeman Podcasting. What's going on here? Free Man Podcast. Free Man Podcasting. And hopefully our podcast frees two, you're saying a handful of people each episode. That's the goal here. And let us know. Yeah. We'd love to hear from you. You want to know? I mean, people email this tweets and stuff.

1:48:15 and I see the responses. I enjoy all of it. And remember what I said at the beginning: look, there's value in this for me. I sit here and I enjoy every single show from beginning to end. It's just fantastic to do this. I'm pretty sure Mo enjoys it too. And, you know, we'd love to see your appreciation for that. Whatever value this had to you, either go out and be a free man talking or support us or both, even better at mofundme.com, M-O-E-FundMe.com. Mo, thank you so much once again. A fabulous, fabulous piece of art we have put here.

1:48:56 This should be in the Smithsonian. This particular episode is Smithsonian worthy, I tell you. As I always say, pay attention to everything and the truth will reveal itself. And we'll be back next week with another edition of Mo Facts with Adam Curry. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for your time and your attention. We enjoy it. Hope you did too. Until next time, bye-bye. I'm a victim of loving you.

1:49:40 I'm a victim of warning you. I woke up this morning. I felt your love laying beside my soul. You told me that you love me, baby. Oh, I love you, baby. I love you so don't go much.

1:50:29 Wow. No way. I'm a victim. I'm loving you, baby. When I was walking on the streets the other day, you passed by and say hello. Ooh, baby. My heart skips a beat.

1:51:13 Loving you. Wanting you every time I see your face, come on. Come on home where you belong. Big man. Big man. You know when I tell you, I love you.

1:51:55 There's nowhere for me to hide no more, baby. You got deep down in my soul. You touched my heart. He's a victim. I'm a victim of loving you. I need you, baby.