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1 Black Conservative vs 5 Black Liberals (HEATED DEBATE) — Transcript

by Digital Social Hour Podcast by Sean Kelly · 34,345 words · 5,596 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00Owning of a slave in the 18th century is
0:01not disgusting.
0:03>> It messes me up that you would down
0:05another black man or black leader,
0:07whether they was perfect or not, just to
0:09make yourself look good.
0:11>> What most people understand about
0:12reparations is that a check is owed.
0:15That's what most people understand about
0:16it. It kind of appeals to this kind of
0:19bitterness, this kind of cynicism, this
0:21kind of covetousness that a lot of
0:23so-called black people have today,
0:25unfortunately.
0:26>> Are you just trying to say black people
0:27bad? Like what are we talking?
0:29>> I mean, you can
0:30>> Don't ask me. I want you to answer
0:31>> you can
0:32>> This is your I want you
0:33>> You can interpret
0:33>> to answer that question.
0:34>> George Washington, I think is a great
0:36American hero, and he owned slaves. I
0:38think it's disgusting. [music]
0:38>> of people owned slaves. A lot of a lot
0:40of colored people owned slaves.
0:49>> Okay, and welcome back. I'm Sarah the
0:51Raging Tomato, moderating another
0:52amazing debate here at Digital Social
0:55Hour. We're going to have some fun today
0:57with Chad O. Jackson here on his 1B10.
1:00Chad, why don't you kick us off with
1:01your first prompt?
1:02>> My name is Chad Jackson, and my first
1:04prompt is black people do not deserve
1:07reparations.
1:08>> Beautiful. All right, Ethan, if you want
1:10to carry us away.
1:11>> All right. First off, Chad, Ethan,
1:12pleasure to meet you.
1:13>> Pleasure to meet you as well.
1:14>> Um so, I think the first thing that I
1:16want to do is understand um exactly what
1:19we mean by the proposition black people
1:21don't deserve reparations. Um so,
1:24do you have like a definition for
1:26reparations just to make sure we're on
1:27the same page?
1:28>> So, my understanding of reparations is
1:31uh the idea of repairing an injustice or
1:35uh
1:36typically how you see it used by the
1:38advocacy community today is that due to
1:41slavery and subsequently Jim Crow, there
1:44are disparities that exist between
1:46so-called black people and so-called
1:48white people, and thus reparations are
1:49needed to repair uh
1:52the disparities or to to basically close
1:55the gap between black and white.
1:57>> Okay. And you use the term uh so-called
2:01uh
2:03W- Why are you like throwing in I guess
2:04like so-called like
2:06W- What What is that?
2:07>> Um Do you want to keep it on the subject
2:10or you want I mean, I'm happy to tell
2:12you.
2:12>> Um if you can do it like quickly, it
2:14probably is
2:14>> Because that's a that's a conversation
2:16in itself.
2:16>> Okay, in that case, then we won't go
2:18into it. I mean, like sure, there
2:19there's black people. We can both agree
2:20on that. Um so, now
2:23uh the idea of like repairing
2:24injustices,
2:26um would you agree that like this idea
2:27is something that is in the context of a
2:31uh apology and also some type of
2:32material um compensation as well for
2:35reparations?
2:36>> I'm sure that there's people that agree
2:38with that or people who would say that
2:40that's uh Cuz that's the thing. When it
2:43comes to reparations, of course,
2:44depending on who you're talking to,
2:46there's not a one-size-fits-all answer.
2:47Everybody has a different answer for
2:49what reparations looks like. So, um So,
2:51yeah, I mean, if your question is um are
2:54there people who would who want that
2:56form of reparations? Then, yeah.
2:58>> Um then the question is though uh since
3:00you have the proposition, when you're
3:02saying reparations, do you mean that
3:03like black people do not deserve um you
3:07know, a one like you could say like a
3:10verbal or like written apology and like
3:12material address? So, just to understand
3:14what you mean by reparations.
3:16>> Okay, well, let me just cut straight to
3:18it. So, when it comes to this whole
3:19notion of reparations and how it's
3:22popular popularly
3:24advocated for today.
3:26>> Right.
3:26>> And of course, you have different
3:28um people of different ilks who are
3:30advocating for it and it looks like
3:32different things. So, when it comes to
3:34reparations, it's predicated on this
3:37notion once again, that so-called black
3:40people um after emancipation um have not
3:44been uh
3:46rendered the necess- the necessary uh
3:50justice. They haven't been able to
3:52receive uh,
3:54monetary or tangible kind of gains after
3:57emancipation, and as a result of this,
3:59uh, a payment is due of some sort.
4:01>> But it's some material thing.
4:02>> Yeah, so like when when you were
4:03defining reparations, you do also
4:05include like the material aspect of it.
4:07So like some type Okay, okay, I'll I'll
4:09just want to make sure that that was,
4:10uh, on the table on that. Okay, cool.
4:12Uh, so I think we, uh, largely, uh,
4:14agree with our, uh, definition here. And
4:16the second thing is, when we're talking
4:17about black people, like just to make
4:19sure we have the scope down as well.
4:20Like we're talking about in the context
4:22of the United States, right?
4:23>> That's correct.
4:23>> Okay, just want to make sure that was
4:25clear. Okay, yeah, cool. Uh, so since,
4:27uh, I think we're on the same page here.
4:29Um, so when you say that they don't
4:31deserve reparations, can you tell me why
4:33you don't believe they deserve
4:34reparations?
4:35>> Well, because, again, it's predicated on
4:38this notion that
4:40um, well, I I would say more of a
4:42narrative that after emancipation,
4:45Negroes were just kind of left to their
4:46own devices, that there was nothing
4:48given to them, and as a result of this,
4:51somebody should be made to pay,
4:53um, to help Negroes get on their feet,
4:56as it were, to make that kind of repair
4:58gesture.
4:59Um, and the reality and the facts are
5:04actually uh, they actually complicate
5:06that narrative. Um, there's a plethora
5:08of different books and literature, uh,
5:11as it pertains to, um,
5:13different lands and money that was given
5:15to slaves after having been emancipated.
5:19And this was done on a kind of
5:20peer-to-peer basis.
5:22>> So but not like on a systemic ground.
5:24>> Not on a systemic ground. Uh, nor does
5:25it need to be done on a systemic ground.
5:27>> Okay.
5:28>> Yeah.
5:29>> So I guess like, um,
5:31what I'm going to levy against, and I
5:32appreciate you acknowledging it's not a
5:34systemic thing, it was like it sounds
5:35like something like individuals were
5:37doing, like local community, like I
5:39guess like help between people. Is is
5:41that accurate?
5:41>> That's correct.
5:42>> Okay, awesome. So, uh, while I think
5:44that is a way to approach this, I don't
5:46think it's uh by any means like uh
5:49a way of justice. Um so, I'm going to
5:52present to you an argument and then we
5:53can go through uh what it is we agree
5:55and disagree on.
5:56>> Mhm.
5:57>> Um so, my first premise and uh it if you
6:01if you disagree with anything, feel free
6:02to interrupt. So, my first premise, um
6:04if a person or a group of people have
6:06been severely unjustly harmed by a
6:08government, they and or their
6:11descendants morally deserve reparations
6:13from said government.
6:15>> with that?
6:16So, are you implying that the government
6:18is the one who issued or who was the
6:19oppressive uh entity that caused the
6:22harm?
6:23>> Correct, yes.
6:23>> Um
6:25I So, constitutionally speaking, we do
6:27have a clause for a redressing of
6:29grievances,
6:30um
6:31which guarantees your right to
6:35uh petition the government for a redress
6:37of grievances, but it doesn't guarantee
6:39that the government has to meet your
6:41demands.
6:42>> Right. Right. But, like from like a cuz
6:45the way we uh you mentioned the
6:47Constitution, the and that's our legal
6:49framework, but our legal framework
6:52reflects that of our morality, right?
6:54So, I'm saying that like um even though
6:57you aren't legally guaranteed
6:59reparations, there still is the question
7:01of what ought to happen, right? Um by
7:04some policy enactment, for example.
7:06>> Um
7:08So, again, it's a case-by-case
7:09situation. Again, you have to go back to
7:11the fact [snorts]
7:12that cuz cuz it's it's not a systemic
7:14issue. It's an issue of, once again,
7:16there were slaves who were left with
7:18nothing but their own devices after
7:20emancipation, and there were many slaves
7:22who were not, who were given
7:23opportunities, who were given jobs, who
7:24were given land and money. And so, it's
7:26really a case-by-case situation. We have
7:29due process um for, you know, if you
7:32were wronged in some way that you can go
7:34through the legal institution of getting
7:36what you are owed or whatever the case
7:37may be, uh but to issue a kind of
7:40systemic, kind of broad sweeping
7:44this reparation package is going to
7:47repair this group of people. I I I
7:49totally disagree with.
7:50>> So, you're saying that Jim Crow was not
7:51like a like like direct systemic
7:53>> Jim Crow?
7:54>> What is Jim Crow? A series of laws that
7:57we'll go into
7:58all the different types of it, but
8:00Jim Crow was a series of laws
8:02implemented that segregated black and
8:03white people and put black people at
8:04severe disadvantages.
8:05>> And who was responsible for Jim Crow?
8:07>> Uh well, we could look at like different
8:09state governments, right? So, like for
8:11example, like the segregation of
8:13schools, schools are funded by
8:15property taxes, and they intentionally
8:18were given severely less funding. I
8:19think
8:20black school
8:22>> black minority schools
8:23>> And you're sure of that?
8:25>> Yeah, I think it I think the scale was
8:26like
8:27like three to one, if I remember
8:29correctly.
8:30>> According to what?
8:31>> I don't remember the stat off the top of
8:32my head, but like if you're telling me
8:34that like black schools were funded
8:36equivalent amounts of white schools,
8:37that's I would love some kind of
8:40>> That's debatable. I mean, again, there's
8:41there's a plethora
8:42>> they weren't?
8:43>> There's a plethora of information out
8:44there. I mean,
8:46when it comes to again, different
8:47states, I mean, Manning Johnson even
8:49mentions it in his farewell address,
8:50which people can look up on YouTube,
8:53where he talks about how
8:55it was actually blacks and whites who in
8:57some contexts came together and they
8:59basically agreed about, you know, that
9:02that the races should be separated for
9:05a time and that that should be kind of
9:08sunsetted after a certain amount of
9:10time.
9:10>> But that doesn't address the funding,
9:11right?
9:12>> does address the funding in in part
9:14because because
9:15hold on.
9:16Just to finish my point.
9:18Um so, he he also acknowledges in that
9:21same
9:22speech that the actual
9:26the the education that Negroes and
9:28whites were getting was being equalized
9:30and in many cases, the Negro
9:31institutions were actually better funded
9:35and were more outfitted better outfitted
9:37than the white institutions in some of
9:38these contexts.
9:39>> What is the proportion of that?
9:41>> I don't know the proportion of it is.
9:42>> Like is like would you say it's like
9:44around like
9:45half like like cuz you're making this
9:48claim that which goes against like all
9:50of like
9:50>> for example, um
9:52I I I I think the number was like 60 to
9:5530. Um
9:57>> So like like 60 to 30 in
9:59um
9:59>> in favor of Negro schools. Uh in terms
10:01of the budget.
10:02>> So in Massachusetts actually funded like
10:06they took their allocation of state
10:08funds for education and 60% of that went
10:11for
10:12>> would have been in the Yeah, this would
10:13have been in 19 the the mid-60s.
10:16>> What is the population density then? I
10:18think that's an Okay, so I think that's
10:19going to be like a really huge factor
10:21here, right? So for example, if you have
10:22like way more uh black people, uh but
10:25like that 60% is like dispersed far much
10:29more than uh like the population, then
10:32of course that would still equal like
10:33even funding. Does that make sense?
10:35>> Uh somewhat, but but here's the thing
10:37before we get too heavy into this, and
10:38I'm happy to get heavy into it, but um
10:41the premise that we should have public
10:42schools in the first place that are paid
10:45for by
10:46um tax dollars, uh I don't really agree
10:49with to to begin with.
10:50>> Doesn't change the matter of the
10:51>> It doesn't change the matter of the
10:52fact, but but it it does it does it does
10:56kind of bear weight in so far that we
11:00are arguing over well, because there
11:03wasn't an equal distribution,
11:05therefore reparations need to be
11:08disseminated in order to equalize that
11:10distribution. That's that's the premise,
11:12right? Uh that's basically what you're
11:14arguing.
11:14>> Yeah, well right now what I'm saying is
11:16like in in that specific case, yes,
11:18right.
11:18>> Yeah, so again,
11:20I don't like we're arguing over whether
11:22or not reparations the blacks are
11:25deserving of reparations. I disagree
11:27that blacks are deserving of
11:28reparations. You haven't asked me um I
11:30mean you you did ask me about working
11:32definitions to be fair, but the main
11:35thing with regard to reparations is that
11:37it's part of a Marxist ploy.
11:40It's part of this
11:41this basically this agenda for wealth
11:44redistribution.
11:46And it's it's a yeah, how is it not?
11:49>> Um no, this is justice.
11:50>> It no.
11:51>> This is So wait, wait, do you believe in
11:52qualified immunity?
11:54>> What is qualified immunity?
11:55>> So qualified immunity is when a police
11:57officer does some unjust action against
12:00a civilian. This the police officer
12:03individually is not sued. You instead
12:06sue like the local police department
12:09instead.
12:09>> Okay, so what's what's the How is that
12:11relevant to what
12:12>> Because that police officer, even though
12:13that individual did an unjust action,
12:16you get justice by suing the system that
12:19they represent.
12:20>> You're not dealing with what I said with
12:21regard to the popularization of the
12:25reparations movement being birthed out
12:28of a Marxist worldview.
12:29>> It's a question of justice, right? This
12:31is ultimately like
12:32>> not dealing You're not dealing with what
12:33I said.
12:34>> What like where he's going is he's
12:36talking about wealth distribution.
12:38Um and kind of pulling that Marxist
12:40socialist type of thought process and
12:43they're utilizing that and taking
12:44advantage of it in order to force wealth
12:47distribution outward.
12:49I think that's what you're saying.
12:51>> that's exactly what I'm saying. Sorry if
12:52it wasn't clear.
12:52>> No, I It's not really I see where you're
12:54going with the unjust process. But but
12:57even if I sued like
12:59uh
13:00if an employee of any corporation,
13:02whether it be the police department or
13:04an actual like corporate America, I
13:06would still sue the corporation not the
13:07individual. Does that make sense? So
13:09that holds firm in in all those
13:12directions, but it doesn't really apply
13:13to what he's saying.
13:14>> What I'm saying is I think that is
13:16totally irrelevant to the point of the
13:17fact that justice is a concept that both
13:19of us agree with. Unless you disagree
13:21with the qualified immunity, I don't
13:22know how you can stand against this. So
13:23even the origins of what you're saying,
13:25that could be accurate. That still
13:26doesn't address the issue of justice.
13:28>> Okay, so
13:30where do you get this idea that justice
13:32equals repair like reparations for
13:34Negroes today
13:36because of slavery 200 years ago?
13:38>> Well, it could also just be like Jim
13:39Crow, too, but yeah, I think slavery is
13:41a good grounds on
13:42>> go with Jim Crow, too.
13:43>> Well, yeah, no, we can look at like
13:44precedent. So, I'm sure you're probably
13:45familiar with the Rosewood Massacre of
13:471923?
13:48>> How does the notion like where do you
13:51get this definition of justice?
13:53>> Right.
13:53>> Like where do you get that definition
13:55that in our American system, our
13:57American legal system
13:58that reparations is due to Negroes today
14:02as an act of justice because of slavery
14:04and Jim Crow. That's the question.
14:05>> Are you asking like my meta-ethics or
14:07you asking like the legal framework?
14:09>> Both.
14:09>> Oh, well, my meta-ethics are based on
14:12>> I agree with your definition of justice?
14:14>> Well, one, we already have legal
14:17precedent of people descendants getting
14:19reparations from injustices permitted by
14:23the state.
14:24And then two, we also have
14:26um a reparations given to people who are
14:27direct victims of injustices by the
14:29state. So, the legal precedent literally
14:31is already there.
14:32>> Okay, so
14:34so when it comes to
14:37a time in America when slavery was legal
14:39and individuals owning slaves um and if
14:44we can point to cases, many cases
14:46wherein
14:47uh Negroes who were newly emancipated
14:50were given monetary and tangible goods
14:53as a result as a result of emancipation
14:55doing so willingly on their own volition
14:58if we can if we can
15:00>> you said that wasn't systemic though,
15:01right?
15:02>> No, it wasn't. It was individuals,
15:04right? So, now
15:05>> Yeah, that's not the system.
15:06>> So, the the idea I agree. So, the idea
15:09of we should now have the government
15:12um pay these people, pay these
15:14descendants of slaves.
15:15>> Right.
15:16>> Like where do you get that like how is
15:17that justice?
15:18>> Because it is the government that
15:19mistreated these people. In order for
15:20justice to be served Wait, please let me
15:22finish. Please let me finish.
15:23>> Go ahead.
15:24>> It is the government that perpetuated
15:26this system, right? And it is also the
15:28government that therefore allowed the
15:29injustice to perpetuate. For example, we
15:31can go again into the 1923 Rosewood
15:34Massacre, where people who are direct
15:36victims of the government not stopping
15:38the mob of people who murdered these the
15:42Rosewood victims, right? The government
15:45did nothing to stop them. And then their
15:46descendants in I believe 19 1994, they
15:50were given reparations for the inaction
15:52of the government because the government
15:53recognized that they had unjustly
15:56handled the situation.
15:57>> That's well and good that you're
15:58pointing to these individual cases,
16:01right? But the question the question is
16:03Negroes today
16:06as a general group, the question is
16:08whether they deserve reparations, right?
16:11>> Well, we know that descendants can,
16:12right? As we've already demonstrated,
16:14right?
16:15>> I think what he's asking is what's Where
16:17are the harms?
16:19I I think that's where you're trying to
16:20get him to go. Like did describe to me
16:22these because you both agree it's not
16:24systemic. You you already said that.
16:26He's he's running on the idea that
16:28>> that's actually incorrect too. It was a
16:30systemic issue. So like for example,
16:31like the Jim Crow laws, right? So like
16:34segregation was literally ruled as
16:36unconstitutional.
16:37>> But when he gave you the examples of
16:39individuals, you agreed like that's not
16:42a systemic problem.
16:43>> slaves, right? Individuals owning
16:45slaves?
16:45>> Right.
16:46>> Right, but like that was also allowed by
16:47the states. Now, I believe that the
16:50the constitutionality
16:52I think was fine because then 13th
16:54Amendment came in, but then we can look
16:56at Jim Crow, which was literally ruled
16:58as unconstitutional. That would which
17:00means that Jim Crow was an illegal set
17:02of practices.
17:03>> Well, I'll take it back again.
17:04>> unjust.
17:05Sorry.
17:06>> You can finish. Sorry.
17:07>> No, that was all.
17:08>> Okay.
17:09So I take it back once again to the
17:11redressing of grievances, right?
17:13I think that you and I are operating
17:15from different views on what that means.
17:19Um I don't take a
17:21a reconstructionist view of redress of
17:23grievances. Namely, to the extent that I
17:26petition the government for a redress of
17:27grievances, and I make a demand on the
17:30back of that saying that because of this
17:32grievance, I now am demanding the
17:34government to undergo this kind of
17:37redistribution policy, right? Um like I
17:40think that that's a false kind of
17:43understanding of American jurisprudence,
17:45uh of constitutionality, so on and so
17:47forth. I take more of a
17:50kind of a rights approach to it. Um so
17:54the fact is when before the emancipation
17:57of slavery, slavery was legal, right?
17:59>> Yeah.
17:59>> So you can't retroactively then go back
18:02>> But Jim Crow
18:02>> and apply Well, let me finish. You can't
18:04retroactively then go back and apply um
18:07new laws to old ways of life that
18:10existed before a new act or a new
18:13Supreme Court decision, so on and so
18:14forth.
18:15Uh when it comes to Jim Crow, again,
18:17many of the the ways in which these
18:20states were operating, one could argue
18:21that they were constitutional before
18:22they weren't.
18:23>> They weren't. It doesn't matter. It was
18:25unconstitutional. It doesn't matter how
18:26they feel. It was unconstitutional.
18:28>> You said yourself, cuz I asked you,
18:30"What is Jim Crow?"
18:31And you said that it's this kind of
18:33amalgamation, this kind of plethora of
18:35different things depending on the state,
18:36depending on the local juris juris
18:39jurisdiction, did you not?
18:40>> I mean, a a really easy example of like
18:41Jim Crow laws were like the segregation,
18:43>> You didn't answer the question.
18:44>> I mean, yeah, that's um how I defined
18:46it. I don't have a good definition.
18:47>> with that being said,
18:48>> there were illegal practices that they
18:49engaged in, which you obviously
18:51acknowledge.
18:51>> Right. So with that being said, there
18:53were some that would be considered
18:54legal, others that would be considered
18:56illegal until they weren't, until an act
18:58came down from the
19:00from the legislature, or a decision was
19:02made by a Supreme Court that now issued
19:04this act illegal, right? And so to apply
19:08these new
19:09regulations and these laws, cuz cuz the
19:11thing is, when it comes to reparations,
19:14the the passing of the act is the
19:16repair. There's There's nothing else
19:18that needs to be done. Not a
19:19redistribution of wealth, not anything
19:21of that nature. And that's what I That's
19:22why I say it's more like I take a more
19:24uh rights-based approach to a redress of
19:27grievances, not a reconstructionist
19:29approach to a redressing of grievances.
19:31>> When um I I want to say too, if I say
19:33something that you disagree with, uh
19:35feel free to interrupt me. Um and uh are
19:37you okay if I interrupt with you when
19:39you say something that I disagree with
19:41because something that can happen is
19:42we'll build off of false premises and
19:44it's hard to address everything. Uh are
19:45you okay with that?
19:46>> What are you asking?
19:47>> Uh sorry, go on.
19:48>> He's He's doing meta meta
19:50[clears throat] right now, just making
19:51sure that if you if you say something or
19:52or maybe put words into his mouth that
19:54he can address it right there on the
19:56nose and say that's not what I said. I
19:57think that's what he's kind of
19:59>> Um I'd rather us just take notes of what
20:00each other is saying and I'll try to do
20:02it and and I'll let you finish and if
20:04there's something that I take issue
20:06with, I'll respond to that and we can do
20:08it by by first saying
20:09>> free to interrupt me if there's
20:10something that uh you disagree with. Uh
20:13I think that's going to I guess like
20:14have a much better back and forth, which
20:16ideally is what we have. Now, when we
20:19look at um another example of
20:20reparations like the uh 1943 mass
20:22incarceration of Japanese-Americans,
20:24yeah, of course you know about that. Um
20:26so, this is an example of something that
20:28would It was never ruled
20:29unconstitutional, for example, right?
20:31But it was still an unjust practice to
20:33which the uh recipients I believe got
20:34about 20,000 per, correct?
20:37>> Um I feel like we're going in circles at
20:39this point.
20:40>> Well, no no no no, this
20:42There are obvious cases where we have
20:45precedent of systems doing uh unjust
20:48things to civilians. Yes?
20:52And those people who got reparations.
20:54>> Yes, but that doesn't Again, like I
20:56think we're missing each other and
20:57talking past each other. With all due
20:59respect. The point that I'm making is we
21:02can point to cases by cases where
21:04governments elected by people at a given
21:06time acted in a way that I agree with or
21:09acted in a way that I disagree with. And
21:11then we're saying that because there's a
21:12precedence of a government making a
21:15decision, a decision that I may or may
21:16not agree with, I must then now agree
21:20that because of precedence, we should
21:23dish out reparations to Negroes today.
21:25>> But Jim Crow was literally ruled
21:26unconstitutional or I should say
21:27segregation was ruled unconstitutional,
21:29right? No, it was literally
21:31unconstitutional, right? Which is which
21:33means it is unjust even by the law.
21:36>> I I think I'm
21:37>> he's trying to say um
21:41may- maybe I'm I think I'm I think I
21:43hear what you're saying. So, what he's
21:44saying like okay, if something that was
21:47illegal, cuz he did recognize there were
21:49some things that were legal, there's
21:50some things that were illegal. However,
21:52constitutionally we have this amazing
21:55due process thing that you can go and
21:57file a grievance.
21:58>> Right.
21:58>> If if something actually did happen to
22:01you, your family, so on and so forth up
22:04the line and it caused all of these
22:05other issues rolling downhill, then he's
22:07saying follow the the the due process,
22:10utilize your jurisdictional rights or or
22:12or judicial rights, go and do those
22:15things. That's what he's saying. But
22:17what you are applying here is that you
22:19should give everyone reparations just
22:22because.
22:23>> Oh, no, no, no. Well, when we're when
22:25we're saying reparations, right? Are you
22:27talking about just like there shouldn't
22:28be like any type of
22:30like you know, so some people will say
22:31like descendants of like a certain area
22:33for example, like with the Rosewood
22:35would like you have to prove that you
22:36were a descendant of a victim of the
22:38Rosewood massacre for example.
22:40>> Yeah, Ethan, I like you and you're a
22:42very smart guy and it's obvious that
22:44you're a skilled debater and it's with
22:46with, you know, full transparency, it's
22:48difficult for me to kind of keep up with
22:50some of where you're going with this.
22:52But with the question that you just
22:53asked, did we or did we not address that
22:55at the very first question that you
22:57asked me?
22:58>> Um what I don't remember what that
22:59question was and how it was addressed.
23:01>> You asked me what is my definition of
23:02reparations.
23:03>> Um yeah, but I I don't remember if you
23:06said I do a repairing
23:08>> repairing an injustice. We obviously
23:10have the slavery Jim Crow.
23:12He said that a repair and this was he
23:15added the caveat that this is how the
23:17the popular advocacy for reparations is,
23:20correct? And you were agreeable with his
23:22definition.
23:23>> Right. Yes. Yes. That is right.
23:24>> the disparous disparities, closing the
23:26gaps. That's how he defined it based on
23:28how it is popularly advocated for today.
23:32After emancipation having not received
23:35justice or payments.
23:37>> Right.
23:37>> Um and he said there was a narrative.
23:39You threw that one in there.
23:41He said the Negroes that were left alone
23:44and were not given payment, material
23:46aspect, so on and so forth.
23:49It's not systemic. And local communities
23:53were giving to specific people.
23:54>> Yeah.
23:55>> Not individual community but somewhere
23:57individual basis to his understanding,
23:59right? So he gave you what is the
24:01popular
24:02narrative out there and then he added in
24:05what his thoughts were.
24:06>> If by the popular narrative you mean
24:09someone who is I guess like not educated
24:12in this like whatsoever. Like
24:14like
24:15I guess the the definition genuinely
24:18just feels all over the place cuz even
24:20what you were saying that was all over
24:21the place.
24:21>> He gave you the understanding of how
24:23it's represented today, but he also
24:25threw in what he actually believed what
24:28was happening.
24:28>> Okay. So then you believe then just to
24:33hammer this out make sure I have a full
24:34understanding.
24:35You believe that reparations would be a
24:38systemic thing just applied to all black
24:40people or they wouldn't have to like
24:41>> That's how it's that's how it's
24:42generally understood in by most people
24:44who hear the word reparations.
24:45>> So like when so you're not even talking
24:48about people who would like prove that
24:49they're descendants of people of some
24:51kind of action.
24:51>> have due process.
24:53And if you live in a state like
24:55California which allows you to be able
24:57to prove I don't know if this is still
24:59the case cuz I don't live in California,
25:01I live in Texas, but there are some
25:02places where if you can prove that
25:04you're a descendant of a slave who
25:07you know, was mistreated or who didn't
25:10get what was owed to them or what have
25:12you, you can you can make your case
25:14again through due process. What I'm
25:16arguing against is a wide scale federal
25:19policy, which is currently being
25:20advocated for as we speak. I know for
25:23example, James Talarico who's running
25:25for senator
25:26there in Texas where I live,
25:28they're advocating for this kind of
25:29broad policy
25:31that they believe would be a kind of
25:33form of reparations for American
25:35descendants of slaves.
25:36>> But what you said about California
25:38though, right? Reparations don't have to
25:39be a federal thing. Isn't that a form of
25:41reparations what you just said?
25:43>> One could argue that it is, yes.
25:45>> And is that something you disagree with?
25:46>> But it's a state it's a state making
25:48this decision.
25:48>> Right, but still reparations. And do you
25:50disagree with that?
25:51>> And again, like with
25:54full disclosure, I'm fuzzy on the
25:56details as to what exactly California is
25:58doing because I've heard different
26:00things about it. So so to to just to
26:03give you clarity here,
26:05I've heard that one can make the case
26:07that look, I'm a descendant of slaves,
26:09here's my paperwork, here's my proof, da
26:11da da da da da.
26:12But there's also
26:14moves to try to from the state level
26:16dish out reparations from all people who
26:19have lived in California for a certain
26:21amount of time and are black. Right? And
26:24so
26:26I would tend to more agree with the
26:29former than the latter because I don't
26:31think that that's something that our tax
26:34dollars should go to.
26:36>> So here's an example that I can give
26:39which I I want to understand if you
26:41agree with this or not. So in from 1919
26:45to 1969 in Evanston, Illinois, Illinois
26:48that local area participated in major
26:51discriminatory practices against black
26:53people. And then in 1994, they gave to
26:56$25,000 and people were able to prove
26:59that they were either direct victims or
27:01descendants of people who were
27:03mistreated by that local area. But that
27:05was in like housing restitution. So like
27:08a repairs, mortgages, things that
27:10address specifically what they were
27:11victims of.
27:12>> Mhm.
27:13>> Would you classify this as reparations?
27:14Because I I think any reasonable person
27:16would say these are reparations.
27:18>> I would I would say that's more
27:19reminiscent of due process.
27:21>> But I don't think they're mutually
27:22exclusive.
27:24>> Um I think they are because again, this
27:27the fact is like we're dealing with
27:28semantics here that is to a certain
27:31degree. And like we can get into the
27:34technicalities of what reparations are
27:36in different forms of what reparations
27:38could be. Um and
27:41truth be told that's not the debate that
27:42I'm interested in even though I'm happy
27:44to have the conversation. I'm more so
27:46interested in again the fact that this
27:50this idea and this advocacy for
27:52reparations
27:53was popularized by people who were
27:56ideologically Marxist-Leninist.
27:58>> This isn't the proposition.
28:00>> Can I finish?
28:01Thank you.
28:02So they were pop that's what it was
28:05popularized as with a specific agenda.
28:08These people, whether you're talking
28:09about
28:11James
28:12Foreman, whether you're talking about
28:15Bobby Seale,
28:16um
28:17the
28:18a list of names that I could give you.
28:21What's the woman's name? Her name is
28:22Audley
28:23What's her last name? Do you know?
28:24>> I'm not familiar.
28:26>> Uh she was a card-carrying communist.
28:28Her name was Audley
28:30Moore.
28:31Uh Muhammad Ahmad,
28:33Max Stanford. Max Stanford and Muhammad
28:35Ahmad were both
28:37part They were members of organization
28:39called RAM. All of these organizations
28:41were exclusively Marxist-Leninist and
28:43they were advocating for uh reparations
28:46and a social socialist agenda for blacks
28:49Um in 1969
28:51and there throughout the year from the
28:53the early to mid-20th century.
28:56This movement would then bloom to the
28:59point to where we are today where many
29:01so-called black people who are
29:03advocating for reparations may not
29:05themselves be Marxist-Leninists but due
29:08to a
29:10a kind of spirit of bitterness and a
29:14nature of covetousness, they have kind
29:16of added their voices to the chorus in
29:18demanding of reparations.
29:20And the objective is like
29:23once once you get whether your state or
29:27the federal government to agree yes
29:29reparations need to be dished out. What
29:30this then does is it creates a precedent
29:33for more people to come with their
29:35grievances and say okay well what about
29:36us? We were oppressed in this way or
29:38that way. It creates this kind of
29:39slippery slope and I know that slippery
29:41slope is a fallacy but it works in
29:43reality where
29:45where the government then becomes this
29:47kind of largesse, this kind of revolving
29:49door for people demanding redistribution
29:52policies and that's moving us more to a
29:54marxified state. This is exactly what
29:57the Audley Moores wanted. This is
29:58exactly what the Bobby Seales and the
30:00all these different people wanted. So we
30:02are arguing
30:04about the technicalities of these local
30:07and unique in these one-off situations
30:10and we're trying to use
30:13due process that worked out in in these
30:16small situations as a legitimizer
30:19for the wide-scale push for reparations.
30:23>> And just a thought Ethan, we'll start
30:25wrapping up here shortly. So if there's
30:26any any bigger pieces you want to kick
30:28in now's the time.
30:29>> I think I've um
30:31been able to assess this conversation.
30:33You're using an incredibly idiosyncratic
30:35definition of reparations. You think
30:37that due process and reparations have to
30:38be mutually exclusive where I would say
30:40that reparations comes through due
30:42process. Now, going back to the uh I
30:45believe it's called uh Evanston case
30:47where there was a clear systemic
30:49injustice that was done.
30:51Uh you never answered if you actually uh
30:53disagreed with uh the city of Evanston
30:56um
30:57giving reparations through like the
30:58housing restitutions.
31:00Uh do you disagree with that?
31:02>> Um so, what was the What was the details
31:04of the housing um restitution?
31:06>> Um I don't know specific I know they did
31:09a lot of redlining and whatever bad
31:11housing practices you can think of for
31:13the people
31:13>> the question.
31:14>> I I just told you I can't give you like
31:15the specific details on it, but like the
31:17town themselves acknowledged yeah, we
31:18participate in systemic racism.
31:20>> Okay, so you're trying to convince me
31:22that this was a good You're asking me if
31:24this is a good thing or like what was
31:26your question again?
31:26>> The question is is it good that the town
31:28of Evanston, which acknowledge that
31:31>> Which you can't You can't You can't then
31:33Like so, you're asking me if it's a good
31:34thing to acknowledge that or that they
31:36did something about it, but you can't
31:38give me the details of what they
31:39actually did.
31:39>> Well, it's the fact that they literally
31:41acknowledged that they did bad things.
31:42That's all that really matters.
31:44>> Uh again, in the in the cultural Marxist
31:46worldview, um it's all about critical
31:49theory. It's all about trying to
31:52acknowledge that we did bad things. It's
31:53It's a It's It's kind of Howard Zinn ask
31:56interpretation of history where you try
31:59to go in to these kind of unique
32:00situations and basically make the
32:03dominant society admit that they did bad
32:06things that you might then go
32:08and use that as fodder to push policy
32:11and legislation for the Marxification of
32:12our country.
32:13>> The city itself literally admits it. And
32:15now, if you want to like go to this
32:16conspiracy that like oh, it's been
32:18infiltrated by the
32:19>> I mean, it's well-documented.
32:20>> Okay, but you're just like making this
32:21up on the spot right here. Granted Okay,
32:23then granted the case that they did
32:25participate in these things, which
32:27historically it seemed to be the case
32:28that they did. I can't go into the
32:29details because I don't know the
32:31specific details, but granted that they
32:33did do that and then that they address
32:35it with an apology and also by giving
32:36restitutions for people who could prove
32:38their case. Do you think it is a good
32:40thing that they did that? Just please
32:41give a clear yes or no.
32:43>> I don't know what they did, so I can't
32:44say yes or no.
32:44>> They gave the restitutions that they
32:46gave were $25,000 up to in housing
32:48restitutions like you for your mortgage,
32:50housing improvements, etc.
32:52>> I would have to look more into the case
32:54before I answer that question.
32:55>> Do you think do you have like maybe it's
32:57probably like a good thing?
32:59>> I'd have to look more into the case
33:00before I answer that question.
33:01>> Wow, that's
33:02an interesting response to that. I can't
33:03force anything out of you.
33:05>> I think that's fair. Like I would want
33:06to know the details of everything that
33:08happened as well before I would give an
33:10answer.
33:10>> No, but we're already saying granted
33:11that like they did participate in
33:13systemic unjust practices. Granted
33:16that's the case.
33:17>> cuz the thing is Ethan um
33:20when you're dealing with a local town,
33:23city, country, or a county
33:25um
33:27again, the people who make up the
33:29governing body
33:31are elected officials who are put into
33:33office by whether it's you know, whether
33:36you have different regions of the city
33:38or whatever the case may be. I know it
33:39looks different um
33:41or from town to city.
33:43And often times you get idealogues
33:47uh in office who make up the city
33:49council or the mayorship or what have
33:51you
33:52who uh bring their ideology to their
33:55office and they look retroactively at
33:58things that happened over the past 40 or
33:5950 years and they embellish and they
34:02exaggerate and they
34:04uh they basically read into it all of
34:07their ideology and say we did something
34:10very bad and therefore we need to do X,
34:12Y, and Z. So
34:14so for you to ask me, is it a good thing
34:16that they acknowledge that they did
34:17something bad? Again, I go back to I
34:19have to look more into the case. I have
34:20to look at what is the ideology of the
34:22people who apologized or said that they
34:24did something bad. I have to look at the
34:25nature and full scale of what was done
34:28and make that determination from there.
34:30I don't have those facts in front of me,
34:31so therefore I can't give you a that
34:33answer.
34:33>> Did you ever give an answer to the
34:34qualified immunity question? I don't
34:35think you did.
34:36>> Um
34:38>> [snorts]
34:38>> could you restate the question, please?
34:40>> Yeah, yeah. So, do you think qualified
34:41immunity is something that we should
34:43have such that, let's say, an officer
34:44brutalizes me, I don't sue the
34:46individual officer, I sue the I I sue
34:48the police department that the officer
34:50represents. Is qualified immunity a good
34:52thing?
34:53>> Um are you asking me
34:55whether or not cuz I'm just trying to
34:56understand the question. All I want is
34:58clarity here.
34:59Um are you asking me that like whether
35:02or not people should be able to sue a
35:04police department if
35:06um if [clears throat] they claim that
35:09something that a police officer, a
35:11specific police officer, wronged them or
35:12harmed them in some kind of way?
35:13>> Yeah.
35:14>> Um
35:16I uh
35:18hm
35:19That's a good question. I don't know
35:20that I have an answer to it.
35:21Because again, it's a case-by-case
35:23thing.
35:24Um
35:24>> Do you think that the idea
35:26of it is like okay
35:27>> okay. I don't think that the government
35:30whether it is a local government or
35:32state or federal government should be
35:34immune from
35:36uh
35:37citizens bringing lawsuits against the
35:40government.
35:41>> Okay.
35:41>> So.
35:42>> But the government is represented by
35:44individuals, right?
35:46>> Correct.
35:47>> Okay.
35:48And if that government is found
35:51>> Right. Police officers are hired.
35:53>> Yeah.
35:53>> Right. Yeah, yeah.
35:54>> to That's the piece that you're kind of
35:55missing here.
35:57I don't know if you're trying to let
35:58that one slide, but they are hired
35:59individuals. So, it's they are not What
36:02you're trying to take this back to is
36:05when he was mentioning
36:07like if you're trying to sue the
36:08government over things that individual
36:10people did with having slaves, correct?
36:13>> Mhm.
36:13>> It's not the same thing. Those people
36:15are not hired by the government to own
36:17slaves or to treat slaves a certain way.
36:19A police officer is hired by the
36:21government. They have an oath. They have
36:23a duty to that government.
36:25>> have a duty to the law, right?
36:26>> That that is right, but that is their
36:29oath in and what they are hired to do.
36:32So again, that's why I gave you the
36:33corporation concept earlier, it's still
36:35the same as an entity, right? That
36:37police officer is acting on behalf of
36:39that government in that
36:41that in that sphere, right? That doesn't
36:43take the any type of crimes that they
36:45can get charged for off the table and so
36:47on and so forth, but and I think some
36:49states are allowing
36:52to to pull qualified immunity off the
36:54books to where you could sue individual
36:56I don't know if that's possible.
36:57>> is a thing. Some places do that.
36:58>> So, but the thing of it is is you're
37:00trying to take that back to the idea
37:02that
37:03cuz this is where you were bringing this
37:05in on him. You're trying to take it back
37:07to oh,
37:08the government is responsible for what
37:10individuals did. But those individuals,
37:12those are just people. They pay their
37:14taxes, they live in a home, whatever.
37:16>> admits that
37:17>> They are not
37:19they are not
37:20paid
37:22members, they are not
37:24they are not working for the government,
37:26they are simply citizens here in the
37:28United States. So your analogy has that
37:31breaking piece of these are hired
37:33employees versus people that just live
37:35here. Does that make sense?
37:37>> Let's go ahead and I'll go ahead and get
37:38my closing. I've been up here for a hot
37:39minute and I appreciate the time. So
37:41ultimately all I'm establishing is that
37:45when a government or we'll say
37:47government entity admits to wrongdoing
37:50and let's grant that it is the case
37:51that's proven that they do this
37:52wrongdoing, then the justice should be
37:55given in some sort of way, whether
37:56that's suing a police department because
37:59they hired them or because the
38:01government acted in some illegal or
38:03unconstitutional way that it's ruled
38:05like with I would which easily Jim Crow
38:07was segregation.
38:09This is a situation where people have a
38:12right to get some type of compensation
38:14for that. You're using an idiosyncratic
38:16definition of reparations, right? You're
38:18saying due process and reparations are
38:19mutually exclusive to which no
38:21reasonable person I don't believe would
38:23even ever agree to that.
38:25So if you want to say that like oh the
38:27idea like oh every black people every
38:29black person should get like a check of
38:30like $3,000 or whatever. Yeah, of course
38:33like that's that's that's absurd. But
38:35there should be cases where people can
38:37go to their local their state and maybe
38:40even to some degree a federal case for
38:42getting some form of restitutions for
38:45the injustices that been perpetrated
38:47against them and their ancestors.
38:49Thank you. Thank you.
38:50>> Then appreciate it.
38:51>> And if you have a final closing thought
38:52>> I'll save it for anyone else who wants
38:54or
38:55the end of
38:56everybody who wants to speak on the
38:57subject.
38:58>> Okay, that's fair. If you want to do
39:00that. All right gentlemen, shake hands
39:01and let's move it along. That was really
39:03good. I like that.
39:05>> My next prompt is systemic racism does
39:07not exist.
39:09>> All right and Erica I'm going to hand it
39:10over to you. Take it away.
39:12>> Are we doing an introduction or anything
39:13or
39:13>> Nope.
39:14>> Oh, okay. Um systemic
39:17systemic racism does exist and it does
39:19impact the material conditions of black
39:21people's lives here in the United States
39:23of America. Why do you say that systemic
39:25racism doesn't exist?
39:27>> Because there's nothing
39:29existing right now here in the United
39:31States that prevents you as a colored
39:35person from doing anything that a
39:38so-called white person can't do.
39:40>> Okay, so what you're doing is you're
39:42pretty much saying that everyone has
39:44equal opportunity.
39:46>> Um I don't believe in equal opportunity.
39:48>> So what is it that you're saying like um
39:51expound on that for me. There's nothing
39:53that's preventing No, there's nothing
39:55that's preventing you from doing what a
39:57white person does.
39:58>> So long as you have the skill, so long
40:00as you have the ambition, so long as you
40:02have the wherewithal um and wherewithal
40:05can mean different things to pursue
40:07something or accomplish something
40:09you're able to to do that
40:12and there's nothing systemically that's
40:13preventing you from doing that.
40:15Basically.
40:17>> I would beg to differ actually. Um I do
40:20think that
40:21access to those opportunities are
40:25actually different between the
40:27communities and of course socioeconomic
40:30status. Yes.
40:31>> Sorry to interject. So different between
40:32the communities or different between the
40:34races?
40:34>> The races. So I was saying between white
40:36people and black people. All right,
40:37thank you. No mind. No mind clarifying.
40:40So different between the races
40:42and that is because of systemic racism.
40:45Like we can go back to looking at
40:49special field order number 15 back in
40:52January 1865
40:55when
40:55>> Did you say 1865?
40:56>> Yeah.
40:58Special field order 15 which was the 40
41:01acres and a mule where the United States
41:03government actually parceled off 400,000
41:06acres of land for the formerly enslaved.
41:09So you can call them the freedmen. And
41:11what happened is is that because Lincoln
41:13was killed in April of what? 1965 that
41:16same year that Johnson came in as
41:19president and he rescinded that order
41:23basically taking away
41:25land from people. Land from the freedmen
41:29and what we usually say is one of the
41:31greatest ways that people can pass down
41:33generational wealth is by owning what?
41:36>> Property.
41:36>> Exactly. Would land be property?
41:38>> Yeah.
41:39>> Okay. All right. So that is something
41:40that has impacted black people. We can
41:42say for generations to come. We can also
41:45look at 1933 and look at the HOLC, the
41:48Home Owners Loan
41:49Corporation. If you recall what that is,
41:52a part of the New Deal
41:53where they established what was it? The
41:57redlining pretty much. They established
41:59redlining and in doing so what did they
42:02do to black communities, black
42:05neighborhoods when it came to redlining
42:07with their grading system?
42:08>> What did they do?
42:09>> They graded them as a D. So um
42:12neighborhoods that were graded A were
42:14seen to were pretty much the more
42:16valuable
42:18um neighborhoods. Those were the ones
42:20where they would get like the best
42:21rates, uh the best loans, so on and so
42:23forth. Um they would have investments in
42:26their communities, so investments in
42:28infrastructure, so keeping the um
42:30neighborhoods up. They would have
42:31investments in businesses, also um more
42:34funding towards their schools. And then
42:37what we would have is in our
42:39communities, black community I keep
42:41saying our and I keep forgetting that,
42:42you know, I don't know if you could you
42:44consider yourself to be black?
42:45>> No.
42:46>> Oh, you don't? Okay. All right. So, in
42:48black people's communities, um what we
42:50then had was those were actually
42:53studied. The government studied our
42:55neighborhoods to see exactly how we
42:57move, how we interact, and what they
42:59decided is that we could not have, all
43:03right? And I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm
43:04editorializing here, okay? So, you don't
43:07try to do the words I printed, okay?
43:09[laughter]
43:10So, [clears throat] what they basically
43:11did is like, no upward mobility here,
43:14and they graded our neighborhoods as D,
43:17thus removing the investments in
43:19infrastructure in our schools and
43:21removing the investments into um
43:24property, pretty much, because we
43:26weren't able to grow the equity in our
43:29homes like they were able like white
43:31people were able to.
43:32All right? And so, wouldn't you say that
43:35is something that would be systematic
43:37and is based off of color? Because they
43:39didn't do it in white communities, but
43:41they did it in black communities.
43:43>> Um so, with due respect, you're
43:45restricting the kind of um
43:50narrative regarding
43:52the way in which Negroes were able to
43:56mobilize and to uh move about and to
44:00build and to acquire loans and things of
44:03this nature.
44:04Uh to concede to what it is you're
44:07putting out, I would have to agree that
44:11the
44:13the act of
44:15securing, or not securing, but basically
44:17approving a loan is monopolized
44:21by so-called white people, when in
44:23reality there were
44:24so-called there were Negro banks, there
44:26were Negro investors who were
44:29regardless of what community was rated
44:33were giving
44:34the the
44:36loans out to people who qualified within
44:39their communities. And so it wasn't even
44:41even though certain doors were closed,
44:44there were other doors that were open,
44:45plenty of them that were open. And this
44:47is why Negroes were able to build. This
44:49is well documented, for example, in My
44:51Larger Education, written by Booker T.
44:53Washington. Even W.E.B. Du Bois
44:55acknowledged this
44:57in some of his writings in The Crisis,
44:58which was a magazine that he was editing
45:01in the early part of the 20th century.
45:04And so I think that this whole notion of
45:08white supremacy and systemic racism
45:11being this big bad boogeyman is itself a
45:14white supremacist view in so far that it
45:17it consolidates
45:20the ability to decide who does and don't
45:24who does and does not mobilize into the
45:26hands of white people, and it takes away
45:28autonomy, it takes away freedom from
45:31Negroes that they did have.
45:34But again, I I think to to bring a
45:36little bit more clarity to this
45:37discussion,
45:39um
45:40we can litigate or relitigate
45:43things that were happen happening in the
45:45past all we want. And
45:49I'm happy to
45:50um
45:52to give resources and citations for
45:56various books that you could read by
45:59Negro authors
46:00who aren't conservative, but who
46:02themselves acknowledge upward mobility
46:05on the part of Negroes throughout the
46:0720th century. Um, where we can read a
46:10different perspective than this whole
46:13notion that Negroes were just kind of
46:14downtrodden and and stagnant and
46:17immobile. Um,
46:20the reality and the facts basically
46:23contradict or at at the very least, uh,
46:26complicate that whole narrative and that
46:28whole notion. But, I but I'm more or
46:30less talking about today, this notion of
46:33of white supremacy and systemic racism
46:35is not something that prevents Negroes
46:38today from from mobilizing upward.
46:44>> We good? Okay, I just wanted to make
46:45sure. Okay, so what it is that you are
46:48doing um, in your um, I guess if you
46:51want to call call it a rebuttal, your
46:53rebuttal is that you're appealing to the
46:55exception. You're trying to say that the
46:56exceptions make the rules while also
46:58still saying that I'm acknowledging that
47:00the doors are closed. So, you're trying
47:01to play both sides of it because you
47:03know that systemic racism is a real
47:05thing because the systemic racism would
47:08actually be something that does impact
47:11the material conditions of people's
47:13lives. So, if you are denied that that
47:16ability to, let's say, own the property,
47:20all right, because of government
47:21interference due to your race, all
47:24right, due to the superficial
47:26characteristics that make up your how
47:28you present to the world, so your
47:29phenotype, then you are in fact
47:32acknowledging, all right, that the
47:34government was in fact racist against
47:37black people. Now, to address your point
47:39in regards to, um,
47:41what was it? It was, uh,
47:43a white supremacist view. No,
47:45acknowledging that these things have
47:46happened is not taking on a white
47:49supremacist view because throughout
47:51history, all right, since the creation
47:54of this system in which it is that we
47:55live in, dating back to the 1450s with
47:59Gomez de Tizona when he came up with the
48:01construct of race and the Catholic
48:03Church agreed to it in the mid-1450s.
48:06A- What we have always done as a people
48:09is we have persevered and we have been
48:10resilient. Yet again, I would say the
48:13exceptions do not make the rule. All
48:15right, we even had during slavery, there
48:17were people All right, there were black
48:19people who were wealthy. We had that.
48:23So, I mean Do What you just said,
48:27um with all due respect, Mr. Jackson,
48:31it was bull crap.
48:32I want to let you know that it was it
48:34was bull crap. When you look at it
48:35today, all right, what has happened in
48:37the past is still impacting us today
48:40because of the simple fact we have
48:41something called the great wealth
48:42transfer that is going to be happening
48:44over the next 20 or so odd years where
48:47there's going to be over a hundred
48:49trillion dollars in wealth passed down
48:52from the silent generation and boomers
48:54to their Gen X children and millennials.
48:58That is happening. Over a hundred
48:59trillion dollars in wealth will be going
49:01to them. And part of that is not It's
49:04not just stocks. It's also going to be
49:05in the form of property because they
49:08were allowed, beginning of course with
49:09the Homestead Act, I believe 1862 is is
49:13the right year. The Homestead Act, they
49:15were given land by the government. There
49:18were over what? 2 million white families
49:21that received land from the government
49:24from the United States government,
49:26whereas it was less than uh what was it?
49:28Less than 2,000 black families that
49:31received land from the government.
49:34>> Yeah.
49:34>> And you can't say and you cannot sit
49:35here and say that we made up some small
49:37share of the population because at the
49:40time of 1861, there were over 3 million
49:44enslaved people in the United States of
49:47America. 3 million enslaved. That does
49:50not take into account how many free
49:52people there were in the northern
49:53states. So, we're just talking about
49:55enslaved people in the southern states.
49:57So, you can't say that oh, well, it it
50:00it some people got it. No, you can't do
50:04that. They were given multiple
50:05opportunities to actually have this land
50:08provided to them by the government. I'm
50:10talking about white people. All right,
50:11and they've been able to pass that down
50:13from generation to generation. I already
50:15mentioned the HOLC. All right, we talked
50:17about that. We can talk about the FHA
50:19loans. Like we can see how this is still
50:21impacting black people today. Even
50:23today, all right, as late as January of
50:252025, we still had instances of
50:27redlining, um a case in Florida. This is
50:302025, a case in Florida where a um a uh
50:34lender It wasn't a lender, it was a
50:36mortgage company that had actually taken
50:39it upon themselves to not advertise in
50:41black and brown communities. And they
50:44were being sued by the DOJ.
50:46That's and that's that's redlining
50:48because you're not um being equitable or
50:51equal in your actual um advertising to
50:55people to let people know that these
50:57things do exist.
50:58So, that happened. That's That's a form
51:00of systemic racism.
51:03So, why do you Why I I I'm on this
51:05conversation, I'm trying to understand
51:07why do you deny that it exists? And you
51:09can't say it's about opportunity.
51:11>> Well, I disagree that that's a example
51:13of redlining, um for one. Uh but then
51:15two, uh Erica, I am glad that you did
51:19acknowledge that
51:21uh 2,000-some-odd Negroes did receive
51:24land because many activists don't don't
51:27even acknowledge that at all. Um they
51:28pretend that not a single black person
51:31uh was
51:32>> with me.
51:33>> Sorry?
51:34>> I said it got nothing to do with me.
51:35>> Right. So, [laughter] so so I do commend
51:37you for that. Um but the reality
51:39[clears throat] is that uh a lot of
51:41blacks didn't even
51:42uh see to you know, check to see if they
51:44even qualified for it. Um so, that's
51:47that's the that
51:48>> aware of it though? And if they were
51:50made
51:50>> Yeah, they of course they were.
51:50>> Okay, so
51:51>> they were. You look at the
51:52African-American
51:53>> How were they made aware of it?
51:54>> Through
51:55through newspaper
51:57coverage in those days.
51:59>> the literacy rate in 1862 for black
52:02people?
52:03>> So, just because a
52:04>> What was the literacy rate?
52:05>> a negro is illiterate doesn't mean that
52:07they don't get the information that the
52:09that the newspaper was
52:10>> What was the literacy rate?
52:12>> If you allow me to answer, just because
52:14a negro is illiterate illiterate doesn't
52:16mean that they aren't able to get the
52:17information that is being disseminated
52:19by way of a newspaper because those who
52:21could read would then share the
52:22information amongst other negroes. And
52:24that's a fact. That that still exist
52:26today. There's people who are
52:28illiterate, but they still get the
52:29information.
52:30So, whether one like your your your
52:33illiteracy doesn't mean that you are
52:35just barred from understanding what's
52:37being said in the newspaper because
52:39especially in those days when you didn't
52:40have television and and you know, modern
52:43modes of communication. Um, you did have
52:46pastors and business owners and things
52:49of this nature who were able to
52:51disseminate information that was being
52:53conveyed through newspapers.
52:55So,
52:56again Erica,
52:58um, my question still stands because I
53:00mean I know you're saying that well
53:03because negroes didn't have property,
53:05they weren't able to pass down wealth
53:07generationally to their descendants and
53:09and there are kind of lingering issues
53:14that that makes
53:17systemic racism well and among us today.
53:19I don't see how you get from point A to
53:20point Z.
53:22Um,
53:23and that
53:23>> Cuz you're disregarding point B.
53:26You're disregarding what
53:27>> it What is it that I'm disregarding?
53:28>> You're disregarding point B. You're
53:30disregarding the the government's actual
53:32involvement in it all and how that has
53:34actually impacted and I say it again,
53:36the material conditions, the economic
53:38mobility of black families. You're
53:41disregarding that. I mean, we can point
53:43to so many things like um owning
53:45property. All right, when you own a
53:47home, you're able to have something
53:49called equity. That means that your home
53:53is valued more than what you owe on it.
53:56People use that equity in their homes to
53:59pay for certain things. One of those
54:01things is higher education, aka college.
54:05Okay? They take out home equity lines of
54:07credit or they can do a second mortgage
54:09on their home and they can send their
54:10kids to college.
54:12All right, what we had is we have what
54:15we have is people white people because
54:18they own homes at a higher rate than
54:19black people. Okay? And they're able to
54:22actually utilize that money and send
54:25their kids to college. And thus their
54:27kids get the degrees. That's not saying
54:29that there's no black kids who have ever
54:31had a home equity line of credit to pay
54:33for their home. We're just noting that
54:35it's done at a higher rate in the white
54:37community. And it's because they've had
54:39greater access to owning a home. That's
54:43one of the things. And then we we can
54:45talk about how also another thing is
54:48that when it comes to our homes that
54:51because of redlining, the government
54:53actually devalued our property value. It
54:57devalued our property value. We can talk
54:59about how even today that appraisals,
55:02which the Biden administration did try
55:04to fix, but how even when it comes to
55:08the disparities in appraisal where a
55:10white home, a home that is clearly owned
55:13by a white person, all right, is valued
55:16at a higher price than a home that is
55:19owned by a black person when it's clear
55:21that a black person owns the home. And
55:24these are comparable homes.
55:26Okay? So it can even be same
55:27neighborhood. There's studies that
55:29actually reflect this information.
55:31That's systemic.
55:33Because the argument that you would try
55:34to make is that that would be the
55:36individual appraiser. No, but the
55:38individual appraiser makes up the actual
55:41system.
55:42Do you understand that?
55:44>> Okay. So, the the
55:46So, by you placing all of this kind of
55:49stock and
55:51the system
55:52the system of racism
55:54and something that was done to Negroes
55:56by the government
55:58and and saying that those are things
56:00that I'm I'm refusing to acknowledge
56:03when it comes to be
56:06uh through Y, right?
56:08Um
56:10I would posit that the thing that you're
56:12neglecting
56:13is the cultural aspect of it.
56:16Um namely, the fact that uh you know,
56:19when you when it comes to this idea of a
56:21so-called white person
56:23passing down generational wealth to
56:25their descendants
56:27uh to the question of like my question
56:29then is like, okay, why aren't Negroes
56:31passing down
56:33wealth to their descendants?
56:35Um
56:36you would say that because the system
56:39has prevented them from having the
56:40property to begin with.
56:42Correct?
56:43Or because of the way that the
56:44government valued it. Is that what Is
56:45that what you're saying?
56:48>> Well, you were.
56:49>> for like where's your your starting
56:51point the starting point you've provided
56:53to him so far.
56:54>> in absolutes though. I don't speak in
56:56absolutes.
56:56>> the starting point that you've provided
56:58to him has been the system, right?
57:00You've talked about the the appraiser
57:02the the appraisers
57:03uh the home loans uh the the the D
57:06ratings uh grading system, the Homestead
57:09Act. Like you're putting that as your
57:11starting point. And that's what he's
57:13saying, right? That that's your that
57:15you're putting your stock in. That's the
57:17starting point and everything from there
57:19trickles down.
57:20>> Okay.
57:20>> Okay.
57:21That should clarify that if you want to
57:22take it from there.
57:23>> Yeah.
57:24So, so is that what you're arguing?
57:27>> Sure.
57:27>> Okay.
57:28So, again, we have to take into
57:29consideration the cultural aspect of it.
57:32>> The cultural
57:33>> the cultural aspect of it. The why why
57:35What is the ethos of a What is the ethos
57:37of this or that culture that would uh
57:40result in the refusal to pass down
57:43>> Are you just trying to say black people
57:44bad? Like what are we talking?
57:46>> I mean you can
57:47>> Don't ask me. I want you
57:48>> interpret you can
57:49>> your I want you to answer that question.
57:52What what is the ethos? Like what what
57:53is it about black people that's
57:55preventing black people from being able
57:56to pass down generational wealth?
57:58>> For one, the civil rights movement.
58:00>> This what?
58:02>> For one, the civil rights movement.
58:04Um
58:05would you like me to explain?
58:06>> Yeah, that's what I'm waiting for.
58:08>> Yeah, so if you look at the turn of the
58:1020th century and the leaders like Booker
58:14T. Washington
58:15and the Negro Business League and the
58:17fact that as a result of his program you
58:20saw the springing up of Black Wall
58:22Streets across the South, across the um
58:26basically across the country. Um you saw
58:29this kind of upward trajectory that was
58:30taking place and you did see the passing
58:33down of not only generational wealth,
58:36obviously not every Negro experienced,
58:38you know, generational wealth.
58:40Uh but to the extent that they had
58:43something to call their own that they
58:44would then pass down to their
58:46descendants, that was that was actually
58:48happening.
58:49Um
58:51and then there was a mindset shift that
58:52took place during the
58:55the height of the civil rights movement
58:57um where
58:59there was a spirit of bitterness
59:00instilled in the Negro community.
59:03Um where the demand for rights, the
59:06demand for this, the demand for that and
59:07then it would it would bloom into a kind
59:09of economic
59:11uh
59:12act kind of activism. Nikki Giovanni,
59:14who was part of the whole civil rights
59:17movement, um
59:18said in a interview with uh I forget the
59:22her her name is uh Bell Hooks
59:24said in an interview with Bell Hooks
59:25that
59:26it was acknowledged that we had all
59:28these black Wall Streets, we had
59:29Pittsburgh, we had North Carolina, we
59:31had Tulsa, we had all these different
59:32places
59:33and we my generation speaking of the
59:36baby boomers, we decided not to carry
59:38that on. We weren't a business people,
59:40we were a civil rights people is what
59:42she said. So we took to activism, we
59:45took to picketing, we took to all these
59:46different things. And the correlation
59:48I'm drawing here is that you see this
59:51kind of disinterest, if you will, in the
59:55kind of wealth building and passing down
59:56that wealth then to your descendants. I
59:59know
1:00:00that you know, my grandparents are baby
1:00:01boomers and if you look at a lot of
1:00:02their generation, unfortunately, we have
1:00:04to speak the truth here. They didn't
1:00:06pass down their generation their their
1:00:08wealth and their homes and things of
1:00:09this nature to Gen X, millennials, so on
1:00:13and so forth. They liquidated those
1:00:14assets and went on vacation
1:00:17in many instances. That's a cultural
1:00:19issue. That's something broken in the
1:00:21culture.
1:00:22And so when you believe that revolution
1:00:25is underway
1:00:26and we will begin to close these wealth
1:00:28gaps, we'll begin to close uh
1:00:30these uh these gaps and disparities and
1:00:33so on by way of revolution, by way of
1:00:36laws, by way of what the government is
1:00:38now going to do for us.
1:00:39That deincentivizes the need to
1:00:44uh to pursue property and to pursue
1:00:46things of this nature that you can then
1:00:48utilize while you're living then pass
1:00:50down to your descendants. This is why
1:00:51I'm grateful and appreciative of people
1:00:53like uh
1:00:54Killer Mike there in Atlanta who is
1:00:57trying to bring the pursuit of property
1:01:00back to the table as it pertains to
1:01:02Negroes living currently in Atlanta. Um
1:01:06so again, this whole idea of systemic
1:01:09racism preventing us from acquiring
1:01:10property or what have you and we speak
1:01:13so heavily of on that without
1:01:15acknowledging what are the cultural
1:01:17uh pathologies that exist that we need
1:01:19to address in order to kind of turn this
1:01:21thing around.
1:01:23I'm less interested in talking about all
1:01:25the woe is me kind of rhetoric as much
1:01:27as I am in talking about what are some
1:01:28of the cultural things that we need to
1:01:29address to
1:01:31to move forward and to
1:01:33to raise our station in life as or.
1:01:37>> Okay, a lot was just said there so I'll
1:01:40definitely try to address some of the
1:01:42main points. Um the thing about it is it
1:01:44is again is that while these systemic
1:01:48barriers do actually still exist
1:01:51>> In what way?
1:01:52>> I'm I'm I'm letting you know
1:01:54>> Okay.
1:01:54>> once again.
1:01:55>> Please.
1:01:55>> Cuz we would have to like
1:01:57you have one more person that you have
1:01:58to speak with here.
1:02:00>> Mhm.
1:02:00>> All right, and some things you're going
1:02:02to have to just grant here because we're
1:02:04going to have to go back to how we have
1:02:06still have de facto segregation and that
1:02:08we have poverty
1:02:10>> And
1:02:10>> All right, we have police brutality.
1:02:11Like all these things that can play a
1:02:13part in someone not being able to
1:02:14acquire property.
1:02:16>> Can can I just interject real quick?
1:02:17>> Sure.
1:02:17>> So I'm not being adversarial. Like I'm
1:02:19just trying to get clarity.
1:02:20>> No, I understand.
1:02:21>> Yeah.
1:02:22>> I know I totally understand. I'm not
1:02:23trying to be adversarial either like at
1:02:25all. What I'm trying to say is that that
1:02:28conversation will take a very long time.
1:02:30>> Okay, but
1:02:30>> Okay, so
1:02:31>> [clears throat]
1:02:31>> but at the same time like if you make a
1:02:33point like I'm asking you for clarity on
1:02:35that point.
1:02:36>> If you keep interrupting me then I'm not
1:02:37going to be able to give you the clarity
1:02:39cuz then I'm going to I'm going to
1:02:40reset. So and also I'm on my medicated.
1:02:42I left my medication in Arizona. So the
1:02:45thing is is that
1:02:48the the the point here
1:02:51Sis, I forgot the [ __ ] question. Ask
1:02:54your question. What What are you looking
1:02:55for clarity on, sir?
1:02:56>> Okay, go ahead.
1:02:57>> Go ahead. What are you looking for
1:02:57clarity on?
1:02:58>> Just proceed.
1:02:59>> Okay, all right. So here's the thing.
1:03:03Again, you mentioned
1:03:06you mentioned a lot. We know that black
1:03:10home ownership has grown about over what
1:03:13about 20% or so more today than it was
1:03:18in the 1930s. We we understand that.
1:03:21Okay? That does not negate that the
1:03:24systemic barriers, which would be, cuz
1:03:26this is what you were asking for clarity
1:03:28on, which would be things like de facto
1:03:31segregation, where the majority of
1:03:33people in the United States,
1:03:35specifically black people, all right,
1:03:37are born in one neighborhood and they
1:03:39die in that neighborhood. Okay? So,
1:03:42there's no there's no moving up out of
1:03:44that.
1:03:45Okay? We would have to talk about how
1:03:48when the Great Migration that black
1:03:50people were who moved from the Jim Crow
1:03:52South, all right, were went up north and
1:03:55they tried to buy properties, but were
1:03:57denied. So, they were forced into what
1:03:59we call the projects.
1:04:01Okay? That's keeping it very high-level.
1:04:04Now, with that being said, you mentioned
1:04:06a few things. You mentioned how during
1:04:08like we had multiple Black Wall Streets
1:04:11and all those things. We had our own
1:04:12during the Jim Crow era, right? Prior to
1:04:15the the Civil Rights Movement of the
1:04:161950s, 1960s. What happened to those
1:04:19towns? What happened in Wilmington in 19
1:04:22Not 19, but 1898 in Wilmington, North
1:04:25Carolina. What happened?
1:04:26>> Tell me.
1:04:27>> Okay, what happened was is that 2,001
1:04:31white men went into that town and burned
1:04:34it down.
1:04:35Absolutely a whole massacre. It was a
1:04:37coup d'état a coup d'état, if you will.
1:04:39The only coup d'état to actually ever
1:04:41exist in US history.
1:04:43That's what happened in Wilmington,
1:04:44North Carolina. All right? When the
1:04:46Fusionist Party, which is a group of
1:04:47black and white people came together,
1:04:50all right, to actually incorporate
1:04:52equality and equity within the city, all
1:04:55right, so that there was ownership by
1:04:57black people and people could live
1:04:58amongst each other without without the
1:05:01segregation. They came in these angry
1:05:05white people because they did not want
1:05:06black people owning property. They did
1:05:08not want black people owning businesses.
1:05:10They did not want uppity Negroes. All
1:05:13right? They burned it down. That was
1:05:16Wilmington, North Carolina. We can look
1:05:17at Tulsa. We can look at Look at Wall
1:05:19Street. Look at the Greenwood District.
1:05:21All right? What was that? 1921? And see
1:05:24how they dropped bombs
1:05:27on them.
1:05:27>> Why?
1:05:29>> Oh, because a black man went into a
1:05:31elevator and he almost tripped and fell
1:05:34and he put his hand on a white woman and
1:05:36the clerk who saw it happen after she
1:05:39screamed the clerk saw it happen called
1:05:42basically called for the police. There
1:05:43was a letter article put in a newspaper.
1:05:46The white man got mad. How the [ __ ] dare
1:05:48he? And then boom. All of a sudden what
1:05:51do we have?
1:05:52All right? We have a
1:05:55It wasn't a It wasn't a riot on the
1:05:57black people's part.
1:05:58>> It was a riot from both sides.
1:05:59>> a riot on the white folks' part who
1:06:02marched into that Greenwood District.
1:06:06All right? And even the police at that
1:06:08time I will say the police
1:06:10in that area did try to help but they
1:06:13still too were overpowered.
1:06:15And that's why you had what? Like over
1:06:18What was it? Over 300 black people die
1:06:22that day?
1:06:23>> The number's different depending on
1:06:24which source you're looking at.
1:06:25>> So, there's that. So, that's what
1:06:27happened. So, and you He spoke about
1:06:29Rosewood earlier. There's hundreds of
1:06:32them. We can talk about Lake Lanier
1:06:34being flooded via eminent domain because
1:06:37they wanted to build the lake.
1:06:38>> And the agreement was that the black
1:06:40people
1:06:40>> what white town? Give me a one for one.
1:06:43What white town was flooded to create a
1:06:45lake?
1:06:46All right? What white town was burned
1:06:48down because black folks got mad?
1:06:50>> The Negroes
1:06:51>> You would have to show these things and
1:06:52you can't show I'm not finished. Thank
1:06:54you. All right? And I'm not being
1:06:55adversarial. I'm just saying because
1:06:57I've been taking notes while you've been
1:06:58talking. All right? You would have to
1:07:00show that these things have existed on
1:07:03our side of the aisle and you're not
1:07:06going I keep saying hour, I forget on
1:07:08the black people's side of the aisle.
1:07:11You would have to show those things and
1:07:12you can't show it because the government
1:07:15has not once been against white people,
1:07:18but they have always been against black
1:07:21people. We see it today and I know you
1:07:24want to respond to this, so I'll save
1:07:25the next part for the next day unless
1:07:27somebody else wants to go, but you got
1:07:29it.
1:07:30>> Yeah, so when it comes to a lot of these
1:07:33Negro towns that were that are currently
1:07:35under water,
1:07:36a lot of that happened because the Negro
1:07:37leaders themselves
1:07:39made agreements
1:07:41for those towns for the for their people
1:07:43to move elsewhere and for those towns to
1:07:44then
1:07:46be turned into lakes because they got
1:07:49monetary compensation for it. So,
1:07:53so so to say just eminent domain and
1:07:55leave it at that is is disingenuous.
1:07:57But then too, like when it comes to the
1:07:59whole Tulsa thing,
1:08:01you didn't say this, but one of the
1:08:03prevailing narratives is white people
1:08:06wanted the Greenwood district for
1:08:08themselves and so they massacred all
1:08:10these Negroes and then
1:08:14then my question would be and again this
1:08:16isn't to you, I'm just speaking
1:08:17rhetorically,
1:08:18is well, what happened to the
1:08:20demographics
1:08:22of the Greenwood area after the riot? It
1:08:25remained Negro.
1:08:28And in fact,
1:08:30the Negro district was built back
1:08:32relatively quickly and in fact, white
1:08:34people there in Tulsa helped Negroes
1:08:36build back the Tulsa that that Greenwood
1:08:38district.
1:08:39And it would
1:08:41it wasn't even called Black Wall Street
1:08:43until after the race riot in 1921. When
1:08:46it comes to this notion of well, there
1:08:49was a article that went out,
1:08:51um
1:08:53and the the the article was nab Negro
1:08:55for attacking girl on elevator, white
1:08:56girl on elevator.
1:08:58That article was written by none other
1:09:00none other than Richard Lloyd Jones.
1:09:02Richard Lloyd Jones was a fellow
1:09:04traveler.
1:09:05He was what we call a progressive
1:09:07who was sympathetic to the communist
1:09:08cause.
1:09:09And so the question for me is
1:09:11when you look at that happening in 1921
1:09:14and that that same year you had
1:09:17John Reed who was an American journalist
1:09:19go to the communist common turn in
1:09:21Moscow and say that, you know, the only
1:09:25real movement going on in America is
1:09:27that led by the late Booker T.
1:09:29Washington. And we as communists have to
1:09:31infiltrate that movement. And what did
1:09:33Vladimir Lenin do? He green-lit using
1:09:36any means necessary
1:09:38to
1:09:39basically cause Negroes in America to
1:09:42flock to the communist cause. And so
1:09:45like clockwork you see all these race
1:09:47riots springing up seemingly out of
1:09:49nowhere
1:09:50over the course of the early 1920s.
1:09:53And so all this stuff is happening. I
1:09:55mean you look at
1:09:56Richard Lloyd Jones' wife who was in bed
1:09:59with Planned Parenthood and she was part
1:10:01of that whole eugenics movement and
1:10:02things of this nature.
1:10:03>> Skull.
1:10:04>> So all this matters Erica because the
1:10:08whole idea of if I'm a Negro who lives
1:10:11in the green in and works in the
1:10:13Greenwood district in 1920
1:10:15and I have a business selling shoes.
1:10:18Right? This
1:10:20is seen you know by the communist as me
1:10:22kind of embracing this kind of
1:10:24capitalistic
1:10:25American value that is at odds with the
1:10:29communist ideology. And so the idea or
1:10:32the objective in terms of causing race
1:10:35riots is to
1:10:36is to basically displace me from my
1:10:39business that I might then run into the
1:10:41bosom of some social activist movement.
1:10:45Be it the NAACP, be it the communist,
1:10:48things of this nature. You can read
1:10:49Robin D. G. Kelley's book called Hammer
1:10:51and Hoe which documents this kind of
1:10:53activity going on
1:10:55in particularly the Negro South over the
1:10:58course of the early 20th century.
1:11:00Again, I'm giving you names to let you
1:11:02know like this stuff is well documented.
1:11:05The idea once again is to demoralize
1:11:08Negroes from seeing the pursuit of
1:11:11property, seeing the pursuit of the free
1:11:13market as a viable means for progressing
1:11:16in the United States and to get them to
1:11:18run into the bosom of one of these
1:11:19social active activist organizations.
1:11:22That same paper, the Tulsa Tribune,
1:11:25would use their
1:11:28newspaper after the riot to to get
1:11:32people to join the NAACP, to get people
1:11:34to join these organizations.
1:11:36So so all of this stuff is relevant and
1:11:40it matters because it's not just oh, we
1:11:43we don't like those Negroes. They're
1:11:44over there, you know, thriving and
1:11:46surviving. Let us go and disrupt that
1:11:48and break that up. Because why would
1:11:50those same white people go and help the
1:11:51Negroes build their property back?
1:11:55Like why why why would that happen if it
1:11:57was just we just hate these Negroes so
1:11:58much?
1:11:59Right? And so there's more to the story
1:12:02than the narratives that we're given, is
1:12:04all I'm saying.
1:12:05Like when it comes to Negroes living in
1:12:08America today,
1:12:09>> [laughter]
1:12:09>> I'm sorry.
1:12:11I'm sorry. You try to make this argument
1:12:13I'm sorry
1:12:14You try to make this argument that what
1:12:16you think my framing is is that all
1:12:19white people bad and that's not it.
1:12:21>> Okay. Well, my apologies.
1:12:22>> that's simply not it.
1:12:23>> My my apologies.
1:12:24>> think that for one bit, okay? So that's
1:12:26not it. I am talking about systemic
1:12:29racism in regards to our our government
1:12:33actually implementing policies,
1:12:36procedures, legislation that has
1:12:38actually been for the oppression
1:12:41of
1:12:42>> of black people.
1:12:44>> Actively right now.
1:12:45>> What we can see is that actively right
1:12:47now, if we want to bring it current, all
1:12:49right? Let's talk about DEIA. You know
1:12:51what D E I A is, right? Okay. So, since
1:12:54you know what D E I A is, I'm just going
1:12:56to say it for the folks listening. All
1:12:58right, it stands for a diversity,
1:13:00equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
1:13:02All right, and it's just simply a set of
1:13:04internal policies and procedures by
1:13:06corporations, companies, employers, all
1:13:09right, that simply allows everyone to
1:13:11have a seat at the table. It covers a
1:13:12multitude of people, not just black
1:13:14people. It covers women. It covers
1:13:18women, veterans. It covers the LGBTQIA+
1:13:23community. It covers disabled people.
1:13:26All right, so anyone who's deemed a
1:13:27marginalized person falls under D E I A.
1:13:31And it's not a hiring practice or
1:13:33anything of that nature. It simply just
1:13:35means that if you have back problems,
1:13:39guess what? That's accessibility. You
1:13:41can get a lumbar in your chair. Or if
1:13:44you have carpal carpal
1:13:46carpal tunnel, whatever the heck it's
1:13:47called, you can get one of those
1:13:48mousepads that has the wrist thing. All
1:13:50right, it also means that everyone can
1:13:53get a voice at the table. So, if we're
1:13:54going to talk about how to do a
1:13:56indigenous people month, let's make sure
1:13:59we have indigenous people input
1:14:01on how to celebrate indigenous people's
1:14:03month. There's no evidence that you can
1:14:05show that D E I A is actually a part of
1:14:08a hiring practice, but yet that's what
1:14:11this current administration, the
1:14:13government, has made it seem as by
1:14:16saying that it's woke policies. Saying
1:14:18stuff like that. Have they not said
1:14:20stuff like that?
1:14:21>> And just a thought, we're going to we're
1:14:22going to move into our wrap-up. So, if
1:14:23you have like a final dig in on that
1:14:25one.
1:14:26>> And so, what we saw was is because of
1:14:29this current administration's attack
1:14:30against D E I A
1:14:32programs is that between February and
1:14:35April of last year, according to a
1:14:37Forbes report, 300,000 black women
1:14:40either were
1:14:41fired, laid off, or they left the
1:14:43workforce because of the removal of
1:14:46these D E
1:14:48All right, we saw that. What we also saw
1:14:50is we saw black unemployment rates all
1:14:53right, almost double that um not even
1:14:56almost double, but we saw black
1:14:57unemployment rates go up by almost 2%
1:15:01within the first year of the second
1:15:03Trump administration.
1:15:04>> Mhm.
1:15:05>> Okay.
1:15:06Like we we we saw that happen. So,
1:15:10why what we saw was an attack
1:15:14on black people?
1:15:15>> Mhm.
1:15:16>> We didn't see that?
1:15:17>> No.
1:15:17>> Okay, go ahead.
1:15:19>> Um so, you're positing that the removal
1:15:22of DEIA from government institutions is
1:15:25tantamount to systemic racism.
1:15:28Um I would posit that it's not that it
1:15:29shouldn't never been part of our
1:15:30government to begin with. Now, if a
1:15:32private business
1:15:35Sorry?
1:15:35>> It It doesn't matter because it is a
1:15:38part of it. It was a part of it. And
1:15:40with the removal of it, what we saw was
1:15:43is we saw an increase in black
1:15:45unemployment. So, it doesn't matter what
1:15:48you think about it. If you think that it
1:15:49shouldn't have been there in the first
1:15:51place, it was there. It was something
1:15:53that was there. And it had an impact.
1:15:55Did it not have an impact?
1:15:57>> Um it depends on what you mean by
1:15:58impact.
1:15:59>> By impact, what we saw was especially
1:16:02from 2020 is that we saw
1:16:05upward mobility
1:16:06from black people all right, making more
1:16:08money because what we saw starting in
1:16:11about 2022 is we started to see the
1:16:14wealth gap between black and white
1:16:16households shrink.
1:16:17>> What it did was it it
1:16:20enabled
1:16:21and validated the negro matriarchy
1:16:24for one.
1:16:25Um
1:16:27so, I would argue that the impact was
1:16:29actually more negative than positive.
1:16:31But no, DEIA
1:16:34is like
1:16:36it doesn't belong in our government at
1:16:37all. And Trump was right to remove it.
1:16:40I would say that Trump is overreaching
1:16:43if he decides to go after private
1:16:46companies for implementing DEI
1:16:49because I'm a free market guy. I believe
1:16:50that if you want to have diversity,
1:16:53equity, inclusion
1:16:55with your private college or your
1:16:56private business, then by all means. I
1:16:59might disagree with it, but it's not my
1:17:01business. I didn't put in the blood,
1:17:02sweat, and tears to build it, take out
1:17:04loans to build it. That's your business.
1:17:05Do with it what you please and let the
1:17:07free market decide as to whether they
1:17:09will buy your services and goods or not.
1:17:12Um but, you know, this notion that you
1:17:16know, and it cuts both ways. This notion
1:17:17that the government should go after
1:17:20those private companies, I disagree
1:17:22with. And the notion that the government
1:17:24should have DEI initiatives in our
1:17:27bureaucracy is something I strongly
1:17:29disagree with as well.
1:17:31So, but no, it's not tantamount. You
1:17:33know, getting rid of it from the
1:17:34government is not tantamount to systemic
1:17:35racism. You can't You can't under an
1:17:38ideal You can't under an ideological
1:17:41policy maker who happens to work for a
1:17:43Democrat president and enacts all of
1:17:46these these kind of redistributive and
1:17:49these kind of equitable policies and and
1:17:53put those in government
1:17:55unjustly
1:17:57and then another president takes office
1:17:59and removes them and say, "Oh, you're a
1:18:01racist." Like that that is disingenuous
1:18:03completely.
1:18:04>> Mhm.
1:18:05But what's the impact though?
1:18:07That's the thing. I think like if we if
1:18:09we stop it there, that's that's shutting
1:18:11it off. You would have to say what the
1:18:12actual impact is because of the increase
1:18:15in the black unemployment rate and how
1:18:16many black folks did lose their jobs in
1:18:182025 just specifically with women that
1:18:20we saw when we look at the 300,000, all
1:18:23right, either leaving, being fired, or
1:18:25laid off within the span of those 3
1:18:26months, what we see is a tally of about
1:18:30$36 billion being removed from the
1:18:33economic system, like from our economy.
1:18:36That's a whole lot of darn going money
1:18:39that's know being removed.
1:18:41>> It's okay, you're fine. Go ahead.
1:18:43>> You know Erica, um
1:18:44I really believe that many of these
1:18:47policy makers are banking on exactly
1:18:49what you just said.
1:18:50Because to the extent, once again, that
1:18:52somebody comes in and they do a kind of
1:18:54course correction and gets rid of these
1:18:56these useless
1:18:59policies that are in our government,
1:19:00you're going to have real people
1:19:02affected by it.
1:19:03And they're counting on using those
1:19:06those people who are affected by it or
1:19:08impacted by it as kind of poster
1:19:09children
1:19:10to say this is why we need it. This is
1:19:13why we you see the same thing with
1:19:14government shutdowns and people, you
1:19:16know, losing their government jobs or
1:19:18being temporarily um barred from
1:19:20entering into these buildings,
1:19:22politicians then say, "Look, all these
1:19:23people are without work. This is why we
1:19:24need to pass this
1:19:27uh budget to get the government back
1:19:29running so these people can be employed
1:19:31so they're basically
1:19:33um
1:19:33um
1:19:34using these people as kind of like a
1:19:38What's the word I'm trying to use here?
1:19:40Um
1:19:41They're they're bribing the American
1:19:43people with their own tax dollars in a
1:19:45sense. They're using it as collateral,
1:19:47you know, uh these people as collateral
1:19:49to push these policies that are actually
1:19:51detrimental and these budgets are
1:19:52actually detrimental to our country as a
1:19:53whole, send us deeper into debt, um the
1:19:56whole nine. And so, uh the fact is, you
1:19:59spoke of resilience of the of of not
1:20:02just Negroes, but people in general
1:20:04earlier. Um and I would argue that to
1:20:06the extent that a person loses a a
1:20:08government job, uh there's plenty of
1:20:09jobs out there that are available to you
1:20:12depending on what your skill set is. And
1:20:14that's just the way the the cookie
1:20:15crumbles. I know it's not the sexiest
1:20:16thing to say, but it it's a fact
1:20:18nonetheless.
1:20:19>> And if you'd like to give a final
1:20:20thought, Erica, and then we'll we'll
1:20:22move it along.
1:20:24>> Yeah, I would say that um systemic
1:20:27racism is real. We see the impacts of it
1:20:30in multiple ways um throughout our
1:20:32society, not just in um housing, not
1:20:35just in the workforce, but also in
1:20:37education um when it comes to suspension
1:20:40rates we see it, and the justice system
1:20:42when it comes to conviction rates,
1:20:44exoneration rates also. We can see it
1:20:46because we know that black men are
1:20:49convicted at what uh I believe it's um
1:20:5117 or 19% um at a higher clip than white
1:20:55men, and then with that being said,
1:20:58black men represent over 50% of the
1:21:01exoneration rate since the they started
1:21:02calculating well tallying that since the
1:21:041980s. It exists, and there's a
1:21:07multitude of factors that go into it,
1:21:10and we can see systemic racism happening
1:21:12today with the removal of civil rights
1:21:14divisions throughout multiple government
1:21:16agencies. Civil rights divisions that
1:21:18actually um investigate and uh
1:21:21adjudicate claims of discrimination,
1:21:24racism, so on and so forth. And
1:21:26additionally, we have the Trump
1:21:27administration currently floating around
1:21:29the idea of getting rid of demographic
1:21:32reporting to the EEOC, meaning that we
1:21:35will not be able to track whether or not
1:21:37there is a true disparity in um black
1:21:40people not being hired, whether or not
1:21:43women um black women I should say
1:21:45specifically are not being hired. It
1:21:47would allow us to not be able to track
1:21:48pay disparities. All of these things in
1:21:50fact being systemic.
1:21:53>> Could Could I ask her a question real
1:21:54quick?
1:21:55>> No.
1:21:56>> Just real quick.
1:21:56>> Yeah, what's up?
1:21:57>> Certainly.
1:21:57>> Um and so like uh and and
1:22:00>> Thank you for breaking all that down.
1:22:01>> Mhm.
1:22:01>> Um
1:22:03when it comes to what you spoke of
1:22:05earlier with regard to incarceration
1:22:06rates and and um and
1:22:10I guess you didn't say it this way, but
1:22:12this is the words that I'll use is
1:22:13basically unequal justice
1:22:17under the law
1:22:18um as it pertains to so-called blacks
1:22:20versus so-called whites.
1:22:21>> there is the law, and then there's the
1:22:22application of law.
1:22:23>> Right. So, um
1:22:25do you think cuz cuz to me like to the
1:22:28extent that that exists,
1:22:30um my belief is that
1:22:33individual judges who are and
1:22:35prosecutors who are
1:22:37um
1:22:38who are
1:22:40being so-called racist in how they
1:22:43deal with uh colored person who is
1:22:46accused of a crime versus a white
1:22:48person.
1:22:49Um do you think that those cuz I I I
1:22:52think that to the extent that somebody
1:22:54is sus is suspected of
1:22:56of kind of uh
1:22:59being unequal in terms of justice,
1:23:01uh that that person should be
1:23:02investigated um
1:23:06versus kind of like
1:23:08uh pushing this whole kind of like
1:23:09defund movement. And I'm not you you at
1:23:12no point in this debate uh advocated for
1:23:16defund. Um however, like do you think
1:23:19that that's the more appropriate way of
1:23:20going about it of of kind of seeing who
1:23:23it is who is
1:23:23>> after the individual rather than the
1:23:25system.
1:23:26>> No, the individual makes up the system.
1:23:28So, what the the entire system itself
1:23:30needs reforming. And um so, there's
1:23:33that. So, the entire system cuz these
1:23:34individuals make it up.
1:23:36>> Right, but like how is that again?
1:23:39Because it's not the system, it's it's
1:23:42the improper utilization of the system.
1:23:45And and and and the thing is uh Erica,
1:23:47and I'm and I'm I'm I'm having this
1:23:49conversation genuinely, to say it's the
1:23:51system. It it needs to be reformed.
1:23:54>> So, we agree that the system needs to be
1:23:55reformed?
1:23:56>> I'm saying that like rhetorically. To
1:23:57say to say that the to say that the
1:23:59system itself needs to be reformed, my
1:24:02question is then reformed with what?
1:24:03Like what do we replace the system with?
1:24:05Because because let me let me just
1:24:07finish. Please let me finish.
1:24:08To say that we need to basically tear
1:24:11down the system and replace it with
1:24:12something else,
1:24:14my my my first question is replace it
1:24:16with what? And my second question is
1:24:17what then do you do about the fact that
1:24:19it's still human beings who operate
1:24:22within that system, the same human
1:24:24beings who who breathe the same air as
1:24:26the the their predecessors, bleed the
1:24:28same color as their predecessors, make
1:24:30the same irrational decisions as their
1:24:32predecessors. So, you know, so long as
1:24:34you have human beings operating within a
1:24:36system, that system is going to not flow
1:24:39as as properly as it should. I would
1:24:41argue that when it comes to due process,
1:24:43when it comes to English common law, the
1:24:46things that we have operating in our
1:24:48country, although is not is not utilized
1:24:52properly across the board, the fact is
1:24:54it's irrational to say we need to get
1:24:56rid of the whole system.
1:24:58I think a more appropriate way of going
1:25:00about it is to see who is
1:25:03misutilizing or who is practicing, you
1:25:05know, doing malpractice. Look at the
1:25:07individuals and bring those facts to
1:25:10bear. So, that way we can we can have
1:25:13some real progress as opposed to just
1:25:16getting everybody riled up and
1:25:17sensationalized. So, so that that's what
1:25:20I want you to respond to.
1:25:21>> Okay. So, what you're talking about
1:25:23sounds like you're talking about like
1:25:25abolish prisons, abolish police, so on
1:25:28and so forth. You're speaking about like
1:25:31basically socialist ideology in that
1:25:33sense, like the DSA. Is that what you're
1:25:35saying about like abolishment
1:25:36>> I'm I'm speaking I'm speaking to what
1:25:38you said. You said that the system
1:25:40itself needs addressing.
1:25:42>> reform. I didn't That's what I'm saying,
1:25:43but you said get rid of. So, that's I'm
1:25:46like get rid of and reform are two
1:25:47different things. So, in regards to it,
1:25:50I think that the system in which we have
1:25:53I will say I do agree that we should get
1:25:54rid rid of it and then we should replace
1:25:57it with something new. I'll address your
1:25:58point about humans in just a moment.
1:26:01Like when it comes to the prison system,
1:26:02not even prison, policing.
1:26:04In Japan, they have the Koban system,
1:26:07all right, where it's more so of a
1:26:08restorative justice type of thing, where
1:26:10the people actually
1:26:13the person who was harmed and the person
1:26:14who did the harm um, meet with each
1:26:16other, all right, of course with a
1:26:18mediator, and they discuss, and the
1:26:21person who was harmed discusses the
1:26:23appro- like, kind of like, suggest the
1:26:25appropriate punishment, all right, and
1:26:27and they go from there. So, like, we
1:26:29want to look at restorative justice.
1:26:30Also, we can look at the, uh, what is
1:26:32it, Swedish model of prisons, where it's
1:26:34more so of a communal style of a
1:26:37rehabilitative care, rather than just
1:26:38punitive, and, you know, people working
1:26:41and their labor being exploited. What
1:26:43we're going to do is we're actually
1:26:45going to try to get these people help
1:26:46with mental services, social services,
1:26:48so on and so forth, all right? So, like,
1:26:51we want to get rid of how it is right
1:26:53now, especially like the the
1:26:54pay-for-prison, um, system that we have,
1:26:57and we want to get rid of our our police
1:27:00simply being just reactive, okay, and
1:27:03causing harm to people, and look at ways
1:27:06that we can just simply make them
1:27:07better, and I just gave you two examples
1:27:09of how we can look at the Japanese
1:27:11system of Koban, and we can look at the,
1:27:13uh, Swedish prison model. So, there's
1:27:16that part. Now, when it comes to the
1:27:17human part of it, all right? The main
1:27:19thing is is that I think you and I can
1:27:21agree that humans do corrupt, okay? So,
1:27:24humans corrupt things. We we understand
1:27:26that. That's why it's going to take a
1:27:27mind-shift change, and these things do
1:27:29not happen overnight. This is something
1:27:31that probably would be, if not multiple
1:27:34decades in the making, then a century in
1:27:37the making, especially in a system like
1:27:39the United States of America and how we
1:27:41operate, all right? But, it's something
1:27:43that will take a while, but, um, as time
1:27:46goes on, humans do adapt.
1:27:49They do adapt. We've all adapted to how
1:27:51we're living right now, have we not? So,
1:27:53here we are, all right? And that's all
1:27:55it is to it.
1:27:56>> Um, there's more I want to say to
1:27:58respond to everything that you just
1:27:59said, but I know that we're on low on
1:28:00time, but I think you and I should keep
1:28:02this conversation going.
1:28:03>> We can we can come back to this one,
1:28:05actually, later.
1:28:06>> saying, like, if you want to, like, have
1:28:10>> Yeah, let's exchange each other's
1:28:11information. Let's keep this
1:28:12conversation going.
1:28:12>> Let's do a little handshake and then
1:28:14good talk.
1:28:15>> So, I enjoyed my debate with Erica
1:28:18and I would very much like to keep the
1:28:20conversation going with her. When it
1:28:22comes to this whole idea of systemic
1:28:23racism,
1:28:25I posit as I did earlier in the debate
1:28:27that there's nothing
1:28:30in existence right now that keeps
1:28:32colored people from progressing or from
1:28:34pursuing anything that they want to
1:28:36pursue. And I think that what tends to
1:28:38be missing from these conversations are
1:28:40cultural aspects and and things that
1:28:43people believe about themselves relative
1:28:45to other people. And whenever you have
1:28:47been inundated and kind of battered with
1:28:51this kind of woe is me mentality that
1:28:54American Negros have adopted since the
1:28:551960s, it would stand to reason or it
1:28:58would then make sense that
1:29:00there is this
1:29:02notion or this belief that systemic
1:29:03racism is what keeps us from moving
1:29:05forward. And so, I don't think it's
1:29:07actually helpful to spend all your time
1:29:10talking about ways in which the system
1:29:13keeps you down when there's so many
1:29:14opportunities that are available for you
1:29:16so long as you're willing to put your
1:29:17best foot forward. And so, I think that
1:29:19we need to move from having this issue
1:29:21this conversation about systemic racism
1:29:23and move to this conversation of what
1:29:25are solutions, not solutions that are
1:29:27focused on a government resolution, but
1:29:29solutions that are focused on what we
1:29:31must do within ourselves to better our
1:29:33situation.
1:29:35>> Wonderful. Thank you.
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1:29:52>> All right, and we are on the same
1:29:54prompt, gentlemen. Jake, I'll let you
1:29:55take it away.
1:29:56>> Cool. Yeah, so I'm a big believer in
1:29:58Austrian economics and so I'm sure you
1:29:59and I may have a a lot of a lot of
1:30:00agreement. I'm very anti-Marxist. Uh
1:30:04but I I think and I and I I could even
1:30:06grant and agree that MLK, whether he was
1:30:09a Marxist himself, certainly had Marxist
1:30:11leanings and you know a
1:30:12huge number of his very close allies
1:30:14were explicit Marxists. But I think a
1:30:16lot of things he was pushing for were
1:30:18things that a capitalist would support.
1:30:21He's pushing Well, he's pushing for like
1:30:22against state regulation on bussing,
1:30:25which you know, the capitalists wanted
1:30:27to deregulate to desegregate the buses
1:30:29because it's better for the market, it's
1:30:31better for the owner of the bus, it's
1:30:32better to offer the same tickets to
1:30:34everybody. You just get better options.
1:30:37And the state itself in
1:30:40you know, across the South was the one
1:30:41who was regulating these things. And so
1:30:43the pushes from MLK are against
1:30:45government regulation and he may have
1:30:47had Marxist sympathies outside of that,
1:30:50but the actual policies that he was
1:30:52proposing were against the state and
1:30:54were things that I as an Austrian
1:30:56support. I don't think we should have
1:30:57state regulation about these things.
1:30:59>> from Austria?
1:30:59>> Oh, no, no. I'm Austrian economics. Like
1:31:01Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, these guys. No,
1:31:03I'm not from Austria.
1:31:04>> you were saying you were Austrian.
1:31:06>> [snorts]
1:31:06>> Um
1:31:06>> Sorry, my bad.
1:31:08>> Very fair point. So, my argument or my
1:31:11rebuttal to that is when it comes to
1:31:13specifically the Montgomery bus boycott,
1:31:15which you bring up, um
1:31:19these were
1:31:20basically like
1:31:23kind of harping on to or piling on to a
1:31:25crisis in order to push a longer agenda.
1:31:29And that's what the whole Montgomery bus
1:31:30boycott was about. King
1:31:33didn't bring the issue to the table as
1:31:35you were well know with regard to the
1:31:37Montgomery buses.
1:31:37>> But he took it over after Rosa Parks was
1:31:39arrested.
1:31:40>> Uh before.
1:31:42Before. So, they had the MIA, the
1:31:43Montgomery Improvement
1:31:45Association. [clears throat] And the
1:31:47leader of it that organization was a man
1:31:50named Man, why am I forgetting names?
1:31:52>> You [laughter] have You have forgotten
1:31:54quite a few names today, but it always
1:31:55comes back to you.
1:31:56>> for a while though. It's It gets tiring,
1:31:58I'm sure.
1:31:58>> not a skilled debater, so
1:32:00>> I think you are and you sound like
1:32:01you're very well.
1:32:02>> But the um the guy who ran it I So so I
1:32:06guess he's besides the point. The the
1:32:08whole idea was like when King left
1:32:11Boston um he went to something called
1:32:14Highlander Folk School.
1:32:15And Highlander Folk School was started
1:32:18by a man named Myles Horton and Don
1:32:20West, both of whom were communists. Even
1:32:23though some historians today say, "Well,
1:32:24no, Don West wasn't a communist." Um
1:32:27like actual Marxists know what's up.
1:32:29Like if you read once again Hammer and
1:32:30Hoe,
1:32:31um
1:32:32um he's described by Robin Kelley, who
1:32:34is a self-avowed feminist Marxist. Um he
1:32:38said that Don West, yes, he was a a
1:32:41secret communist, but of course he
1:32:44didn't like broadcast that.
1:32:46>> Mhm.
1:32:46>> And the whole objective of the
1:32:48Highlander Folk School was to teach
1:32:50non-direct action.
1:32:52Um which is in keeping with this kind of
1:32:56Leninist strategy of pushing for
1:32:59revolution.
1:33:00>> Mhm.
1:33:00>> Um namely to find crises and to utilize
1:33:04those crises as a kind of temporary
1:33:06thing to move the ball down the road for
1:33:09the next cause.
1:33:10>> But isn't there a huge difference
1:33:11between the Leninist violent approach
1:33:13and the MLK anti-violent approach?
1:33:16>> Well, Lenin Lenin wasn't always act or
1:33:19at or
1:33:21Lenin wasn't always advocating for
1:33:23violence. I mean, he was also advocating
1:33:26for non-violence.
1:33:27>> violent man.
1:33:28>> He was he was a an incrementalist and a
1:33:30and a strategist.
1:33:32>> Sure.
1:33:32>> He He was what we call a Marxist
1:33:34scientist. And [clears throat] he
1:33:35understood that you have to use
1:33:37different approaches depending on where
1:33:38you are in the world, because there's
1:33:40not going to be a one-size-fits-all
1:33:42um solution
1:33:44>> Yeah, of course.
1:33:44>> of pushing this agenda. And so it just
1:33:46so happens that in a society like ours
1:33:50at the time, which was
1:33:53pretty much uh
1:33:55for the most part anti-communist, you
1:33:57have to use a different strategy. When
1:33:59you look at earlier stages of the kind
1:34:02of communist revolution in America,
1:34:04specifically as it pertains to the
1:34:06workers strikes and things of this
1:34:07nature, those did get violent and it
1:34:09backfired against their overall cause
1:34:11and so they had to regroup and try to
1:34:13figure out something else. I mean
1:34:14communists are always doing this. I mean
1:34:16look at the the cultural Marxist at the
1:34:18Frankfurt School.
1:34:19>> Yeah, I mean for sure. I'm from Seattle,
1:34:20so Anna Louise Strong and all that is a
1:34:22very core part of our our history. You
1:34:25and I are going to agree on all the like
1:34:27Marxism sucks, trust me. Like I am with
1:34:29you on that.
1:34:30>> It's not just as simple as Marxism
1:34:31sucks. It's that they are like these
1:34:33people they don't spend as much time as
1:34:36they do studying the humanities the soft
1:34:38sciences
1:34:39group behavior things of this nature
1:34:41just for the hell of it. They they do it
1:34:43in order to apply what they're learning
1:34:45to moving the ball down the field as it
1:34:48were.
1:34:48>> But wasn't it good to remove the state
1:34:50regulation about bussing?
1:34:52>> One can argue that. I mean one can argue
1:34:54I mean this this was already happening.
1:34:56>> should argue that.
1:34:57>> One can argue that and it was already
1:34:59happening.
1:35:00There was already a Supreme Court
1:35:03a case that was that was going to be
1:35:05argued and decided
1:35:07uh
1:35:08even without the MIA and without King.
1:35:10Again, it's a matter of leeching on to
1:35:12existing crises.
1:35:14Putting yourself in a position of look,
1:35:16I'm the champion of this cause and then
1:35:18winning the favor of the public that you
1:35:20might then
1:35:21uh
1:35:22uh continue to proceed and push for what
1:35:25it is you're ultimately trying to do. By
1:35:26the time you get to the late 60s, King
1:35:28says, well we won victories in this, we
1:35:31won victories in that. Now we have to
1:35:33get to the economic issue because that
1:35:35for them that's what it was always been
1:35:37about. Like if you read King's college
1:35:39papers, this is what he's advocating
1:35:40for. And so but between the the day he
1:35:43graduated college and 1965 after the
1:35:47passage of the Voting Rights Act,
1:35:49um one can argue that some of the things
1:35:50that he was arguing for and advocating
1:35:52for in between that were things that,
1:35:54you know, moderates and conservatives
1:35:56can get behind.
1:35:57>> Well, heroic things, right?
1:35:58>> gets to the more juicier things that he
1:36:00actually wanted to do.
1:36:02>> Mhm.
1:36:02>> Uh [clears throat]
1:36:03as as you cross into the latter half of
1:36:06the 1960s where he's talking about a
1:36:08radical redistribution of wealth, where
1:36:09he's talking about uh social justice,
1:36:12which you know as well as I do is is is
1:36:14birthed out of the Marxist worldview.
1:36:16>> Oh, deeply, yeah.
1:36:17>> He's advocating for these things and
1:36:18he's using these incremental things to
1:36:20get there. And so and so that's the
1:36:23point. Does that make sense?
1:36:24>> Sure. So, sort of split MLK pre roughly
1:36:28'65 and post roughly '65.
1:36:30>> Mhm.
1:36:31>> Can we find agreement on the pre-1965
1:36:34MLK being a hero or you don't think so
1:36:36then?
1:36:36>> I don't think so because we're then
1:36:39getting into different philosophical
1:36:41beliefs of how our government ought to
1:36:45function.
1:36:46>> Well, our government probably shouldn't
1:36:47be racist, right?
1:36:48>> Uh I wouldn't I wouldn't uh
1:36:51>> Like as a capitalist, it's bad when the
1:36:53government regulates the market and
1:36:55requires business owners to not offer
1:36:57certain
1:36:58>> technical, but I don't I wouldn't call
1:36:59myself a capitalist.
1:37:01>> Oh, interesting. Okay, so you I am and
1:37:02so I would always defend capitalism. So,
1:37:04I think what MLK did was heroic in
1:37:06defending free markets and free markets.
1:37:09>> markets, okay. But I don't think that
1:37:10that should be collapsed into
1:37:12capitalism.
1:37:13>> Fair enough. So, we use the word term
1:37:14free market then to skip the all the
1:37:16other
1:37:16>> was advocating for was not for free
1:37:18markets prior to 1965.
1:37:20>> He was arguing for to remove the
1:37:22regulation about who can go on the bus.
1:37:24That is a free market regulation or is
1:37:25that a free market reform?
1:37:27>> In in what way?
1:37:28>> In the way that there used to be a law
1:37:30that said you have to put black people
1:37:32in the back of the bus and then he
1:37:33wanted to remove that law. The
1:37:35capitalists didn't want to have
1:37:37it either.
1:37:38>> is it? Is that what the law said?
1:37:40>> I don't know the exact wording on the
1:37:41law, but that was the impact of the law.
1:37:43Which the the free market people that
1:37:45the owners of these buses wanted to not
1:37:48to do that because they can make more
1:37:49money by not doing that.
1:37:50>> Yeah, so
1:37:50>> This was a not a de facto
1:37:52discrimination. This was a de jure
1:37:53discrimination. And a free marketist
1:37:55would remove the de jure discrimination.
1:37:57>> Okay. So, the fact is because we have to
1:38:00bring in the nuances to this
1:38:01conversation.
1:38:03>> Um
1:38:03>> clearly know more than me, so I'm
1:38:05>> Uh I wouldn't say that. You You seem to
1:38:06know a lot. So, when you look at the
1:38:10laws that existed in Alabama with regard
1:38:12to transportation,
1:38:13>> Mhm.
1:38:13>> um
1:38:15specifically in Montgomery,
1:38:17a lot of the laws that were on the books
1:38:19were holdovers from a bygone era.
1:38:21>> Mhm.
1:38:21>> And
1:38:23by the time you get to 1957,
1:38:26it's kind of like you remember in 2020
1:38:28whenever we had the mask mandates?
1:38:30Um specifically like in in Dallas,
1:38:32Texas, we had Judge Clay Jenkins who
1:38:34issued a decree, I guess you could call
1:38:35it for lack of a better word, uh that if
1:38:38you run a business,
1:38:41people upon entering into your
1:38:43establishment have to have a mask on. If
1:38:45you don't enforce that as a business
1:38:47owner, you will be fined.
1:38:49And you will be like there will be
1:38:51punitive uh
1:38:52you know, things that you would suffer.
1:38:54Um there were many who were enforcing
1:38:57it, and there were many business owners
1:38:58who were not enforcing it. Uh the same
1:39:00is true when it comes to this these kind
1:39:03of transportation laws in Montgomery by
1:39:05the time you get to 1957. Yes, you had
1:39:08some of these laws still on the books,
1:39:10but they weren't being wide-scale
1:39:12enforced.
1:39:13>> But they were laws used to try to make
1:39:14them enforce it, though.
1:39:16>> Yeah, there were. Um
1:39:17>> Right. So, it was just the state, which
1:39:18MLK fought against as a free marketist
1:39:20in that scenario.
1:39:21>> He Well, he wasn't doing it as a free
1:39:23marketist. He was doing it as a as a as
1:39:25a strategian.
1:39:26>> Sure, but his strategy was free market.
1:39:29>> His strategy was not free Well, okay, I
1:39:30get I get I get what you're saying. I
1:39:32get
1:39:32>> are we talking about?
1:39:33>> I get what you're saying. So, um he was
1:39:35Yeah, and that that's the thing. They
1:39:36Communists, they pick up and they borrow
1:39:38certain things and hold it for a time
1:39:40cool
1:39:40>> communists to pick up free market.
1:39:42>> Sounds good.
1:39:43>> But it But I
1:39:44>> But let's slow that down though.
1:39:46Because like picking up a free market
1:39:49cause temporarily
1:39:52and as a result of that duping a lot of
1:39:55people to believe that you are a free
1:39:56market guy and then they put you on this
1:39:59pedestal.
1:40:01That creates a lot of damage in so far
1:40:03that that person is then allowed to go
1:40:05on and push other things that are
1:40:07actually
1:40:08antithetical to free markets. But at the
1:40:12same time it's like well what do I do
1:40:13with this? It creates a kind of
1:40:14cognitive dissonance because
1:40:16you know, this is the guy that we
1:40:17thought was the hero.
1:40:19>> Well, he was.
1:40:20>> And we and we put him up as this kind of
1:40:22wise
1:40:23you know, person who who knows all these
1:40:25things and who is a moral leader of our
1:40:28nation.
1:40:28>> Shouldn't call him that.
1:40:30>> Right. But but that's what he that's
1:40:32what happened.
1:40:33>> Sure. And so I would agree that a lot of
1:40:34things that happened around him were
1:40:35erroneous and wrong. But that doesn't
1:40:37make him not a heroic for most of his
1:40:39life.
1:40:39>> What was you say your name was? I'm
1:40:41Jake.
1:40:41>> I'm Jake. Okay.
1:40:42>> Nice to meet you by the way.
1:40:42>> Yeah, you as well. So I'm bad with
1:40:44names. So I liken it Jake to like a
1:40:47politician for example who's running for
1:40:49office.
1:40:50>> Right.
1:40:51>> And you and I have both seen this where
1:40:53on the campaign trail they will say
1:40:55things
1:40:56to win votes. They will say things that
1:40:59make you feel
1:41:01that oh man, this person gets it. They
1:41:03know like once they get in office
1:41:04they're going to you know, they're going
1:41:05to turn all this around and then they
1:41:07get office and they're doing the same
1:41:08crap.
1:41:09>> Yeah.
1:41:09>> And so
1:41:10>> Peace president with Trump, right?
1:41:11>> Right. And so and so do you then say
1:41:13well the things that they were
1:41:14advocating for it that still makes him a
1:41:16great man. That still [clears throat]
1:41:18makes him a hero. Like no, you you're
1:41:20you're you you look at the whole
1:41:23kind of body of their work and you look
1:41:25at what the kind of of ideology and the
1:41:30strategy underneath that which
1:41:32undergirded it undergirded it and
1:41:33informed those decisions and to make a
1:41:36decision as to whether this person can
1:41:38rightly be called a hero or or not.
1:41:41>> this is a false comparison because the
1:41:43politician who is campaigning on one
1:41:45thing and then does something else is
1:41:46very different from a politician who
1:41:48spent their entire career doing one
1:41:50thing and at the very end maybe did
1:41:52something different.
1:41:53>> Well
1:41:53>> Like a politician who spent their entire
1:41:55career doing free market reforms and
1:41:57then at the very end did some other
1:41:59stuff, I may say, "Okay, well the end
1:42:01I'm not sure I agree with that, but for
1:42:03the majority of their politics in this,
1:42:05that was pretty good." And so you
1:42:07you can't use the like, "Oh well he said
1:42:10one thing and did something else."
1:42:12King did the good thing.
1:42:14>> But you're you're again, you are going
1:42:17off of this kind of working
1:42:20uh
1:42:21um
1:42:22notion, I guess I could say, that what
1:42:25King was doing with the whole Montgomery
1:42:27bus boycott was a free market thing.
1:42:29>> It was. Anti-state.
1:42:31>> And I don't see how it is because
1:42:33>> see how it's anti-state?
1:42:35>> Just to kind of finish my train of
1:42:36thought and I'll get there. Uh so when
1:42:38it comes to Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks was
1:42:40selected because she herself went
1:42:42through the training at Highlander Folk
1:42:43School alongside King.
1:42:45Um
1:42:46because of her position her position in
1:42:48the community, her being an older woman
1:42:50at the time, she I believe was in her
1:42:5230s. Um
1:42:53>> Is older in her 30s?
1:42:55>> Well [laughter]
1:42:57Well relative to Claudette Colvin who
1:43:00was the subject before, who was 15 or 16
1:43:03years old.
1:43:04>> Mhm.
1:43:04>> And relative [clears throat] to King who
1:43:05was in his early 20s, freshly graduated
1:43:07>> than them.
1:43:08>> So older than them. Um to a lot of cuz
1:43:10the thing is like when it comes to
1:43:12communist activism, they say that the
1:43:14youth are the vanguard of the
1:43:15revolution. And so compared to the
1:43:17revolution or the people who make up the
1:43:19revolution Rosa Parks as a 30-something
1:43:22year old woman in those days would have
1:43:24been considered older.
1:43:25>> Yeah right like SDS and the Weathermen
1:43:26and you and I can go back and forth
1:43:28hating communism for hours.
1:43:30>> So so so I'm not saying that cuz I'm
1:43:31saying that
1:43:32>> all that, yeah.
1:43:32>> Yeah. So um
1:43:34>> I'm with you
1:43:35>> so maybe I'm part of the vanguard.
1:43:37>> 22? Oh, wow. I wouldn't have pegged you
1:43:39for 22, but
1:43:41um
1:43:42when when you So, so Rosa Parks this
1:43:45whole was a whole elaborate strategy
1:43:48where they specifically chose out this
1:43:49specific bus driver because they knew
1:43:51that he was one of the few who would
1:43:53>> to do what, by the way?
1:43:54>> The strategy to the the the long game
1:43:57was to create a government a federal
1:44:00government apparatus that would regulate
1:44:02transportation. That was the long-term
1:44:04goal.
1:44:04>> Wasn't
1:44:05>> As stated by the MIA and other
1:44:08>> Right, but wasn't the thing that they
1:44:09were suing to do to remove the state
1:44:11regulation?
1:44:12>> That's only part of it.
1:44:13>> But isn't that what they did is they
1:44:15removed state regulation?
1:44:16>> didn't remove the remove the state
1:44:17regulation. The Montgomery bus boycott
1:44:19did not result in the moving removing of
1:44:20the sto- the ro-
1:44:21>> No, but it's it's like an amicus brief
1:44:23where you can, you know, support you can
1:44:26show mass support for something to make
1:44:28the court more or less like it a rule a
1:44:29certain way.
1:44:30>> Okay, so that's
1:44:31>> And it was a mass support movement that
1:44:33helped us remove Jim Crow laws, which
1:44:35are
1:44:36non-free market laws.
1:44:38>> So, the the object was not that. The
1:44:42object was to propel King into
1:44:44superstardom. That was a That was the
1:44:46object. That was the
1:44:48>> did so by advocating free markets.
1:44:50>> They didn't advocate free markets.
1:44:52Because again, as as I stated earlier,
1:44:55the stated One of the stated
1:44:57uh
1:44:58objectives of the MIA was to uh use the
1:45:03Montgomery bus boycott not not solely to
1:45:06get rid of Jim Crow, but to create a
1:45:08federal government apparatus
1:45:10>> Mhm.
1:45:11>> with regard to transportation, which we
1:45:12now have.
1:45:13>> Right.
1:45:14>> And so which is a problem.
1:45:15>> And so Yeah, exactly. And so that like
1:45:18the end goal is not free markets, it's
1:45:19more government regulation. It's
1:45:20government expansion.
1:45:22>> Right, so their end goal was that.
1:45:24>> Right.
1:45:24>> doesn't make the what they're doing in
1:45:26the meantime not Like you can I can
1:45:28agree with some things and not other
1:45:29things and I can think that a large
1:45:31amount of things they did was heroic and
1:45:32a large amount of things they did were
1:45:33not good. You know, take a different
1:45:34example like George Washington. I think
1:45:36he's a great American hero and he owned
1:45:38slaves which I think is disgusting.
1:45:39>> A lot of people owned slaves. A lot of A
1:45:41lot of colored people owned slaves.
1:45:42>> Sure, sure. But my argument is not to
1:45:43detract from George Washington. My
1:45:45argument is that you can do something
1:45:47that I think is disgusting and you can
1:45:49do something that I think is heroic.
1:45:51>> in the 16th or the 18th century is not
1:45:54disgusting.
1:45:55>> I mean that's a different argument. I
1:45:56think that was disgusting. Um I think
1:45:58that a lot I mean like Jefferson wrote
1:46:00about how they knew that it was wrong
1:46:01and they were advocating to try to ban
1:46:03the slave trade but not ban slavery yet
1:46:05cuz of pragmatic problems with that and
1:46:07they still didn't release their slaves
1:46:09until after they died because they still
1:46:10wanted to reap the benefit of having
1:46:12slavery. Like I think there's a lot of
1:46:13really bad things these people did and
1:46:15they're heroes. These are my personal
1:46:17heroes. I love these people. And so the
1:46:19same thing I think that someone like
1:46:20Rosa Parks, someone like MLK, these
1:46:22people can have certain goals that I
1:46:23think are problematic
1:46:25while also doing deeply heroic free
1:46:28market interventions in the meantime.
1:46:30>> Yeah, I guess we're just going to have
1:46:31to agree to disagree that it was uh
1:46:34these were free market interventions. Um
1:46:36I don't I don't see
1:46:38that argument and I'm not trying to like
1:46:41uh be difficult here. Um
1:46:43once again, like when you look at the
1:46:46goal
1:46:47like the objective, like here's what
1:46:49here's where we want to end up at and
1:46:51the different strategies that are used
1:46:53to get there,
1:46:54um it seems that you're focusing on some
1:46:56of those strategies being good, others
1:46:58of those strategies being bad, but those
1:47:00good strategies is enough to make this
1:47:02person heroic. I disagree with that.
1:47:04>> I think it's probably just a qualitative
1:47:05thing. You know, you and I both agree
1:47:07there were good things that happened and
1:47:08there were bad things that happened and
1:47:09we're just putting different emphasis.
1:47:11>> Right, but I have to I have to um
1:47:12emphasize here that it wasn't
1:47:15the Montgomery bus boycott that resulted
1:47:18in the doing away with that law with
1:47:21regard to buses. It was a Supreme Court
1:47:23decision
1:47:24Um that was unrelated to the Montgomery
1:47:26bus boycott.
1:47:27>> the boycotts are relevant though. Like
1:47:29public opinion absolutely impacts the
1:47:31court. That's why you have amicus
1:47:32briefs. That's why you have protests.
1:47:33That's why you have all these things.
1:47:34>> you heard of Have you heard of Have you
1:47:35heard of Have you
1:47:36>> No, tell me about it.
1:47:37>> Okay, so C.L.R. James was a
1:47:40um communist who wrote a book called The
1:47:42Black Jacobins
1:47:44um who King met with because he was
1:47:46invited to Ghana to celebrate their
1:47:50quote unquote independence. And after
1:47:52having left Ghana, he went and traveled
1:47:54Europe and met with
1:47:56uh C.L.R. James in England who uh they
1:48:00discussed the Montgomery bus boycott and
1:48:03and using that as leverage to propel
1:48:05King into superstardom as a Negro
1:48:07minister and using the Negro
1:48:09minister-ness of King as the thing to
1:48:12help push this ultimate Marxist
1:48:14objective and agenda. After having left
1:48:17England and came back to the United
1:48:18States,
1:48:20C.L.R. James would then write a letter
1:48:21to
1:48:22uh King as well as to a lot of communist
1:48:25front groups in the United States saying
1:48:27this is the person that we need to
1:48:29basically, for lack of a better word,
1:48:30he's not saying this, but I'm saying
1:48:32this, put on a pedestal. We need to get
1:48:34behind him and we need to get behind
1:48:35this this strategy because this is what
1:48:38works. And again, C.L.R. James was a
1:48:40skilled
1:48:41uh and seasoned communist who tried all
1:48:44different kinds of strategies in the
1:48:45United States. He wasn't even from here.
1:48:46He was West Indian. But um
1:48:49but the whole idea was
1:48:51not to popularize the Montgomery bus
1:48:55boycott for the sake of getting people
1:48:57to see how disgusting Jim Crow was. The
1:48:59whole idea was to use it as a kind of of
1:49:02of launching pad, if you will, for
1:49:05King's career. That's what the That's
1:49:06what the objective of it was.
1:49:08Um I would I don't agree, as you alluded
1:49:11to earlier, that prior to 1965, all
1:49:14these things that King was doing was
1:49:15great.
1:49:16Um when it when you look at the 19 the
1:49:19Civil Rights Act of 1963
1:49:21with regard to public accommodations and
1:49:23things of this nature, I don't believe
1:49:25that that was a pro free market policy.
1:49:28I don't believe that that was a pro free
1:49:30market bill. When you look at the civil
1:49:32the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
1:49:35which was about suffrage, I don't
1:49:37believe that universal suffrage is a net
1:49:39good for our republic. I I just don't.
1:49:43And so
1:49:45the
1:49:46I All that to say, I don't agree
1:49:49for the 15th time
1:49:51that what King was doing prior to 1965
1:49:54was
1:49:55with the objective or with the result or
1:49:59or had the result of
1:50:02of pushing for free markets.
1:50:03>> Right. So, I think a a great distinction
1:50:05might be, you know, certainly when when
1:50:07King, you know, is is killed, so we
1:50:09don't know what he would have kept doing
1:50:11had he come to, you know, even more fame
1:50:13in the sort of a post
1:50:15civil rights movement movement. But, a
1:50:17lot of people who sort of took his
1:50:18place, people like Angela Davis, like
1:50:19Stokely Carmichael, a lot of these
1:50:21people are explicitly pushing Marxist
1:50:23ideas and are a huge portion of the
1:50:26problems that we see today. And so, had
1:50:29MLK, to the degree that MLK had done
1:50:31some of that moving there, these are bad
1:50:33things that happened afterward.
1:50:36But, something like, you know, removing
1:50:38Jim Crow laws, which happened by the
1:50:40Supreme Court, but because of movements
1:50:43that happened around that to shift the
1:50:45public opinion.
1:50:47>> Um so so what's your question? I'm
1:50:49sorry.
1:50:50>> I I guess I'm not asking you a question.
1:50:51I'm just disagreeing with you. I'm I'm
1:50:53disagreeing with the idea that the
1:50:55movement that MLK
1:50:58built and and people built around him
1:51:00and everything, that went on to push a
1:51:02lot of Marxism, that that would make
1:51:03that someone couldn't be heroic within
1:51:06it for pushing for good reforms in the
1:51:08meantime. Like I think that removing Jim
1:51:11Crow
1:51:12and, you know, being having your house
1:51:13firebombed or a bomb of some kind while
1:51:17pushing against that and continuing to
1:51:19fight through that is a heroic thing. I
1:51:21I would oppose Jim Crow extremely
1:51:23strongly. And so regardless of whether
1:51:25you're trying to remove Jim Crow because
1:51:27you have this ulterior of Marxism or
1:51:30you're trying to remove Jim Crow because
1:51:31you want equality or you're trying to
1:51:33remove Jim Crow because you're like an
1:51:34intense Austrian economist. Like
1:51:36whatever your reason is we can all agree
1:51:39that
1:51:40this is these are heroic things to fight
1:51:41for in the meantime.
1:51:43>> Um so I would advise everybody watching
1:51:47to
1:51:48uh go on Amazon or go to archive.com or
1:51:51org. Sorry, archive.org and look up the
1:51:55book where what is to be done by
1:51:57Vladimir Lenin um in order to understand
1:52:01kind of some of where I'm coming from
1:52:03with regard to this particular
1:52:04conversation. Um because the the point
1:52:07that you just made Jake about like the
1:52:09the the people who would kind of take up
1:52:11the baton after King's assassination,
1:52:13your Stokely Carmichaels, your Huey
1:52:15Newtons and others. Um these people are
1:52:17not deviating from the agenda set forth
1:52:21by King and it wasn't even set forth by
1:52:23King. It it precedes King.
1:52:25Um was in keeping with this larger
1:52:28Marxist-Leninist strategy wherein the
1:52:31social reform movement gives way to the
1:52:33more confrontational revolutionary
1:52:35movement. Um when you look at
1:52:39uh
1:52:40kind of during the kind of precipice of
1:52:43the anti-war movement that was going on
1:52:46where King took a stand on Vietnam
1:52:49um
1:52:49>> Which I think was right.
1:52:50>> on until his assassination and you look
1:52:53at what he's doing with the more black
1:52:56power contingent. He's not like he he's
1:52:58doing this this interesting thing where
1:53:01he's co-signing what they're doing while
1:53:04at the same time still trying to appeal
1:53:06to American moderates.
1:53:07>> black power movement didn't appear until
1:53:09after he died, right?
1:53:10>> No. It It 1966, we can see them very
1:53:13active. And King died in '68. So, um
1:53:17black power
1:53:18>> Malcolm X died that that movement
1:53:20appeared then, or
1:53:21>> power movement uh
1:53:23was uh preceded by SNCC.
1:53:27SNCC was the um the Student Nonviolent
1:53:31Coordinating Committee, um which was a
1:53:32college movement right
1:53:34made up of young people, college
1:53:35students.
1:53:37And it was basically the kind of acting
1:53:40youth wing of the SCLC, the Southern
1:53:44Christian Leadership Conference.
1:53:45Uh SNCC is preceded by what was called
1:53:49the Southern Negro Youth Congress, which
1:53:52was also SNCC.
1:53:53>> Mhm.
1:53:54>> [clears throat]
1:53:54>> Um which was a communist front group,
1:53:56which was getting orders and dictates
1:53:59from Moscow.
1:54:00Um
1:54:01And so, that goes all the way back to
1:54:03the 19 30s, the late 1930s, and it would
1:54:07again bloom into these other
1:54:08organizations. So, the black power
1:54:10movement, again, where you look at
1:54:13whether it's James Foreman or you look
1:54:15at somebody like a Stokely Carmichael,
1:54:18all of those were former members of SNCC
1:54:21who went more the black power route. And
1:54:24this was part of this Leninist strategy
1:54:27of the social reform movement giving way
1:54:29to the more confrontational
1:54:30revolutionary movement. It It's It's
1:54:32It's It operates in phases. Um and so,
1:54:36it's not the the case, which I think,
1:54:38and you can correct me if I'm wrong,
1:54:39that you're trying to assert here that,
1:54:43you know, here King was and all he
1:54:44wanted was integration and all he wanted
1:54:46was social reform, but then these, you
1:54:48know, nasty commies came along and took
1:54:50over the movement and hijacked it.
1:54:52>> No, no, I'm not saying that.
1:54:53>> Okay. Thank you.
1:54:54>> I I think it's highly I I certainly
1:54:56believe King was at least a Marxist
1:54:57sympathist, and he may have been a
1:54:59Marxist himself. I I You seem very
1:55:00convinced of that, and you know more
1:55:01than me, so I'll grant that for now.
1:55:04Uh I just think that you can do good
1:55:07things in the meantime. You know, like I
1:55:08I mean I I I take take this question. If
1:55:10it's 1954,
1:55:11>> Mhm.
1:55:12>> I would be in support of these
1:55:14movements, even though I'm not a
1:55:16communist. I'm extremely anti-communist,
1:55:18and I'd have a lot of sympathy with like
1:55:19the McCarthyism even. Like just like
1:55:21>> Chad was trying to say. But correct me
1:55:24if I'm wrong, but he's trying to say
1:55:25like that is the strategy. To sneak one
1:55:27in, sneak a little here, sneak a little
1:55:29there, and then it makes you know you
1:55:31can carry it away.
1:55:32>> No, and I I agree with that idea.
1:55:34>> ask you this, Jake.
1:55:35>> But they're sneaking people in by doing
1:55:36good things, which I would agree with.
1:55:38>> Okay. So um
1:55:40>> By doing heroic things, which I would
1:55:41agree with.
1:55:42>> So you you you seem to be somebody who
1:55:45is able to
1:55:47uh to basically ascertain or to
1:55:52understand things as you read them and
1:55:53as you see them and and to get
1:55:55underneath them.
1:55:55>> I hope so. I I try at least.
1:55:57>> And so what you're saying that, you
1:55:59know, if it were 1954, which King and
1:56:03and you were just giving a random date,
1:56:04but King wouldn't really come to
1:56:05prominence until 1957.
1:56:07>> 56, 57, yeah.
1:56:08>> Yeah. Um
1:56:09>> I'm sort of picking a slightly pre-King
1:56:10year.
1:56:11>> Right. So so my belief, and you can
1:56:13correct me if I'm wrong, that you're
1:56:15saying that is predicated on what were
1:56:18the other options that were out there.
1:56:20And believing that there were no other
1:56:22options, what King was offering seemed
1:56:25like a viable option.
1:56:27Is is that
1:56:28>> Well, not no other options, but
1:56:29certainly that King's option was better
1:56:31than the alternate than the status quo.
1:56:33>> Okay. Um and
1:56:34>> Like I don't know which protest I would
1:56:36rather be a part of, but certainly I
1:56:38would have been a part of some civil
1:56:40rights protest.
1:56:41>> Okay. And so what I would then say to
1:56:43that is that it was more than just King.
1:56:46And and it Not only was it more than
1:56:48just King, it was also more than just
1:56:49Malcolm X. There were other, I guess you
1:56:52could say for lack of a better word,
1:56:53movements that were happening that were
1:56:55not
1:56:57uh undergirded by communists, that
1:56:58didn't have a long-term strategy to
1:57:01Sovietize America,
1:57:03um
1:57:03that weren't interested in this kind of
1:57:05long-term strategy of of redistribution
1:57:07and equity and all those different
1:57:10socialist buzzwords,
1:57:11that were actually doing something and
1:57:14effective in doing something about the
1:57:15doing away of Jim Crow.
1:57:17>> Someone like Thurgood Marshall and they
1:57:19>> Yeah, and they were effective in doing
1:57:20that. And so, like and so it wasn't just
1:57:23Thurgood Marshall, although I think
1:57:25>> you can point to him as he was one of
1:57:27the attorneys for the NAACP, which I
1:57:28have my problems with NAACP.
1:57:30>> Me too. I would rank Thurgood Marshall
1:57:32more heroic than MLK.
1:57:34>> I would I would concede that. Um
1:57:36>> But that doesn't make MLK not heroic.
1:57:38>> Which I disagree with. But I mean, I
1:57:41don't that alone doesn't make King not
1:57:43heroic. Um so, yeah, I'm with you there.
1:57:46Um but
1:57:48like when you look at the um
1:57:51the National Baptist Convention,
1:57:53uh there's a book about that thick.
1:57:56Yeah, that thick. Uh which I forget the
1:57:59title of it, but I'm happy to share it
1:58:01with Sean and he can put it on the show.
1:58:04>> Mhm.
1:58:05>> Um I have it sitting on my bookshelf at
1:58:06home. But it talks about
1:58:09um
1:58:10uh race activism in America that the
1:58:14National Baptist Convention was involved
1:58:16in since the uh 19th century.
1:58:19>> Mhm.
1:58:19>> And they were doing things that were uh
1:58:23helpful in reforming a lot of the
1:58:25unjust, unconstitutional laws
1:58:27>> Yep.
1:58:28>> uh with regard to Jim Crow and and so
1:58:30many other different things and they
1:58:31were effective in doing it uh not in a
1:58:34kind of agitated and hostile way, but in
1:58:36a way that sought understanding and
1:58:38reconciliation
1:58:39>> Mhm.
1:58:39>> from peer to peer.
1:58:40And the by the 1950s, the leader of this
1:58:44organization was Joseph H. Jackson and
1:58:47he took issue with King because of some
1:58:50of the things a lot of the things that
1:58:51King was doing with regard to direct
1:58:53action because Joseph H. Jackson
1:58:55understood that this was a communist
1:58:56ploy.
1:58:57And so, he spoke out against what King
1:58:59was doing. And what's interesting about
1:59:01Joseph H. Jackson is we we look at the
1:59:03kind of things that he were doing, those
1:59:05were actually free market things. For
1:59:06example, to the extent that
1:59:08sharecroppers were being treated
1:59:10unjustly and not being paid fairly and
1:59:12things of this nature and were getting
1:59:15ready to protest or join some the ranks
1:59:18of some organization, what Joseph H.
1:59:20Jackson did through the National Baptist
1:59:21Convention is he bought 400 acres of
1:59:23land in Tennessee and he allowed Negro
1:59:25sharecroppers to work the land rent-free
1:59:27and to pocket that money that they might
1:59:29then go and start their own farms. These
1:59:31were the kind of effective and practical
1:59:33things that Joseph H. Jackson was doing.
1:59:35He had a lot of respect not only among
1:59:37Negroes, but also among whites as well.
1:59:40Uh these were things that were not uh
1:59:43kind of suffering the burden that the
1:59:45civil rights movement was suffering with
1:59:47regard to on the one hand winning
1:59:49legislative achievements while at the
1:59:52same time uh instilling the sense of
1:59:54bitterness that was doing away with the
1:59:57kind of mentality that Booker T.
1:59:59Washington was advocating for prior to.
2:00:01>> Mhm.
2:00:01>> And so, what we did
2:00:04with regard to the passage of the civil
2:00:06rights acts under King is quite
2:00:09interesting. On the one hand, we got all
2:00:11these these these bills that effectively
2:00:13made Negroes in America a protected
2:00:16class.
2:00:17But we also
2:00:19have this kind of this determination,
2:00:22this kind of um
2:00:24this
2:00:25uh
2:00:26uh kind of self-uplift, I guess you
2:00:30could say
2:00:31that characterized Negroes prior to the
2:00:34'60s being done away with and replaced
2:00:37with this kind of spirit of bitterness,
2:00:38the spirit of entitlement, um
2:00:41this kind of pathology that would begin
2:00:44to take hold. Prior to the 1960s, four
2:00:46out of five black children were being
2:00:48raised in two-parent households. That's
2:00:50not the case today. So, there's
2:00:51[clears throat] a lot of pathology that
2:00:53we embraced as a result of this new kind
2:00:57of sense of entitlement that comes from
2:01:00a civil rights movement that tells us
2:01:02you've been wronged, you have been
2:01:05oppressed, and you have been this, that,
2:01:07and the other. Come and join us in our
2:01:08marches, come and join us in our
2:01:10movement, and we will demand what the
2:01:12government owes us. And so, that takes
2:01:14the onus off of me
2:01:17to cast down my bucket where I am, as
2:01:19Booker T. Washington put it, and to and
2:01:23and to instead take up the picket sign,
2:01:25believing that the picket sign will give
2:01:27me what I seek. Right? And so, and so,
2:01:30there's a kind of mentality shift that
2:01:32take place. I was speaking to Erica
2:01:34earlier, she
2:01:35was was advocating for a mentality shift
2:01:38that would need to take place
2:01:40once we began to either reform or
2:01:43replace our current system. Mentality
2:01:46shifts take place all the time due to
2:01:47propaganda, due to
2:01:50the kind of
2:01:52manufacturing of public opinion through
2:01:53the institutions, things of this nature.
2:01:55I would argue that the civil rights
2:01:57movement resulted in a negative mindset
2:01:59shift that has created a lot of the
2:02:02pathologies that we see today. The when
2:02:05it comes to every metric with regard to
2:02:07home ownership, with regard to
2:02:08entrepreneurship, things of this nature,
2:02:10a lot of that has remained stagnant
2:02:11since the 1960s.
2:02:13>> a lot of those things started getting
2:02:14worse much sooner than that. I mean, the
2:02:16the the entitlement obsession often
2:02:17begins with FDR, and even going back to
2:02:20Wilson, but especially taking place in
2:02:21the black community with with FDR, you
2:02:23know, people talk about like southern
2:02:24strategy or whatever, not when the, you
2:02:26know, black community started shifting
2:02:27more towards the liberal party.
2:02:29So, a lot of that entitlement begins
2:02:31long before that. The the black
2:02:33unemployment rate for teenagers in the
2:02:35'40s was roughly the same as the white
2:02:37unemployment for teenagers, but then as
2:02:39they institute more um uh wage laws,
2:02:42they start pricing out the black
2:02:43community as early as the '40s and '50s.
2:02:46Exactly. Yeah, Thomas Sowell is one of
2:02:47my heroes. I love that love that guy. Um
2:02:50and so, you know, you have a lot of this
2:02:51these these problems of unemployment
2:02:53existing in the black community as a
2:02:54result of government regulation. You
2:02:56have like men in the house laws that
2:02:57were from like the '30s, I think, until
2:02:59like '58.
2:03:00>> and Piven.
2:03:01>> I'm sorry, I don't know who that is,
2:03:02actually.
2:03:02>> Uh so, Richard Cloward, um Frances Fox
2:03:06Piven,
2:03:07uh had the strategy. They were both
2:03:09social scientists, professors, who had
2:03:12the strategy. Their stated strategy is
2:03:14so this isn't me speculating or
2:03:16um
2:03:17>> [snorts]
2:03:17>> doing anything of that nature, but they
2:03:18had the stated purpose of
2:03:21of
2:03:23uh with the assistance of civil rights
2:03:25leaders in the 1960s,
2:03:28um
2:03:29getting what they called the ghetto
2:03:30people.
2:03:31>> Are these the ones that are at Columbia?
2:03:32Is it Is that that? Okay, yes.
2:03:34>> Getting the ghetto people to saturate
2:03:35>> names. I have the the same name problem.
2:03:37>> Right.
2:03:38But getting the ghetto people, which
2:03:39they meant Negroes, to saturate the uh
2:03:43the
2:03:44um welfare programs.
2:03:46>> Mhm.
2:03:46>> Uh so much so that you then deplete the
2:03:48money that's available for that.
2:03:50>> Yep.
2:03:50>> And once that's done, it creates a
2:03:52crisis, and that will help Americans to
2:03:54understand that we need a universal
2:03:55income, and that will [clears throat]
2:03:57eradicate poverty.
2:03:57>> And it breaks up the family, which then
2:03:59makes people more likely to riot and
2:04:00protest, and moves the locus of control
2:04:02from the individual to the group.
2:04:03>> 100%.
2:04:04>> But those movements began in the '40s
2:04:06and continued through with, you know,
2:04:08the SDS and the Weatherman, and you
2:04:10know, Barack Obama launching his
2:04:11campaign at a build Ayers's house, and
2:04:13like the the idea that this this like
2:04:16the civil rights portion of this, which
2:04:18I actually agree with, removing the Jim
2:04:20Crow laws,
2:04:21dismantling that from all of the other
2:04:24things around it, from welfare to the,
2:04:26you know, various terrorism acts to the
2:04:29the the deliberate movement to take away
2:04:31the locus of control from the individual
2:04:32to the group. At some point, you do say,
2:04:35"Well, yeah, you kind of
2:04:37they were victims in the '50s. That
2:04:38doesn't mean you have have victim
2:04:39mentality and those are probably
2:04:40separate problems.
2:04:42But the idea that the government was
2:04:44victimizing black people, like that was
2:04:46true. And the having you know, I agree
2:04:48with your like systemic racism doesn't
2:04:49exist. It doesn't exist now and I fully
2:04:51agree with you on that. But if we go to
2:04:521957, it definitely existed in 1957. And
2:04:56so you have to fight against that system
2:04:58while also maintaining the self-control.
2:05:00And I think unfortunately some of that
2:05:02self-control was lost, but not as a
2:05:03result of the civil rights movement.
2:05:05That was happening from the '40s till
2:05:07now.
2:05:07>> And also what was happening from the
2:05:09well, before the '40s until the '60s.
2:05:12Um, at the turn of the century, like so
2:05:16the end of the 19th century going into
2:05:17the 20th century on until the middle
2:05:19part of the 20th century, um, you saw
2:05:22many unjust laws being addressed and
2:05:26being done away with as a result of
2:05:29non-communist
2:05:31uh, organizations and individuals that
2:05:33were effective. And so the fact that we
2:05:35today, cuz I was born in 1990,
2:05:38um, and you were born in the 2000s.
2:05:40>> Yeah, 2000 2003.
2:05:42>> Um, and so that's crazy. That's crazy.
2:05:45Uh, but
2:05:46>> Let's start moving into a wrap up here
2:05:48after you finish your thought.
2:05:48>> But but my point is though, um, and this
2:05:51is a good place to wrap up is that
2:05:54the like Jim Crow was being addressed
2:05:57and we were moving in the right
2:05:58direction. And what the civil rights
2:06:00movement would do is it would lay claim
2:06:02to that and would basically champion the
2:06:06victories that were already made as
2:06:07their own. Thus making not only the the
2:06:11civil rights movement, but Martin Luther
2:06:12King himself, uh,
2:06:14appear to be like he's the champion who
2:06:17got rid of Jim Crow. When in reality, it
2:06:19was it was already happening. One could
2:06:21argue that it would have happened at a
2:06:22slower pace, but at least
2:06:24>> Which I would.
2:06:25>> But at least we would have retained some
2:06:27degree of small government, even though
2:06:29the the was already large, especially
2:06:31under FDR. Um, but it has grown
2:06:33incrementally it has grown ex you know
2:06:35exponentially since then and King was
2:06:37part of that. King's policies or the
2:06:39policies that he helped promote served
2:06:41to expand the role of the federal
2:06:42government at the expense of the dignity
2:06:45and the ambition and determination that
2:06:48was previously characteristic and the
2:06:51colored community. So I would want I
2:06:52would rather have a slower pace doing
2:06:55away with Jim Crow
2:06:56and maintain those characteristics
2:07:00rather than to have the pathology that
2:07:02we have
2:07:03in the colored community today
2:07:05in addition to a more expensive
2:07:07government that we've been given
2:07:10at the behest of the things that King
2:07:12did.
2:07:13>> Do you want to give a closer to that and
2:07:14then we'll wrap it up?
2:07:15>> I think that was actually a perfect
2:07:16distillation of our points of
2:07:17disagreement and our points of agreement
2:07:19which again is mostly actually agreement
2:07:21throughout this conversation but about
2:07:23the the the specifics of the civil
2:07:26rights movement in the sort of 57 to
2:07:2864-ish led by King. I think the problems
2:07:32in the black community and in America
2:07:34broadly happened more more strongly in
2:07:37the black community but the the movement
2:07:38towards single motherhood rates, the
2:07:40movement towards Marxism, all of these
2:07:41movements were growing across all
2:07:42communities in America and have been
2:07:44since the 30s and 40s and continued into
2:07:46the you know the 90s and and throughout.
2:07:49I I don't think the civil rights
2:07:51movement is to blame for that and I
2:07:53don't think the civil rights movement is
2:07:55even a substantial pusher of that. I
2:07:58think that there were people who can
2:08:00combine those two movements together and
2:08:02who can gain popularity in a good
2:08:04movement to then push for a bad movement
2:08:07and that's certainly a serious problem
2:08:08when you have the sort of hijacking of a
2:08:11good thing you know the of the Baptists
2:08:13and other really powerful people who are
2:08:15fighting for
2:08:17for for free markets, who are fighting
2:08:18for equal rights, who are fighting for
2:08:20positive things. And so the idea that
2:08:23MLK might have been uh the
2:08:25simultaneously advocating for civil
2:08:27rights
2:08:28and with this nefarious Marxist movement
2:08:30behind him doesn't change whether or not
2:08:33the civil rights that he fought for were
2:08:35heroic. And so, I am very opposed to the
2:08:37people in the '30s, I'm very opposed to
2:08:39the people in the '90s, and I'm even
2:08:41opposed to the people around King
2:08:42through the '50s and in '60s, and even
2:08:44opposed to many things about King
2:08:47through the '50s and '60s. But overall,
2:08:49I think the specific major achievements
2:08:52of King were anti-state and were
2:08:55free-market or I would call it
2:08:57capitalist reforms. And I I think that
2:09:01you know, where I think we're almost
2:09:02just choosing to weigh different things
2:09:04and emphasize different points. And so,
2:09:05your idea of you would take a slower
2:09:07civil rights movement to avoid the the
2:09:09communist takeover.
2:09:10I I think the communist takeover was
2:09:12happening no matter what. And so, I'm
2:09:15just happy that they took a brief pause
2:09:17to do something good in the middle.
2:09:20>> Beautiful. All right, Chad, I know you
2:09:21like to do your closer to the hero cam,
2:09:23so feel free to turn on over and get it
2:09:26going.
2:09:27>> Yeah, so I appreciate the discussion uh
2:09:30with Arthur and Jake. Um
2:09:33I would just advise people to go and
2:09:36uh
2:09:37you know, utilize these resources that I
2:09:39have mentioned throughout this debate in
2:09:41order to get a more contextualized
2:09:43understanding of what it is we're
2:09:44talking about rather than relying on the
2:09:47education that you received through our
2:09:49public education system that is meant to
2:09:50make people like
2:09:52Martin Luther King a hero, to make
2:09:53people like Helen Keller a hero, to make
2:09:55people like all these other people. Um
2:09:58it it it is very much a kind of Howard
2:09:59Zinn-esque education that we all
2:10:01received that has meant to
2:10:04that that that has the the objective to
2:10:06turn us into statists, to look first and
2:10:09foremost to what the government must do
2:10:10to resolve our issues versus looking at
2:10:12what we must do within ourselves and on
2:10:14a peer-to-peer level to resolve our
2:10:16issues. Um there's a lot that I disagree
2:10:19with particularly Jake on, but there's a
2:10:22lot that I agree with Jake on
2:10:24um that I think you've seen in this
2:10:25conversation. Um but I but I thank him
2:10:27for the conversation and thank him for
2:10:29being um um amicable uh throughout the
2:10:32conversation.
2:10:33Um I don't believe that anything that
2:10:36King did over the course of his career
2:10:37was in favor of free markets. Um and I
2:10:41think
2:10:42I'll be remiss if I don't say this.
2:10:44Um even though Jake's position is
2:10:46interesting and he is adult enough and
2:10:53um
2:10:55and you know, mentally three-dimensional
2:10:58enough to be able to kind of pick up
2:11:01good things and put down bad things. My
2:11:03concern is that when it comes to the
2:11:05greater society
2:11:06um
2:11:08so long as you keep King on his pedestal
2:11:12uh and not just King, but so long as you
2:11:15keep this mentality that the state is
2:11:18what we must go to to resolve our
2:11:21issues,
2:11:22uh then nothing will ever get better.
2:11:24Um we'll continue to expand government.
2:11:26We'll continue to demoralize society. Uh
2:11:29what we need is a kind of of reformation
2:11:33of the mind. Uh a revival of the mind as
2:11:36it were, where we understand that the
2:11:38thing that made America great was you
2:11:40and I from the beginning.
2:11:43Um and it was the state who actually
2:11:45disrupted that. And so long as we keep
2:11:47giving the state power, which is what
2:11:49King was trying to do
2:11:51nothing will ever get better. So
2:11:53um again, I thank you Jake. I thank you
2:11:54Arthur. I thank everyone who showed up
2:11:57today
2:11:58um as well as those who didn't because
2:11:59I'm I'm tired and ready to go home.
2:12:01Um
2:12:03for this discussion and I'm looking
2:12:04forward to doing it again.
2:12:05>> Wonderful. Thank
2:12:07>> All right. My next prompt is that Martin
2:12:10Luther King was not a hero for so-called
2:12:11black Americans.
2:12:13>> All right. Uh Arthur, I'm going to kick
2:12:16it on over to you, sir. Thank you for
2:12:17your patience today.
2:12:18>> Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
2:12:20Um I don't know if you You didn't give a
2:12:23You didn't have a bio of me or anything
2:12:24like that to introduce me. Okay, so I'll
2:12:26just introduce myself.
2:12:28Um I am a master's degree student at a
2:12:32evangelical seminary in California, uh
2:12:34Talbot School of Theology.
2:12:36So, I have a somewhat of an affinity
2:12:38with Dr. King in a in a sense, so
2:12:41I'm I have been in ministry working in
2:12:43different churches, so
2:12:44So, um I find it interesting that
2:12:47someone would argue that Dr. King wasn't
2:12:49a hero. Do you have a working definition
2:12:51of a what a hero is, sir?
2:12:53>> Um that's a good question. A working
2:12:54definition for what a hero is.
2:12:56Um I guess and the most elementary
2:12:59definition is someone who
2:13:04That's an interesting question,
2:13:05actually. It it So,
2:13:07the most elementary definition
2:13:10is a person who makes a sacrifice to
2:13:15um for the betterment of
2:13:18uh situation, I guess. Uh
2:13:21trying to protect the damsel in
2:13:23distress.
2:13:24So, um
2:13:25So, yeah.
2:13:26Um I I can see why
2:13:29uh people would call him a hero because
2:13:32they would
2:13:33postulate that Negroes were a damsel in
2:13:35distress and here he came with his cape
2:13:38to
2:13:39uh relieve them. Yeah, like Superman to
2:13:41relieve them of their situation. So, so
2:13:44yeah, I could see why people would would
2:13:45say that he's a hero.
2:13:48>> But, you would disagree with that.
2:13:50>> I would disagree. Like, I don't think
2:13:52that the work of King was overall good
2:13:57for
2:13:58American colored people.
2:14:00>> Okay.
2:14:00>> Um I don't think that it it made
2:14:04um
2:14:05Because when you look at, for example,
2:14:07the kind of ethos and a lot of the
2:14:08pathologies that exist currently among
2:14:11American colored people, Um and you you
2:14:14juxtapose that to the ethos that existed
2:14:17before his rise to popularity.
2:14:19>> Mhm.
2:14:19>> Um mentally, I don't think that modern
2:14:23colored people are are better off. And I
2:14:25think that had they stayed on that same
2:14:27trajectory, again, that was popularized
2:14:30by the likes of Booker T. Washington,
2:14:33uh colored people today would be far
2:14:34better off. But this notion that I mean,
2:14:37if you look at the the 2019 Cato
2:14:39Institute study, and I know
2:14:41I'm sure you've come across this before,
2:14:43where asked different people of
2:14:44different ethnic groups
2:14:46which they favor, socialism or
2:14:49capitalism, uh I think it was
2:14:52over 60% of colored people had a more
2:14:54favorable view of socialism than of the
2:14:56free market.
2:14:58Uh
2:14:58>> I think I've heard of it.
2:14:59>> Other other ethnic There's no other
2:15:00ethnic group that had a more favorable
2:15:02view of socialism except for colored
2:15:04people.
2:15:05And so, I think that that is informed,
2:15:07once again, by this kind of identity
2:15:10with the struggle, which was popularized
2:15:12by King. Of course, he's not the only
2:15:14one, but there is a whole bevy of of
2:15:16different activists who kind of make up
2:15:18this contingent.
2:15:20>> Okay. All right. So, I I wanted to just
2:15:23kind of start off with like that,
2:15:24because we want to understand our terms
2:15:26and what we're doing and what we're
2:15:26talking about. Cuz the word hero is in
2:15:29the prompt, so I have a couple of
2:15:31definitions here. Hero is a person who
2:15:33is admired for courage, outstanding
2:15:35achievement, noble character, or
2:15:37self-sacrificing self-sacrificing
2:15:40actions, which you did bring up the
2:15:42self-sacrifice part.
2:15:43>> [snorts]
2:15:43>> Uh especially when those actions benefit
2:15:45or protect protect others.
2:15:48And I have some dictionary
2:15:49Merriam-Webster, a person admired for
2:15:52great
2:15:54uh for great or brave acts or fine
2:15:57qualities.
2:15:58Oxford Dictionary says a person admired
2:16:01for courage or outstanding achievements
2:16:03or noble qualities.
2:16:05Uh Cambridge Dictionary says someone
2:16:07admired for having done something very
2:16:09brave or having achieved something
2:16:12great. So, in my mind as I look at Dr.
2:16:15King
2:16:16the very fact that his house was bombed
2:16:19twice and he didn't cut and run and say,
2:16:21"I'm not dealing with none of this." My
2:16:23house is bombed. My my my wife and kid
2:16:25were in there. The fact that he actually
2:16:27did that and stayed the course is uh
2:16:30showing courage.
2:16:31>> Did they ever find who bombed King's
2:16:33house?
2:16:33>> No, but that's irrelevant to the point.
2:16:35I'm just trying to get us to see what a
2:16:38hero is and to show you just briefly
2:16:40before I get to my main points that that
2:16:43right there is courage or bravery with
2:16:46the definition of what a hero is.
2:16:48Okay?
2:16:49>> But a hero for whom?
2:16:51>> [snorts]
2:16:51>> That's also in the
2:16:51>> Well, I'm just talking about the
2:16:52definition of what a hero is. That's
2:16:54what That's what we're talking about,
2:16:55okay? And you
2:16:57within the promise for
2:16:58African-Americans, but yes, a hero for
2:17:00African-Americans. He was
2:17:01African-American. And he showed courage
2:17:04in standing the staying the course after
2:17:07people bombed his house. Not only that,
2:17:10I mean he was
2:17:11They tried to pelt him with rocks and
2:17:13all kinds of things, but to to stay the
2:17:15course in that in in the face of that
2:17:18kind of antagonism does take bravery and
2:17:20courage.
2:17:21>> He definitely stayed the course and he
2:17:23was certainly a hero, but not for
2:17:24colored Americans, but we'll get to that
2:17:26later.
2:17:26>> So, so what was he fighting for then?
2:17:28>> Uh, he was fighting for the
2:17:29Marxification of the United States of
2:17:31America and using the Negro to do it.
2:17:33>> Yeah, I know that's what you believe,
2:17:34but that's your opinion. That's not
2:17:36actual fact.
2:17:37>> Let's go [snorts] on then.
2:17:38>> Let's go on here, okay? So, they were
2:17:40Okay, first
2:17:42I have a couple of points. I have five
2:17:43basic points
2:17:45which are based on
2:17:47your claims
2:17:49online, okay?
2:17:52And these are kind of randomly chosen.
2:17:55I'm not
2:17:56you know
2:17:57specifically going any in any specific
2:18:00direction, but I'm I'm trying to make a
2:18:02point, okay?
2:18:04>> [snorts]
2:18:04>> Okay, you have a YouTube channel,
2:18:07correct?
2:18:08>> Yeah.
2:18:09>> And on that channel, you you talk about
2:18:10Dr. King and other things.
2:18:12>> Correct.
2:18:13>> Okay. [snorts]
2:18:14I also have a YouTube channel. It's
2:18:16called the Christian Warrior Channel.
2:18:18Okay, and basically
2:18:20what I've done, and I've done it over 20
2:18:23videos debunking what you claim, and
2:18:25Vince Ellison, April Chapman, your whole
2:18:27little crew.
2:18:29Over 20 videos. Most of them are over an
2:18:31hour long.
2:18:32Okay?
2:18:33My throat is getting at me.
2:18:35Sorry. Get a little water here.
2:18:39Ah, I hate that.
2:18:41Okay.
2:18:43So, in your video dated 10 2 25, titled
2:18:47Chado Jackson in in Chado Jackson's
2:18:50intentions questioned on Club Shay Shay.
2:18:53And I have the timestamp here if we need
2:18:55it.
2:18:56You claim that Dr. King was involved in
2:18:58cocaine use.
2:19:01Uh, but in that video, you did not offer
2:19:03any evidence or documentation.
2:19:05>> whether he was a hero or we
2:19:07>> Yes, we are.
2:19:08>> Okay.
2:19:08>> But what I'm dealing with is your
2:19:10beliefs that would lead you or that
2:19:13leads you to believe he's not a hero.
2:19:15>> And I spoke of his Marxism.
2:19:16>> Yeah, he he did fine line that to say
2:19:19that he fought for uh Marxism to push
2:19:22that narrative versus he did not fight
2:19:24for the American colored people.
2:19:26>> No, I understand.
2:19:27>> he's [clears throat] not I don't think
2:19:28he's crappy not on his character by way
2:19:31of I mean, maybe in the videos that
2:19:33would be a piece of it like
2:19:35I'm saying, but
2:19:37>> not even in that because the thing is,
2:19:39like when it comes to
2:19:41uh King's affinity for women and for
2:19:45uh
2:19:46booze and all the different things, I I
2:19:48tend not to focus on that as much as I
2:19:50focus on what did he believe and what
2:19:54did he do and where what was
2:19:57the what what was the things that he was
2:19:59doing informed by and instructed by?
2:20:02That's what I tend to focus on
2:20:04in the question of was this a net
2:20:06positive for American coloreds or was
2:20:08this a net negative? I frankly don't
2:20:10care what King was doing in his private
2:20:12life. I really don't. How many drugs he
2:20:14used, how many but whether he is true or
2:20:16not that he had a fifth of whiskey every
2:20:19day or how many women he was sleeping
2:20:21with. I don't I don't focus on that. I
2:20:23tend to focus more so on what
2:20:25>> did King believe?
2:20:26>> Uh and what did he do that resulted in
2:20:29policies that created this kind of
2:20:32mindset that is inhibiting
2:20:36to many coloreds today. That that's what
2:20:38my focus tend to be on. So I don't care
2:20:39to get into cocaine use and all that.
2:20:41>> No. But here's the thing though.
2:20:43You said that's your focus, but if
2:20:45that's your focus and you don't care,
2:20:47why mention it? See what I'm saying? And
2:20:49you you did mention it though.
2:20:50>> it up today.
2:20:51>> I know. I know, but I'm I'm I'm making a
2:20:53point though.
2:20:54>> Yeah.
2:20:54>> Okay? Because these are things that he
2:20:57has said and that that he would argue
2:20:59this is why he's not a hero because of
2:21:02alleged cocaine use. And my And my
2:21:04question is what evidence do you have
2:21:07for that? Cuz you did make that claim.
2:21:09>> I would like to focus again I would like
2:21:10to focus on the matter at hand.
2:21:12>> Well but do you believe that though?
2:21:14That's
2:21:15>> It's Let me let me let me back back us
2:21:17up, okay? The the current prompt is
2:21:20Martin Luther King Jr. was not a hero
2:21:22for black Americans.
2:21:24>> Right.
2:21:24>> And the crux of his argument is that he
2:21:26was instead
2:21:28somebody who pushed Marxism
2:21:31but he did not push he was not pushing
2:21:33for the the colored people, right? He
2:21:36wasn't fighting for
2:21:37>> Social uplift.
2:21:38>> So these are these are very hard-lined
2:21:40ideologies, not personal character
2:21:43attacks. If if that makes sense.
2:21:45>> that, but again
2:21:46>> So that's why I'm saying that the
2:21:46cocaine I like I would throw it off the
2:21:49table because it's not really part of
2:21:51the ideology of Marxism. Right, that's
2:21:54the bigger question.
2:21:54>> not the the prompt isn't just Mark
2:21:56there's no prompt the prompt isn't
2:21:58focusing on Marxism. He's just giving
2:22:01his response about Marxism. My focus is
2:22:04reasons why Mr. Chad has argued that
2:22:08he's not a hero and that's what I'm what
2:22:10I'm focusing on various things. I'm
2:22:12going to get to the Marxism further on.
2:22:15But that's what I'm what I'm focusing
2:22:17on.
2:22:18>> Okay.
2:22:19>> Claims
2:22:20>> I mean I'm not I I don't really care too
2:22:22much about cocaine usage.
2:22:24Again, those are like minor character
2:22:26flaws
2:22:27because then we could just we would just
2:22:29go back and forth on well, he did this
2:22:31but then he did that but then he did
2:22:32this but then he did that like those are
2:22:34really small like if I had a plate for
2:22:36dinner, those are the small little peas
2:22:38on the plate. I want the meat and
2:22:39potatoes of the debate. Does that make
2:22:41sense?
2:22:42>> [snorts]
2:22:43>> Yeah, it makes sense but I mean it is
2:22:44relevant but I'll I'll just I'll just
2:22:47simply say
2:22:48um based on what you've said and again
2:22:51if it's not if it's not relevant or
2:22:53significant then why would you mention
2:22:55it in public in a video?
2:22:57Cuz you have and my [clears throat]
2:22:58point is in that video you didn't
2:23:00present any evidence for it. Now, I do
2:23:02have a copy of his toxicology report
2:23:05which doesn't have
2:23:07any cocaine on it.
2:23:10Okay?
2:23:11And we don't have any evidence from any
2:23:13eyewitnesses of the time of Dr. King's
2:23:16behavior exhibiting cocaine use. But
2:23:19let's go to the next point.
2:23:21Okay?
2:23:22Next point I'd like to make.
2:23:24>> [snorts]
2:23:25>> Okay.
2:23:26In your
2:23:27>> Wait, so you're saying that a toxicology
2:23:29report
2:23:30that is taken up after a person
2:23:34um
2:23:35has passed
2:23:37would show evidence of cocaine usage
2:23:4010 11 years prior?
2:23:44>> Uh well, I don't remember you mentioning
2:23:46how long he he had used it. You simply
2:23:50uh made the statement with no evidence
2:23:51that he used it. But
2:23:53But but I mean if he was a
2:23:55>> You're opening the door now back to this
2:23:57cocaine. So
2:23:57>> No, it's okay.
2:23:58>> [laughter]
2:23:59>> I thought Hold on. I thought it was a
2:24:01silly argument. Like I now present to
2:24:03you a toxicology report and it's like
2:24:05bro, like that that doesn't help your
2:24:07argument, but let's move on, please.
2:24:09>> it does because if it was in his
2:24:11bloodstream, if he was constantly using
2:24:14it, it would show up.
2:24:15>> But you're you're you're changing the
2:24:16definition now. You you first said that
2:24:18I said he used cocaine. Now you're
2:24:20saying that now you're inserting that he
2:24:22was constantly using it, which I never
2:24:24said. But it's like
2:24:25that's a very fallacious argument.
2:24:27Please move on.
2:24:28>> I don't know if it's fallacious, but the
2:24:29point is
2:24:31if you're going to make a claim about
2:24:32someone, you need to have
2:24:33evidence for it.
2:24:34>> would say I'm moving on. I'm moving on.
2:24:36>> Yeah, I would say tell me why he is a
2:24:38hero. Let's let's start there. Maybe
2:24:40there that can push a better
2:24:43conversation.
2:24:43>> I want to just continue. Okay?
2:24:46Okay. In your YouTube video dated 9 16
2:24:5025, and of course this is along the same
2:24:52lines as to why he would argue Dr.
2:24:54King's not a hero. And if he And if he
2:24:56doesn't believe that, you can correct me
2:24:58if you're if if I'm wrong.
2:25:00In your video of 9 16 25 titled Why
2:25:03Charlie Kirk and MLK are not the same,
2:25:05you claimed
2:25:08that Dr. King even beat up a few women.
2:25:13And you claimed that your source for
2:25:14that was Ralph Abernathy. Do you still
2:25:16maintain that?
2:25:17>> Yes, but I would like to talk about why
2:25:20King was or wasn't a hero. Um
2:25:22>> Well, that this is a part of it. Because
2:25:24if he's beating up women, how can he be
2:25:26a hero?
2:25:27Right?
2:25:28>> Pertinent to
2:25:29>> Because because you can't
2:25:30>> Again, these are minor character flaws.
2:25:32>> Pertinent to
2:25:33the colored community.
2:25:36>> and allegations.
2:25:36>> Hey, sir. Pertinent to the colored
2:25:38community, whether King was a hero or
2:25:41not as it pertains to the colored
2:25:43community today. That's That's the
2:25:44argument.
2:25:45>> Well, yeah, but this this is germane to
2:25:47the issue.
2:25:48>> Okay. Whether or not I believe, and I
2:25:50do, that King did use drugs, that he did
2:25:53drink, that he did, you know, sleep with
2:25:55various women, and even put his hand on
2:25:56some of those women. Yes, that those
2:25:58things are true, and I'm not like I'm
2:26:01happy to share with you all of my
2:26:02citations at a on a later date, but
2:26:04>> Okay.
2:26:05>> we're talking about whether King was a
2:26:06hero or not as it pertains to the
2:26:08colored people. That's what we're
2:26:09talking about. That's what we're talking
2:26:10>> Yeah, I know, and that's what I'm
2:26:11talking about.
2:26:12>> Right. So, so I know I know I know you
2:26:13came with your notes, but please please
2:26:16keep to the notes that have to do with
2:26:18the matter at hand.
2:26:19>> Well, this this has to do with the
2:26:20matter at hand.
2:26:21>> in what I think what he means by this is
2:26:24to in order to be a hero for black
2:26:26Americans based on the prompt, you would
2:26:27have to be pushing policies or making
2:26:30movements or or or doing bigger things
2:26:32in order to be the hero. Like, what what
2:26:35Martin Luther King Jr. did in his
2:26:37personal time would not necessarily
2:26:38reflect whether he's a hero or not for
2:26:40all of those other policy pushes. Does
2:26:42that make sense? That's what I'm saying,
2:26:43it's a bigger ideological battle right
2:26:46now versus like these character flaws.
2:26:48>> No, I I understand, but this is a part
2:26:50of whether or not you're a hero.
2:26:53And how people perceive you as a hero.
2:26:55Again, I know he's his whole arguments
2:26:58and all of the arguments that he's made.
2:27:00And this is this is a part of it.
2:27:03>> You have now myself and the moderator
2:27:05asking you for the love of God to please
2:27:08focus on the matter at hand.
2:27:10>> This is This is focus on the matter at
2:27:12hand.
2:27:12>> that King pushed.
2:27:13>> This is different issue. Different
2:27:15issue.
2:27:15>> in which Okay.
2:27:17If if you insist, I mean, I I I would
2:27:19really rather have a a more meaningful
2:27:21conversation.
2:27:21>> I think this is very meaningful, okay?
2:27:25But again,
2:27:26>> [snorts]
2:27:27>> getting back to my issue here with the
2:27:30claim of him beating up a few women. Do
2:27:32you believe he did that?
2:27:33>> I answered that in the affirmative
2:27:34already. Please Please me
2:27:36>> But okay, right. So, based on what?
2:27:39>> Could you please continue?
2:27:40>> Well, I'm continuing.
2:27:41>> do this. Can you steelman his his
2:27:44argument and his claims? So, Martin
2:27:46Luther King Jr. was not a hero for black
2:27:49Americans. Can you steelman his
2:27:50position? Steelman means can you give me
2:27:54what he's why he believes in this claim,
2:27:57like the arguments behind it.
2:28:00>> Yeah, I'm giving you the arguments.
2:28:01>> No.
2:28:02>> They These are not
2:28:03>> And And that's what I'm saying is he's
2:28:05saying that's not part of this claim.
2:28:08So, and this is why a good steelman
2:28:10would help here because if you say,
2:28:12"Okay, cocaine, he beat up [ __ ] and
2:28:15uh he drank a lot." or something, right?
2:28:17He's already telling you that's not
2:28:19where I'm coming from for this
2:28:20particular claim. And we've I've already
2:28:23informed you that he's coming from it as
2:28:25he was pushing socialism or Marxism, so
2:28:27on and so forth. And And therefore, the
2:28:29policies that he was attempting to do or
2:28:32the the directions he was going in was
2:28:34more pro-Marxism than it was pro-black
2:28:38people.
2:28:39Does that make sense? Like if I I'm
2:28:40stealing steelmanning him at this point.
2:28:43Um and kind of giving up his arguments
2:28:45for you.
2:28:46So, if it's he's not doing a character
2:28:49flaw here. He's not doing He's not
2:28:51saying Martin Luther King was an
2:28:53absolute piece of trash. That's not what
2:28:54he's saying. He's saying what he was a
2:28:57hero for was not the black Americans. He
2:29:00was a hero, I guess you could say,
2:29:02correct me if I'm wrong, is he was a
2:29:03hero for Marxism.
2:29:05>> That's absolutely correct.
2:29:08>> Okay.
2:29:10All right, I understand that, but I I
2:29:12guess
2:29:13you're not understanding my point that
2:29:15these are There are certain things that
2:29:17are incorporated within all of that in
2:29:20the Marxism
2:29:21uh and the claims. Yes, go ahead.
2:29:23>> believe that the cocaine, beating up
2:29:25women, and drinking, and so on and so
2:29:27forth have anything to do with pushing
2:29:29Marxism?
2:29:32>> No, not necessarily
2:29:34have anything to do with directly
2:29:36directly pushing Marxism.
2:29:38But again, that's not the only reason
2:29:41that Mr. Chad believes he's not a hero.
2:29:43That's my point.
2:29:45Okay, I'll tell you what I'll do.
2:29:47>> [clears throat and snorts]
2:29:48>> I would say are there other things in
2:29:51which aside from the character
2:29:53components, are there other things in
2:29:55which you believe that Martin did for
2:29:58the black Americans that he stood on and
2:30:01these are cuz you mentioned sacrifices
2:30:03and let's see, you had bravery,
2:30:05sacrifice,
2:30:07admired for courage and
2:30:10cuz you brought that up earlier and I
2:30:11thought we were going to move somewhere
2:30:12with that, but stand on that and how
2:30:15Martin applied those traits for the
2:30:17black Americans. I'm not worried about
2:30:19his character like in terms of uh
2:30:22what he did in his personal time.
2:30:24>> Excuse me. What Okay, I I I understand
2:30:27your point. Um I'm just hoping I will I
2:30:29was hoping that you'd understand where I
2:30:31was coming from because all of this
2:30:33it's not something totally separate from
2:30:36whether or not he's a hero. How can he
2:30:38be a hero if he's using cocaine, if he's
2:30:40doing all this stuff
2:30:42and the [snorts] evidence simply doesn't
2:30:44support those claims.
2:30:46But I'll I think I would just go
2:30:49straight to the Marxism.
2:30:51Okay? And uh we'll we'll see if we can
2:30:54work on that, okay?
2:30:56Okay, [snorts]
2:30:57Mr. Mr. Jackson in your YouTube video
2:31:0051924, you claimed I'm sorry.
2:31:03>> [snorts]
2:31:04>> Uh the title of that um MLK's uh was
2:31:07MLK's renunciation of communism a
2:31:10disingenuous tactic.
2:31:12Um are you okay with discussing that?
2:31:16>> Yeah.
2:31:17>> Okay.
2:31:17>> I'd say that's on the [snorts] nose.
2:31:19>> No, I'm just
2:31:20>> Mhm, yeah. We're in the We're in the
2:31:21wheelhouse.
2:31:22>> Okay.
2:31:24Okay, you claimed that uh in that video
2:31:26that Dr. King uh plagiarized Robert J.
2:31:29McCracken
2:31:31and that this somehow proves he was not
2:31:33sincere about his rejection of
2:31:35communism. Is that accurate?
2:31:37>> That's correct.
2:31:38>> Okay.
2:31:40Um now I've actually looked at your
2:31:42claim
2:31:43and I've looked into McCracken and
2:31:47the King website
2:31:48and he did not wholesale
2:31:51plagiarize McCracken.
2:31:52>> I think it's interesting that you
2:31:54>> threw in the word wholesale when
2:31:56>> Yeah.
2:31:56>> before you asked me the question you did
2:31:58not include that word, but go ahead.
2:32:00>> Yeah, I mean I understand you didn't
2:32:02include that word, but that's okay.
2:32:05Uh the implication I believe is there
2:32:07because
2:32:07>> What's the definition of plagiarism?
2:32:09>> It's when you use someone's work without
2:32:12attributing it properly.
2:32:14>> Is that the definition?
2:32:15>> I believe so.
2:32:16>> So somebody using an idea even if they
2:32:20move some words around, that's not
2:32:22plagiarism?
2:32:23>> Not necessarily because there's such
2:32:25>> False.
2:32:25>> No, there's such a thing as
2:32:27um
2:32:27uh similarity
2:32:29because you can
2:32:32Excuse me.
2:32:33You can say something that someone said
2:32:35in the past and it can be almost exact
2:32:38or close, but you may have never even
2:32:40read what they said, but it sounds close
2:32:43you could assume plagiarism, but it's
2:32:44not. It's similarity. So there's there's
2:32:47a difference between similarity and
2:32:48plagiarism. Okay.
2:32:49>> Uh no, okay, but this isn't a question.
2:32:51I'm just making
2:32:53trying to get this thing together here.
2:32:55Okay.
2:32:56So uh but you say he plagiarized
2:32:58McCracken and there is some truth to
2:33:00that, but
2:33:02um
2:33:03do you know that Dr. King in his book
2:33:05Strength to Love, he called atheism, I'm
2:33:07sorry, communism, called atheism wrapped
2:33:10in the garments of materialism. Now, is
2:33:12that unique to King or did he plagiarize
2:33:14that?
2:33:15>> Uh well, that book was heavily edited by
2:33:18his editor and and uh top
2:33:22uh
2:33:23adviser Stanley Levison
2:33:25who himself was a communist. Um and so
2:33:29>> was an atheist, too, right?
2:33:31>> Who?
2:33:31>> Stanley Levison, wasn't he an atheist,
2:33:33also?
2:33:33>> Yes.
2:33:34And he was also while he was act an
2:33:36active member of the Communist Party
2:33:37before uh
2:33:39I'm giving up his communist card in
2:33:401957, was working for
2:33:44uh as an editor for a Christian
2:33:45publication called The Churchman
2:33:48uh which was a Anglican um magazine uh
2:33:51periodical. And he was editing for them
2:33:54and and here he was an atheist while a a
2:33:57card-carrying member member of the
2:33:58Communist Party editing for The
2:34:00Churchman. And so he is uh advising,
2:34:03he's inputting, he's um even putting in
2:34:07his own kind of like characterization of
2:34:09things with this Christian magazine not
2:34:12from uh
2:34:14atheist perspective, but to come off as
2:34:16coming from priests and ministers and
2:34:18things of this nature. So so yes,
2:34:21certainly.
2:34:23>> Okay. Um
2:34:26But my question is this, um
2:34:28so you're saying that
2:34:31that Stanley Levison
2:34:31>> I'm saying. I'll I'll tell you exactly
2:34:33what I'm saying cuz cuz what you're
2:34:34alluding to or insinuating
2:34:36>> Okay.
2:34:37>> is that well, because Levison is an
2:34:40atheist, he wouldn't ever write anything
2:34:42like that. He wouldn't ever write he
2:34:45would never write that, you know,
2:34:47Marxism is is cold atheism wrapped in
2:34:49the garment etc. etc. etc. because he's
2:34:51an atheist. He would never say anything
2:34:53like that. And I'm giving you evidence
2:34:54of the fact that he worked for a
2:34:56periodical called The Churchman while an
2:34:58atheist, while a member of the Communist
2:35:00Party where he was doing the same kind
2:35:02of thing.
2:35:03>> Okay.
2:35:04>> And when you look at and we have to
2:35:05contextualize this
2:35:07because when you look at the how the
2:35:09communists were operating in those days
2:35:11during the Cold War
2:35:13the idea was to kind of turn down their
2:35:16doctrinal Marxism
2:35:18and to infiltrate universities,
2:35:21churches, and other institutions so as
2:35:23to move the hordes of people into a
2:35:26Marxist way of thinking without
2:35:27realizing that's what they're moving
2:35:29into. That was the objective. This was
2:35:31the objective passed down by Earl
2:35:32Browder who in the 1930s was the leader
2:35:34of the Communist Party
2:35:36who advised communists to do just that
2:35:39to revoke their communist membership and
2:35:42to go into seminaries that they might
2:35:44help to move the Protestant and the
2:35:46Catholic faith more to a Marxism Marxist
2:35:49disposition. That's exactly what they
2:35:50were doing.
2:35:52Uh and then when you look at Stanley
2:35:53Levison, he was basically following
2:35:55those kinds of orders. This is why he
2:35:57would go on to work for the church men
2:35:58and this is why he would subsequently
2:36:00work for with King in 1957 during the
2:36:03height of the Montgomery bus boycott.
2:36:05And then all this is well documented.
2:36:07>> Okay, but what uh
2:36:09solid credible evidence do you have that
2:36:12it was Levison that wrote that line
2:36:14about communism being cold atheism? What
2:36:17solid evidence do you have that?
2:36:18>> research it yourself. I mean
2:36:19>> I have researched it. That's why I'm
2:36:20saying.
2:36:21>> You can research it yourself and there's
2:36:22a plethora of evidence
2:36:25um
2:36:25where even
2:36:26where even
2:36:28Let me finish.
2:36:28>> Okay, go ahead.
2:36:29>> where even
2:36:32uh scholars and historians who are
2:36:34sympathetic to Levison um wrote that
2:36:37Levison himself heavily edited. They use
2:36:40the They use the word heavily. Heavily
2:36:42edited King's books. Right?
2:36:44>> but that doesn't prove that that line
2:36:46came from Levison though. You can edit a
2:36:48lot of things.
2:36:50But
2:36:51I'm looking for a proof that he wrote
2:36:52that line because you're arguing that oh
2:36:55he's an he's an atheist. He would never
2:36:56write that. Well
2:36:58>> Well, I'm using
2:37:00>> but I mean I need evidence of the proof
2:37:02of that claim that Levison actually
2:37:04wrote that line. If If you're going to
2:37:06argue he he possibly wrote
2:37:07>> Yeah, I have no I have no proof that
2:37:09Levison wrote that exact line.
2:37:11>> Okay.
2:37:11>> Um however, again, I'm looking at the
2:37:14whole body of what we're talking about
2:37:17here with regard to how Levison
2:37:19operated, with regard to what the
2:37:20communists were actually doing in those
2:37:22days, with regard to the fact that King
2:37:25even
2:37:26against the
2:37:27advising from be it Bobby Kennedy or or
2:37:31JFK to distance himself from communists,
2:37:35King actively decided not to do that,
2:37:37whether it's whether we're talking about
2:37:39Jack O'Dell, whether we're talking about
2:37:40Stanley Levison, whether we're talking
2:37:41about Clarence Jones,
2:37:42you know, all of these guys, like King
2:37:44was all too willing to to work with them
2:37:47because he understood that that what
2:37:50they were trying to push for was
2:37:52something that he agreed with. And so it
2:37:54it it would stand to reason then why,
2:37:56you know, King would try to downplay his
2:37:59communist sensibilities in order to come
2:38:01off as
2:38:02amicable, in order to come off as this
2:38:06this great peacemaker and unifier. I
2:38:08mean, he was literally called the
2:38:10moral leader
2:38:12of our generation, moral leader of our
2:38:13nation. He was He was called that
2:38:15multiple times by publications. He was
2:38:17called that by A. Philip Randolph.
2:38:20When you read Bella Dodd's book, School
2:38:21of Darkness, she talked about the
2:38:23strategy on how the communists were very
2:38:25selective about who they did and did not
2:38:27allow to be card-carrying members of
2:38:29their party because they understood that
2:38:31a person who is clandestinely pushing
2:38:34the communist agenda is going to be more
2:38:38effective if they have no kind of ties
2:38:42to communism from the surface
2:38:44and are able to occupy [snorts]
2:38:47roles as teacher unions leader, teachers
2:38:49union leaders, pastors, professors, so
2:38:52on and so forth. And so King definitely
2:38:54fits the bill, and we can get we can get
2:38:56more into
2:38:57ways in which he fit that bill, for
2:38:59sure.
2:38:59>> Okay.
2:39:00>> If you If you want to.
2:39:01>> Okay. I just want to circle back cuz you
2:39:03said a lot, but to circle back
2:39:05to your argument about King, um
2:39:08>> [clears throat]
2:39:09>> being a Marxist or communist and based
2:39:11on him
2:39:12um quoting [clears throat] McCracken but
2:39:15not citing him as a source.
2:39:18And that being disingenuous and so your
2:39:20argument
2:39:21>> Totally disingenuous.
2:39:22>> Mhm?
2:39:22>> Totally disingenuous.
2:39:23>> Right, I know. I know I know your
2:39:24argument, believe me.
2:39:25So, your argument is that he was being
2:39:27disingenuous
2:39:27>> Mhm.
2:39:28>> when he argued against communism by
2:39:30quoting someone without
2:39:32attributing them properly.
2:39:33>> The objective being once again to pass
2:39:36yourself as anti-communists.
2:39:39And so, rather than coming up with his
2:39:41own kind of like
2:39:44analysis of why I'm not a communist or
2:39:47why communism is bad, he did what he
2:39:49always does or did was to
2:39:52uh lift in some cases verbatim, in some
2:39:54cases again, to use your word, using
2:39:57similarities uh to try to pass off these
2:40:00things of of his as his own to make
2:40:02himself out to be this kind of
2:40:03anti-communist person. But in reality,
2:40:05you look at the practice, you look at
2:40:07what he was actually doing and actually
2:40:08saying in other areas, he's definitely
2:40:11pushing the communist cause. Again, this
2:40:13is true of King, this is true Dodd
2:40:15herself admittedly did and that Fulton
2:40:18Sheen would later talk about. This is
2:40:20This is This is You look at J.B.
2:40:21Matthews, for example, who was a
2:40:23communist who defected who talked about
2:40:25this strategy. Well, you look at the
2:40:27book Public Opinion written by
2:40:29um
2:40:30uh
2:40:31um
2:40:32what's his name? I forget his name, but
2:40:33the book Public Opinion
2:40:35>> Okay, that's
2:40:35>> Walter Lippmann. You look at Walter
2:40:37Lippmann's book Public Opinion, he talks
2:40:38about this strategy
2:40:40of
2:40:42using the uh
2:40:44the grievances, the sensibilities,
2:40:48uh the kind of sense of patriotism or
2:40:51Christianity
2:40:52using rhetoric that appeals to those
2:40:54things in order that you might get into
2:40:56the good graces of the people. And once
2:40:58you've won their favor, they will look
2:40:59to you to push a policy of campaign. And
2:41:03to the extent that you push that policy
2:41:04of campaign even if it completely
2:41:07contradicts the rhetoric that you used
2:41:09to get into their good graces, they will
2:41:11go for it every time. This is what
2:41:13Walter Lippmann wrote about in Public
2:41:15Opinion. Uh Public Opinion was a book
2:41:17that was heavily read by uh
2:41:20Stanley Levison, who was King's advisor.
2:41:22And so like all of this stuff connects.
2:41:25Uh the idea once again is to use
2:41:27anti-communist rhetoric
2:41:29in the height of the Cold War in order
2:41:32to convince the public who were
2:41:33otherwise uh hostile to communism that
2:41:36look, I'm not like those folks. I'm
2:41:38trying to push something different. But
2:41:40when you look at the fact that it quacks
2:41:42like a duck, it walks like a duck, what
2:41:43marks what what King himself is doing
2:41:46was in keeping with the communist cause,
2:41:48what like what it doesn't take more than
2:41:50two brain cells to to see what's going
2:41:52on here.
2:41:53>> Okay.
2:41:53>> And say we're going to running short of
2:41:55time, so if you have like a final big
2:41:57piece you want to throw in, now's the
2:41:59time to do it and then we'll wrap up.
2:42:00>> Okay. All right. Well, the thing is the
2:42:02problem is just because other people are
2:42:04doing following some type of
2:42:06plan or plot, that doesn't follow that
2:42:09Dr. King's doing it. That's a non
2:42:10sequitur fallacy. And speaking of non
2:42:12sequitur fallacy,
2:42:14your conclusion does not follow from
2:42:16your premise.
2:42:18Even if Dr. King wholesale plagiarized
2:42:20from a McCracken, which is your premise,
2:42:22basically,
2:42:23this does not prove that Dr. King did
2:42:25not agree with McCracken
2:42:27and that he was being disingenuous
2:42:29because again, that's a non sequitur
2:42:31fallacy. Because what you're doing is
2:42:33assuming
2:42:35based on your presupposition. You're not
2:42:37using sound reasoning to come to that
2:42:39conclusion.
2:42:40And I'm going to use a I guess a I have
2:42:42list here.
2:42:43One of the biggest problems with your
2:42:45claim about Dr. King being a communist
2:42:47or Marxist
2:42:49is that no historians argue that.
2:42:51I have a article here from
2:42:54King historian David Garrow.
2:42:56Cuz you read what he said right here in
2:42:58highlight? What did he say right there?
2:42:59>> read it. I'm not reading your your
2:43:00notes.
2:43:01>> Okay. I just want to see.
2:43:03It says here
2:43:05Martin Luther King was never himself a
2:43:08communist. This is a historian, King
2:43:10historian.
2:43:11Uh and there are other historians that
2:43:13will say the same thing. He says far
2:43:16from it, but he goes into the FBI and
2:43:18and Stanley Levison and
2:43:20the whole thing.
2:43:22And uh the moderator can look at that if
2:43:24she'd like to.
2:43:25But the point is
2:43:28if Dr. King was the Marxist communist
2:43:31that you claim, you would think that
2:43:34King historians, David Garrow, Clayborne
2:43:36Carson, other historians would say, "You
2:43:38know what? Yeah, he was Yeah." No, they
2:43:41don't argue that. You argue that, but
2:43:43you're not a historian. Okay? No King
2:43:46historians argue what you argue. And
2:43:49that's one of my main [clears throat]
2:43:50points. And I'll I'll leave it at that.
2:43:52>> Okay. So, uh Arthur, you say your name
2:43:55is? Yes. Okay. I would advise you
2:43:57uh to go and do your homework.
2:43:59>> I have.
2:44:00>> I would advise you to go and do your
2:44:02homework and to look at communist
2:44:05strategy during the Cold War [snorts]
2:44:06over the course of the 20th century
2:44:08and semantics and definitions and
2:44:11language and how a
2:44:14uh a person can can rightly say that
2:44:17this person was never a communist. What
2:44:19are they saying?
2:44:21They're saying that they were never a
2:44:22member of the Communist Party.
2:44:24They were never
2:44:26>> They're saying that they were never a
2:44:27member of the Communist Party.
2:44:29>> That's not what he said.
2:44:29>> Let him Let him finish. He's a
2:44:31>> They're saying that they were never a
2:44:31member of the Communist Party. You look
2:44:33at somebody like uh
2:44:36I forget his name, but um he was the
2:44:38leader of the either the AFL or the CIO.
2:44:41I think his name was Walter
2:44:43something or another.
2:44:44Um he's the one who uh was asked to
2:44:48donate money or to invest money in this
2:44:50kind of grocery store venture that they
2:44:52were trying to build in uh Mississippi,
2:44:56Grenada, Mississippi.
2:44:57Um, and after finding out that and you
2:45:00can look this up, please do.
2:45:03After finding out that Walter Reuther is
2:45:06his name.
2:45:07After finding out that the SCLC was
2:45:09involved in a
2:45:11grand theft auto racket in Atlanta, he
2:45:14chose not to put his money into
2:45:17the building of this grocery store. So
2:45:19Walter Walter Reuther himself was a
2:45:21socialist and he was asked to come
2:45:23before the HUAC committee to describe
2:45:25the definitions but difference between
2:45:27socialism and communism and all these
2:45:28other things and he was able to to to
2:45:31their satisfaction
2:45:33try to kind of blur not blur the lines
2:45:35but make these kind of sharp
2:45:36distinctions between these things when
2:45:38in reality if you read Lenin, if you
2:45:40read any of these kind of Marxist
2:45:42scientists, they tell you that all of
2:45:44that is a strategy. All of that is just
2:45:47kind of
2:45:48of using the humanities using
2:45:52the system to try to incrementally build
2:45:55to their their their common goal. And so
2:45:58all of us, the lay people on the ground,
2:46:02we we can see that oh, this person is a
2:46:04democratic socialist. Oh, this person is
2:46:06a socialist. Oh, this person is a
2:46:07democrat. They're they're
2:46:10diametrically opposed to each other when
2:46:12in reality no, it all is meant to kind
2:46:13of move in the same direction, same
2:46:16stream that moves to the same body of
2:46:18water. And so one of the tactics that
2:46:21they that they use is to say this person
2:46:24isn't a communist even though they're a
2:46:26fellow traveler. Are you familiar with
2:46:27the word fellow traveler?
2:46:28>> Yeah.
2:46:28>> Okay. Even though this person is a
2:46:30fellow traveler, which is the part that
2:46:31they don't say, this person was never a
2:46:33communist. They're far from it. And I'm
2:46:36not saying that Garrow is is a secret
2:46:38communist sympathizer because Garrow is
2:46:40one of the ones who do talk about what
2:46:41you tried to talk about earlier with
2:46:43regard to King's
2:46:44you know
2:46:46extramarital affairs and things of this
2:46:47nature.
2:46:48Um but
2:46:50at the same time, Garrow does take a
2:46:51very sympathetic view of King and think
2:46:53that what he did was a net positive. And
2:46:56when you look at the work, you know, my
2:46:58body of work when it comes to the MLK
2:46:59project, which is the docu-series that
2:47:00we just produced, we lean into
2:47:04uh scholars who are sympathetic to
2:47:06King's cause and what he was trying to
2:47:08do. We tend to stay away from people who
2:47:11who take a a kind of disagreeable view
2:47:14of King because that's not useful
2:47:16because at that point you're just kind
2:47:17of preaching to the choir. Uh so, what
2:47:19we do is we go to primary sources and we
2:47:22go to historians and scholars and people
2:47:24who admired King and loved King.
2:47:27And so, you know,
2:47:29all this this this business about well,
2:47:31you know, this person said that King was
2:47:32never a communist. Again, when you
2:47:34understand the communist strategy and
2:47:36you when you understand
2:47:37that the that who they're trying to
2:47:40appeal to are the masses who are
2:47:42otherwise ignorant of how that strategy
2:47:44works, they use propaganda and they use
2:47:46all these things to try to to try to
2:47:49make us believe that all the things that
2:47:51we learn in grade school about King
2:47:53being this great hero,
2:47:55it's it's unquestioned, it stands, and
2:47:58it holds, and you you dare not question
2:48:00it. That's the objective of why somebody
2:48:03would say that King is not a hero or
2:48:05that that King rather is is was never a
2:48:07communist.
2:48:09>> So,
2:48:09>> And all of you want to go ahead and give
2:48:11a final thought to that and then we'll
2:48:12wrap this one and move to the next.
2:48:14>> Okay. Um
2:48:16Yeah, I mean, again, I I understand and
2:48:18know all those arguments.
2:48:19>> You don't, though.
2:48:20>> No, I do.
2:48:21>> Let him have his thought.
2:48:21>> Believe me, I've I've I've heard I've
2:48:23heard this
2:48:24I don't know how many times from your
2:48:25videos.
2:48:27But you are arguing
2:48:30with a non sequitur fallacy trying to
2:48:33say, "Oh, this is how they work. This is
2:48:34how they did things." Problem is that
2:48:37doesn't follow that Dr. King did that.
2:48:40You have to understand that's logically
2:48:41fallacious. You cannot jump from here to
2:48:44there without something in between that
2:48:46proves here to there.
2:48:48Okay, now I understand you do think you
2:48:50have arguments that prove that, but they
2:48:53don't really stand up. Okay? And like I
2:48:56I've I've done 20 videos on YouTube
2:48:59debunking you. I have a special video
2:49:01debunking the
2:49:04uh MLK project by Cheadle Jackson,
2:49:06propaganda unmasked. I have a whole
2:49:08series of videos dealing with your
2:49:11arguments. And also the other people
2:49:13that you run with. So, it's not like I I
2:49:15know your arguments left and right. But,
2:49:18and [snorts] I know that they don't hold
2:49:19up. Okay, but because of time and
2:49:22the issues here, I can't get deep into
2:49:24it. But,
2:49:26I mean, I'd love to go into more detail,
2:49:28maybe just me and you or something like
2:49:31that. But, I mean, I I the one thing
2:49:34I'll I'll I'll try to leave on a
2:49:35positive note.
2:49:37I do appreciate that you you do a lot of
2:49:40research, you study, you read.
2:49:43You remember a lot of things.
2:49:45Uh but,
2:49:47as I you know, that are in my notes
2:49:49here,
2:49:50the problem is you get facts wrong.
2:49:53You do disinformation, you do
2:49:55misinformation, you do malinformation
2:49:57with Dr. King especially. And I prove
2:50:00that on my YouTube channel. So, and like
2:50:02I said, I would love to prove it here,
2:50:04but again, we're going to stick to we
2:50:06have to stick to this prompt, this
2:50:08structure here. But, the point is I know
2:50:10your arguments, I've gone over them left
2:50:12and right.
2:50:14So, I know the flaws in them, and I've
2:50:17just revealed some of it here.
2:50:19Now, you claim to be a Christian,
2:50:20correct?
2:50:21>> Yeah.
2:50:22>> So, do I? See my tie here? Like that?
2:50:25So, I'm a Christian. I've been a
2:50:26Christian since 1983. You can do the
2:50:28math.
2:50:30And the one thing I'm sure you'd agree
2:50:31with with me is that a Christian should
2:50:33not lie, a Christian should not
2:50:37uh push disinformation. A Christian
2:50:39should not push
2:50:40misinformation. A Christian should not
2:50:43misrepresent someone. Would you agree
2:50:45with that?
2:50:46>> Yeah.
2:50:47>> Okay. Because like I said, I can I can
2:50:50demonstrate and I've partially shown
2:50:52here that you're guilty of that. Not
2:50:54only you, but all the other ones that
2:50:56push [snorts] what I call anti-Dr. King
2:50:58propaganda. And so I I like I said, I
2:51:01admire that you do research. I would
2:51:03just simply argue you need to do it
2:51:05better as a Christian.
2:51:07>> Wonderful. Shake hands, gentlemen. All
2:51:09right, and we already got you to state
2:51:10your prompt. So, um Dooney, I'm just
2:51:13going to hand it over to you. Go for
2:51:14gold.
2:51:15>> hand it over to me? Listen, uh it is
2:51:17truly an honor to be here. Thank y'all
2:51:19for having me. My name is Dooney the
2:51:21Barber, Dooney the Street Priest. You
2:51:23know what I'm saying? I'm representing
2:51:24whole Dallas-Fort Worth area, from Oak
2:51:26Cliff. That's where I'm from. Y'ALL KNOW
2:51:27WHAT THE [ __ ] going on. You know what
2:51:30I'm saying? But listen, it's an honor to
2:51:32be here with with Chad. Or Jason, man. I
2:51:35I I listened to you in your previous
2:51:37debates, and it's an honor to be sitting
2:51:38here in front of you, man. I I would
2:51:40look at you more as a teacher
2:51:43than me as a student.
2:51:45Someone that's from the urban community
2:51:48that grew up
2:51:49seeing things. I'm a '70s baby.
2:51:52So, I'm borderline '69.
2:51:54And so, I've seen some things come, and
2:51:56I've seen some things go.
2:51:58And so, my question is this. When you
2:52:00say
2:52:01that black people shouldn't get
2:52:03reparations
2:52:04looking at my ancestors, okay? Looking
2:52:07at your ancestors. And I'm just going to
2:52:10just coming from a urban, fundamental,
2:52:12layman term. Looking at your ancestors.
2:52:14Look at how you look. Now
2:52:17we both speaking English, right?
2:52:19>> Right.
2:52:20>> And so, that English had to come from
2:52:22somewhere.
2:52:23Because as we go way back before
2:52:25Christopher Columbus, then we had a
2:52:27language, we had a god, we had a
2:52:28culture, we had a religion.
2:52:31We had all that previously before we was
2:52:33taught this.
2:52:34So, my question is this,
2:52:36with our ancestors, what they went
2:52:37through with slavery,
2:52:40and
2:52:41even with the Confederate, okay? They
2:52:43was given property when some of them
2:52:45went off.
2:52:46But when they came back, the government
2:52:48gave them their property back from the
2:52:50slaves.
2:52:51>> Mhm.
2:52:52>> Um at that point, I can feel my
2:52:54ancestors saying that we would deserve
2:52:56something because we worked hard
2:52:58on
2:52:59to cultivate this land.
2:53:01We was not Johnny-come-lates.
2:53:04We've been here for a long time, and
2:53:06history has proven and has said that
2:53:10we've been here before any other
2:53:12uh immigrants, and no disrespect to
2:53:14immigrants, none of that. I'm not here
2:53:17I'm not a racist, none of that. But when
2:53:19it comes to our ancestors, and I say my
2:53:21ancestors because I only know one
2:53:23language, and so they had to be a
2:53:24descendant of something. I had my
2:53:26ancestors had to be taught that.
2:53:27>> Mhm.
2:53:28>> Because prior to that, we was we was
2:53:30taught something else. So, I say this,
2:53:32reparation I say we we should um receive
2:53:36something for those that can prove that
2:53:38they got ancestral history. But if not,
2:53:41I don't give a [ __ ] about reparations.
2:53:44Okay? You know what I think? Reparations
2:53:47look different now.
2:53:49And it's more into just being
2:53:51competitive in this market as black
2:53:54people.
2:53:55It's being uh given a chance and an
2:53:57opportunity. Now, I'm not saying all
2:53:59black people you know, some of us can be
2:54:01ignorant sometimes cuz I'm speaking for
2:54:02my urban. I didn't seen it. I've seen
2:54:04smart black people, and you look like
2:54:05one that's smart. And I've seen ignorant
2:54:08black people. That don't mean they fool
2:54:09or they done, they just don't know how
2:54:11to move forward in life. So, I'm done
2:54:14with that, but I just want to know as a
2:54:15student, because my teachers teach me if
2:54:18you think you know everything is when
2:54:19you know nothing. So, I come to you as a
2:54:21student and someone that I highly
2:54:22respect that knows about the Democratic
2:54:24Party, the Republican Party. I get it.
2:54:27Yeah, but man, talk to me.
2:54:29>> Well, um I don't claim to know
2:54:31everything. There's a lot I don't know.
2:54:32I mean, we can see with my debate with
2:54:34Ethan that there were some things that
2:54:36he brought up that I have
2:54:38that I'm going to have to go
2:54:40back and and look up on and I thank
2:54:41Ethan for bringing those to the table.
2:54:44>> Yeah.
2:54:44>> Um but so so when you say that
2:54:48um
2:54:48you know, so-called [clears throat]
2:54:49black people um if you go back enough
2:54:52into history
2:54:53>> Mhm.
2:54:54>> that they believe something different
2:54:57than what I guess America projects to to
2:55:00you know, today. What what regionally
2:55:02are you talking about? Are you talking
2:55:04about here within the United States or
2:55:05in Africa?
2:55:06>> Yeah, I'm just talking about here in
2:55:07>> Sorry, I'm sorry. Here in the Americas
2:55:08or in Africa?
2:55:09>> Even in the Americas. We can we can go
2:55:10back to Africa, Abu Kalan, but even some
2:55:13would say the Moors would say that we
2:55:14was already here
2:55:15>> Mhm.
2:55:16>> prior.
2:55:16>> And what do you what do you think?
2:55:18>> What I think it don't matter.
2:55:20I don't care. From what I see does
2:55:22matter. And so what I think is this,
2:55:25that whether we was here or we was
2:55:27brought over here, our ancestors were
2:55:28brought over here, it don't get it don't
2:55:30matter. We still was taken. Our land was
2:55:33taken. Not not our land, our culture was
2:55:36taken. Our language was taken. And your
2:55:38language is attached to your culture and
2:55:40your culture is attached to your God. So
2:55:42I say this, that prior to Christopher
2:55:45Columbus or anybody that came in here
2:55:47speaking a different language that we
2:55:48spoke prior that we was taught this
2:55:51language cuz even is documented that
2:55:53slaves was taught how to speak. Because
2:55:55if they knew how to speak, whether you
2:55:56spoke another language or not, if you
2:55:58knew how to speak, you would get what?
2:56:00Castrated. You would get your ass
2:56:03whooped if you knew how to speak. So
2:56:05when we didn't know how to speak, we had
2:56:07to translate this down to our youngins.
2:56:09When we didn't know how to speak, then
2:56:10who the [ __ ] taught US HOW TO SPEAK?
2:56:12THAT'S WHAT I'M SAYING. As in slave, we
2:56:14had slave masters. Our ancestors, I'm
2:56:17just only speaking for the ancestors and
2:56:19and and we got these FBAs, you know,
2:56:21fundamental black I I get it. I get it.
2:56:24I I We got these organizations like
2:56:26Islam We got the Nation of Islam. Shout
2:56:28out to the honorable Elijah Muhammad.
2:56:30Shout out to them. But, my thing is
2:56:32this. We had all these black movements
2:56:34that came in the '60s, but they was
2:56:36asking for certain things because they
2:56:38felt they demanding it. And we needed
2:56:40those movements back then. But, right
2:56:41now, reparations look different, man.
2:56:43>> Well, I don't think we needed those
2:56:44movements. Um
2:56:45>> You don't think we needed those
2:56:46movements?
2:56:46>> that. Yeah.
2:56:48>> Now, how can you speak for that era when
2:56:49you weren't in that era?
2:56:51How can you speak about that era when
2:56:54you weren't in that era? Because 50
2:56:56years from now, your child can't speak
2:56:58about your era. Well, and now, it it it
2:57:01now it it messes me up that you would
2:57:03down another black man or black leader,
2:57:05whether they was perfect or not, just to
2:57:08make you more yourself look good. I
2:57:10think you you are definitely a good
2:57:12component for black people. You're very
2:57:14intelligent and smart, but man, don't
2:57:16ever
2:57:17put your mouth on no ancestors, man,
2:57:19that just came and and GAVE THEIR LIVES.
2:57:22>> I think I'm looking for the argument
2:57:24here.
2:57:24>> so No, no, no, no, you're right. But,
2:57:27but the reparations is what I'm
2:57:28passionate about. Let's go ahead, Chad.
2:57:30>> I'm just trying to get an you have been
2:57:31going for like 10 minutes.
2:57:32>> My my my
2:57:32>> This whole this whole
2:57:33>> I respect you.
2:57:34>> No, no, I respect you as well. The this
2:57:36this idea of speaking negatively on the
2:57:39ancestors um
2:57:41this notion that people get that Chad O.
2:57:44Jackson
2:57:45um doesn't have anything but negative
2:57:46things to say about the leaders who came
2:57:48before me. And full disclosure, I'm not
2:57:51interested in being any being anybody's
2:57:53leaders. I'm not interested in being the
2:57:55center of attention. I'm not interested
2:57:56in hey, everybody look at me, I'm so
2:57:58smart. That's not what I'm interested in
2:58:00interested in.
2:58:01>> Okay.
2:58:02>> There are many
2:58:05so-called black folks who came before me
2:58:07who I have a great deal of respect and I
2:58:09think that their work was worthwhile and
2:58:11it yielded great benefits and great
2:58:15and a lot of positivity, but there are a
2:58:17lot of them who didn't who who weren't.
2:58:19And so, if I'm in a position now at the
2:58:22age of 36, where I can't say anything
2:58:24negative, or I can't scrutinize, or try
2:58:27to objectively look at, "Okay, what was
2:58:30the net result of this person who
2:58:32happened to be so-called black? What was
2:58:34the negative impact of their work?" It
2:58:37like if they're off limits, then how do
2:58:39we move forward?
2:58:40>> I get it.
2:58:41>> You know, it's it's so it's so with all
2:58:43due respect, when you say that you know,
2:58:46how dare I speak negatively on these
2:58:48negro leaders,
2:58:50like that, with all due respect, I think
2:58:53is part of the problem because we we we
2:58:57protect and we
2:59:00uh play off or downplay the negative
2:59:03impact of many of these people who we're
2:59:06we're suffering a lot of the detriments
2:59:08of their work today.
2:59:09>> And I agree, but here's the deal, that
2:59:11was just trial and error. So, you I I've
2:59:14read about you you was just you a
2:59:15plumber, or you have a plumbing
2:59:16business.
2:59:17But when you started your business, now
2:59:19I'm speaking from a businessman, that at
2:59:21some point when you started, you had to
2:59:22go through trial and error. It was
2:59:24sometimes that you made bad decisions
2:59:25for your business that you wouldn't make
2:59:27now because you made those decisions.
2:59:29What I'm saying is I see how you
2:59:30critique those movements. That That's
2:59:33That was just trial and error that we
2:59:34was going through because we was trying
2:59:35to find our place in the in this
2:59:37particular deal sport.
2:59:39>> So, you don't think that there was no
2:59:41deliberate
2:59:42>> It could have been, but it was still for
2:59:44the empower empowerment of our people in
2:59:46the situation that we was at at that
2:59:48moment. But what I want to ask you is,
2:59:50and I'mma wrap it up because I I I
2:59:51respect and I want to get your
2:59:52information cuz I want to share some
2:59:54more things with you. What I want to
2:59:56know is, I understand where we have a
2:59:58trial and error. I understand our
3:00:00movements and where we didn't came from.
3:00:02But where we going? And and if you going
3:00:04to discredit a lot of the things that we
3:00:06did back then, then definitely, god damn
3:00:09it, you got to have an answer to where
3:00:11we go as a people today?
3:00:13>> is Jesus Christ.
3:00:14That's the answer.
3:00:15>> See now we going to go into a whole
3:00:16religious text because now we got to go
3:00:19into where Jesus come from. We got to go
3:00:21to the Constantine area and I don't want
3:00:22to even go and deviate from the
3:00:24reparation because I will say this that
3:00:26Jesus Christ is just a consciousness and
3:00:29Jesus Christ to me didn't didn't show me
3:00:31how to be a real man at all because he
3:00:33didn't even love [ __ ] And his
3:00:35disciples No, no, no, hold on. And his
3:00:37disciples how you going to take some
3:00:39other men from their women to you
3:00:41and you didn't even know what a a warmth
3:00:43of a woman was. So no, no, he brought
3:00:45that up. So no, you brought up Jesus. So
3:00:47Jesus to me is just a consciousness. Did
3:00:49I like the fact that Jesus loved God and
3:00:51that he had a connection with the most
3:00:52divine, the hidden presence that nobody
3:00:55have ever seen, but the very
3:00:56characteristic of Jesus didn't implement
3:00:58how to be a man, how you even supposed
3:01:00to treat your queen, how you used to
3:01:01what? Cuz he never had a queen.
3:01:03>> Let let him who has ears hear.
3:01:05Um if if a man tells me that Jesus can't
3:01:07teach him how to be a man it's because
3:01:09he's not willing to hear him.
3:01:10>> me how to be submissive to God, but not
3:01:11how to be a man. So now let me tell you
3:01:13this. Let me share this with you cuz we
3:01:15can go through this Jesus thing all day
3:01:16long because Jesus I'm [clears throat]
3:01:17just not convinced there is a Jesus. I
3:01:19have never ever been a Jesus. I'm never
3:01:21I'm not even convinced there's been a
3:01:22Moses.
3:01:22>> Mhm. God bless you.
3:01:23>> Okay? Yeah. And so but I have a bit
3:01:26convinced cuz I'm a believer that there
3:01:28is something divine. And one thing about
3:01:30the Africans and I'm going to I'm going
3:01:31to wrap it up right here. The ancient
3:01:33Egyptians and the Africans before it was
3:01:35Egypt it was Kemet. The Kemetic science
3:01:37they didn't never call a God a God. That
3:01:40wasn't even in our definition. So I say
3:01:43this to say this that they they they
3:01:45understood the divine as Amun-Ra which
3:01:48is the most divine, something that we
3:01:49cannot see. That's how it was just a
3:01:51spiritual system. So we all was born
3:01:53spirit, but we was taught religion. So
3:01:55that very Jesus you just just brought
3:01:57up, man, that [ __ ] was a handed
3:01:59down to you from your mama and your
3:02:00grandmama. You was introduced to that
3:02:02[ __ ] because you was born spirit.
3:02:04>> Do you have an argument against
3:02:06>> No, no, but for there's the reparations,
3:02:07man. I'm real interested to see where we
3:02:10going as a people with the ideologies
3:02:13that you have and the concepts you have
3:02:15to to to to take us and lead us to the
3:02:17goddamn promised land like our
3:02:18modern-day 2026 Moses. In that, and I'm
3:02:21done. What the [ __ ] going on?
3:02:24>> Uh and if you want to do the hero cam of
3:02:26your closing statement uh since he's
3:02:29already stepped away, you're welcome to
3:02:31>> Um yeah, so I thank these two gentlemen
3:02:34for engaging in a lively discussion.
3:02:38It's one way to put it. Um
3:02:41And uh yeah, when it comes to the the
3:02:44idea of reparations and the way that
3:02:46it's known today, I understand that
3:02:48Ethan said that my views were
3:02:50idiosyncratic, but the reality is what
3:02:53most people understand about reparations
3:02:54is that a check is owed. That's what
3:02:57most people understand about it. And it
3:03:00it kind of appeals to this kind of
3:03:02bitterness, this kind of cynicism, this
3:03:04kind of covetousness that a lot of
3:03:07so-called blacks people black people
3:03:08have today, unfortunately,
3:03:10um as a result of the marxification of
3:03:12the so-called black race.
3:03:14And we look at the way that it was
3:03:15popularized, it was popularized by
3:03:17people who held uh
3:03:20a Marxist-Leninist ideology.
3:03:22And the idea was to try to preempt
3:03:27wealth redistribution and to marxify or
3:03:29sovietize the United States of America.
3:03:31There are many ways in which they did
3:03:33this and reparations is just one of the
3:03:36things that they that they uh put forth.
3:03:39And so I think that that's something
3:03:40that we should consider uh when it comes
3:03:43to reparations because it's not just a a
3:03:45matter of
3:03:46Negroes are wronged and therefore they
3:03:49are owed money for it, so.
3:03:51>> Wonderful. Thank you. All right.
3:03:54>> These debates only get bigger when you
3:03:56support the channel, and we've got some
3:03:57of the wildest matchups coming next.
3:03:59Subscribe [music] now, tell us in the
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