Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 397 - The Lynching Of George Floyd ft. Daryl Davis
Episode Date: June 12, 2020Daryl Davis is back on the podcast again to discuss all current events happening in the world today. Unfortunately, it's only been a few weeks and a lot has happened. Daryl Davis is an American musici...an, pianist, activist, and author. He has extensively studied the subject of racism, the Klu Klux Klan, and has successfully influenced over 200 Klansmen and Klanswomen to give up their robes. He has been able to do this through developing relationships and friendships with many of these people. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Support the show by visiting our sponsors! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Power Project crew, welcome to today's show.
This episode was recorded on June 11th,
and it is not a repeat of a previous episode,
although we did just have him on recently,
just a matter of weeks ago.
But today we are on with Daryl Davis.
Daryl Davis is the gentleman that has converted
over 200 Klansmen to turn in their robes
and turn a new leaf, per se.
But today we actually brought him back
because we wanted to get his thoughts on the current events today.
What he calls the George Floyd lynching.
He explained to us what lynching actually meant and why he believes that George Floyd was not killed.
He was not murdered.
He was lynched by that police officer.
So we really got just we talked about that.
We talked about just a whole gamut of things regarding to race, racist issues or racial issues.
And we really think you guys are going to like this episode. So I'm going to try to get out of your guys way as soon as possible.
But really, really quick, if you guys missed the call in show the other day, we had an absolute blast.
We had our boy Jesse Burdick on and we took calls. We took your calls. It was a it was a it was a lot of fun.
It was a new experience. It was a new feature that we hope to do a lot more often.
But if you guys did miss out on that one, make sure you text anything.
You can text, like Jesse Burdick says, you can text the word farts to 206-737-7369.
And every time we go live and we're accepting calls, you guys will get a text notification right on your phone to let you know, hey, we're live and there'll be a link in there and you guys will actually get to join or actually you'll get to listen to the conversation and then select whether or not you would like to be on hold, put on hold so that way you guys can talk to us on air.
And then lastly, markbell.com, a free 30 day trial is available everybody listening right now. From now all the way to the end of June, you guys can gain access to the entire website that includes the paid version and the paid premium version where they have a virtual scoreboard.
So you can physically or digitally put points on the scoreboard every single time you do a workout to help keep you on track, help keep you motivated, and just getting more and more better.
And you can also train with Team Super Training.
So if you are not anywhere near West Sacramento,
we can bring the gym to you by showing you guys the exact program
that everybody at the gym is doing.
Again, that's at markbell.com.
Please take advantage of that, and please do so before the end of June
because after that, the free 30-day trial will be over.
That's it for me.
So ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy this episode with the one and only Daryl Davis. How are you guys doing today? Good. Yeah.
Doing awesome. Got in a 10-minute walk,
turned into 15 minutes, and I got some coffee this morning.
You're just overachieving all over the place. I know.
What's funny is I was planning on coming in a little bit early to get in a good walk, you know, do some research, some more research on our guest.
And I actually woke up with a pretty bad case of vertigo.
Oh, no.
It was weird.
God.
I got up and I fell right back over.
It's happened before, so I can deal with it.
But it sucks.
I don't like it.
So, I took it a little bit slower today.
So maybe tomorrow I'll get back on it.
Any idea what triggers that?
No idea.
When I went to the doctor, like the first time I got it.
They just told you that you're weird?
When I was like probably like 14 or 15, there's, ah, you just got a couple of screws loose.
I'm like, isn't that really bad?
Can we tighten these things up?
Yeah, for reals.
I'm like, yeah, get a,
get a drill in there and start screwing these screws back in.
You know, my grandma had vertigo, has vertigo,
and they're apparently crystals in the ear or something.
So like what they did and it didn't totally like cure it,
but it helped.
It's like they like shifted her one way and then shifted her the other.
And they were,
they were trying to like get everything to kind of stabilize in her head.
Yeah, no, none of that for me.
Okay.
No, because what they also tell you to do is like,
oh, get on the edge of your bed and then just let your head fall back off of the thing.
And I'm like, do you want me to get so dizzy that I throw up everywhere?
Like, no thanks.
So I didn't.
Yeah.
But anyways, enough about me
i don't think i ever experienced anything like that before i know i've gotten like
hit really hard before and you know and kind of saw stars and got a little got a little woozy but
yeah i never uh i mean i guess maybe sometimes working out you go do a heavy set and then you
get done with the set and you kind of feel like, whoa, I've felt that before.
But I think that was more like just electrolytes, you know, not having enough, you know, salt and stuff like that.
The best way I can equate it to that makes sense to a lot of people.
Have you guys ever played the Labyrinth game?
It's like a marble, and you have to balance the platform to get, like, to not fall in the holes, basically.
Like, it's like that, but that's the ground.
And somebody's like, hey, check this out.
And they at least, like, turn both knobs and they just throw the, like, it's just weird.
Like an inception, you know, like when they're fighting and they're, like, going upside down.
It's like when you drank way too much and you're like, I could totally make it across the room just fine.
And no one's going to notice how hammered I am.
Yeah.
And you go to get up and, like, the whole room's kind of. That's exactly what it's like. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. And no one's going to notice how hammered I am. Yeah. And you go to get up and like a whole room's kind of.
That's exactly what it's like.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
Cool.
You guys have any good steak lately?
Hell yeah.
All the time.
I cooked up two ribeyes last night.
Some Piedmontese ribeyes.
Oh, my gosh.
And I've been chopping them up, man.
I've been going with the chop chop.
I cooked up two of them.
I ate about half of that.
And then maybe like an hour and a half went by and ate the other half.
Yeah.
That's two nights ago.
Only had one last night.
But it's always nice when you can eat two steaks in a night.
It always feels so good.
There's something different about it.
Yeah.
I know.
I had a couple of the one pound ground beef packets.
I had a couple of the,
uh, the,
the one pound ground beef,
uh,
packets and like,
I,
they came free back in the day when they were shipping those out for free,
like for every order.
So if they do do that again,
please take advantage.
But like I took,
I don't want to say I took it for granted,
but I underestimated that their ground beef also has like a different taste to
it.
Like it tastes really good.
So I've been back on like monster mash this week and it's,
it's a freaking party every
single time that I get to indulge in Piedmontese ground beef. Don't sleep on those sliders either.
Those sliders are good. We ordered some Thai food a couple days ago and the DoorDash people,
they only sent like half the order. And so I just said, everybody relax.
Everybody calm down.
I'm going to cook up some sliders.
And so I cooked up some sliders and saved the day.
But, you know, there's a lot of people are going to be outdoors a lot coming up,
and people are going to be barbecuing and stuff.
And so, you know, why not get yourself some Piedmontese burgers and hot dogs?
Those freaking hot dogs are legit.
Yeah.
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Excited for today's podcast, fellas?
Mm-hmm.
Indeed.
We got our boy Daryl Davis on again today.
Should be pretty cool.
We just talked to him not too long ago, but there's been some recent happening.
So I'd like to talk to him and get some of his vantage point and see what he thinks.
uh, what he thinks.
Cause I think that this is a guy that has been thinking about this and
studying,
uh,
racism for,
um,
since he was a kid,
since he was,
since he learned about it,
since he first learned about it,
which is kind of cool.
When he first learned about it,
he was like,
huh,
this is a weird topic that somebody should continually investigate.
And obviously there's a lot of people that,
that look,
that have been looking into it for many years,
but it's great to have somebody like that,
that we can,
uh,
we can call up and have a good conversation with.
Yeah.
I think he's one of the most rational people to talk about in terms of the
situation too,
because this is the first time that,
um,
like both or all groups that are having to deal with this or having to
literally converse with each other.
Um, and then
you you see a lot of i guess you can't necessarily say it's a wrong way to talk about this but you
see a lot of ways that people are going about this and you're just like that could be done a
little bit better you know yeah well look at some of the fallout that that people are having with uh
you know making comments that are against like this
change against this movement towards perhaps um i don't want to say like getting rid of racism i
don't know if that'll ever happen but i guess uh having better common ground maybe you know and uh
you know getting to a better situation where we have equal opportunities you know equal rights in that fashion and
there's some people that you know on social media have made statements and it's like
the country and actually in other parts of the world as well they're not tolerating that shit
anymore whereas some people might be like oh that's funny yeah you know people aren't thinking
that way anymore they're they're they're get They're cutting their ties and we're seeing it left and right.
Just yesterday, the Mr. Pickles and Davis, they decided to shut down.
I think the owner said something about, he said Black Lives Matter matters is becoming like the KKK.
And, you know, like who knows why the guy made the statement.
Maybe the guy felt he had a, I don't know, maybe he felt that made sense.
I'm sure he didn't say it for no reason, you know.
But whatever the reason is, obviously people aren't going to agree with stuff like that,
especially at the moment, you know.
with stuff like that, especially at the moment, you know?
And it just appears to me that Black Lives Matters as an establishment is just trying to draw attention to the fact that there's been a history of blacks being mistreated
over and over and over again.
And so it's just, it's a weird time because you don't necessarily
have to agree with everything that's going on, but I would say just until you get more information,
there's no reason to be anti towards certain things. Yeah. There he is. Hey, good morning.
Good morning. Good morning, Daryl. Yeah. How are you all doing? Hey, it's great to have you back
on the show again. And I appreciate at the end of the last show, you said, hey, we're all friends now.
So if you want to call me back up and have another conversation.
So here we are.
We're at it again.
And I appreciate it very much.
Thank you.
I wanted to ask you, you know, a lot has happened since last time we had a conversation, which wasn't even that long ago.
It was just two weeks ago or so. You know, a lot has happened since last time we had a conversation, which wasn't even that long ago.
It was just two weeks ago or so.
Do you feel like some of what's happening and some of what's going on is, even though there's been a lot of things that have happened that are unfortunate, do you feel like this is, it's hard to say the word good, but do you feel that this will maybe be to humanity's benefit in the long run?
Yes, I do. And I'll go ahead and say it's good.
You know, sure, there are some things that that could be that could have gone better.
But yes, in the long run, it's good. I feel that for the first time, we are really beginning to turn a page.
I mean, we're not quite at the end of the book yet, but at least the page is turning.
You know what I mean?
I mean, you know, we've always had white people involved with our civil rights things since Rosa Parks. And, of course, on through the movement in the 60s with Martin Luther King.
with Martin Luther King.
But for the first time, we are seeing white people en masse,
a whole lot of them, recognizing, you know, especially young people and even some old people, recognizing what's going on.
And they're saying, hey, enough is enough.
You know, they get the empathy for it.
And so that's, I think, a big contributing factor to what's going on. And people are finally starting to listen because now we have a collective voice of many different races. I don't like to use the word races because there's only one race, but you understand what I'm saying. Ethnicities and people like that.
where before, when it was predominantly black, people's ears were like this.
And now they're pulling the earplugs out and things are beginning to happen a lot faster.
And as always, when you have these kinds of things, it causes a chain reaction.
And other things began to fall into place.
Like, for example, when Martin Luther King orchestrated the bus boycott with Rosa Parks in 1955, you know, that was targeting the Montgomery bus lines in Montgomery, Alabama.
It took a year. It took a year for them to finally come around because their buses were riding around empty because mostly black people rode the bus.
White people had cars. And so their buses are riding around empty and they're losing money, putting gas in the bus, no passengers, et cetera.
So they finally decided, OK, you know, we're going to change our policy. And when they did, guess what? It began changing all over Alabama and all the other southern states changed their bus policies because they figured, you know what?
Martin Luther King would probably come here next. And other things began to fall into place, not just the bus, but other things. So what we're
seeing is not just some changes with how they address police things. Like usually it takes
months for a police officer to be arrested or fired, you know, if he is, because it rarely happens.
But if it is, it takes quite a while.
And boom, boom, boom, it happened pretty quick.
So we're seeing that.
Now we're seeing the Confederate stuff come down, et cetera, et cetera.
So these are residual effects.
And one of the things, you know, apart from the white people joining in to the march is the coronavirus that has kept a lot of people home.
You know, they can't go to work. Their businesses are shut down.
So they're home doing nothing. So they come out to the streets and march.
That's why we're seeing nothing. You know, it'd be nice if it was on a regular basis with no lockdown.
But if we had no lockdown, you would not have I don't believe you would have the record number of people because they would be at their jobs.
But now, you know, they're on lockdown or whatever.
They're coming out, which is great.
Of course, it is a health risk.
which is great. Of course, it is a health risk, but they are passionate enough about something that has gone on way too long, for 400 years, that they are willing to risk their health along with
us. Viruses come and go. Every year, we get a virus, whether it's the Hong Kong flu, the Asiatic flu, you know, whatever, whatever it is.
And eventually it goes away and then it comes back again the next year.
Racism has never gone away. And it's never been addressed in this record number.
So, you know, this is a good thing. And I think all the things fell into place that allowed this to happen.
You mentioned turning the page. How do we kind of turn the page and start to get to the next
chapter? What are some things that maybe are not being talked about yet that you think might be
important? Well, of course, I mean, the police is just one small component of it. And of course, you know, people say, well, you know, the police kill white people, too. Yes, they do. You know, and also in high numbers, too. But so there but is there a racial component to the white killings?
component, like I'm tough and you're not, and you do what I say or I'm going to blow you away.
You know, there's always that component you have to deal with, too. But black people have the power component and the racial component, which is what a lot of people don't see unless
they experience it. So, yes, police reform has to happen. A lot of things have to happen.
I'm really, really glad that NASCAR took that step of removing that flag.
You know, that is big.
And as a result.
What does that flag, just to inform, what does that flag represent, in your opinion, the Confederate flag?
What it represents to me is the promotion of slavery.
You know, the Civil War was fought over slavery.
of slavery. You know, the Civil War was fought over slavery. Now, I realize that a lot of people are ignorant about their history, and they want to say it represents heritage. There are some
people who know it represents hate and say it represents heritage. And then there are those
who really believe it represents heritage and not hate. Those are the ones who really need to study history. There are a lot
of things, a lot of things that the South has to be proud of. Slavery is not one of them.
And the Civil War was fought over slavery. All this business about sovereignty of the states
and all that. Yeah, sovereignty of the states so they could uh maintain their slaves you know that's like saying uh some you know uh people took a take drugs and and uh and it causes
their heart to to speed up and have arrhythmia and then they die so medically speaking the person
died of heart arrhythmia you know a, a heart attack or whatever. Yeah,
where that heart attack was brought on by the drugs. So, you know, let's get to the source
of why the heart sped up. So, the Civil War, you know, you can use whatever excuse you want to use,
sovereignty of the states, this, that, and the other. But at the bottom line,
slavery was at the core because people did not want to give up that free labor. They're
making tons of money off somebody else picking cotton, picking tobacco, doing this and doing
that and not paying them. So, you know, that's where their money, when you hear the term,
oh, he comes from old money, she comes from old money. That's what they're talking about.
The money that was generated off the backs of slaves, that's old money from old money. That's what they're talking about. The money that that was generated off the backs of slaves.
That's old money from way back. You know, tobacco people, cotton people from the South.
You know, new money is like Silicon Valley. All right. So nobody wants to give up that that free labor.
And that's why they fought, because, you know, when you have money, you don't want to give it up. And that's a lot
why people
are concerned about
the election. Will they be able to keep their
money? Because
this guy has money, he represents money
and looks out for the rich, etc.
etc. It's very important. Whether you
like him or not,
you want your money.
Do you think Abraham Lincoln wanted to abolish slavery because he wanted to be nice to black people?
Or do you think there's some underlying things that, you know, because I think that like in this decision that people are going to make coming up and in voting, you know, I think they're they're trying to think of like you know who who's outwardly
racist that i can make sure that i don't you know vote vote for and i think in the case of abraham
lincoln he's always credited as um you know being this this great historical figure who did this
thing to abolish slavery but and i'm not going to say that he's he wasn't a great person or he
wasn't a great president but uh just in knowing something about politics, usually there's a political reason on why people do stuff rather than just for humanity.
So what are your kind of thoughts on that?
Well, of course, you know, I don't know Abraham Lincoln, but I know about him and the things that, you know, I've studied about him.
Yes, he did abolish slavery.
He did free the slaves.
But I think it was, well, I lean towards thinking it was he wanted them
to go back to where they came from.
Okay?
You know, he realized, no, this is wrong.
You know, these are people, but, you know, and to own them
and to sell them and to torture them and beat them, et cetera, is wrong.
You know, we need to stop that.
But, of course, society is never going to accept them.
After that, you know, we're going to have them go back, you know, like Marcus Garvey kind of thing.
You know, if those were his feelings of the day, you know, that's fine.
But guess what?
We're here now.
And we're not going back. You know, no more so than any white person is going back to Europe. You know, we are Americans. This is our country. And we helped build it. So, you know, that's the way it is. Let's learn how to get along.
One of the things that I think has to happen is we are perpetuating a lot of this police violence, whether it's on white people or black people, by not having a national registry for police officers who've gotten into trouble for misconduct,
especially egregious misconduct like what we saw the other day and what black people have been seeing for the last hundred years or so.
And what we've been complaining about, because what happens is in the rare instances where they get fired or get convicted and terminated from their department,
they just move on to another department and get and get rehired somewhere else.
It's just like, you know, these Catholic priests who abuse little boys.
All they do is just shift them around, you know, rather than protect them and shift them around to some other parish congregation where the whole sexual abuse thing starts all over again.
You know, whereby if you if you are a sex abuser or something like that, you know,
pedophile, you go on a national registry.
So, you know, if you're in New York and you get convicted and you go out to California
to get a job, they see you on this national registry.
You know, we're not hiring you to work at some little, you know, youth camp or something
like that.
So we need the same kind of thing for police.
So we need to apply for a job at an Amber alert for racist.
Yo, there's one in your neighborhood.
You know, I'm curious about this too.
The registry thing is amazing,
but what I'm seeing a lot right now, and a friend of mine
posted about this. So when we see a lot of people conversing about what's going on right now,
whether it's black people talking to white people or et cetera, there seems to be a lot
of individuals that instead of trying to actually converse, they're more so trying to get revenge.
trying to actually converse, they're more so trying to get revenge.
I've seen people try to publicly make individuals apologize for their racism on public forums,
calling them out. And I've seen that go on a lot. Then you also see individuals like,
you see videos of people trying to make officers kneel. And sometimes it's actually something that people are trying to do, but there's other times you see it and they're just literally saying, kneel to me, kneel to me.
And it's, it's like, how is this productive? It doesn't seem that it's not. So, um, how can you
help us like, uh, get better at trying to go towards the solution without, I guess,
trying to go towards the solution without i guess shaming people no i i think people should be shamed okay if they do something that is egregious and just outwardly racist yeah um but trying to
hold somebody accountable for something that somebody else did, the apology is symbolic.
It still needs to be made.
I'll give you an example of something.
I gave a lecture at a university out in the Midwest
just a few years back,
and we were talking about slavery and things like that.
And the fact that the United States has never,
never apologized for slavery. We have apologized to Native Americans. We have apologized to the
Japanese and their descendants, Japanese Americans, that is, who we put in the interment camps.
We've never apologized for slavery.
And if you are one of those internment people,
you're still alive or your descendants,
you're entitled to a little bit of government money.
Same thing with Native Americans.
If you have, I think, one-eighth Native American in you,
you can get some of their money for what happened to you.
There's nothing like that for people like you and I.
Now, I'm not saying we need money but at the very least we need an apology
and then so anyway we were talking about this
and this young girl I think she was like a
sophomore there in the college she wasn't racist at all
but she didn't get it she said you know
I don't understand white girl I don't understand why
I should apologize when I didn't get it. She said, you know, I don't understand. White girl, I don't understand why I should apologize when I didn't own any slaves.
You know, I can't help what my great grandfather did or whatever. He's long gone.
I think slavery is wrong. But why should I apologize for it?
I said it is symbolic. I said no one is accusing you of owning the slaves.
All right. Or do anything like that. Of course, you know, you wouldn't do that.
I said, but the apology is symbolic. It never came. I said, for example, it was in November when I was
speaking there, and Thanksgiving was coming up. And I said, listen, I said, let's say that I was
a student here, and you knew I lived on the East Coast. And you say to me, hey, you know, Daryl,
you know, are you going home for Thanksgiving, home for Thanksgiving to be with your family or whatever? And I say, no, I don't have the money. I think I'm going to
save up and I'll go home on Christmas break. And then you say to me, well, you know, I live here.
You know, my grandparents told me, you know, I could bring home, you know, some students,
some of my classmates, you know, who didn't have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving. Would you like
to come to my grandparents for Thanksgiving dinner?
I say, sure.
Okay.
So she picks me up from my dormitory, brings me over to her house, along with some other kids.
And while there, one of her grandparents makes a racist remark.
He's off the cuff or whatever, because he's never had a black person in his house before.
because he's never had a black person in his house before.
And on the way back to the dormitory,
when she's, cause she's driving me back, she says, I said, you know,
you say to me, Hey, I'm sorry about, about what, you know, what my grandfather said, you know, he had no way to say that, blah, blah,
blah. I said, I said, would you do that? She goes, of course I would.
I said, well, you know what?
You just apologize for one of your ancestors that you had nothing to do with
with their remark.
Your apology does not change what he did,
but it's your acknowledgement that it was somebody related to you.
And it's symbolic.
If you had not apologized to me,
we probably wouldn't be friends anymore on campus.
You know, it's the fact that you're not,
it doesn't change what he did or how he feels,
but the fact that you acknowledge it.
There are too many bystanders in our country who see what's going on.
They know it's wrong, and they feel bad about it,
but they don't want a voice.
You know, they don't want to put out their voice.
And that, you know, I think Martin Luther King said it. He who walks in silence
hangs the innocent and lets the guilty go free.
That's why an apology is needed. But trying to
force one out of somebody, I think is counterproductive.
It has to come from within. So to answer your
question, how do you do this? You have civil dialogue, civil discourse, and you lead by example and show people things, educate them, expose it to them so that they come in Tulsa, Oklahoma, didn't even know about the Tulsa race riots because it's not in the history books there.
It's been swept under the carpet. So when they start seeing it,
it's like, whoa, whoa. Now I understand
why you all are so pissed off. It's like these people who
saw the George Floyd murder. We've been seeing that for a hundred
years before video cameras ever existed. And now they're
seeing it like, I don't believe this. And first
they think it's happening in some anomaly, in some bubble. We say, no, no,
no. This is not about George Floyd. There have been 100 years of George
Floyd's, you know. I get it. I get it. And then they
lend their voice. So it has to come from within them. You know, I get it. I get it. And then they lend their voice.
So it has to come from within them. You can't force it out of them. It's, you know, it's, it's like you can,
you can legislate somebody's behavior.
And you, well, you can compel their, their behavior through legislation.
Cause you know, if they don't do this, they'll be arrested.
But you cannot compel how they feel.
So that's why you have to lead by example.
And it takes patience.
Because, you know, if they're not living that life, then they don't get it.
They don't see it.
You know, one's perspective is one's reality.
You know, what you brought up there was really interesting because there's a discussion that I had
this weekend with a few people and
a white
guy was, it was a very open discussion
and this white guy said, you know,
right now, obviously, things are
really, really weird and
sometimes I find it hard
because I've asked black
people before, what can I do, etc., etc.
And some people, you know, they tell, they tell me, go do your research.
This isn't my job to tell you.
But some of us kind of agree, sometimes it's not our responsibility to educate you.
But at the same time, if there's a person that really wants to know right there and they're open, it's necessary to help them out because they can
go help their family and then their family, their kids, they can go spread that out. But if you're
closed off to, and not patient enough, like you said, because it takes massive amounts of patience,
that person may just quit on themselves and say, well, it's not my responsibility.
So I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that because you're seeing that narrative a lot now
a lot of black people are having white people
and other individuals reach out and say
hey I didn't know that you guys went through this
I didn't know that there was this
what can I do on my side
to help remedy some of the situation
to exploit that
to bring that in
let's have a conversation
thank you for asking
thank you for asking.
You know, thank you for asking.
In other words, the earplugs are out, you know, and that's an opportunity.
Listen, Jason, regardless of the circumstance,
whether you're talking to a Klansman or just a regular, you know,
third-grade dropout, it doesn't matter, all right?
A missed opportunity for dialogue is a missed opportunity for conflict resolution.
Whether you're providing the education to that person or whether he's getting it out of Encyclopedia Britannica or the Internet or Google or going taking a course at the local community college.
You know, you have lived it. You have lived it. And so there is a firsthand opportunity to tell somebody what you have been through, what you have personally experienced. Let me give you an example of something.
an experiment. And I had to, my experiment consisted of using a piece of dry ice.
And so I was told that I could get this dry ice, this one delicatessen a few miles from my house where I lived in, had dry ice. So I called them, they said, yeah, they had it. And so I got my
father to drive me down there. I'm in eighth grade, 14 years old, so I'm not driving.
And he gives me like a twenty dollar bill, not knowing how much it's going to cost.
He sits out in the car. I go in and I ask the guy for the dry ice. He brings this big chunk out. I only want about that much.
And so he says, how much you want? I showed him.
So he like, you know, chopped it and wrap it up in some Brown paper. So it'll be $5.
So I give him the 20, he get back $15.
So now I got all this extra money that my dad gave me and I'm looking inside
this glass counter, you know, and I want to eat. And so I see ham,
I see cheese, I see all kinds of stuff.
And so I asked for a ham and cheese sandwich.
He goes, can't do that.
This is a kosher place.
And now I heard the word kosher before,
but to me, we kids, how we use the word kosher,
it meant everything was okay.
It's kosher.
That kind of thing.
It's cool.
It's kosher.
We had no idea what the
true definition was at least i didn't you know i wasn't jewish and so um
i'm thinking okay well so it's cool so why can't i have one and um
so i'm trying to rationalize why he wouldn't do it. And then I'm thinking, oh, well, maybe these this big piece of ham and all this cheese.
These are models for what is available.
But he's all out of stock in the back.
So I saw some other meat and some cheese and stuff.
And I said, well, how about a salami and cheese?
No, it's a culture place.
And I said, so what?
You know, I have the sandwich.
He goes, get the hell out of here. And he kicked me out of the store out of the delicatessen now that was a a missed opportunity
to educate me all right because i was ignorant i had no clue obviously he knew i wasn't jewish
i mean yes there are black jews but obviously if I was Jewish, I would know what kosher meant.
So that right there told him I wasn't Jewish, let alone the color of my skin.
I don't think he was racist.
I just think that he was, you know, all pissed off because I didn't know what something meant.
I hadn't done my research, so to speak, and it wasn't his job to teach me.
So if I – that could have gone two ways, you know.
Fortunately for me, I later found out what kosher meant, and I would ask my friends, and they would tell me.
Most of them didn't know why.
They knew what it meant.
You don't mix the dairy with the meat.
And I would say, but why?
Well, that's just the way it is.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but why?
Why?
There has to be a reason behind it.
Well, I don't know.
My mother did it.
My grandmother did it. It's just the way it is.
Yeah, but what's the root of it?
You know?
So anyway, or I could have been mad at all Jewish people and figured that they all were like that, you know,
because this guy behaved that way. And I was young, you know, I was 14 years old. I'm impressionable.
I didn't have that much contact with Jewish people. And that's my experience. So now I'm
going to have a chip on my shoulder about Jewish people. Fortunately, I didn't go that way,
but that could have happened like that. And so, yes, that is an opportunity for us as black people, for him as a Jewish person. You know, when you see somebody who is ignorant to something, and I don't use the word ignorant in a derogatory sense, I use it as an uneducated, unaware, unexposed.
Yes, we have an opportunity to make things right. And the saying, I'm not my brother's keeper. Yes, we are. We all are in this country together. So all of you guys are my brothers and I'm your keeper. And if I see something wrong and I have an answer, I'm going to provide it to you. You see me going down the I think, are super important. I had some friends that said that their kids were scared because they saw the riots on TV. You know, they saw, you know, buildings burning and police officers, you know, hitting people with batons and so on.
children and say, well, the fear that you have, that uneasy feeling that you have in your heart and in your stomach is the same feeling that black people feel when they're seeing cops do this on TV
routinely. So I agree with you a hundred percent. I think a lot of times people get frustrated
sometimes with children because they don't know something or they just assume that they're going
to be able to, you know, pick up on something, but it's a great opportunity just to deliver a message
to them right then and there. Exactly, exactly, exactly, you know, and we are responsible for
educating one another, you know. I may have told you on the last time we were together,
you know, that I'll just say it again real quick, that I give 60 to 80 lectures a year or so. A lot of them at colleges and universities.
And two or three out of every 10 lectures I give, you know, I'll do a Q&A at the end or whatever.
And even after it's over, students will still come up to the podium to ask me one last question or they want to touch one of my clan robes or whatever.
And two or three out of 10 times, there'll be one student off in the distance.
And I've come to learn what's going on. He or she is waiting for the crowd to go away.
And when they go away, this person will walk over and they'll come in, they'll haul. And they'll
say, oh, you know, I enjoyed your lecture, Mr. Davis. And then they'll like look around,
make sure nobody's, you know, within earshot. And then they say, you know, I was raised that way. My mother is in the Klan or my father's a
neo-Nazi or whatever. And now I'm here at this college. And, you know, my boyfriend is black
or my girlfriend is Jewish or, you know, I'm dating this Muslim girl. I'm dating this guy from Pakistan or whatever, you know, and I can't bring them home.
My parents will kill me or they'll disown me.
And I can't tell my friend because they'll drop me.
So they got this burning secret on their chest that's causing an ulcer and they have to get
it off.
So they release it through me because I'm the perfect person for them to speak with.
And, you know, because they don't know how to handle it.
Because here's what happens.
In their neighborhood, it's homogenized.
Everybody there in that neighborhood goes to the same school.
They cheer the same football team.
They read the same books.
They swim in the same community swimming pool, do the grocery shopping at the same, you know, grocery store, et cetera. They're the same books. They swim in the same community swimming pool, do the grocery
shopping at the same, you know, grocery store, et cetera. They're all the same. And now you come to
college to get an education because your parents want you to get an education. The high school
doesn't come with you. And now you're around people from all over the country and all over
the world. And you find out that Jewish people don't have horns
and black people don't have tails, you know,
and Muslim people are not all terrorists, you know.
Your eyes are, like, opening.
You're like, oh, my goodness, you know.
How do you tell your parents they were wrong?
You know, your parents wanted you to come here and get an education,
but they didn't want you to get that education,
and they damn sure didn't want you to get that education.
And they damn sure didn't want you bringing that person home.
You know what I mean?
So what do you do?
And you're changed forever.
Your perspectives are changed forever because of that exposure.
And you can't go back home with all these people who have Islamophobia or
homophobia or they're racist or they're anti-Semitic,
all your friends from high school or whatever, because you are a changed person.
And how do you how do you navigate that?
And it's a good thing, but also presents a problem. I think in some households it will be up to the younger generation that's in the household to actually dispel the myths surrounding racism.
How do you think a child could go about doing that?
Not maybe even a child, but just a young person can go about doing that.
Someone that's, you know, between the ages of, you know, 15 and 30 or so.
And they're, you know, they're at a barbecue with the family and they hear something that's said that's, that's racist and they can, how do you think they should, you know,
help dispel some of these myths?
Obviously, if you just said, hey, what you're saying is wrong or wow, that's really irrational
that you think that way.
What do you think would be a good way to, to, to open up a conversation and maybe open
up their ears a little bit?
I think that a child should ask their parents why they didn't stand up and speak out against that.
They know it was wrong.
Maybe this was an adult.
If it was a kid saying it, of course, the kid, you know, can go ahead and speak to another kid.
But if it's an adult saying it, it might appear to be disrespectful.
But why didn't any of the other adults or you, mom and dad,
why didn't you all say something? It was wrong.
And then let the adults have that conversation with the child.
And either they'll defend what that person said or they'll say,
yeah, I know it was wrong, but,
well, there is no but, so that now they can have that conversation, and that child can see that
oftentimes there is a lot of hypocrisy in that, because, you know, we all know people who have,
you know, black or white or whatever, who have some degree of some phobia in their family,
whether it's where this fear of gay people or
Jewish people or whatever people, you know, and they say, you know, yeah, I love my uncle, but,
you know, he was the most racist person, you know, that kind of stuff. We all know those people.
And I tell you, schools dance around these issues.
And one of the biggest culprits are our religious institutions.
And I'm going to come down on them.
I mean, I was raised in the church and all that kind of stuff.
And I'm a Christian but every
or pretty much
every religion has some
form of Sunday school
for the younger people like
four and five year olds, six year olds, etc
Mormons
have it, Catholics have it, Protestants have it
Jewish people have it
and in that
Sunday school the kids learn God made a rainbow
of different colors, and we're all God's children. He loves us all. And that's, again, you know,
we're four and five, six, seven, eight years old. We're taking this in, and this is what we believe,
because our personalities, our minds have not been shaped yet. You know,
we're young kids sponging information, and this is our teacher, an authoritative person,
and we believe everything he or she says, whether it's in regular school, kindergarten,
or at the church. So this is what we believe. And then when we reach puberty, adolescence,
or whatever, we're sent upstairs to the larger congregation.
And we sit in the upstairs and listen to the preacher, the reverend, the minister, the priest, the rabbi, whatever clergy is there.
And that's when the problem starts.
Because that clergy, whichever it is, stops the Sunday school lesson.
He or she no longer continues telling the mass congregation, we're all God's children.
God made a rainbow.
He loves us all.
All right.
Because if he or she were to say, hey, you know what, folks, it's okay for blacks and whites to get married.
It's okay for Jewish people to marry Catholics or whatever.
Half that congregation is going to get up and walk out.
All right?
And they damn sure won't be putting any money in that collection plate when it gets passed around.
Because you only pay for what you want to hear.
You know, if you're not hearing what you want to hear, you're not emptying your wallet into the collection plate.
So what happens is this.
into the collection plate. So what happens is this. You either leave the congregation or you get rid of that preacher and bring somebody else in who's going to tell you what you want to
hear. It's just like if you send your kid to school, public school, and he's not learning
in public school what you think he needs to learn, you snatch him out and you put him in a private
school. If he doesn't learn it there, you snatch him out and you homeschool him.
That's what happens.
You pay for what you want to hear.
And unfortunately, the clergy is putting money over morality.
They know it's wrong, but they realize if they say something that their congregation doesn't want to hear, regardless of how moral it is, regardless of how they can best even back it up in the Bible, it doesn't matter.
If you're going to lose clergy, you're going to lose a job.
So they're putting money over morality.
And that's got to stop.
And, you know, we have black look, we have Black Baptist churches,
we have White Baptist churches, but yet we read the same King James Bible and pray to the same
God. We have Black Baptist churches because we were not accepted in the White Baptist churches,
so we had to establish our own. And then later on, of course, it's already established, blah,
blah, blah, but they can still get together, but they don't.
But then they say, you know, we are brothers in Christ.
You know, you're white, I'm black.
We're brothers.
Do you accept me as your brother in Christ?
Oh, absolutely.
But will you accept me as your brother-in-law?
That's great. Oh oh my gosh uh daryl my question isn't how long do you foresee racism continuing on
because that's that's a whole nother topic but my question is um how long do you foresee some
of these uh protests the uh the rallies the uh the riots and all that for the current situation. Do you have
an idea or anything
in mind to see how long something like
this will continue on?
I think it's going to continue
on through the election in November.
Maybe not as
large as we see it,
but it's all going to depend upon
what happens. Like I said,
the page is turning.
It hasn't completely flipped over yet. It's just in the process of turning.
If it stays right there, the protest is going to
last a lot longer. If it starts going back down to where it was,
it's going to increase. And like I said, there's going to have to be
a lot more reform. And like I say, you know, there's going to have to be a lot more reform.
But for example, again, you know, you asked not about specifically what just happened, but there's been a lot that's happened in the last week, you know, in the last three weeks or whatever.
You got the Breonna Taylor. You got the the Amy Cooper with the dog in the park. You got George Floyd.
Something has to change. It's always been happening.
We're not seeing more and more of it.
We're seeing more and more of it on video is the problem.
But it's always gone on. For example, that girl in the park.
but it's always gone on. And, you know, like, for example, that girl in the park,
she claimed to the police that this African-American man was threatening her life and threatening the life of her dog in the Ramble in Central Park, when actually she was
threatening his life is what was happening.
Because, listen, she said she felt threatened, but yet she walked up in his face and pointed.
You can see it right there on the video. Turn that thing off. Stop recording me.
If you felt threatened, you wouldn't be walking up on your threatener and threatening him and pointing your finger in his face.
You'd be walking the other way. All right? And so she knew what she was doing.
She didn't say, I'm going to call the police and tell them a man is threatening my life.
She told him, I'm going to call the police and tell them an African-American man is threatening my life.
Because she knows the history of blacks in the police. And usually when a black person is involved with a white woman,
especially, whether it's a good involvement or a bad involvement,
it's usually a deadly involvement when the police arrive.
It has that potential.
And so she knew what she was doing.
You know, he's standing right there.
She didn't even describe what he was wearing.
She just said an African-American man.
Well, there are plenty of African-American men in Central Park.
She said there are plenty of white men.
Did she say he was wearing white tennis shoes and a red shirt and blue jeans or loafers?
No.
The first thing they want to know is a description.
You're standing right there looking at the guy.
All she wanted to tell the police was there was some black guy threatening her life
because she was hoping they weren't going to come,
and that would be the end of the story for him.
And she wanted to make him scared.
So these are the things that we also have to deal with,
not just people in the Klan or in the alt-right,
but just individuals who think like this.
Because, you know, if we're going to change the system, we've got to change the people who run the system.
The system isn't going to change by itself. In that situation that you just mentioned, like I said, we're having a lot of conversations these days about this type of situation, like relations between ethnicities.
And one thing that I'm seeing used a lot is the term white privilege.
And I've been hearing a lot of individuals hearing that terminology way more nowadays than ever.
I mean, you used to hear it a bit bit but now you're hearing that all the time um but what i'm noticing also is that as much as we know that like in this
situation with amy cooper and and i think his last name was also cooper i forgot his first name
christopher cooper christopher cooper um as you can see she she knew where her privilege did lie there and she knew how to weaponize it. She knew, like she knew his relationship with the cops. You can also see a lot of individuals kind of going about the use of the term white privilege, uh, a little bit too broad.
I'm seeing it a lot. I'm seeing whenever, you know, conversations are happening and maybe a white person says something, uh, it just may be ignorant because they just don't know the white
privilege hammer comes down. And then honestly, the conversation just kind of disseminates because
again, it's being used very broadly. So my question to you is, um, how can we explain what
white privilege actually is, but then also from the side of
using that terminology how is it best used because many times like i said it's being a
term that's being weaponized against an individual rather than a term that's trying to be used to
educate an individual yes sort of like uh the race card you know it's the reverse of the race card um
i think you know when these when these things are done if you know if you are truly seeing
white privilege then explain why why why you're saying this is white privilege rather than just
to say well you know you just got away with white privilege.
A lot of it is white privilege because again,
one's perspective is one's reality. And if they don't know, they don't know,
you know? And, and,
and there's really no reason for them to know because it doesn't happen to them. You know, they don't experience these things.
They don't get pulled over late at night and beaten up things like that. You know, they go home every night. So if't get pulled over late at night and beaten up
uh things like that you know they go home every night so if you got pulled over late at night
and got beaten up it's like well what did you do you know you had to have done something
so you know they don't they don't get it that that's their white privilege
um it's like i've gone into stores and um in fact this, this girl, you know, I'm a musician and I was,
I was accompanying her on the piano and she was riding with me and we stopped
at a gas station and she went in to get soda pop or whatever candy.
And I came in after her. And so I was in line right behind her.
And she was white. And so we got to the, to the counter.
I got my little potato chips or whatever.
And she paid the lady with whatever bill she gave her. And the lady put the change back in her hand. My turn, she's standing there waiting for me. I give the lady my bill and held my hand for the change and she put it down on the counter.
hand. I just stood there like this until she picked it up and put it in my hand. And my friend said, I don't believe it. I've heard about that, but I didn't believe it. I see it. I just witnessed
it. I told her that's white privilege. You know, you don't see, you know, you don't see those
things unless you experience them. It took that for her to see. I mean, she wasn't racist at all. And she certainly was not a stupid person, you know, but
that's not in her bubble. That's not in her world
because she doesn't have to go through that. But now she sees it and now she can relate to it.
So not everybody, you know, has that experience of being
exposed to it firsthand like she was. That's why
it's incumbent upon us, you know, if we're
going to tell somebody they have something or tell them what they are, what we think,
then we have to have reason to tell them and help them to understand, give them examples.
Like, you know, you can say, you know, hey, you know, I walked into an elevator and, you know,
white lady grabbed her purse, you know, but she wasn't grabbing it when the white guy came in the elevator or something like that.
We all have seen those examples or you and I get followed around the store.
We either get followed around the store or nobody wants to help us, one or the other.
Would it be fair to say that being black in America is like an extra
challenge? Like we all have challenges. We all face challenges.
You know, and then that's some people's, you know, they just say, Oh,
we all have challenges. You got to get over it.
But do you feel that being black is just like an,
it's an extra challenge that you have to deal with day in and day out?
Yes,
because we have all the challenges that these people who say get over it have.
We have those challenges.
We lose jobs.
We get divorced.
We, you know, our kid fails his test or, you know, whatever the challenges they have, we
have the wife gets sick.
We got to take care of her and so forth and so on.
Those are normal everyday challenges of life. So as long as anybody's living, I don't care if you're Asian, Hispanic, Black, White, Mongolian, we all have those challenges of life. have to deal with in a area where people who fit that profile are not welcome or are feared.
So, yes, you know, it's like police officers, you know, it's said, you know, when they go
out, they put on that badge and gun and that uniform and they go to work, they go out,
they are putting their lives on the line. They are, you know, when they pull somebody over on
the highway for speeding and they walk into that car, they don't know, you know, if they're going
to be able to walk back to their car. The guy might pull a gun. It has happened. So yes, they are putting their lives on the line. But you know what? I feel
when I walk out this door, this
is my uniform. And I'm putting my life on the line too.
Because I might not come home. And that's the
problem that these people in these football
stands, stadiumss don't understand they go and they
cheer for their team and you got black guys and white guys working together on the football field
to win that game you know on your team you have black guys and white guys and they all get along
it's all fine and everybody in the bleachers in the stadium, you know,
is cheering their team of black guys and white guys.
They love them. You know, they idolize them.
They're sports celebrities.
But what they don't realize is when those black guys leave the stadium
and are driving home, it's a different story.
It's a different story.
On the field, they're all recognized and treated with respect,
and everybody loves them.
But when they leave the stadium, they go into another world.
And that is what that man was kneeling about.
And that's what they don't get, so they boo him.
And the president of the United States called him a son of a bitch.
And then now, when you get all these white cops out there kneeling,
where do we hear,
where do we hear the president calling them the same name?
That's what we see.
I liked what I saw in Virginia,
which some people might disagree with me,
but there's a lot of people protesting and they were vandalizing and they
took down some statues and
stuff like that. And the police didn't step in. And one of the officials in the area, I don't know
if it was the mayor or chief of police, I'm not sure who it was. He said, it's just a rock,
you know, and I think, you know, when we think when we think about right, we think about human
life, right versus, versus what happened to that, to that stone that was etched in, I don't even know who it was.
It was Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.
Right. And so when we even think about the American flag, like I am patriotic.
I love a lot of things about America.
But the flag is just, you know, something that we printed stars and stripes on it's something
that we made up and we have a certain identity to it and when it comes to these statues these
monuments um you know i'm not in favor of seeing them all like torn up and ripped down there's
probably better ways of of uh you know making some of these things happen but these these statues
are there and they represent uh things from our history that that aren't great.
And I think that it's that's a good vantage point to say, hey, yeah, it's just it's just a rock.
It's not worth beating the crap out of people over.
And maybe those things shouldn't be there to represent us because maybe they're not representing the right right things.
I agree with you. And I don't think, well, a lot of the, not all of the statues,
but a lot of the statues were put up long after the Civil War, some in the 1920s,
some in the 1960s, as a slap to integration, slap in the face of integration. None of them should
have been put up in the first place. But the ones that were put up long after the Civil War
were used to insult
people.
Okay, so
you're going to make us integrate with you.
We're going to put our statues and our
flags up just to piss you off.
In the state of Virginia, which is right
next door to me,
I'm 20 minutes from the Virginia line,
15 minutes from D.C. Virginia and
D.C. and Maryland are all right there together. Anyway, every county courthouse in Virginia
has a Confederate statue in front of it. And guess who built those courthouses? Black people.
And back in the day, even the old courthouses, the historic ones, were built by the slaves.
Back in the day, if a black person had to go to court, he had to go through the back door of the courthouse.
So today, of course, we go through the front door.
But if I have to go to Virginia to go to court for something, maybe I was speeding down the street or whatever and got a ticket over there in Virginia, I go to court, to traffic court.
I have to walk past that Confederate statue.
And I have to wonder to myself, am I going to get equal justice or am I going to get Confederate justice?
So those things need to go.
All right.
They should not be destroyed.
I don't believe in destroying them.
They can be put in a museum. A Confederate
memorial park can be built, and they can be put over there. Now, the government should not pay
for that park. You know, sons of the Confederacy and whatever else can pay for it or whatever.
They can be put there, and their flag can be flown there. The Confederate flag does not deserve to be flown over the state capital of South Carolina.
You know, we had to make it come down because it does not represent everybody in South Carolina.
The state capital does, not that flag.
So, you know, if people want to honor their ancestors and all that kind of stuff who fought in the Civil War,
they can go to the park, They can go to the museum.
Listen, I had ancestors who fought in the Confederacy.
All right.
I'm a descendant of slaves.
I was born in Chicago only because my father had a job there at the time.
But my parents are from Virginia, Roanoke and Salem.
All right.
So which was the seat of the Confederacy, the state of Virginia.
And if you know anything about American history,
you know that the slaves had to fight for their slave masters in the Civil War.
So my ancestor's slaves fought in the Confederacy.
Now, I honor my ancestors because without them I wouldn't be here,
but I don't honor slavery or the Confederacy myself.
There are some people who do.
But and that's, you know, that's their business.
They can go to their park.
The loser does not get to build his statue.
The loser does not get to fly his flag.
We went to war against Japan when they bombed Pearl Harbor.
We have plenty of plenty of Japanese Americans here in this country. And some of their ancestors were involved in that war against the United States with Japan. But do these people erect
statues of Hirohito and whoever else for the Japanese flag? No. Japan lost. We went to war against Germany, against Adolf Hitler. There are countless German-Americans in this country, and you agree with them or not, you were under him and you fought for him.
You stood for what he stood for.
He was a dictator.
If you didn't, you were eliminated.
So those people love their ancestors.
Do they erect statues of Adolf Hitler and Goebbels and all these other people and fly swastika flags outside their house?
No.
The South lost the war.
Get over it.
That's my attitude.
Don't destroy those things.
That's part of our history.
Go build a park, get a museum, and go there and honor those people
if that's what you want to do.
But the government should not pay for it.
Just like we wouldn't pay for a statue of Hitler
just because we want to honor German-Americans, or a statue
of the Emperor of Japan just because we want to honor Japanese-Americans.
So why would we build a statue
of Robert E. Lee? Why would we pay for
a Confederate park? The Confederacy lost. They got to understand
that. You know, it's just like slave plantations. You can go take a tour of slave plantations,
and some of them charge you money to go on the property and go look at the slave quarters and
see the big antebellum colonial homes
and all this other kind of stuff.
I would not pay money to go see that.
Why would I pay money to go on a piece of property that my ancestors fought so
hard to get the hell off of?
Now I've been, I've seen all that stuff.
I've seen it on the free places and I've been to Goree Island over in Africa, where a lot of the slaves came from. I lived in Senegal. I lived in Africa for 10 years. So I visited Goree Island for free. And I saw that. But why would I pay money to go on a piece of property that my people died and fought trying to get off of.
Do you think rioting is necessary? I mean, it definitely draws a lot more attention to the
situation. I don't think most rational people are in favor of violence of any kind or burning
buildings, but it does seem like it made things more urgent.
It seems like it maybe did put pressure on people.
Let me explain that to you.
You're saying violence is not necessary.
Right.
And that's what we've been saying.
That's what we've been saying for 400 years.
Right.
There was violence in choking that man to death up in new york eric
garner there was violence on kneeling on the man's neck it was violence and hanging somebody from a
tree um so and speaking i digress for a second speaking of hanging somebody from a tree george
floyd was not murdered he was lynched he was. OK, what's the definition for that of lynching?
Yeah. Of of taking somebody who who who allegedly has committing has committed a crime and murdering that person before they have their day in court.
So a lot of people think lynching is just hanging somebody from a tree.
You know, Emmett Till was lynched. He wasn't a tree.
And he was beaten and tortured and thrown in the river
The guy in
James Byrd
In Jasper, Texas
The Klan, you remember a few years ago, back in the 90s
The Klan grabbed him
And chained him to the back of a pickup truck
And dragged him to his death
That was a lynching
So
You've seen those pictures of lynchings in the 1920s where a whole family
is out there and all kinds of white people stand there pointing at the black
men hanging in the tree and smiling.
They're posing for the camera.
And some of those pictures were turned into postcards.
And they would send them to their families out of state
you know you know this is how we handle our nigger problem and there were postcards of this
google uh lynchings and you'll see them that was a lynch mob these people were arrested either
um legally or illegally they were arrested for what they did or even arrested for
what they didn't do, you know. And before they could go to court, a mob goes in, a white mob
goes in, snatches them out of the cell and brings them to a tree and strings them up.
That's a lynch mob. And oftentimes, not all the time, but oftentimes the authorities were
in on it. They'd leave the door unlocked because they knew the lynch mob was coming and they didn't
want their jail torn up. So they unlocked the door. Otherwise the door would get broken down.
You know, and how do you get into a locked cell? Somebody let the door unlock, you understand? So when you have all these people
standing there
watching somebody be murdered
by hanging him on a tree,
and then you pose for pictures,
what I
saw
those two Mondays ago
when George Floyd
was breathing his last breath.
That was a lynching, okay?
You got two officers, one holding him down on the back,
even though he wasn't moving, he wasn't resisting.
He's handcuffed.
Other guy holding him down on the legs.
One guy standing on the sidewalk holding the young people passing by
from getting too close.
And Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck, looking right at the camera the whole time that he's being filmed until this man took his last breath.
That is a lynching.
That's a lynching.
So back to the protests and the rioting and stuff.
I'm totally against all this looting and stuff.
That is not called for.
That is never called for.
Shame on those people.
And I'll tell you, I don't believe that the majority,
I would say probably 99% of the protesters were not involved in that looting.
I believe those people were the people
who were exploiting the protests for their own benefit, whether they were Black. I mean,
there were Blacks and Whites doing that, but they were not involved in the cause.
All right. They were there to stir up trouble, create dissension or whatever. You know,
some said, you know, there was Antifa, there was white supremacists involved, nationalists, et cetera,
who are blending in with the protesters, et cetera.
Yeah, probably.
Okay, because that's how they do.
They exploit.
But I don't advocate and I'm not justifying the burning down of the buildings,
but I understand it.
I understand it. And there is a reason why that happens.
And let me explain that to you. Cause people always say to me,
I don't understand why, you know, why you people, so you people,
why you people, you know, set fires, you know, to,
to the buildings and stuff and even in your own neighborhood and blah,
blah, blah. Here's the reason.
Because we have been crying out, we have been demanding to be heard. And again, nobody was listening. Now, if you are driving down the street speeding,
or you run through a red light, cop pulls you over, you get a citation, you get a ticket.
like cop pulls you over, you get a citation, you get a ticket.
If you do something to somebody and hurt them or something, they sue you.
If you don't pay your credit card bill on time, you get a late fee attached to it.
All these examples I just gave you are costing you money. And the reason why you get the ticket or you get the late penalty or the lawsuit is to deter your behavior from
occurring again. They figure if they can separate you from your money, you will modify your behavior
because nobody likes to be separated from their money. You work hard for that money.
Somebody sues you for $50,000 and they win, you know,
or you get $150 speeding ticket or $25 extra on your, on your credit card bill because you, because you didn't pay it on time.
Chances are you're going to modify your behavior.
You're not going to speed down that street again.
You're not going to do whatever it was you did to that guy, to somebody else.
And you are going to put your credit cards on time.
So money modifies your behavior if you're separated from it.
Well, these people have been begging to be heard for decades and nobody is listening.
And then they go to the court and the court is unbalanced.
It's not blind justice.
You know, it's this kind of justice, you know, peeping out of one eye.
So they're frustrated.
The only way they can get your attention is the same way you get theirs.
They hit them in the wallet.
So they go and they burn down the city.
That costs the city millions and millions and millions of dollars
to rebuild. And the insurance companies that have to insure those people, the insurance companies
are mad at the police because they got to pay out because all these buildings have insurance.
So the insurance companies want the police to also modify their behavior because the insurance companies, you know how they are, they don't want to get rid of their money.
They want you to pay premiums, but when it comes time to collect, they don't want to pay you.
But now they have to.
So when you hit somebody like that and cost them millions of dollars, all of a sudden they pull the earplugs out, and now they're willing to hear you.
You understand?
I'm not laughing at it, but it's just ironic.
I don't advocate burning down buildings
and I don't justify it,
but I'm just giving you the reason why it's happening.
Because you're separating the city from its money.
And you saw how fast the firing happened
and the arrests were made.
And then when the third degree murder, whatever that is, was instituted,
more buildings got burned down and a new prosecutor came in,
took over the case and upped it to a second degree murder.
And he may up it to first degree if there's enough evidence.
You mentioned Antifa.
You educated us better than anybody on the KKK. Can you educate us on who Antifa is and why do they keep getting mentioned so much during these protests and riots?
and here, you know, there was an Antifa movement in Italy and in Germany way back when,
and they've just taken that, you know, that name. And here they, a lot of them are, or they actually said they have a lot of anarchists involved with them. Their goal is
to get rid of racism, which is an admirable goal.
I don't necessarily agree with the methods that they do it.
They can be very violent, very destructive, very aggressive, and they are definitely very impatient.
I've had my run-ins with Antifa.
I, too, want to get rid of racism, but I don't believe in causing violence and overthrowing the government and attacking the police and all that kind of stuff.
And they will. And they will attack anybody who does not agree with their methods.
The anarchists join that because they're ready to rumble and they want to instigate chaos.
So that's a good place to do it. Just like the people who want to exploit the protesters. You know, they burn down the buildings, other ones go in there and loot, you know, that kind of thing. So I've had several run-ins with Antifa because I'm willing to sit down and talk with the KKK or neo-Nazis, and they don't like that.
they don't like that. In fact,
one of them called me a white supremacist, which
just caused me to burst out laughing
because, I mean, I've been called every
name in the book except my own name,
but that was the first time I've been called
a white supremacist. So, I
mean, you know, when you call me a white
supremacist, you've already lost the fight.
That was your last round of
ammunition.
Yeah, thank you so much.
We appreciate it, man.
And I think your points about the rioting, I think, really makes a lot of sense.
And I think sometimes it's important for things to go a little too far, I think, sometimes.
I think it sucks that there has been buildings burnt down. It sucks that there's been people hurt in the riots, but
in order to dispel some of these myths and these misconceptions that people have been walking
around with in their heads for so long. I think sometimes there's no other way to do it than to,
you know, have what's going on to happen. Because I think sometimes people
just aren't willing to listen to reason. With your own experience with going into the KKK and talking
to those leaders, it seems like you may have dispelled the myth that people aren't willing
to listen. Have you still run into people, though, after having good conversation with them,
have you still run into people that still are just they don't care about what you said?
They don't care about the information you shared with them.
Sure.
They're people like that for sure.
But there are more.
I've had more good experiences than I've had bad.
But there will always be people, you know, who won't listen.
And, you know, they will go to their graves being hateful, violent and racist.
won't listen and, you know, they will go to their graves being hateful, violent, and racist.
And, you know, and here's another thing. This time around, not only do we have more collective voices that represent this country, all ethnicities coming and marching with us,
and which is giving the attention of the people who need to hear it. They're seeing this for the
first time, but it's also giving the attention of the world. We are in a fishbowl now, and other countries
around the world are looking at us and having their own protests. See signs for George Floyd
over in Berlin, Germany, in London, you know, in Paris, and other places, because we are in a
fishbowl. They are demanding not only justice in our country, but also in their own countries.
So that's why I say, you know, this page is turning, you know, for the first time a lot further, you know, than it has turned before.
And that's not to discount all the work that's led up to this, because without the previous people, you know, doing their thing, we could not have gotten to this point to do our thing. So it's very important, you know, that this thing is happening and is getting the attention that it's getting.
But with the riots that have been going on, we can understand why it's happening and we can understand why it's effective. But you hear many people trying to compare, looking down on the riots, trying to compare it to Martin Luther King and how peaceful he was.
And you hear that narrative a lot.
What do you, what's your take on that idea?
Because people are trying to say, oh, they should be peaceful like MLK was.
They were doing sit-ins, etc.
But not everything was like that when they were doing protests.
And usually the people who are saying that are the ones who stood by and let black churches be burned down and bombed.
They either stood by or they participated in it.
And now they're trying to move the needle over.
Well, how come y'all aren't more like Martin Luther King?
All he did was come in and sit on the floor, sit at the counter,
and let people pour stuff on their heads or just march.
You know, you know, he didn't do all this stuff.
Well, you know, there were riots and there were white people who threw rocks at him and and people who pulled out police dogs and fire hoses and all kinds of other stuff.
Now, a lot of black churches got bombed and burned to the ground because they were registration centers for black
people. And even in the 1980s, there was a stream of churches being burned. I knew one of the guys
who was responsible for that in the Klan. I knew him personally. He didn't like me. I didn't like
him. His name was Horace King. He died in prison. He was the Grand Dragon of South Carolina. Anyway,
of South Carolina.
Anyway,
these protesters are not going around
setting fires to churches,
burning down schools
that educate Black people.
You know, people
like groups like ISIS
and Al-Qaeda,
they want to cause as much
destruction to people.
To people. That's the difference.
The clan that was burning down these places wanted to destroy people, as does al Qaeda and ISIS.
So where is a good place to go to to to kill as many people as you can in one fell swoop?
A school, a hospital, those people can't escape.
They're in hospital beds with needles in them
and ventilators and whatever else.
So, you know, these people are vicious and inhumane
who go and drop a bomb on a hospital or on a school.
These protesters are not doing that.
They're not burning down buildings with people in them.
Unlike the Tulsa race riots where white mobs went into Greenwood in Tulsa
and burned down people's homes with them in it.
And if they tried to escape, they got shot.
And then they went in there and looted the houses.
You know, this is not what this protest is about.
The burning in these cases are to get your attention.
And if you don't listen, then we're going to do the same thing. We're going to cost you money.
In World War II, Pearl Harbor got attacked in 1943 on December 7th or something.
What did we do? We went and dropped a bomb, a nuclear bomb, on Hiroshima and on Nagasaki. When Muammar Gaddafi of Libya
shot down Pan Am 103 or something, what did we do? We went and dropped a bomb on his palace.
He was not home at the time. He was out in the desert. But allegedly, his little daughter was
killed in that thing when Reagan dropped the
bomb. When Saddam Hussein threatened us, what did we do? We came over there and bombed his country.
So, we're not strangers to punishing people, you know, and going overboard with it. But these
protesters are not doing that. They're not killing people. They are trying to
get your attention so that you will listen. And as you listen and things change, things start to
get... You see now the protests aren't as strong. They're still strong in spirit, but they're not
on mosques. You don't see the burnings. You don't see all this going on because people are starting to listen. So maybe in the future, there won't be any burnings. I'm not saying it's the tool to use.
I'm just pointing out why it's used. You've been a great resource for us. I really appreciate it.
Where can people find it? Where can people follow along and get more information from you?
get more information from you? Daryldavis.com. D-A-R-Y-L-D-A-V-I-S.com. And I hope people will call me or email me, Daryldavis.com. See my website. And let's all get together. Let's all
do this thing collectively because we are supposed to be the United States of America,
not the Confederate States of America, the United States of America, not the Confederate States of America, the United
States of America.
And when you hold your hand over your heart and I hold my hand over my heart and we say
the Pledge of Allegiance, we should both be believing in the same thing.
One nation, indivisible, under God, with liberty and justice for all. But right now, we are not one
nation. We are not indivisible. We are very divided. And it's certainly no liberty and
justice for all. So that's where we want to get to so think about that next time you
said the pledge of allegiance not everybody not everybody gets that you know that there's some
people who are not getting liberty and justice for all and there's some people who are very
divided and that's what we have to fix so that we all can be equally proud to say to say those words
well said thank you again uh, always a pleasure
to have you on the show and, uh, can't wait to meet you in person one day. Absolutely. Thank
you guys. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. Okay. Take care of
y'all. Always fun having him on the show. Always, always good's the best got a lot of a lot of great
information um just to clear something up when i was talking about those statues uh you know i'm
not in favor of like vandalizing stuff i'm not in favor of that necessarily but what i thought was
was great was it's hard to figure out how to like defend these pieces of property and
the main thing is any of this stuff could be rebuilt.
You know, if they if they thought that there's any reason to put up certain statues or they
thought certain statues do represent parts of America that people believe in or think
is fair, then they can reestablish that.
But, you know, the ones they took down, obviously, they took those down for they're ripping those
down for a reason.
But I thought, what a great attitude by the law enforcement in the area to just say, it's
just a rock, you know?
And I think if both sides can kind of get to that position of like, it doesn't actually
really mean anything.
We shouldn't be like killing each other over it.
We shouldn't be beating the hell out of each other over it.
Just like, you know, and I, at the same time, it's hard because you don't want people just to, you know, overrun and beat the hell out of everything and burn everything down because that does cost money and it causes other problems. where we can recognize that we have a filtering system in our brain to where we can filter out
what we see, what we hear, and we don't always have to attach feelings to it and then have
irrational action behind that, then I think we'll be in a better spot.
It's a really, really tough thing to do nowadays, though. A lot of the things I was asking him was
pertaining to person-to-person interaction, Because a lot of the things that we are talking about with each other, if you ask me something, it's going to
immediately yield typically an emotional response. And it's hard not to respond with that. But if you
do respond emotionally, that kind of cuts off the whole conversation. That cuts off you learning
something or me learning something from you just because my emotion shades what the
intention of the conversation is supposed to be so i think he was a great person to talk to about
all of that yeah it might cloud the information that you're trying to give me and you might just
i mean sometimes people go back and forth in conversation and they finally just say hey well
i just think what you're saying is stupid i just just think what you're saying is stupid. I think what you're saying is dumb.
And then it's like, well, I don't know how that helps anything progress forward any further.
But if you're stating, hey, this is how I see it.
This is my vantage point.
This is my experience.
And you can say, well, hold on a second.
I kind of agree with some of what you said there.
But what about this?
And then we get in conversation and we start to figure out a way to move forward on it.
But like you said, it's not easy.
But I'm saying even if it's a statue of Jesus, I don't care what it is.
I don't think none of it really has to, it doesn't have to mean anything unless you want to put meaning on top of it.
If you think a statue of Jesus is willing, you're willing to die for it, then that's your interpretation of what Jesus means to you, and you can go for it.
But I just don't think it's rational, personally.
Yeah, I was going to ask you, is there a symbol like the American flag or something that you do believe shouldn't be messed with?
I don't think so.
Okay.
We don't need any of those things
we're not born with any of those things they're all stuff that's made up yeah i i do think however
uh so these are these are materialistic symbolic things so those are i understand why people get
upset over them and i'm not saying that i don't have any emotion if I see like a burning flag or something.
But what I am saying is that you would, I would rather see if someone is going to like fight,
that they fight over principle and ideas and concepts to help progress and preserve maybe some ideas and concepts. And I think that's kind of what's happening is some people are like,
no, the Confederate flag is, you know, it represents, you know, A, B, and C. And I think that's kind of what's happening. Some people are like, no, the Confederate flag is, you know, it represents, you know,
A, B, and C, and I don't think we should do that to it.
And other people are like, no, because it represents A, B, and C, that's why we're getting
rid of it.
You know, so you end up with people on opposite sides of the coin.
But if you think about it, you're like, you're fighting over a flag, like, it really gives
a fuck.
Yeah.
Honestly.
Yeah.
And, you know, like how he said, he's people will argue like no it's heritage like that's actually all i've ever really heard so
it's i love that he's explaining like no like it represents slavery because that's you know that
was their side and they lost but you're right it is like a piece of material. We get really heavily involved in tradition.
You know, there's traditions that are just dumb.
Well, I guess.
You know, it's like shaking hands.
I mean, we've talked about that on the podcast before.
It's like that's not, you know, with a virus going around and stuff like that.
I understand.
Like, that's what we're used to, know a hug a high five you know but like
maybe that's just maybe that's just a thing that has been passed on from generation to generation
that isn't uh productive maybe it is productive maybe somebody else can say actually when you
shake hands and you make contact and you pick up the other germs from the other person's actually
helpful to your immune system but i don't i'm'm unaware of data like that or don't know.
It seems like it would be better just to give you a little bow or just acknowledgement.
Hey, man, what's up?
Like, doesn't that have to be enough?
I don't know.
I think it's, I mean, because I know I've heard this before when it comes to like people
in gangs and stuff.
It's like, dude, you're really fighting each other over a color you wear.
Like, how silly is that?
It's like, dude, you're really fighting each other over a color you wear.
Like, how silly is that?
That's way, that's a different conversation.
But that's like making it really obvious what Mark's talking about.
It's the same thing.
Like, I mean, yeah, it's just.
You shot the guy because he was wearing red?
Yeah.
You know, like, yep.
So, if that is very clear, this, you know, I think we can do a good job.
Or we have an opportunity to make this just as clear. Yeah. Well know there's a lot of irrational shit like when you said the that it
just reminds me like you know certain people hate people because they're gay certain people hate
people because they're black it's just it's really fucking dumb it's just really really stupid yeah
we're showing up at a at a football game wearing the other team's jersey.
You know what I was thinking about the other day?
Because, you know, the whole Kaepernick
protest, getting on the knee, right?
I don't know if we talked about this here, but
getting on the knees, like, yeah, did we talk
about this? How it's like, literally,
it's almost like reverence. When people
get on their knees, like,
they're gonna
pray, right? Like, it's it's almost like reverence when people get on their knees like they're gonna they're gonna
pray right like it's usually something about prayer i was my mind went somewhere else at that
for a second but it's usually to get down and like pray it's tim tebow went down on one knee
he did different right he did he went down on one knee and like it was it was reverence and it's
like when that was being done i can't think of anything like more passive that you could do.
What do you want?
Do you want to be splayed on the ground like this instead?
Like,
like it's just thinking about it.
It's not like he took his,
it's not like he dropped his pants down around his ankles.
Exactly.
He could have done something much worse.
He could have.
Yeah.
It's just,
I just,
I just think about how ridiculous it is, man.
It's just.
Yeah, and a lot of his protests got kind of hijacked because then people made it about the anthem and about the flag.
He was really just trying to.
I mean, who knows exactly what his exact intentions were, but whatever it is, it worked because it just had people have conversation.
Yeah.
You believe what Kaepernick did?
What an asshole.
And it got people talking.
It got people having a conversation and some people are like actually he was doing it against
you know police brutality and some people are like i don't like it because you know it's against it
it's against the anthem it's against tradition and it's like well part of having freedom is the
choice to you know unfortunately part of having freedom is to even be racist.
It's all part of it. You get to pick and choose what you want to be.
But as soon as you start stepping on other people's toes, you start to outwardly do things that are hateful, that's when we end up with a lot of problems.
Louis Simmons, I think, said it best in Bigger, Stronger, Faster.
He said, my morals are my morals and your morals are your morals. Who am i to judge you and who are you to judge me i love that philosophy
you know just and if we're not outwardly encroaching on each other's uh morals and
ideas and concepts and you know i'm not doing anything to you your family i'm not doing anything
to a another race then you know what I mean?
Like it's, it's, everything should be, everything should be kosher.
Someone not liking someone's perfectly okay, but you just, you better not, it better not
lead to, I guess their detriment or damaging them in any way.
That's fine.
Right.
Is it, is it, uh, is it impacting society in a negative way?
Yep.
Which it very well could be because if you own a company, you could be making decisions based off of your bias.
And you could be making decisions in your day-to-day that are based off your bias that could potentially not be helpful, I guess I'd say.
Yep.
Yeah.
And this is a really crazy realization.
Yeah, and then this is a really crazy realization, but, you know, we were talking about redlining and, like, how if you were from a certain area, you were not allowed to get or you weren't going to get a loan for another, you know, better neighborhood and stuff. It was pretty interesting.
Like, I actually could see the people who were putting, you know, placing bids on my house, like, who they were.
Like, some would even send pictures and stuff.
house, like who they were, like someone even sent pictures and stuff. And I was just like, man,
if I like really wanted to, like, I can just make sure to like outwardly seek out a certain race or,
you know, color of skin or something. And I was just like, it kind of, I don't know,
it just maybe because everything that's going on right now, it just blew me away to think like,
like, damn, that's another way that, you know, like systemic racism would continue on it. Sure, the banks are going to now give those loans, but if that is still ingrained in society,
like it could still continue on and it just happens a different way.
It just really tripped me out.
Like, like almost to the point where like, I got the chills, just like, oh shit.
Like if I wanted to, I could say no to all these people.
And yes to this person, even though their offer sucks.
Like it's just wild.
Like just,
yeah,
you're really,
you're really taking into consideration your neighborhood.
How are these people going to fit into this neighborhood?
It shouldn't really even be a factor.
It's like,
you know,
can they afford the home?
And I mean,
the transaction should be,
should be pretty simple.
I mean,
and then,
but even think about how it could even be worse
than that if you're renting it you know if you're renting it now you really get to pick and choose
you get to like almost interview you're like you do you get to interview the person and say oh well
this person's not coming into my neighborhood yeah no it's just crazy yeah because i mean i
did think i'm like okay well my neighbors speak sp, if, like, a Mexican family moves in, like, they might get along better and, like, sort of that thing.
And then I'm like, you know what?
Fuck it.
Like, we're just going to accept the best offer, whoever that is, or whatever offer fits us, you know, the best.
What about the idea for the registry?
That sounds kind of neat.
I mean, I'm sure you'd have to examine and, you know, make sure that that's, you know, something that's just as well, because you don't want to just, you know, have a reaction and throw something in there.
But I think something like that's great.
That's a smart idea.
And I don't know, like, it's kind of odd that they don't have anything like that.
I mean, maybe they do.
I don't know.
That's what I was thinking. It's like, we're talking about police officers having a registry basically of,
uh,
I guess,
shared historical information about their actions.
Um,
yeah,
I don't know.
I don't know.
Like I,
I just,
with him mentioning it on the show today,
it sounds like a good idea,
but if you think about it more,
there could be potential reasons on,
on why it doesn't exist or why it's not a,
not a thing. But at first glance glance i think it sounds like a i think it sounds like a great idea i'd
imagine they have something internally that we don't have access to right i mean because right
your work history is going to follow you regardless but and it should it be public information yeah
you're right that is that is something i mean think about this sex offenders have yeah
they have a public one but okay there are sex offenders who have let's say it was a guy and a
girl and they they're just stupid young 20 year olds having sex in a park they're sex offenders
and now they're on that list you know right for for something like that i mean you shouldn't do
that right but at the same time
maybe you shouldn't be on a list of other sex of sex offenders right so when it comes to something
like that like yeah i think that that kind of shit if cops are actually brutalizing people
should be on a list well and they said with uh derek chauvin i think he had 19 yeah he had you
know kind of a a lot of complaints i don't't I never looked into how, you know, how far down, you know, he I never looked into what they were.
But it it does sound like a lot.
You know, it sounds like he was a cop for around the same amount of years as complaints and have, you know, a complaint every year.
I think is a lot.
You know, maybe somebody else doesn't think that's that much
i don't know but like that seems like if they're legitimate you know uh you know gripes of him
being overly aggressive and not handling situations in the right way that's i think that's kind of
excessive i think i think they maybe have two or three situations that you didn't maybe handle so well makes makes some sense uh
but to have a history of of racism which i don't know if he has or not um i know there was like a
thing going on around the internet with him wearing a hat that said something i can't even remember
what it said but like there was there was some some history of that but then i think some people
said that that was fake.
At this point, I don't know what's real and what's, what's fake,
but when they take them to court and they go through stuff, you know,
we'll, we'll see what they kind of come up with at that point.
But think about that.
A registry would be so effective because not only would that be public
information, but now you're scared of getting your name on that registry.
Now you need to be more careful in terms of what you do so that you don't have all these people reporting you for misconduct and hurting individuals.
There's now an actual deterrent.
Whereas right now, I don't know if there really is a deterrent.
There's a lot of ways for you to get off with doing stupid stuff.
Yeah, we need to have a chat with some police officers because I think it would be good to I don't know their current protocols and I'm sure they're way different from state to state and stuff.
But like when you're when you are a police officer for X amount of years, do they kind of, you know, do they review do they constantly review you?
It's my understanding that they do a lot of that.
But but I don't I don't really know, you know, somebody that has 19 complaints that's been a police officer for a long time, if I was like the chief of police or something, I would assume I'd be like, this guy's kind of on his last leg.
Like he probably shouldn't be out there.
He shouldn't be in the community, I don't think.
You know what I mean?
I would be mindful of that, but I don't know if there's any sort of way that's any sort of like, you know, way that they check on people that way.
Check on your mental health.
I mean, you know, you're doing some crazy shit.
You're picking up a three year old child that's smashed into the pavement because they got in a car accident or somebody got ripped apart on a motorcycle or, you know, and then you're going to a call about, you know, somebody
who's really high off of drugs and you got, you know, a drunk guy at a bar and then you
have, I mean, let's have like a lot of shit and they get called as we talked about.
They get spread very thin.
It doesn't, it's unfortunate, but it doesn't seem like a job that anybody really, really
wants, especially now, especially with what's going on now.
And so it puts them in a tough position.
Some people think they should get paid more so that they have better credentials.
They get paid more.
And some people are like, they should get paid a lot less.
Some people don't think they should exist.
You know, like, I mean, you know, we're at a weird, a weird crossroads here.
But the good thing is, is that we're asking questions and that we're, you know, hopefully going to start to maybe make some sense of it and figure it out.
You know, my son was, was, we were watching some of the stuff on the news and like, you know, the police officers are hitting these people.
You guys probably saw the same footage.
It was like on day two or day three.
Police officers are bashing these people, men and women, white and black, you know,
in the legs of police officers hitting them in the legs.
And so me and my son had a good conversation about it.
We're like, what do they do?
You know, do they do they retreat?
You know, they were told to go there and they were told to hold the line somewhere.
And you got to think some of these police officers, some of these men and women are kind of maybe militant people to begin with a little bit.
I'm not saying that in a bad way.
I'm just saying that they they want to follow through on protocol.
They're people that like protocol.
Yeah.
And they like following their kind of rule followers. You know, they're going to follow the rules. They had on protocol. They're people that like protocol. Yeah. And they like following.
They're kind of rule followers.
You know, they're going to follow the rules.
They had an assignment.
They're going out there to try to do it.
They told somebody not to cross the line 10 times.
The person crossed the line.
They tell the person another 10 times.
They tell the person several times. I know there's other cops that don't have any patience for it whatsoever.
And they maybe even go on the attack earlier.
I don't have any patience for it whatsoever.
And they maybe even go on the attack earlier, but I'm just going based off of what I was seeing in this one particular, you know, video shot. And then they're firing off tear gas.
And it looks like it looks like another country.
Right.
We're not used to we're not used to seeing that in this country that often.
You know, it looks like we're just looking at another country.
It's like, holy crap.
What's what's going on out there? And then, you know, President looks like we're just looking at another country. It's like, holy crap. What's what's going on out there?
And then, you know, President Trump calls in the National Guard.
And it's like, does that make sense?
Does it make sense to pull in more, you know, more backup?
Do we let people just overrun everything?
Do we just say, fuck it, not even call in the National Guard and just call in the military?
Flat out, you know, like that call in the National Guard and just call in the military? Flat out.
You know, like, there's some people that in their head, that's rational.
Let's just pull in the Marines.
Let's just pull in, you know, whoever you think.
Let's pull in people that have been at war for a long time.
Let's take them.
I'm not saying this is a good idea.
I'm just saying this is what some people are thinking.
And some people think do nothing.
Some people think just vanish the streets.
Just like let people run amok.
Let people do what they want.
But then those own protesters might be hurting each other because you end up with like a mob mentality.
because you end up with like a mob mentality.
I don't know if I would ever be in a protest,
especially like as a younger person, I think I would be probably more scared of it than anything.
But if I was to go to a protest at 18 or 19,
I can picture, you know, kicking a car
because my friends did, you know,
slamming a window with a rock and then kind of running away just because you're a kid and you're
like, you're just, I don't know, you're fucking experimenting with your life and experimenting
with what you're doing.
And what if that rock that you threw hit somebody in the head or something like you just, I
don't know, you're just, it's a mob mentality.
Everybody else is kicking stuff.
Everybody else is causing a ruckus as well. You get caught up in the emotion. I mean, I don't know if you guys,
I'm sure you've all been to concerts and stuff before. Go to a concert and the music starts
going and, you know, people start getting excited and you kind of get goosebumps. Like you get these
feelings that kind of give you an energy that you otherwise wouldn't have. And if you're in like a big, you know,
you're in a big protest like that and people have a lot of energy going,
the car's already beat to shit.
It already says fuck you on the side of it and whatever else it says on the
side of it.
So you're just like, yeah, you know, knock it out window or whatever.
I mean, I can,
I can see that happening with a lot of the younger people that are,
that are going into those things.
And I'm not saying I understand that there's some differences between some of the protesters and some of the vandalizers and some of the people that are looting and burning shit down.
I understand all that.
But I'm just saying, I can see how you can get caught up in those scenarios.
Yeah.
I mean, you see the footage of Santa Monica.
I don't know if you guys saw that, but like just like broad daylight, people walking around
like they just looted like the Apple store and like, you know, hold in IMAX and one in
each hand and cops just flying everywhere.
And it's just happening on like literally every business was getting smashed or like
an ATM machine was like trying to get cracked open.
It was nuts.
So when somebody sees that there's like that's not
helping like the cause or it's not protesting like yeah where's the military now like you know
then it's like yeah for those guys that's cool but but again other people are like no just let them
whatever let it go get out of their system i think apple and maybe a couple other companies were
they were like for it they're like go for it for it. Wow. They just said, fuck it. But they did shut down their phones.
Those phones are disabled, so you can't do anything with them.
But they just said, we'll just rebuild it.
I think that's a decent way of looking at it.
What's the other way of protecting it?
You put people out there with machine
guns i don't know it doesn't that doesn't sound you know imagine you mow down 50 people with
machine guns because they were gonna light a building on fire yeah the eye gun in front of
the apple store yeah i don't know i don't know elon musk will get this all figured out he will we'll email him and then he'll solve everything yeah he's got a handle right yeah i mean he launched a fucking
car into space right yeah wait pause that that didn't happen dude no there's a tesla floating
around out there yeah when that wasn't on the shuttle launch wasn't no it wasn't recent it
was a while ago oh i didn't know about this just because there's a tesla there's a car on its way to mars and you're
not aware i didn't know that oh man i feel so unaware that's crazy it happens he just did it
just because he can that's what's even better about it have you guys seen his his child's name oh yeah he named it like x five seven
whatever something right yeah it's like x the a whatever like changing because i guess you can't
have like a number in there or something or yeah yeah it's like x ash something something there's
a few numbers at the end does he pronounce it a certain way or is it just like the kid's a model
number no the kid kid sounds like a model number pretty much but like the the a and the weird e is pronounced ash what's it based off
a video game or something right is it the date uh deuce x or deus x however you pronounce that
uh you guys are you guys know that our boy angelo who we you know recently had do some uh
media stuff for us he's like top 15 in the world
at uh oh shit now i forget the game what's the game that has a battle battle royal on it fortnight
smash bros oh fortnight no wait not fortnight call of duty there you go wow he's top 15 in the world
in warzone i gotta get it makes sense that's Yeah. I forget what his handle is. It's chubby something.
I got to hit him up then.
Yeah.
So his kid's name is X Ash A12.
And what's it based off of?
Any idea?
Okay.
Let's see.
Let's see.
The SpaceX units.
I don't know.
We'll have to find it later.
But yeah, it's different for sure.
Yeah. Oh, okay. Actually, here we go we go here we go since we're on this uh x is the unknown variable ash my elven spelling of ai love or artificial intelligence a12 precursor to the sr17 our
favorite aircraft no weapons no defenses just. Great in battle, but nonviolent.
Sure.
Yeah.
Sure thing.
Sounds good to me.
Until somebody does the A-13.
That's their next kid.
All right.
I think that's it for today.
What do you guys think?
I think so.
Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode.
Sincerely appreciate that.
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Mark?
Man, I'm getting sore from these last couple workouts.
Really?
Yeah.
I'm not even doing anything either.
That's the worst part.
I'm not even really lifting anything.
My forearms are toast right now.
Man, I'm getting killed out there
maybe i should just quit i'm at mark smelly bell strength is never a weakness
weakness is never a strength catch y'all later