Supremacy and you are the richest nation on earth. [music] And you've done all this because even with white supremacy, you can still accomplish more than anybody. I understand. Then where is the problem? We are here talking about [music] there is something that is just human. When you find yourself in a certain situation, you cannot explain it better. Create a boogeyman fast. But a boogeyman only turns around and imprisons you and your own children. I refuse. There is no psychological effect [music] on any black person on earth. We are just what we are. Different. [music] But can you right now, with your wealth and the people that you know, how much land in Chinatown, anywhere in the United States [music] can you buy right now?

Which Chinatown? In one year? Any Chinatown? How much can you buy right now? [music] Well, I don't know. Zero. They won't allow it. How much can you buy in the diamond district [music] in any place? Let's just start in New York. How much can you blow? How much you buy? Zero. Let's talk about.

No, no, no. I'm making. I just want to give you too many history lessons. I can't verify because you don't know the history. Follow you because you're not a history expert. So don't give me history that as if you're teaching [music] a high school kid. Just ask a list of questions and you said we're going to have this discussion.

We. But to go to Nazi, I wasn't born. I wasn't. You're missing. I'm trying. [music] [music]

All right, welcome back to another episode of the bro chat, where we have real and honest conversations. Get away from the monotonous conversations about dating and relationships and all the goofy stuff we talk about that's entertaining. But you know, we we here to have some real conversations today, man. No book of by go by the name of Eli. As always, we got Ace with us. Yes, indeed. The daily rapper crew, the greatest core with the conversation you've been waiting for. You heard Ace the golden.

Okay. Okay. You was waiting. You you was waiting all week to say that. Was it? No, I just thought about that. Yeah. [laughter] Last but not least, we got Jill. You had it actually flowed. So now I got to I got to come. Hello. Have a great day. No. What it do? What it do? It's your boy Jew. Thank y'all for tuned in. Make sure y'all like and subscribe. You heard? Mhm.

Listen, today's conversation is long overdue. Um, intellectual class with um, two brilliant minds um, that are different different perspectives about the black agenda. Um, on one side, we got Dave Anderson. Other side, we got Frank um, Zenu.

Yes. Um, let me start here with Dave. Can you explain to the audience um, who you are and why you are qualified to have this conversation? I I I feel like um my qualifications are I'm a foundational black American, 22 time bestselling author, radio broadcast professional, husband, father, and liver of the black experience for the past five decades. You know, I don't think I need a doctor, but I got a couple degrees. Okay.

It's all right. Aside from that, I've been living, baby. [laughter] Okay.

And Frank, can you let the audience know who you are and why you are qualified to have this conversation? My name is Frank Zano, of course, uh from Benin Republic, West Africa, and have lived in about nine African countries. Is I was trained to be a journalist. So I've been a reporter for the Washington Times for 13 years. That allowed me to live in Asia, Europe, Africa, and so on. And now, of course, I live in the United States of America. So I have a link. Seems to be the only bridge who can compare what I know from where I came from and then seeing people that were taken from that place now. So I can look at it too and be able to spell out the similarities and what the root cause of some of the problems are.

Um, the first topic I want to get into is how do you define culture? And under your definition, do black Americans have a um, unique um, culture? Let me start here with Frank.

Well, I'm glad you use the word unique uh culture. So, yes, I'm sure you all saw the episode uh, you know, that got everybody on my on my case except this gentleman who was the only one brave enough to say, "Well, look, before I cut him into pieces, let me give him a chance to come into the studio and explain, you know, uh, to to uh, the audience."

Yeah. Uh, so, it's interesting. People say, "Oh, you're from Benin." And I'll say, "Yes." And they say, "What's Benin culture like?" And then I freeze. Cuz there's nothing like a Benin culture. Or if you're from Ghana, or if you from Nigeria, Silon, Liberia, there is no such thing.

Mhm. But if you say, "Oh, you're Euroruba." He said, "Yes, what is Euroruba culture like?" Then he or she is able to start to talk about it.

Mhm. So there are similarities which I'm going to really explain and you can see it. So I'm first going to ask. He's been on my show. I he has been he's seen my. I do not put together that show which I fund from my own pocket because I just want to say things to make people angry. No, it's because I really care. And sometimes I get frustrated about what I have seen from the continent where I come from and what I see here about my great great grandfathers, uncles, sisters who were taken away. So African-Americans would say, "Well, you're not one." Yes, I know. But I'm walking past my cousin, my nieces every day. So what is in my head is what is in their head. And what I'm explaining is something that they must listen to. When I say there is no such thing as African-American culture, they're like, "What do you mean?" But culture for me is not dance, food, clothing. Those are not cultures.

Culture is a worldview. The worldview is what drives people. Their relationship to wealth, to money, to community, to marriage, to family. It's the worldview they have. That's the foundation of a culture. And number two, there is no possibility for you to have a culture without having a language. So if you read most of the books written by brilliant African-Americans, the first thing you see, the headline is the traumatic thing about slavery is not merely changing your environment.

The traumatic thing about slavery is not merely asking you to work long hours. The Russians had hard labor camps in Siberia. Many countries, Japanese had it where people work and they die. The traumatic thing about slavery is one thing only, which everyone has written about. They took our language away. They took our culture away. They took our history and religion away.

That is a traumatic thing about being a slave. Now, if they took those things away, how and when were they recovered? So I met a gentleman. I was attending a conference in Singapore and I met this gentleman who was a Korean sociologist. So we started talking during coffee and I said, "Oh, I lived in Korea for two years when I was reporting." He said, "Oh, wow." And then we started talking. I I can I don't remember how the conversation came about when he asked me. He said, "So your country was colonized?" I said, "Yes." In my his country, Korea was colonized by the Japanese for 49 years. And he said, "What did you guys," meaning referring to people in Benin, "what did you lose as a result of colonization?" And I froze and I said, "Whoa, nobody has ever asked me that question." So I said, "Prof, you tell me, and that will give me some idea." And he said, "No, we're Koreans. We're colonized by the Japanese. So when they left, all we lost was time. We just went back being Koreans."

And from that day, I could tell clearly, what did we lose as a result of colonization in Africa? What did you lose as a result of slavery? [snorts] If you don't fix that which you lost, you are not going to make any way forward. So in Africa, the countries that exist today were never there. They force a group of tribes that have their own distinct cultures to become a country. So they've lost their distinct cultures trying to have a culture as a collective, which is never going to happen. So for me, first and foremost, when I talk about culture, I'm talking about a worldview. Meaning the collective has to have one reason they are here on earth, and that thing is what drives them. It's what makes them wage wars, conquer people, um, anything you ask anybody. In 1884, it was the Irish journalist who finally found a word to describe the Englishman, which he called the manifest destiny. That exceptionalism of the Englishman. Now you call them Americans. The American exceptionalism is the American culture. That they believe that God put them on this earth to colonize and civilize others. And that's what drives them to go out there and try to give freedom and fight for freedom and do all the things they do. Good or bad, I'm not giving any value. You ask the Japanese, you will tell you their worldview. So they are dance and food and no, those are not. I came from a place where as a young boy, I was given a worldview, and it guided me everywhere I went. So when you meet me outside my culture, you can tell from my behavior, he must come from a culture that believes in XYZ. [snorts] So a culture becomes more pronounced when you are outside the group as an individual outside your group. People must be able to tell.

Okay. Uh, Dave, what is your rebuttal to that?

It's not so much a rebuttal. It's a difference in philosophy, right? It is. And I I think we got to thank Frank for even coming here because I know for some people this would be very adversarial. Frank and I, we talk all the time. We we're very, very good folk. And there's a couple of things that I got to push back on simply because they were not available to us. See, when Frank was born, he inherited a culture.

We had to make one with what we had. Some of us, if you take any, if I were to swab any one of you, you would find some Nigerian, you would find some Ghanaian. Like, we had to hodgepodge. Not to mention, out of all of the places that black people were forced into when we were slaves, 3% came to what we now consider the United States of America. And then we were bred. Over time, we were buck broken. Over time, they would take our women and uh, grape them out of respect for your channel, you know what I'm saying? Drop the G. And then on top of that, they had a uh, a split breast system. And the split breast system means that one breast would feed the white children of the slave master, and the other would feed the black children that were going to be bought off and sold. We also have a situation where we had to face things that no other black person on the continent had to face. You know, taking our children and feeding them to alligators, lynching, Jim Crow, all of those things. And when you look at it, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, the pulse of America runs through foundational black Americans. Who was the first person to die in the Revolutionary War? Crispus Attucks, black man, foundational black American, right? Harriet Tubman made the Underground Railroad and stopped it in Philadelphia. There are all of these things that have happened that make it who we are. Now, as a person who was the first black youth president of an organization called the National Conference of Christians and Jews, to Frank's point, I do agree. You don't really see your culture until you're out of it. So, I'm a raisin in buttermilk in a conversation where there's a bunch of white Christians and a bunch of Jewish people, and they're like, "Hey, we do this." I'm like, "No, no, black people don't do that." You know what I'm saying? From the way we walk, the way we talk, the way we eat, the way we move. Not to mention, you can't go anywhere on this earth without seeing our influence. The problem is, unlike any other black culture on the face of the planet, we have been colonized and monetized for profit by everyone, including the Koreans. K-pop ain't nothing but R&B. Let's call it what it is. And it's R&B under duress. Cuz if you look at what happened with Megan Thee Stallion when she was dealing with those K-pop girls, she was like, "Oh, it's serious up in here." Because if they miss a step, they get what Joe Jackson gave Mike and them. But worse, there are all of these things that take place that no one wants to talk about. So, no, we don't have a language because we weren't allowed to speak our language under penalty of death. When you talk about, uh, you can't come to the cookout and things of that nature, people forget picnic is uh, is an abbreviated slang term which means you get to pick and to lynch.

I didn't know that. Postcards came from pictures that they used to take the back of and mail for people who couldn't see the lynching that they had. All of these things we survived. And the funny thing is, everyone's coming over here and benefiting from the fact that we put out the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment. All of those things that started as the black liberation movement but then got shoehorned into civil rights because everybody wants to come off of our pain. Is still a part of who we are. American culture is black culture. The problem is not only did we have to create it, but everybody else got to monetize it. We don't own major forms of media. So the message that goes out to the world about foundational black Americans is very lopsided. It's very negative. Even Frank said to um Nancy, he said, "Well, what is y'all called y'all? Twerking?" Negating the fact that twerking started in Africa, mating rituals, things of that nature, tying of the hips, stop me when I go wrong. All of these things get put out as if that's who we are. And it's a very limited, very narrow-minded, very sore, and very disingenuous snapshot of who we are. Because we get put into killers, baby mamas, this and that and the other. And then when you look at how the media is weaponized, right? They'll take people throughout the diaspora and then put them on platforms and then bring them here. I'll give you an example. There's a show on CBS called Bob Hearts Abishola, and she said things that were much more incendiary than what Frank said, you know, oh, what is it? Gangbangers and baby mamas.

Crazy. No, that energy is designed to keep us a certain way. And then when you talk about how the entertainment is weaponized because that's the message. That's our largest export. It always has been. Our talent and our our ability to entertain but not capitalize on said entertainment. You can't point to one major black-owned record company. You can't point to one major black-owned media outlet. You can't point to one major media or technological distribution center that is controlled, owned, and managed by foundational black Americans. And so the message of foundational black Americans that gets out is not our message. And I completely reject that. If that's what you think the culture is, I am here to tell you that ain't my culture. It ain't never been my culture. It ain't been the culture of most of my brethren. Do we have some knuckleheads? Absolutely.

Of course we do. But do we also have things like COINTELPRO? We've still had to overcome. Do we have things like the '94 Biden-Clinton crime bill that we've had to overcome? And throughout history, I have yet to see anybody from any of those 54 countries come back for their brothers that they say that they love so much. I don't remember the warships coming to get us. I don't. But what I do see is, oh, well, we're really good at educating. We take the opportunities and we're able to, you know, go and take these American opportunities that you guys squander. Yeah. Because you get an immigrant experience. You do not get the foundational black American experience. You get the same immigrant talk that the Russians get. And the Russians got a lot of nerve because if it wasn't for Alexander Pushkin, they'd still be speaking French. Alexander Pushkin created the Russian language. He was a black man. So when you when you talk about where we are and where we've been, you also have to talk about the mind screw out of respect for your channel that we have been put under. So, no, we don't have an official language because we weren't allowed to have one. But still, if you look at AAVE, it's everywhere. And and when it comes out of our mouth, it goes from the hood to the boardrooms to a billboard on on on on Broadway or in Times Square. So, we have culture, we have influence, and no, I'm not just talking about um taking taking um what's the word I'm looking for? Weeds and turning them into collard greens or taking innards and turning them into chitterlings. I'm talking about the fact that we have persevered and we are the most copied individuals on the planet. So much so, if I'm wrong, please explain A-con to me. Please explain Burna Boy to me. They all do a variation of who we are. And I'm not just talking about music. I'm talking about the walk. I'm talking about the talk. I'm talking about the the hairstyles. I'm talking about the innovation. Everything we do. We took a construction worker's boot and made it the hottest item for the past 40 years because everybody finds a way to profit off of what we create and then demonize us for creating it and then label us criminals, uneducated, unwilling. We don't care. But they don't talk about all the systemic things that have been set up and profited by by people who want to keep us in a certain box. That doesn't mean we can't escape that box. But to act like we were not put under duress for what we had to put together as a culture when everybody else got to inherit it, and that includes Haitians, Jamaicans, everybody else got to be left alone so that they could develop. We didn't have that. And to this day, I have yet to meet one African, one Jamaican, one Caribbean, one black person anywhere who comes into this country and has automatically ingrained in them before they start going, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing," that they're afraid when the red and blue lights come on behind them when they're pulled over. And I get it. And I'm the son, brother, and nephew of cops. That's why I say yes, we have a culture, but of course we don't have a language. But let's not be disingenuous and act like it doesn't matter because it does. Because as foundational black American goes, so goes everybody else in society.

So Frank, let me ask you a question. Um, if slavery erased our black Americans' culture, what do you call what we built after uh slavery? What do you call that?

Well, you have to give me an example of what you mean by what we built. What what are you referring to?

Yeah, you you tied um culture back to African and and something that you inherit, but you said that that got erased um through well during slavery, but we built something clearly black Americans have built throughout um slavery and culture that we have currently.

What I'm asking is, give me an example so I'll be able to respond to that particular thing.

Well, like things like gospel um is something that we built after slavery. Um, what?

Songs and music.

Foods that we that we eat that we can.

Songs and music exist in every society that.

Is that not a part of culture?

No, let me let me come to that and first, let me make um a little u uh response to.

Sure.

Uh, David's uh, assertion that we were not allowed. So in Benin or Ghana or Nigeria, pick any of the 54 countries in Africa, right?

Mhm. If you had gone into a Yoruba tribe, which is now part of Nigeria, they would speak Yoruba. Now, when we were put together forcefully as countries, today my nieces and nephews can't even speak my language properly. And the French and English, they can't even speak it properly because in one classroom, you have 36 kids who come from different tribes in that classroom. So they can only use English or French or Spanish or Portuguese to teach this myriad of tribes now who are not who don't speak their language anymore. African-Americans were not prevented from speaking their language.

Mhm. When the ship arrived, it was one from this tribe, that tribe, that tribe, that tribe. So automatically, you can't speak to each other. And when you don't speak your language for a while, like I've been outside Africa now going 40 years. If I meet any of my uncles and I start to try to speak my language, I'm interfered by English constantly and I can't finish it. I can't make a coherent sentence in my own language because at school, you could not use that language because we are now a bucket of different languages. The same thing happened here. You were brought as a a shipload of different languages. That is why Creole and Patois were created. So you use the only word you can understand a little bit of the colonizer or the what whoever is controlling you and try to speak to someone who come from Senegal. You don't know what he speaks. So over time, it becomes this hodgepodge of a language called Creole or Patois. In Silon, they have it. In Liberia, they have it. In Nigeria, they have the Pigeon English because they can't speak to each other. So nobody prevented you. All you need is to not to use your language because there is no one there to speak to and the next generation is gone. The Jews, however, it was Jews. They took them as Jews. Even though they went from country to country to country, they were lucky enough to keep talking to each other because they can understand each other. So they they were able to retain the language. This is my starting point. It happened to us on the continent. So don't be fooled. You hear countries like Nigeria, Ghana. If you ask five Ghanaians, one from the Ashanti, one from the Ewe, the Ghana, the Awamu, and the Northern Region, and ask them, "Are you Ghanaians?" "Yes, we are Ghanaians. Look at our passport." Ask them, "What is Ghanaian culture?" And they will start looking at each other. There is no such thing. Ask them, "What do you speak in Ghana?" They will start looking at each other. Ask them, "What is a Ghanaian sense of value?" There's no such thing. "How do you guys marry in Ghana?" There is no such thing. But you say you're Ghanaians. So what happened to us happened here. And when I arrived here, I understood it. When I went to Haiti, I was like, "Whoa." When I went to Jamaica, the same thing. So when I said I was only speaking here, so I said African-Americans, I would have said the same thing about my own countries on the continent. We have no culture.

Yeah, but from from that video, what I what I got from it is you kind of you put Haitians on a pedestal. You you.

I didn't. No, let me correct you.

When in comparison to black Americans, you said Haitians, they have a culture. Like you you said that out.

I said so it was a long video about Haiti.

Mhm. And during that conversation, I began to talk about why Haitians can't fix Haiti because you don't have Haitians. You have just a country forcefully imposed upon you, a citizenship, but you are from different places in Africa. But right now, if you go somewhere, you would speak uh Creole and somebody would say, "Oh, that is Haitian." That's what I meant, not putting them on any pedestal.

So they have a language.

They created one.

So you want to say.

And it's not even useful in any any way because it's not an international language.

So they they took French and made Creole, is what you're saying.

Spanish, French, and then over 200 African tribal languages into one.

But Americans would say that they took English and made their own language as well.

And what is that?

I mean, it's it's a broken version of English, but it's still something that we could speak to that specifically to us.

What language is that?

I mean, it's English.

He's talking about the African-American Vernacular English. The same way, for example, in.

I think I've heard uh, yes, when I came to this country in 1994, I had a debate on my campus about Ebonics.

Right. Same thing.

Yeah. And uh, somebody corrected me and I think it was my professor said, "No, if you say Ebonics, there is no one collective."

Ebonics.

Correct.

You have to go into pockets. If the person is from the north, the south, the central, they created their own style around it. So I understand that part. That didn't even qualify as a subculture. So [snorts] let me give you. Jamaicans don't have a culture. When you say the country Jamaica, no, there's no identifiable as a culture, but the Rastafarians have a culture. Now, let me explain what I mean by worldview. The Rastafarian's worldview is that men were put on earth to take care of nature.

Mhm. Okay. That wealth, you have to create more than consume. So they live a frugal life. So politically, they are pacifists. They will never go to war. Socially, they're communal and what we call epicurean. They believe getting high, eat some food, and have deep conversation is what life is about. And then religiously, they are Rastafarians. [snorts]

Hippies are the western version of Rastafarians. They also had a worldview, and that dictated their relationship with wealth. The hippies believe that humans were put on earth to create than consume, and that living in in community and being frugal, as to wearing the most, you know, inexpensive clothing and and and using things together is what life is all about. So it guided how you see them dress, where they shop from, why they marry, on and on and on. That's what I mean by any society, if you want to understand them, it's the worldview. The Jews believe that they were put on earth as God's chosen people.

Mhm. That threw them with that is a worldview. Now, any child told that, forget hurting one of them because they are driven by that. That is why they insist on having a community wherever they are. The Chinese, the white community. Do Africans that come from the continent have a community? We don't. Why? Because we don't have a culture. If we had, it would drive us to have a community. In the 50 states of the United States of America, African-Americans don't have a community. They have neighborhoods. Now, people who got angry with me didn't even ask me, "What does culture do anyway? What is it that if you I say you didn't have that, it makes you what?" Nobody asked that question. What is that thing you're trying to hold onto? Culture. By the way, what is it?

You care to elaborate on that then? Now.

What am I asking? Once upon a time, John Lennon sang a song. Imagine we don't have religion. Imagine a world without religion, without heaven and hell. He believe in what? The brotherhood of mankind. So imagine the people without a culture. Maybe they are striving to a brotherhood of mankind.

So you take words out of context and then you crucify a man.

Right.

Not knowing that I am a victim of a cultureless country.

You know, that's sometimes the the risk.

I think we get angry too quickly. We are too sensitive. I was giving a talk, live talk the other day, and a gentleman, not the way David is behaving. He wrote the book and he said, "My brother Frank, he doesn't know what this means to me." He called me on the phone and spoke with me. And we we like we became friends like on the phone. And I said, "I got to go even if it's three hours drive, if I have to fly, I'm going to see this gentleman." Because more than this conversation, there is someone here who really is a thinker. Mhm. But we got to begin to tame down and accept criticism because that is the only way societies were built in this world. In my live talk, I told this gentleman when he wouldn't get off my case. And I said, "Let me tell you something." "You don't hate the white man. You don't even fear them." Because if black people hate and fear the white men the way they hate and fear each other, you would all have left this country at the end of slavery.

Left this country and go where?

Go where?

Yeah.

Where did the Jews go to? Do you know how many lines in Africa was offered to African-Americans through the Black Star Line project? It was funded by a British through Marcus Garvey and Kwame Nkrumah. The Black Star Line. Did you go? No. How did you get the Liberia, America, Liberia culture move? 3,400 people only agreed to go to Liberia. What do you mean, where to? Plenty of land everywhere. Where did you come back from? How about the Caribbean?

See that in and of itself. But I'm not saying it as I said. Hold on, Frank. I'm not. Let me let me get the day real quick. No, no, no. See, the thing of it is, and you got to understand, right? Like my favorite verse in the Bible is Proverbs 4:7. It says, "And all I get and get an understanding." You got to understand Frank's perspective. In his mind, it's like, "Well, shoot, why didn't you go?" [snorts] To me, that's no different than when Kanye sat in front of Harvey Levin and um and uh the other the light-skinned boy, never call his name, um, and said, you know, "Well, shoot, for 400 years, that's slavery. That sounds like a choice." Like, no, it's not. It's not just that, right? It's bigger than that. Because what no one talks about is the SCOPE that was done to us from 1619 through 1865, and then after 1865 all the way through. Right? So if you have been told over and over and over and over and over again that you're less than, that you ain't nothing, that you don't even get the right to call yourself a name, there are certain things that get lost in translation because he does not carry that particular experience. He's got his own experiences. And one of the things that I love and I encourage absolutely everybody to go to this man's YouTube channel because when he talks about black-on-black crime, he does not start and stop the conversation at foundational black Americans. He talks about what's happened in Nigeria. He talks about what's happening in Liberia. He talks about what's [clears throat] happening in Ghana, and that is something that's happened throughout the diaspora. And the one thing we all have in common is that we were colonized and scoped, but none more brutally than us. So if you think, for example, there have been writings from Frederick Douglass, there there were writings from uh Harriet Tubman, there have been plenty of people who have talked about how many people did not want to leave the plantation because it was all they knew and they were scared, almost to a point where they had Stockholm Syndrome. The idea of going back to a place they'd never been or had any historical reference to because they had been beaten, threatened, hung, stabbed, lynched out of them.

Yeah. No, I ain't going back there. Why would I? Now, me personally, I know plenty of people who have repatriated, right? And I know plenty of people who love it. I know plenty of people who get called all types of vicatas and every dag on thing else over there. I also understand that there's a caste system over there. There are people if I when there have been times when I have been called over there mixed because of the texture of my hair or the fairness of my skin or the narrowness of my nose. Because whether we like to admit it or not, when it comes to a foundational black American line, you can always find if you go up farther enough, somebody who played Massa got loose in the slave quarters, right? Or as they like to say, black buck got loose in the big house, but it wasn't us getting loose in the big house. You understand what I'm saying? So there's all these things. And to the John Lennon point, that's ironic, and I will tell you why. John Lennon was a part of the Beatles. The Beatles invasion came about because the Beatles were the very first Backstreet Boys. The Beatles were doing what Ike Turner was doing, what Jimi Hendrix was doing, what Little Richard was doing, what all these foundational black Americans were doing, but because they were palatable. And they told you themselves that they were singing black music, no different than Elvis. So yeah, it's real easy to say imagine when you're a European rich white man with an Asian wife who has more money than he knows what to do with, who had the unmitigated gall to say he was bigger than Christ himself and not get canceled. Yeah, you can imagine that because you're imagining it behind a gated community. And the second he stepped out of that gated community, one of his own people got it.

But even that is culture. When we were not allowed to marry each other to the point when you talked about traditions, we jumped the broom as a symbol to each other, and everybody on the plantation or the property, because all slaves weren't on plantations, that this person is my person. I jumped the broom to this day.

I jumped the broom with my wife.

Yeah. That's a part of who we are. That is unique to us. No, we don't have a language. And I'm not going to rehash what I've already said, but we have to have a different level of understanding of what has happened, what continues to happen, and how there is a global conspiracy, whether we choose to understand it or not, to keep all of us separate. Having said that,

Mhm.

There are things that happen in Haiti because of what Bill Clinton did when he was president and afterwards. There are things that happen in Jamaica that happened because of the British crown, right? We all have our different cultural battles to fight. But we're all still black. However, me saying that I have to take care of my two daughters does not mean that I don't care about every other black woman on the face of the planet. They are my immediate responsibility. As a foundational black American, my immediate responsibility is to foundational black Americans first. Not saying foundational black Americans first and f everybody else. I am saying foundational black Americans first because we're the ones that are bleeding, and everybody has benefited from our blood, whether they choose to admit it or not. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment do not happen without us. Civil rights does not happen without us. Um, these very loose, very fun um immigration laws that folks are now playing and screwing all of us throughout the diaspora who are here in the Americas um does not happen without foundational black Americans. And so all of those things are extremely important to that conversation.

So what would be your definition? My what would be your definition of culture? Frank gave his definition of culture. What is your definition of culture? My definition of culture is traditions. It's style. It's uh certain taboos, you know, and taboos don't have to be a big huge thing. Bring raisins in a in a potato salad to a family reunion. Watch what happens to you, right? Or if we're going to if we're going to talk about taboos that still happen but are still considered taboo, bring home a white girl. See what happens. You at bare minimum are getting talked about. Not saying that there's not an O.J. Not saying that, you know, the majority of um professional athletes, entertainers, those types of people, people who get to a certain level don't still do that. But it's taboo. Curse while the pastor is talking uh during his sermon.

Those are all taboos, right? Walking on the inside of the street as opposed to the outside of the street. I was raised, but again again, my uh my grandfather was born in I think 1890 and my grandmother was born in 1904. So my dad was born in '35. So I got a different worldview than a lot of people my age. Um, but there's certain things you don't do. You don't hit a woman. Like there's certain things that aren't necessarily only unique to us, but there are certain things that over time we have built that make up our culture beyond just language.

Spirituality was robbed from us. Language was robbed from us. And yes, even with that, with the example Frank gave, and I'll lay my plane on this. Yeah. When you go to school, yeah, they got to teach a certain way. Even when you go, I got a cousin that lives in Osaka, Japan, and she teaches English as a second language to Japanese businessmen cuz they want to come over here. You understand what I'm saying to you? But you have to have a baseline language. But the difference is you're choosing to go to school versus being forced, whipped, you know, chained, bred like cattle, and had anything um cultural taken from you. Even the ability to name your child wasn't up to you.

My last name didn't come from the continent. My last name comes from the Anderson slave owners of South Carolina.

I know exactly what plantation my ancestors come from. Can't tell you the boat though.

I wanted to ask like, so where did you get your definition of culture?

Well, um, my background is mass of journalism. And if you do advanced mass of journalism, of course, you're going to do multicultural understanding. And in the study of multicultural differences, understanding, of course, you study how languages were developed, what it meant for people, and so on and so forth. And it's the first thing that allows you to understand how to interact when you move from one place to go uh to another place. So through that um uh uh uh and then of course, my column for 13 years was life and culture. I didn't report on politics, economics, or wars. I I reported on life and culture. It allowed me to study and I realized how would I know? I began to compare it.

Okay. To where um I'm coming from and I said something went wrong. I I would uh make give me just a little bit to explain something. You know where my interest as a black man became picked? After traveling the world, when I began to hear the slogans we create, the narratives we create.

Okay. I was speaking in Kenya on a university campus. One young man got up and told me how I missed the point about why Kenya is the way it is. And uh, blamed the white man who came to take their culture and stop them from speaking their local languages and gave us Christianity. Oh, he went down the laundry list of things that happened to them and is still happening. So I said, "Wow, you are a brilliant man. I've never met anyone who have made this list, but I have only one question. Why did it work?"

And that is what we refuse to ask ourselves. So we always say that they did this to us, they did this to us.

But we never ask ourselves, why did it work? See, I've been to the Caribbean. I've been to many cities in the United States. I've lived in the UK. I've seen blacks in the UK. I've seen blacks in China. I've seen blacks in almost every corner of the world.

And I've seen blacks in the Americas and on the continent. And everything we are describing is uniform about us. You really think that the largest number of people on earth in terms of countries?

Mhm. 54 in one continent, about 10 or 13 in the Caribbean, black groups in the UK, in China, in America, and we are all suffering that psychological warfare and responding to it for years. Nothing in the world, use any probability, has ever touched a coin and it fell on its head nine times out of 10. Impossible. We need to re-examine us as black people. What is it? And it's nothing we are saying. Because if it is true and there's something really wrong first with us, let me tell you something. Korea, nobody, it's a miracle that Korea is what it is today. It is the only country in the world or in Asia, let me just be. That has never waged war. They call them pakacho inferior by the Japanese, but Mongolians, Chinese. They were bullied and they were invaded, colonized, tortured for hundreds of years. Why didn't it work on them? The Jews went into slavery, the globe, 4,000 years in the diaspora, in Egypt, in Baghdad, which was formerly Babylon. When they were in Europe, what was the name? The Aryan race through the Nazi organization said they were Jews are inferior. It's what they said over and again to German kids.

When they arrived in America, Sammy Davis had a joke. He said he was getting on the bus in Montgomery. The driver told him to get to the back of the bus. He said, "No, you don't understand. I'm a Jew." He said, "Oh, get off the bus then." In 1977, a black man bought a home in Westport, Connecticut before a Jew. Jews were not allowed to rent or buy a home in Greenwich, in Westport, in Darian. There's a story Donald Trump had to build the first golf course when he became aware that Jews and blacks were not allowed to play in golf courses. Jews had it tough in this country through redlining, where they were not allowed to set up businesses. So they were forced to converge and start loaning to themselves from within. It didn't happen to them 4,000 years longer than we were in slave or colonization. So the question you need to ask is, if they did all these things against us, why did it work?

Let me give you one thing to the response I said earlier. Why African-Americans didn't leave after slavery? Not because there was no place to go to. That is completely a lie.

Mhm. Ask yourself, the Ashantis knew that they were the most powerful tribe in Ghana, followed by the Ewes, the Ga, the Twi, the Akwamu, everybody. They knew that they didn't inform the country Ghana that they were forced. Okay. But it came to an end for Ghana in 1957. Why didn't they go back to become the individual tribes they were? Did was there anybody there telling them you can't? No. Do you know why they stayed as a country?

What?

They were attracted by the blame the colonial left behind. M. The roads, the hospitals, the schools, the post office, the fire, the department, the the buses with air conditioning from London imported to their country, the railway lines, all the beautiful things. Why didn't you leave here? It's not because you don't know where to go.

It's because you didn't hate the white man and you were not afraid of them. I think you're eliminating the fact that we built blood, sweat, tears, deaths, you know, so much. We we the biggest innovators. We built America. Why give up everything we built? We America wouldn't exist off the pains and struggles off of black Americans. We don't you don't just give that up. We also, if with with asking your question, we do also ask why didn't Africans or other Caribbean people or other nations join us and make us a bigger nation in in America? We built it. Everything came off our death. And every time we created something big, it was destroyed. Burned down. Like where?

What are you talking about?

Oh, wait, wait, wait. I got I got this one. Don't worry. Wilmington, North Carolina. Eatenville. Uh, Rosewood. Um, Tulsa.

Philadelphia, Chester, Pennsylvania, Wilmington, North Carolina, uh, shoot, South Carolina. Yeah. You know, there there were plenty of places. Anytime we had any infrastructure, two things happened. They decided to integrate it. Look at um, have you been to Central Park?

Mhm. You know what Central Park is, right?

No, it's not. Central Park was actually a place called Seneca Village. It was when freed black people decided to converge in one area. And they decided to redistrict that area even though they owned the land and the houses that

They built free and clear. And they destroyed those people, displaced those people, and built a park around it. There's an old song uh Jonie Mitchell sang said, "Don't it always seem to go this you don't know what you got till it's gone." They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. They paved paradise and put up Senica Village.

In Georgia, just outside of Atlanta, there's a place called Lake Laneir. It used to be a thriving black town. They decided to kill the black folks, get rid of the ones they couldn't kill, and then people right now are boating on it every weekend. That's what happened to us. That's what got destroyed. And it doesn't mean that we don't keep building.

But after a while, even if you look at the flea experiment, are you familiar with the flea experiment?

>> The what?

>> The flea experiment.

>> No.

So the flea experiment goes like this. You take a bunch of fleas, you put them in a jar, you put the top on the jar, and you put holes in the top of the jar. After a while, the fleas will stop at the top of the jar because they get tired of smacking up against the top of the jar. Now, because you have conditioned the fleas that they're not going to go above the top of the jar, you take the top of the jar off and you never have to worry about them jumping out of the jar because they don't think there's anything above the jar.

So, if you have been killed, bombed, drowned, thrown out, redistricked, redlinined.

>> Mhm.

>> Yeah, those are historical facts. I got time. We can Google it.

>> Sure. But, but that's what

>> I'm not I'm no expert.

>> No.

>> On all the things he has listed. I'm just saying we shouldn't just talk about leaving.

>> I I'll build that.

>> Yes, I'll respond to you. I'm no expert on all the things he has listed. I might have read read about them, but you see every time I read something or I encounter a story, my mind works in that way because I'm an anal critical thinker.

All right. I have also known societies in the world that once upon a time were prevented to do anything. They were prevented to do anything. Like the Jews is an example of it. Indians were example for 81 years by the British. They couldn't build, innovate, do anything. think they have to rely on on the on the on the on the white people, right? And you can go down Korean uh the same way. However, I believe in something called the second advantage, meaning when the phenomena the phenomena is over,

>> you should repeat it.

>> So, somebody gave me the first lecture about Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I said, what year was that? Quite a long time ago, right? Okay. At one time in this country, you and you and you and we will not have an opportunity to do certain things.

Mhm.

>> But if that ability to build Black Wall Street is innate,

>> why haven't we repeated it?

>> Because we cannot. And here's here.

>> Now, let's go to your flea experiment.

>> Sure.

>> How about the other people who've been held down also by the same condition for long. Why are they not? Here is my problem.

>> I have a lot of mentees.

>> Yeah.

>> African-American students whom I used to take to Africa. I had a program every year. I take a bunch of them to build schools in Benin.

Mhm.

>> A lot of that money out of his own pocket. By the way, credit where credit is due.

>> Now, I really get the goose on my skin

>> when we keep repeating the very thing that is building prisons around us.

One is that we've been psyched up so we can't do anything. Two is somebody is always lurching in the dark. That's why we are the way we are.

If you say so and then you ask a kid to go to school and stay in school and do well, well, you sound stupid. Why don't you go and kill the white supremacist so the problem will go away from me? There is something that is just human.

When you find yourself in a certain situation, you cannot explain it. Better create a boogeyman fast.

But a boogeyman only turns around and imprison you and your own children.

I refuse. There is no psychological effect on any black person on earth. We are just what we are different. And whenever we find ourselves among other people, the first thing we start doing is compare. Let me give you a country South Africa.

12 tribes, seven major ones. Chaka the Zulu is from the Zulu land and then the Kosas and then Vendas and Limpopos. Okay. Makes one huge region. 51 million black people. Sispark and big chest. They'll kill you with their bare hands. 2.8 8 million white people arrived and build that country to the standard of a European country

2.8 million

South African white then the people started bickering they said apathide was the reason the black man was poor in South Africa so the majority 51 million black people were waiting on 2.8 a saying that apathite. You don't know what apathite is?

>> Yes.

>> Aparttheite was no economic thing. Aparttheite simply is what is happening or happening in America like in Westport. Look, don't have children with my our girls.

We want to keep a pure race. Apathide is what is happening in India. We want to keep Indians bury themselves.

Koreans are eugenics. They marry each other. How many Koreans have you seen in America married to celebrities? Nope. That is apathite. So if you start marrying them, they'll tell them clean out. How was it? Now if blacks believe that they can build South Africa, you know what? Mandela wouldn't waste his time in prison and all these things, he would have simply said, you know what, let's have a BSA, black South Africa, Republic. Let them cut off white South Africa and let's compete. No, they wasted their time asking the whites, just allow me to come to your beach, to your clinic, to your schools. Okay, 32 years ago the white man said just wait and see. We are warning them that managing a country is not something anybody you can just do. So 32 years ago they gave the country back to the blacks. I was there in 2022 to speak. They are now having load shared electricity can stay on. Water is not flowing. Roads are cracked. Airport is breaking down. The Durban train station is finished

when they gave it to blacks.

So So you saying that they're not capable? No, they are not capable. I don't have to say it. 32 years it took Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malay, Malaysia, and Indonesia to build themselves up right after independence. 14 countries in the Balkans. Many people in this country who are below the age of 40 don't understand what Soviet Union means. That was a devil's empire that colonized 14 countries in their grip for 40 years. Name one Eastern European country that is downthrodding because of the Russians. So do you have the answer to the reason they're not capable? There is no reason.

So they're just not capable because they're just not capable. There's no reason behind it. There's nothing behind it. There's not a particular mindset. I will tell you because if you look in the generation of where I come from, my grandfather, great-grandfather, great great grandfather, none from Africa has ever managed, build and manage a country.

Ain't got to be a reason though.

No, no, no. I'm saying we have never done it. Just like no lion has ever dug a foxhole.

Only fox can dig a fox hole,

right?

Only rabbits can dig a rabbit hole. So lions can't. So why would you say is there a reason the lion can dig a foxhole?

No, there's no reason. It's a lion.

But those different animals we talking about lack of breath of experience.

Humans are my friend.

Not having the experience is a reason. And again,

okay, so maybe we have not had the need. You see, we make too big a deal about industrialization as if industrialization is for people who are smart. No, industrialization is for people who were threatened by nature. And the continent of Africa, which is the home place of black people, is the most comfortable place that has never had any threat. Tsunamis, earthquakes, tatanic plates, uh winters 10 feet high, springs for no. Oh, you wake up every day, the trees are green, the tomato is 365 days, right behind your house, the river is there, and you just lie out there, eat something, and just chill. So your brain for millions of years is not inventive because

there's no need.

There's no need.

So we build little communities.

Africans are communal. The black man by nature is not an individualistic actor. No,

the black man relies. That's why you can't finish a sentence with a black man without him saying, "Oh, my niece, my cousin." You can talk to a Japanese, a Korean, and a white man for 3 hours and is my wife and children. That's all you're going to hear because they come from that kind of scene. All right? So, where we come from, where we evolved, gave us something. And that something is what we are. So, what the white person did in South Africa is not because he's smart. is because just over years, millions of years, they've been in threat from nature. So always their brain is inventive. Oh, how can we protect ourselves? We didn't need a reason to let the water be in some because it's it's not going to freeze.

And we have to come back to that. But we keep preaching that somebody this wiggly white small race have held down black men shakil size of people. And then our childrens are hearing it. And you forget to see why our children hate each other because you said we are nothing.

So it's easy for the black man to kill the other person. And I'm just saying we need to stop this.

Stop it. How can one race on earth have the same experience and it's not going away?

I agree with you right to certain degree.

That's my question. We build it so we won't live it. You're lying to yourself. What did you build in America? Name one thing you built.

Everything. You were in a six states in the south farms because of your ability. They took them to Jamaica because of plantation. They took them to Haiti because of plantation. So when you they brought you here is because farms. And you keep saying we build we build. You're making the kids angry. If the man didn't have a home, how could he bring you as a slave? He built the country. He wanted you here to maintain some things, man. So what you build? So what? You will give your dignity, your children's dignity because we built a country. Therefore, we are going to stay in a country where we will be looked down upon. We will be indignified because I build it instead of you going and build. You know what the Jews build in other people's country, but they left it easily to go to a desert. And look at it today. Touch one of them and God bless you.

A desert that was started and state sanctioned in 1946, the year my mother was born. A desert that also came with infrastructure. A desert that also came with banking systems. was a desert that also came with absolutely no laws preventing them to build freely. That is no noank. I sat here very quietly listening. I got two ears and one mouth. So I was listening twice as much as I normally talk.

Jews were allowed to build institutions, hospitals, banks, all of those things over time. And when they left what was happening because of Hitler, they also came with their wealth intact. And they were allowed to commune together and build those things without infrastructure. You know what happened right after emancipation? The federal government created something called the Freeman's Bank. You familiar with the Freeman's Bank?

I've heard of it. I'm not familiar.

So the Freeman's Bank was marketed to black people, foundational black Americans, recently freed men. And that's why it's called the Freriedman's Bank as a place for them to take the money they had acquired over time either from sharecropping what they had earned from buying their freedom or whatever the case may be and they all put their money in to the Freedman's Bank. And you know what happened? The government and the robber barons and the people running the Freeman's Bank took all of their money. Do you know how many blackowned and operated banks there are currently in these United States?

Nope.

22. Most of those are completely underfunded and they don't have a network that does not get the same support from the FDIC as a Wells Fargo, a Chase Manhattan, all of those things. These things are unique. There is in fact, and you know this because you have lived I I've lived in 34 cities in 19 states. I've been around. I I understand how certain things go. But can you right now with your wealth and the people that you know, how much land in Chinatown anywhere in the United States can you buy right now?

Which Chinatown? The one here?

Any Chinatown? How much can you buy right now?

Well, I don't know.

Zero. They won't allow it. How much can you buy in the Diamond District in any place? Let's just start in New York. How much can you blow? How much you buy? Zero. Because they're they're allowed to gatekeep that. There is no situation that you can name in America in modern times taking slavery and everything off the table just starting from 1865 on that does not have white involvement and white interference if you can name it I will apologize but it does not exist and that's what makes us unique versus the Jews who were allowed to take their money. Oh, and by the way, the United States of America, also Germany, all of those countries that were involved in World War II, paid and repaired the Jews. Japanese Americans who were put in interament camps because America allegedly was afraid of another Pearl Harbor. But we all know historically that was some BS because they knew Pearl Harbor was going to happen before it happened and they allowed it to happen. Took the Japanese Americans out of their homes, out of their stores, out of their businesses, out of their communities, and put them in internment camps. And when they released them when the war was over, you know what they did? They repaired them financially. They gave them grants, land grants. So, it's easy to talk about, well, look at what the Jews did this, that, and the third. Because the other part of that is you can freely, without fear of recompense, without fear of cancellation, without fear of any type of retaliation, talk extremely um critically of foundational black Americans. I dare you to go do that to Edstein and the folks over at the National Defamation League and see how quickly Frank Zanu gets canled. See how quickly your bank accounts get frozen. See how quickly you become public enemy number one. But they will back you and make sure your algorithm goes viral to the point where people wrongly are threatening your life. It's not an applesto apples comparison. We're comparing apples to ancestry and the freedom to make it happen. That's not an excuse. And by the way, I'm not saying a white man is holding me down. I have plenty of businesses. Google is a snitch. It'll tell you all of my business. But the truth of the matter is, am I a dyslexic, discalculate um kid with a speech impediment that became a speaker and a 22 time bestselling author? Yes. In spite of the fact that my family started in the Richard Allen projects. In spite of the fact that I have to read a little different. In spite of the fact that I might jumble my words here and there. It's not that it's impossible, but to me to act like that is the rule as opposed to the fact the truth is that I am the exception is not only disingenuous, it's very very

shortsighted.

Mhm.

That's the only point I'm making.

Look, when I use the Jews,

I I don't talk about something like, you know, the Jews have this money, this person. I don't know and I don't want to talk about it and I don't talk about other people because I don't have to. They have done nothing to me. I talk about people like me. So, I'm not going to criticize them and the fear of my algorithm and by the way I do not like that anybody will say because I'm criticizing my people that my algorithm is going up. If it is so fine all I'm saying is I am talking about us and I'm saying if all the things you are mentioning happening where wouldn't that be enough reason for you to here for 40 years? You said

34. Okay. Before then, what what were what was your understanding of foundational black Americans at that point? Have you heard about us even when you were wherever you were from?

Well, you must understand that when we began to know about African-Americans, they were called college people

and then from college it became negro

and then after negro he became afroamerican. So we in high school if you had come to Africa we call it afroamerican and then from there became black American and then from there became African-Americans and now I'm hearing the new terminology which is foundational black Americans. I don't understand it. I don't know where it came from. So if I knew about African-Americans yes my name was Superfly. We all have to choose from African name African-American name because we watch Koulih High uh you know rock and all these things. We we knew the names have changed just as the style the lifestyles have changed also. So yes, of course we read it in high school. We knew about

but what was the gist of what because my whole point of bringing this up is you know the media and the world of the power of America let's just like you mentioned those those movies those movies depicted you know black people in a certain way but we're ignoring the fact that black people are are uh found foundational black Americans are being pictured as criminals uh your enemy uh everything anger everything evil everything is baldled in. So when you guys hear that from wherever you're from, you come here and have that same

No, that that same.

You know what is funny?

I'll tell you this.

In Africa, you can New York has many Africans. Ask any African who is over 50 years old or 60 years old

to name one negative thing we heard back in Africa about African-Americans. Zero.

So, so where does that come? Cuz we had African people on the show say that their parents gave them the talk when they came over here. Stay away from those black Americans.

Mhm.

They just going to get you pregnant. They they drug deal. So where did that white supremacist talking point about black Americans come from with Africans and even some Caribbeans?

Yeah. So you have social media, right? Before social media.

No, no, no. I'm talking about Listen, you talking about today. This been going on for centuries.

No.

You asked me about what we knew about African-Americans back in the And I'm telling you, I am telling you, we never knew one negative thing about African-Americans. Never. Now let me make it clear so you can understand.

Start from 1957

when we d moved to to Ghana.

Malcolm X Muhammad Ali Maya Angelo moved and lived there for 14 years. The Ghana became or West Africa became the the mecca for African-Americans. Not one has any bad message when they come back here. So we were only knowing things and we were copying your style. You made Dashiki become even attractive to us to wear it, you know, uh platform shoes and all that. We followed today any barber shop in Africa you don't see any African it is all you know iced tea and all these people

only when we arrived here then we see it for ourselves what we see so you follow the white supremacist mindset when you guys got here that's that's what I'm hearing

what is it because the hatred that that's put upon or frowned upon you know black Americans

by who what

no by the spec by Africans

African people of I'm my father's Jamaican. [laughter] I hear it in that household too, brother. So there's not coming over here and then saying embracing, hey, I got a black brother. I have a black sister. It's more like, oh, I heard what they said

and I agree with them. Y'all some [ __ ] over there. You know what I'm saying? So that's the problem. In one of my episodes, I ended it by saying I I talk about how we started worshiping African-Americans when we were in Africa. M

all my classmates, you are not going to have a name. You pick one of the movie names. I knew about Isaac K, the black Moses. I met him when I came here. It's like a legend standing in front of me. Okay. So, we copied African-Americans before we came here. I ended the episode by saying when we got here, we stay away from you because we see too much of us in you.

Now, now here is what I was saying from the beginning. Why don't you ask me

why when you arrive here you don't unite with us then you concluding that you hate us why supremacy's talking point

well our eyes can see things so ask me why is it so I mean and I will ask you how many times have you tried to go visit us on the continent if my resources was

resources you rich than I am [laughter]

how how

you're not okay you're flashy by the way fine what's [laughter] the leather pants oh it's leather pants Okay. Okay. Um, at $16.99 H&M, go get, [laughter] you know, go get two of them. You know what I'm saying, my brother? You know, just cuz I'm stylish don't mean nothing. You got stylish. You're stylish. Look, what I'm trying to say is this. I'm not afraid. I ended the episode by saying,

yeah,

I love African-Americans. When I was coming here, I'm telling you the truth. My mom, my dad, my people, nobody told me stay away. Do you know my first wife is an African-American.

She's now the superintendent of schools here. So, when did that change then? When we arrived here, we saw too much of us in you and we stayed away.

What do you mean by that?

Huh? When you say too much of us in youth specifically,

the violence, the meanness, Rwanda, Chileon, Liberia, the killing of each other, the dishonesty, the anger. Look, let me tell you. If I go home, this guy you see here, I'll live like Michael Jackson.

I have money to live like a king in Africa. Why do you think I'm still here? The snow

or the taxes? [laughter] Because I don't want to go back and take what I see here. So, so aren't you don't you say it yourself? Come on. Don't you say it all the time. African-Americans are a crap in a bucket. They don't support each other's business. They don't come together to do so. Why are you blaming that on me? You've said it yourself. I heard it from you.

And the same thing you're saying is over there. A Chinese lady just opened a hair a hair shop next to three Ghanaians in in Ara. It's all on YouTube. Blessed in America. I'll tell you that.

All the blacks started going to her.

Mhm.

Of course.

On the continent, the same thing you say here. Oh, you start a business in Nigeria, your own family and friends are going to bring you down. What you're saying here, we are saying it there. When I moved to Kenya, the same thing I keep hearing.

So, I love to ask why.

I think you're you're you're overlooking. A lot of people overlook the success and achievements that black y so fixated on the negative. Black Americans, we are.

They copied it from you. Your music says it.

Uh what is the deal with the guy with a glass eye? Uh something white. Uh he's all white. He says it. Cosby says it. You've written books about it. We hear it from you first. We want to. We were focusing on your success when we see you come to Africa.

Okay.

Mhm.

We never had a problem. Have you heard any African-American tell you, I went to the and and they did this to me. But do you know what we have gone through in the hands of African-Americans here in America? How many times a white man has called me a Buddhist culture? But I can tell you when I go to high schools to speak, that's what they call me. laughing. So you think it's just you.

But that

so I'm asking I hate that analogy from the other place who is now here observing the two people asking the questions that making conclusions that oh we are just following white supremacy talking point. No we're not.

Well hold on let me let me let me let me step in here for a minute. I I I hear where Frank is coming from. But again there has to be just a little bit of a shift, right? Because two things that are very very important. My man said he loved [ __ ] High, right? He he said that, you know, we made dashikis and platforms. Cool. Afro and bell bottoms, whole nine. Iced tea on the wall. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Wonderful. He's right. Cosby did say it. Pull up your pants. All that good stuff. He's absolutely right. Our music says it. He's absolutely right. Um, our television says it. He's Am I Am I Am I Am I in the right ballpark? Cool. How much of that did we that we produce

of what?

All of those things. All the media that you're speaking of who

media I live in Bridgeport.

No, no, no.

It's a firsthand experience for me.

No, no, no, no, no, I I don't want to move the goalpost. I want to talk about exactly what you said when it comes to the music, the the books, the TV shows, the movies, those things are media.

Okay. Sure. How many of that how

how much of that did we produce and distribute?

Oh, I I don't know who wrote the lyrics for Tupac or who wrote the lyrics for BI.

No, no, no. The producer is saying, "Bring your product and I will just produce it. You went with smoke [ __ ] like a cigarette. He produced it. You blaming the the medium.

No, no, no.

Let's get real.

Oh, I am getting real. Here's what I know.

So, I come to you

and I bring my lyric.

Right.

Glad Davies produced uh what is her name? Uh Whitney Houston.

Okay.

You know, she sung people's songs. You could say, "No, this song I don't want to sing it because I want to protect the dignity of my people."

But you write your lyrics, you take it to the guy said, "Great, your people love this." She said, "Yes, I produce you." I would do the same.

That's the truth. But here's here's a fun fact. You don't know about me, Frank. Um, when I was a kid, I I used to sing backgrounds for Teddy Pendigrass and people like that. Um, I grew up in the music industry.

Wow.

Yeah. Gerald Levert. Wow.

I'm the youngest person to re-record The Twist with Chubby Checker. Like, I've been around the music business for a very formidable part of my life. I also was a radio programmer. I also ran CBS in Austin. And I also put Ricky Smiley in this indication. I work with Wendy Williams, DJ Clue, so on and so forth. I can tell you from firthand experience, and I defy anybody who watches this to tell me I'm lying, that we do not get to pick what records make. See, when somebody makes a record, you might not know this cuz you're not in the industry. When somebody makes a record, they can make a bunch of songs. Marvin Gay and Barry Gordy because Barry Gordy was answering to palm colored people at this particular point in history had an issue because Marvin Gay wanted to sing what's going on and start reaching his people a different way. And what Barry Gordy wanted was I wasn't nothing. He he wanted he wanted the fun stuff. He didn't want anything, you know, too controversial because he didn't think it was going to sell. When you make an album, it's usually anywhere from 30 to 100 songs. Out of that 30 to 100 songs, they pick 12. And when you look at it, the people who are making, it's funny you said Clive Davis because Clive Davis is also responsible for B.I. because Clive Davis distributed Bad Boy and then after him um you had uh Jimmy Ivine distributed Bad Boy. You and Death Row you at different points in history. The point of it is when the people, the board that are not us

Mhm.

statistically and historically because I defy you to find a major record company, a major media platform that is owned by us. We don't get a say. We can make a million in one songs. I have sat in meetings with people who were signing record deals and they were like, "Yeah, we like this, but no more of this. You can't talk about this, this, that, and the third." And if you say no, you know what there is? There is a line of foundational black Americans who all want to buy their mama a house and the only thing they know how to do is rap. The only thing they know how to do is make beats. And so once the product gets in their hands, it's not about what we want. Because if you go back, you were here

1992. Were you here?

Right. No, you weren't here. Yes.

92. Do you know what the number one record on the radio in 1992 was?

Oh jeez.

It was It was I I'll save you the trouble. It's Public Enemy, Fight the Power.

Mhm.

And that's when the Rodney King verdict happened. And that's when folks were were riding and they said, "Never before, never again."

And they made a distinct And when I say they, I'm talking about the major media companies said, "We're not going to allow this to happen ever again." So they decide what goes out. They own the radio stations. They own the billboards. They own the distribution channels. They have global distribution. That has absolutely nothing to do with I bring my lyrics because there have been plenty of people who bl uh bought lyrics. Okay. Right.

Last point, I'll land my plane. You're familiar with Tyler Perry, are you not?

Okay. Do you know what his lowest grossing movie was?

It's a movie that shows a responsible foundational black American man who had two daughters. Like, I got my two daughters and I take care of my two daughters. But that is not what sells. How many times have you turned on the news and and heard a foundational black American businessman went home to his wife and two daughters today and absolutely nothing bad happened? But you'll hear about all the grapes and take the G off. You know what I'm saying? You'll hear about all the unalivings. You will hear about all the stabbings. You'll hear about all the drug raids. You'll hear about absolutely everything because we are the only people who do not own and control our narrative. We get to perform. We do not get to collect. We get to put it out. they get to produce it and decide the message that goes out into the world.

Yeah, business works like that. Of course, um I remember long back that we were dancing to Nat King Po, we were dancing to Ella Figerat, we were dancing to Sacho, uh we were dancing to, you know, Heb Hancock and all these black people. Yeah.

But you understand? And there was no violence and dirty language in it. But it was the same producers. In fact, back then you can say there was no Bad Boy, there was no death row, there was no Young Money. Now you have it and you're still writing the bad lyrics. This is what I understand about the culture. Cultures have gatekeepers.

Did you wear the t-shirt? Did you dance with the song? Did you buy it? Did you allow him to remain in your neighborhood? Well, you promoted it. So don't blame the guy over there. If you're going to sell your dignity, as you said, so your lyrics can sell. Well, you choose because you don't have a culture that has a gatekeeper. But I promise you one thing. The people I have lived among in Asia, they will never let you back again into the community if you're going to sing songs about our women that way or make videos with our women. Didn't you allow it? You did. So I don't like to blame who produced.

So at what point by at one point by that same logic, if it's just business, slavery was just business. Jim Crow was just business. Segregation was just business. Pole taxes was just business. All of it is just business. But the truth of the matter is there is irreparable harm and to act like that irreparable harm does not exist and lay it on the artist and not on the people who go looking for those particular artists. When I was coming up, when I got my deal, right, there was a department. It was called artist and repertoire. The average bear calls it ANR. And you had to go out and you would develop talent over time. Now that's not what happens. They want the most ratchet, the most gutter, the most despicable situation they can possibly have. And when we do own it and we get too old and we're like, you know what, I want to retire, they back up the Brinks truck and they take us out of the game. When you look at what happened when BET got sold by Bob Johnson uh over to Viacom, which is now Paramount or whatever the heck they are this week, um do you know the first things they did?

No. The first thing they did was they got rid of the news because the news was showing us in not only what was happening bad in our communities, but what was happening positively in our communities highlighting. They got rid of Ed Gordon so fast it made your head swim and right after that they kicked Tavis Smiley out. Then they got rid of Teen Summit because you had a bunch of positive kids who were being examples, black kids being examples of what to be, what you could aspire to. So you take all the hope out of a situation. And these are historical facts. This isn't conjecture. You [snorts] take all the hope out of a situation and you continue to promote hopelessness. There is a distinct line that starts in the summer of 1992 and continues on because if it bleeds, it leads. You got a masscom degree. I got a masscom degree. Hell, I was a masscom professor at Temple University. You know as well as I do that sensation always sells. And nothing sells more than anything else. You know what a gaper delay is, right?

A gaper delay. So pretend you're in traffic, right? Whether you're on 95, the Tapency Bridge, wherever you are, and [clears throat] there's a delay in traffic and you can't figure out what it is. And so you're driving up and all of a sudden you see that there's somebody with a uh there somebody with a bad uh accident, their arm is off or their head's rolling down and your mouth is a gape. People are slowing down because they want it's a gaper delay. We have been programmed, all Americans, regardless of skin color, okay, to ingest a diet of negativity. But the biggest producers of negativity without any balance or the biggest group of people that have negativity without any balance by design are foundational black Americans. And we're the only culture in America that has that.

I keep saying the same thing. I would ask the same question. You would say, "This person did this to me." I would say, "Why did it work?" The propensity must be there before the stimulus was introduced. Now if you do not, my grandfather told me something.

He said anything that happens to you,

forget about the resolve. It's unpleasant, unfortunate. Do not focus on what happened to me because everybody knows what happened to you and you know what happened to you.

Ask why was I susceptible to it?

And from that day, nobody can mess with you. I think it's not that simple. All right. I know it's not that simple.

The the traffic light was created by a black man, right? You know what they did? They start making tickets for people at red lights. Um the light bulb was created by a black man. They started making con Edison bills. Like everything the telephone the cell phone was created by what I'm saying. It's not that sample. If we created all these things and they add a bill to what we created.

Look man, I cannot defend what you you have just listed. I have no proof of it. I have no name of it. If black Americans are fewer than Africans, is that not true? Wait. Huh?

The population of African-Americans in America.

It's like one country in Africa, isn't it? Certainly.

Okay. So, if all these abilities to do all these things,

why always the invention is African-American and never anything happens where you came from?

We repeat the because I know that

Let me repeat the question so it's clear. Yeah.

Africa has almost 1.2 2 billion people 54 countries.

Yes.

All right.

African-Americans 13% maybe 54 million, right?

All right. If these abilities you keep naming that you can build a country like America, you can invent all the things.

Yeah.

Why the people from whom you came, why are they not doing it?

Because they don't got the same pedigree as black people in America are the the richest black nation on earth. We're the most successful black nation on earth. We got the we don't have the res we can't leverage resources like they do in Africa. We built

I'm asking about the ability for you to do the things he listed. Why are they not doing it on the continent if it's

I can't speak of the continent. I can only speak about black Americans in this country. Like that's this is what we did in this country with less resources with less and we still accomplish more than anybody in the diaspora.

Well then what is a complaint about about the white supremacist?

Here's the complaint about the white supremacy

and you are the richest nation on earth and you've done all these

because even with white supremacy you still accomplish more than anybody in the

I understand then what is the problem we talking about?

Here's the problem. We are the only group.

Why are you complaining if you just say now that no I mean him you are the richest nation on earth. I agree with you

and we have done all these things and accomplish all these things.

Then why are we talking about somebody did something

life is just going on. You're going to be better more. Talk about what is here so the kids can hear it. Pointing that to them. You are pronouncing and highlighting. You're the one making it that the kids are demoralized by these narratives. And I refused to participate in that because the day I knew I'm just a different person. I'm an accidental citizen of this earth. I didn't choose my skin color. I didn't choose my tribe. I didn't choose my nation. I didn't choose my race. What is there for me to defend anyway?

Knowing that I'm an accidental being here, I get along with anybody based on me. That's it.

And I'm tall, handsome, and happy. That's when I respond when people ask me how are you.

What is the headache?

What is it?

I think that

what is wrong? I think the issue is the lack of respect that we get from

You feel it. You said so.

Mhm.

When I came to this country, there was one word common among gang bangers. Yo, you disrespected me. What the heck is that? It's an abstract noun. You can't even see it. You hang on to abstract nouns and kill people over it. How do you know you've been disrespected? What does it do to you? Did I pinch you?

Did I hit you on the head? I mean,

what what is it? Right.

Only because you mentioned being called African booty a booty scratcher affected your mindset.

No, I didn't. I didn't end by saying I said only African-Americans did it to me. Did I tell you it affected me? It didn't. I still took kids.

Okay. So, you Africa take you out of it, right?

You talking about the the millions of Africans is here. It didn't affect them cuz that's the one thing they always come and say.

I don't know.

It's a throughine. I'm only telling you about what happens. I I was in Kenya and this Sudanese girl, I was online and I met her online. So, finally we met in person and she said to me, you know, I knew you are from America, but I knew you were not an African-American. That's why I agreed to meet with you.

And I said, why would you say that? And she told me her story.

She's a refugee in Kenya,

tall,

and uh so she got a scholarship to come and play here in Maryland.

I don't know which school she went to, a high school.

Yeah.

She said every day she cried. she can't go to the locker room because of the black players basketball girls. So one day they played against a white team. One of the white girls saw that she was not in a good mood and asked her and she told her mother, the white girl's mother came to the school and made sure that she took this girl out to go to a different school. She said the last two years in America among all white, not that I didn't miss my black people was the best I ever had. They call me duck. They call me names. They the one uh uh blacks you used to joke about.

He said all that. He said I cry every day. Listen, I am not blaming.

I'm only telling you same it is back home.

This is my people. I'm among and I can tell you I have a credibility. I'm from the continent where my great-grandfathers and mothers were taken from and I'm among them. So I see more than you see. But you say disrespected us. What disrespect? Why should that matter?

It it it doesn't matter. But the thing of it is that I need you to understand. If any other group in this country gets disrespected by whatever measurement they feel, for example, Kyrie Irving, you familiar with Kyrie Irving?

We talk about uh he sent a link of a Jews uh documentary.

Yes, that is correct. On Amazon, last I checked, Jeff Bezos wasn't exactly a foundational black American. Um Kyrie Irving did not produce that documentary. Kyrie Irving did not star in that documentary. He just said, "Hey, this looks interesting."

Yeah.

What did the Anti-Defamation League do to Kyrie Irving?

They asked him to go to five classes and learn about uh Jewish sensitivity.

What else?

Uh pay some fees, become friends with the rabbis, take a lesson, and he was like, "Yes, sir. Yes sir. Yes, sir."

All because they felt disrespected because he tweeted something. because there is an infrastructure there in order to punish people that feel that

they feel like have disrespected them. And the irony is these are the same folks who will say that we're not like that. We don't run this. We don't punish people. We don't terrorize people. And then they go out of their way to make demands and sanctions on the very people that they say are disrespecting them or or are or are anti them by forcing them to do certain things. There in lies the difference. And so I want to I want to answer the real question you asked and I'm paraphrasing so forgive me but it's like well what is the problem when it comes to this? If we can do all of this then what is the issue? Are you familiar with Eli Whitney?

Give me a look.

Okay. Eli Whitney was a landmass slave owner

who said he invented something called the cotton gin. The cotton gin was a machine that cleaned and picked cotton and basically expanded slavery and cotton manufacturing by about 400 to 4,000% depending on which estimation you have. The thing about

That is Eli Whitney. Was an educated white man. The term "cotton gin" is pigeon English for "cotton engine." Black slaves created it, but a white man monetized it. You can't name one foundational Black American invention that has not been co-opted, cashed in, or monetized by, uh, white hands. And that is the unique disparity that nobody wants to talk about. It's not about a white man holding me down because ain't no white man holding me down. Ain't no white man holding me back. My daughter's sitting right there will tell you every dime of her tuition I paid out of state at Howard University, $186,383.63, out of my pocket. So it's not a matter of what we can't do. It's a matter of what happens when we do certain things, and it becomes harder. And historically, we're unique amongst that, even to this day, right? We talk about what Clive Davis did with Whitney Houston. But Whitney Houston was a was a kid from the projects who smoked, who smoked cigarettes and had a cocaine habit. Those are facts. That's not that's not disparagement.

Um, the other part of that is we never talk about what Clive Davis did to Milli Vanilli, 'cause those are young Black men, but they looked a certain way, and they were too pretty. But we have these big, old, fat Black guys that can really sing. So we're going to have them sing, but we're going to put Milli Vanilli up. And then when it got discovered that the scam was happening, Clive Davis didn't lose a Grammy. Milli Vanilli did. Clive Davis wasn't shunned. Milli Vanilli was. Clive Davis went on and made Bad Boy, made J Records, gave Usher a record deal, built LaFace Records, did everything he wanted to do without any consequence or recompense to what he did to those young boys who were out front through no fault of their own, who were forced into that situation, and the, the, the fat Black kids who were in the back singing. When you don't control the media, when you don't control the message, when you don't control the invention, when you don't have the ability to freely monetize the creation, how can you ever dominate?

No, I don't. No, I can't answer that question. I do want to interject, um, because we still got a couple more questions to go to. Jew, I know you had a topic that you, you wanted to get into.

Okay. Um, so when you hear the word "tether," do you feel like, or do you believe that is a word to just, you know, separate non-Black Americans from foundational Black Americans, or do you believe it's more on the line of hateful speech?

No, I, I don't consider anything as hateful speech. I don't.

You know that people, you know, use words. Would you consider yourself the same, along the lines of "tether"?

I said "tether."

Yeah.

It's a grammar. I mean, I don't know how people define it.

Well, basically, they say on, on, on the lines of non-Black Americans that benefit from Black Americans but talk down on Black.

That's what "tether" means?

Yeah.

Oh, okay. They must have a reason. Yeah. They must have a reason to say that.

Yeah. I mean, I, I wouldn't be offended by that.

But I'm saying, would you consider yourself?

That you benefit from the labor of Black Americans being here, the opportunity, and then?

Well, I don't know.

And you speak down on Black Americans now, as well as, as well as?

Okay, let me go to other people. Let me go to the other words.

Yeah.

You see, this is the problem.

I'm not speaking down. Stop using the words. We are having a very heated discussion. Okay.

These are my views and I'm sharing them.

About a certain people who are close to me. It's not speaking down. This is where the violence starts.

So, let me answer to your.

I came to this country with money.

Mhm.

My, my, my school fees didn't come from the United States government. It was paid through my former employer. So, I brought $148,000 to the University of Bridgeport to study. All right. And I have remained in this country. I raised my hand and I swore an oath to the white government to say I want to be a naturalized citizen, and they accepted me. I've worked my butt off, you know, in corporate, my own nonprofit, and now my destiny. So I don't know what you mean by benefit. No, I worked myself, just like I worked in many countries, places where there were no Black people, but I succeeded. I lived in Japan for four years. I've been in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, everywhere. So it's no different from my hard work and my attitude to be in this country. So I don't want anybody to tell me that I came here to benefit from anybody. So if somebody calls me a "tether," I'll say he must have a good reason to call me that. That shouldn't make an enemy at all for me and that person.

Well, I mean, it's still a benefit to come to the country, 'cause you wouldn't have came here if it wasn't a benefit, right?

What benefit?

Why did you come here?

I came here to go to school, and I stayed, just like any place. My freedom to choose any place, including the desert, if I want to.

But is, but you came here because there was more opportunity there.

I came here to go to school. I stayed. I told you, I could go home and live big.

Mhm.

But I don't want to deal with the headache of what I'll get at home.

So this is the country I choose to live in.

Okay.

So.

Go ahead. Go ahead.

Um, there's two points I want to make, actually. Um, there, there is some Black Americans that, um, have come to this country and, like you said, you was already well off financially. You said your employer paid you. You already came over here with over a hundred grand, you said, right? To go to school?

Yes.

You paid. So you already was established coming here. There's some Black, um, Black immigrants that are the same way. They come here established already, and then they come here and then look down upon the Black Americans, just like something we say in Black America, "You didn't get it out the mud like how we did." So now some people come over here in the diaspora that are already established, and now they want to say, "Damn, you know what? You didn't work as hard as me," and they already got a, they already got a pass. You get what I'm saying?

But that, that's the type of rhetoric that's when we have the panels, that's the type of rhetoric, "Okay, you guys are lazy. You guys are going off of government assistance." When you guys came here already established, some of you guys. I'm not saying all of them. Oh, okay. Let me make it clear. I wasn't already established. Okay. As a reporter.

Coming over here with 100 grand, that's more than most people.

My money, scholarship.

It doesn't matter.

Scholarship giving, still majority doesn't mean my money. If I wasn't established, no. Established, I don't know what it means. But I knew that I was an emotionally stable, well-structured, sophisticated gentleman from Africa. That is all that matters to me.

Mhm.

Okay. I'm not interested in the American dream and wealth and house and picket fence and all these flashy cars. Go and see outside what I brought here. 2014 Kia Soul with 188,000 miles on it. I've never bought a brand new car in this country 'cause I don't need it.

Yeah, neither do I.

Okay. So this need a Ferrari.

I'm just waiting to die. That's it. And I chose to die in America.

What is the point? Like, I got something from somebody here.

If anything, I beg the white man whose country I came to, and he gave me the citizenship. Not a Japanese, not a Chinese, not an African-American.

But the reason that you're talking about things that would make us understand each other, and maybe I thought we would use this to understand why do people from the Caribbean and Africa come. I have defended. But you see, when I speak about myself, you may think I'm trying to make things up. I used to get very angry when I hear any of the Caribbeans and Africans say things like this about African-Americans.

Right?

I have been.

There's not a man who be lying here for that. And I used to say, "I give it to the African-Americans. They were uprooted, shook so hard, there is no soil left for the root to germinate." And yet, look at them here. You come from your own place, and we are all messed up out there. So who should I give the credit to?

Well, the other, the other point I do want to make, I want to get to you, Dave. Um, you said that you said at your own mouth that you didn't want to go back and deal with what you have to deal with in your country, right? I think that is the difference between Black Americans because we stood here and fought. Have that luxury to to leave our country and go live somewhere else and benefit off the hard work of other people. You said out your own mouth, "I don't want to go back home and deal with what my, my country is dealing with right now. I'd rather stay over here in America." And I think that's the difference between foundational Black Americans and not and Black immigrants is that you guys are leaving your situations instead of staying and fighting and and making your situation better. That way the citizens don't have to leave and go somewhere else to live a better lifestyle for themselves and their family. You guys chose to go to another country instead of staying and fighting, fixing the, um, the corrupt politicians, fixing the economy, fixing the poverty, fixing the crime rate, fixing the educational attainment. You guys chose to leave. Especially the brilliant minds. They are leaving their countries to go live elsewhere. That's not something Black Americans have in us. We don't. We stood. We stood here.

Japan was the number one economy for about 20-something years until the bubble burst in 1989. Japan, the most beautiful place I have seen on mother earth. You won't find a poor person. Denmark, Scandinavia, you won't find. But they migrate here a lot. So it's not just because people come everywhere their country is bad. Migration is something in people. There are more people back home in my country than I am.

There's a reason people individuals feel certain ways. Doesn't mean that it's for everybody.

So Japanese are here.

Sure.

It could be in Japan, which is very quiet, polite, organized, no crime.

I went to LA for a conference. I went to Little Tokyo. They've boarded up every place. And I know Japanese like, "What is this?" But they choose to. "I just like this place." Scandinavians are here. They're not from a poor place. So I don't think that fixing a, I'm not in a business of fixing no politician, a corrupt politician in my country for what? I don't have a country. I told you it was forced together by some foreigner.

So you're calling something I don't have my country.

No, I don't have that allegiance, really. No.

But, but I think, I think where the benefit lies is that you were able to come here with.

Here, you talking about?

America.

Who's, who's America? I didn't think I was going to a Black country. I would have gone to. But the reason.

I came to a white man's country. When I went to the embassy, I saw the United States of America and read about what. But the reason a Black man yourself can come here is because of what the FBA did to make it, to make it lawfully like possible for you to come here with your 100 grand and go to college. That was not a possibility. That was not a possibility a century ago.

Do not know. There are many countries that don't have slaves. UK is one of them. That are no slaves like African-America. So why you go there?

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

There are many countries in Europe, they don't have Blacks there.

Right?

But all Africans are there.

Right?

Okay. So who made it possible for Africans to go to those countries?

It's a world of difference. And here's why. And I think.

Why only when it comes to America, you're thinking that you made it possible to come? Saudi Arabia. I lived in Japan. I got, I got a resident permit for four years. I could have asked for permanent, permanent residency, right? They would have granted it to me. Same as in China. There are 14,000-something Africans living in China. Okay. What I'm saying is, you go through the 46 countries in, in Europe, you find almost in every one of them that Africans are there, driving, working, doctors, students, and everything. It wasn't no Black person that is there to make it possible for them to come. So we can say that if you were not here, therefore Blacks wouldn't come to America. So that one is not a good point. But you have a question.

No, it's not. It's, it's not even a question. Right. So [laughter] the, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment. The 13th probably really doesn't apply to you too much because you were never enslaved, but that abolished slavery. 14th amendment, just because I want to make sure I get this right, is birthright citizenship, right? Because we were denied rights after slavery, right? The 15th amendment is voting rights. The Civil Rights Act that got put into law was because my people, you know, my, my mother's generation, my father's generation, um, fought for you to become, for you to come over here.

No.

Not yet.

No, no, no, no. They fought for their freedom.

I was never informed, sent any letter in Africa that you should come to America. I'm just telling you, nobody fought for me. You were in a condition. You need to fight for your freedom.

Mm. And so you fought for your freedom. Benefit from you. Benefit from that picture. I've given you an example. There are many places I have lived.

But we're not talking about many places. This is unique. One of them. What makes you think that if you're not here, therefore America wouldn't allow Black people to come here? We were the ones who fought to make. No, Asians are not white.

Frank, you got to let you got to let me rock for a minute. Right. So here's what I need you to understand. The reason that it went from the Black liberation movement to civil rights was twofold. The first one was they wanted to make sure they could shoehorn everybody else in because when folks come here, they contribute to the economy.

Who?

Okay. When I say that.

I mean, who made that folks should come and contribute to the economy? You mean the white Americans?

The white government.

Okay. Sure. Yeah.

Right.

When that Civil Rights Bill got passed into law, when LBJ signed it into law.

Right. After that, you got fat white women being stewardesses on Pan Am, right? You got, uh, women had rights. You've got gays having rights. You have people being able to come into this country and have the opportunities that were not allowed prior to us bleeding, fighting, and dying for those rights to be put into law. That is uniquely on us that we, whether you realize you benefited from it or not.

What right is that?

The right to come into this country, to come to school in this country, to become a citizen of this country.

I'm just asking for.

Black people fought for civil rights. You are here because of civil rights.

What is civil rights?

That's a great question, and it depends on who you ask. The, the right to be able to participate in what the Constitution of the United States provides for everybody. "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare." I mean, it's a long constitution, but in there, there's a lot of amendments in the 13th, 14th, and 15th.

Yeah. So, the Civil Rights simply says that people living here, African-Americans who were brought here illegally and forcefully must have the freedom to participate in everything civic.

Not everybody. You see, that's what that's that's the distinction that they don't tell you. It's not just about African-Americans. They shoehorned absolutely everybody else into.

Americans who enacted a Civil Rights were thinking about other people.

No, we weren't. But that's what the government did with it. That's what I'm trying to.

It's not about whether you were extending an invitation or not.

Make it. You are trying to make it more.

If I buy you a ticket to the Yankees game, you didn't buy the ticket or you didn't ask to go to the Yankees game, but you're sitting in the stands.

It's saying you still benefit from. Still benefit from it. Whether I did it, I don't believe it. And therefore, it made. Whether you believe it or not. I don't believe that's a camera. It doesn't stop it from recording.

I also showed you that other country, 196 countries on the surface of the earth. Out of that, 46 or 48 of them are white countries. You go to any of them, you'll find us. We didn't wait to see, "Oh, Black people are here waving flags and say, 'Now you can come.'"

Why the hell y'all wasn't here when we was out here getting our ass whooped and hung? Okay. I don't want to talk about the conditions people face and what they fought for.

It's one thing I respect it.

It don't because you.

You wouldn't be able to walk these grounds.

The rights you have as a Black man, regardless of where you come from in America, you are an American citizen, right?

Yes.

You are a, you are a American citizen.

You're a naturalized American citizen.

13th, 14th, and 15th amendment. Like that, you became a naturalized citizen because that amendment was fought for by us.

Oh. So.

So you benefit.

Southeast Asians who are here.

Same. Yes. The South Asians, the Germans, everybody.

Yes. Everybody.

And I don't have anything to say about that because I'm not on why American white American government decided to allow immigration to build because it was a, it was of a financial benefit. It was of a financial benefit. They have taken. Of course, that is one of the things America did that is so unique from other countries. They knew the line they have taken and the country they want to build. Of course, every country on, on the surface of the earth builds into its system a form of immigration. Even the most homogeneous, like Japan, they always know what immigration does to a country.

And so if you're going to go on telling everybody who is here is because of us, uh, then fine. I wouldn't argue at that.

You did.

I mean, it's everybody, then I think I mean.

No, but the, the thing of it is, it's a historical fact that whether you recognize it or not, there is a debt of gratitude to be paid to foundational Black Americans who got their heads cracked in, who got beaten and lynched and had dogs sicked on them, and still happens, you know, where that right would not have been available to you, that privilege would not have been something that you would have been able to have taken advantage of. You would have wound up in Oxford.

If it wasn't for that. That's a historical fact. It's not.

I, I don't know what government of America, white government of America had in mind in terms of immigration,

Right? And I think that's why that's important for us to have these conversations because it's about learning both ways. There's certain things that.

I know Europeans migrated here.

Sure.

I know Arabs migrated here. Migration is migration. So I don't know. So I can't speak about it. But if you want to take the credit.

But you understand how Black people was treated in this country, right?

Understand?

It's pointless. Giving backhanded.

So you, you understand how they were treated before we fought for civil rights and and the right to vote and the right to you. You understand how how Black people treated before all these laws is passed.

I do not have to. If you migrated before somebody is in slavery.

Well, that alone explains itself.

Right. So if you migrated here, you're jumping to say because of that, as if other countries don't give immigration.

And you haven't proven that.

Other countries don't. If this is solely exclusive to the United States, then I would say you're right, but it's not exclusive to the.

No one said immigration. Everybody knows that's a bit of a straw man.

Immigration.

That's a bit of a straw man.

Because they know that there are many talent and skills. They have to import it, even if it means by force. They bribe. Japanese did it. But how you think you would have been imported in this country had we not fought for these rights?

What right? Tell me the right.

The right for naturalized citizenship, the right for civil rights, whether you came. So, so say for example, you came. Let's, let's pretend that we're on Earth two, and let's pretend that Earth two is an alternate universe, just like us, except for one particular change. And that one particular change is segregation is still in place. White supremacy is the law of the land. If it's white, you're right. If you're Black, get back, regardless of where you come from. Now, let's say that you did apply and you became a citizen. You would automatically be a second-class citizen, and they would say, "Get your Black ass to the back of the bus. You can't do this. You can't do that." Do you know that when you became a lawyer in this country, up until Black people started becoming lawyers, there was no such thing as a bar exam? They created bar exams to bar us from becoming attorneys. When we got the, when we got the right to vote, they started creating things called grandfather clauses and poll taxes in order to keep us from exercising those rights. You understand that that to be a fact, correct?

I don't know.

Okay. But trust me, the comment section will tell you that that's a fact. Civil rights, which started off as the Black liberation movement, and then COINTELPRO did its thing and and and gave us civil rights.

So, back to you. The rights I'm enjoying.

Hold on. I was, I was landing. I was in the middle of telling you the rights you're enjoying. Okay.

Civil rights gave you the opportunity to be here, take that $148,000 scholarship and sit in a classroom amongst all Americans and make that make that happen.

You have to show me where that does not happen. If it is exclusive to the United States, please, please.

No, that is not true. United. Many places.

Before, were Black people being burnt and brutally killed over those places? No, no, no. Were they Black people shipped over there, burnt, killed, destroyed, and abolished every opportunity they have? Was that happening in those other places first?

You talking about these other places? The, the American experience is unique.

You can't compare. [laughter] You can't compare to these other places. That is something you're missing. I think you understand when you take somebody as a slave, as it happened in Northern Europe, the whole of Northern Europe, slaves, right? As it happened in Africa between tribes, as it happened in Asia, uh, with the, with the, uh, Mongols, as it happened in the Middle East with the Ottoman Empire, slaves have been taken. The condition is never something anybody is ever comfortable with. So, what you're describing, "my head was busted." Yes, you are in a slave condition. They took you and they said, "You're going to be my slave."

Mhm.

Let's not begin to say what it did to me.

But you're trying to make an argument that, oh, when slavery was over and I fought for civil rights, is why you came here. I would buy that argument. I'll bow to you if you told me that was exclusive to the United States because other countries do not allow Black anywhere, which is not in the text. Now, tell me what I'm benefiting.

Again.

No, he, she, he said it. Please go ahead.

I'm telling you.

No, no, no. Name it at items, please. Just name the item that you're benefiting from.

Yes.

The reason that you were able.

No. What is the item? It's a business relationship I have with the United States of America.

I brought money. I pay taxes on my money.

The reason you were able to do that is because. I'm asking you, give me the benefits.

I can't. I can't.

Exactly.

Okay.

I can't. So, let me.

I don't. Frank, Frank, here, here's, here's, here's what I need you to understand. Right. Immigration is not something that is unique to America. No one ever said it was. That's the straw man argument. That's not what I'm on. Here's what I am on. Are you familiar with the Nuremberg laws?

What?

The Nuremberg laws.

Yeah. In Germany.

Yes. In Germany. Okay.

Do you know where those came from?

No, I don't.

No. See, Hitler went on record.

No. Mh. Talk about. No. You got [laughter] Black Americans. I just want to say that. You give me too many history lessons. I can't verify because you don't know. I'm not going to follow you because you're not a history expert.

So don't give me history like as if you're teaching a high school kid. Just ask a list of questions. And you said we're going to have these discussions. But to go to Nazi, I wasn't born. I wasn't.

You're missing the trial. I am asking you to tell me. I'm working in this country. But look.

What is that one right that you can say I'm enjoying?

Okay. You, you have the right to be a citizen here, which you would have not.

For the Americans, they wanted it and they gave it to Frank. We're going to let. We're going to let him talk.

We let you talk. Let him have his his moment.

You have the right to sit down in a classroom and pay for tuition that you would not have been able to do in any place in the United States with very few exceptions if it were not for civil rights. That is an irrefutable fact. And the reason I was bringing up the Nuremberg laws is because Jim Crow in and of itself was so bad that Hitler modeled the Nuremberg laws off of Jim Crow. And I'm not trying to give you a history lesson, but there's a lot of history that comes with foundational Black Americans that you do not know. That would change your perspective. We came here for this conversation, not so much to try and convince you or you to try and convince me, but to have an exchange of ideas so that you can understand our perspective and we can understand yours. When we had our initial phone conversation, we talked about the importance of people understanding that you are not coming from a place where you're trying to demean people and people are threatening your life and you know, your team is like, you know, should we call the FBI? And you're like, "No, but this is insane." To the point where when we were talking, you said, "Well, you know, this, this, this group, foundational Black Americans." I said, "No, Frank, it's not a group, it's a lineage. That's what it means."

I, what I'm saying, please ask me the questions. I don't like the chumming along because the things you're saying I can't verify them. I wasn't there. So when you say something like that, you're forcing me to say, should I, should I concur and say it's true?

No, I'm not trying to. I'm not trying to get you to agree. I'm trying to give you things that you can look up later on for your own benefit, for so that you can get a better understanding. This is not about.

The question now.

Okay. So let me go back to, 'cause I asked you and and Dave, I want to switch to you because.

Yeah. Frank said, uh, he's not offended by the word, uh, "tether." Sure. Right. But when you hear the word "akata,"

And there's, uh, countless amount of words.

Do you believe those words are to embrace, uh, foundational Black Americans or?

To do the term?

No. But the thing that I, I think is extremely important is is twofold. The first is when you use a term like "akata," that comes from institutionalized hate and divisive language that has been spread through through media and narrative that puts us in a certain light, right? That we're lazy. We don't care about.

Like the N-word, in a.

Exactly. It's, it's, it's, it's a nice little code word. You know, for example, I know people that would call us. I've known Italians that would call us, [ __ ] Mulligans. There's a bunch of, uh, terms that come up, right? The thing that people don't understand when it comes to the "tether" word is it's not every single person who is Black who decides to become a naturalized citizen and take the oath. That is extreme ignorance. A "tether" is somebody that goes out of their way to disparage, disrespect, and not understand the the heritage, the sacrifice, and the contributions of foundational Black Americans to the fact that they are here. You are tethering yourself because the average person, we had this conversation the last time I was here, the average person can't tell an African from a Jamaican, from a Ghanaian, from a foundational because they don't have a basis. It's just like many Black folks don't know the difference between a Japanese, a Chinese, a Vietnamese, or a Korean. They don't know. They just put us all in one boat. So when you come here, they're just like, "You're Black."

Mhm.

But our unique distinction is we did fight for the right for Frank to be able to come over here and sit in a classroom to be a, a citizen with all of the rights that are imbued in us, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness by the U.S. Constitution. We fought for that uniquely, and that part is unique. Immigration is not unique. Having people come and become naturalized citizens is not unique. But Black people and other people, other marginalized groups who are not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants being able to take advantage of the same freedoms, the same benefits, the same laws that are inalienable, God-given rights according to manifest destiny in the U.S. Constitution is uniquely because of what we fought for. There in lies the difference. Do you agree with the term "akata" being used in a, in a way to disrespect or harm, uh, in a harmful way?

Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

You know, so many things happen with that word. Okay. Even some of us, if you use the same word in a Ghanaian one of the Ghanaian languages or one of the Nigerian languages, on and on and on.

It was a movie with Wesley Snipes, I believe. Mhm.

That that poisoned that word because when he said, uh, something in Yoruba language, and the guy asked him what did he mean, he translated to him and said.

And then Snipes swung at him in that movie. I hated the whole thing.

Okay. But if you go to any of the West African countries, especially Ghana.

In the Ewe language of Ghana.

Your name is Amaybo Yoo, the Black white man.

The Black white man.

Yes.

Why is that?

That's what that's that's the name in the Ewe language. That's what they called African-Americans.

And is that.

What do y'all call the Caribbeans? And why, why do we have a specific term? What are the Korean, uh, the Caribbeans called? But you must understand that United States and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Things that happened and the people who came and went. Maya Angelou, you know.

Yeah, the '60s movement was never between Caribbeans and, uh, what is it called, Africa. It was between American Blacks and Africa. So we came to see more of you now. The word "Gajin." Does anybody here know the word "Gajin"?

So, "Gajin" is a Japanese word for foreigner.

G-A-I-J-I-N.

"Gajin" is the Japanese word for foreigner.

Do you know when you are a foreigner to Japanese?

I prefer to be called a foreigner than, you know, when or where they will refer to you as a foreigner.

When you're not, when you're not born there.

No, what I mean is, when a Japanese, anyway, when the Japanese definition of the word foreigner is not when you visit his country.

What is it? If four Japanese come to the United States, they refer to everybody here as "Gajin," the foreigners.

Because "Gajin" means those who are not like us.

Okay.

So, it's not only when you go to their country.

When they're in your country, all of you are "Gajin."

Okay.

So, you're asking me why do they call you, uh, what is it? Uh, uh, the Black man white.

Well.

In Africa, we don't say that skin color is what identifies you with an ethnicity or a tribe or this. We don't.

Mhm.

It's more of trait, personality, character.

Yes.

So if you have lived among the white and you are from a Western country, yes, you wear the same skin color, but we know that if we interact, we have to learn how do we interact with this person.

Okay? You wouldn't go to Ghana and feel comfortable sitting on somebody's lap because the, the, the public transport is full and sit on his lap. I don't have any problem with that because we don't have special communication. Only Westerners have special communication, which means that you don't get to, yo, yo, yo, you know.

When we were in high school, we hold each other's hands, boys.

Yeah.

Here.

In high school.

Yeah.

For what?

Like walking home.

Okay.

You see what is going through your mind now? [laughter]

He's like, "Pause."

I remember my best friend always, we're holding hands. We put hands on each other's shoulders and walk home. Yeah.

I mean, but why, why hold hands though?

You see, you're asking why about some people's cultural, cultural.

Difference? I'm, I'm just asking why. You're asking why.

I'm asking what's the reason? Like, is there a reason?

Oh, there's no reason. I just.

Expressing love. That's how they, um.

I'm just trying to show you that the reason we see you as an American is because we. Okay, I can describe it. You couldn't deal with it. No, but you can say Black American, not Black white American. It's the disconnect.

But my friend, I am. You see here is the problem.

It's a huge disconnect. I am a Black American. I'm not a Black white American. I don't care. It's a huge disconnect. You are using the word.

You are disconnected already.

No, you're disconnected.

When you are, when you visit my country.

I have to help you understand many things and how to do it.

So where is the disconnect? The, the disconnect is just how you said, you said the Japanese, they have that term and everybody falls under that foreigner term. It's not, they don't look at Russians and like, you know, only them are foreigners. The thing is, you're trying not, but the, the culture or the tribe is saying that they have a specific unique name for one set of people in the diaspora that they don't have for anybody else. Like I asked you, what do they call the Caribbeans or the.

Caribbeans are not living in the white, in the white man's country. They don't.

So what do they call them? Do they, do they have a name? Are they, what, what do they name?

So this is the confusion, right? Until, until they say, "I'm Jamaican."

As long as they speak with a different accent in English, we simply would say the same thing until they say, "No, I'm from Jamaica." We didn't know about Jamaican. All these things, you must understand, we didn't.

You're still not answering the question though.

Yes. We did not know about the Caribbean.

Okay.

Our high school books didn't teach us about Caribbean. Wouldn't you understand? We thought the people they took from the continent, the first place we all know they went to, that is why most of you came was died in Ghana. They didn't go to the Caribbean. They all came to. So we be, we had this connection to learn about this group of people.

But we know also that when they come to Africa, that the way they are carrying themselves, what they do, different from us. So they are, yo, Black men, white.

I get that.

Not an insult.

No.

But when.

It's not. But he, what he's trying to say, it's not, it's not. He's not trying to make it an insult. Jew.

No, he's not. I'm just saying it's not an insult. It's not an insult because you can say it until the cows come. You don't understand. I told you from the beginning.

If you come to Ghana right now, my Ghanaian family and friends and neighborhoods will drop everything to protect you more than they will protect a citizen.

I've seen it.

Okay.

But you don't appreciate it. And this is the problem that is crossing the discouragement. You have to. No, you don't. You don't. You don't. Because Maya Angelou lived in Ghana for 14 years.

Okay.

What did she write about Ghana? Have you read it?

No.

Exactly. But he can quote me all the way to Nazi.

Why didn't you read what she said about living in Ghana for 14 years?

So that means who moved to Ghana and died in Ghana? What he wrote about Ghana? Did you read it? No, you didn't. How about the myriads of other academics who moved out of this country to Ghana because Ghana was a Black star, you know, was the first person to get independence. So everybody thought, "Whoa, whoa, whoa." So it became a place, uh, when Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X met in the elevator and refused to shake hands, which is what hurt Muhammad Ali until he died in Ghana.

So you didn't read anybody who went to Ghana or West Africa what they said about that place. So they have a reason, and you are right to even understand how the people in South Sahara Africa wanted so much, and then we arrive here.

And then we have these kind of feelings. So we don't. Okay. So what I would say is, because I'm a man and a man of honor and respect, I apologize if that.

You're a good man.

If I was taken.

But in the same way, I want you to understand like.

You. I'll even go to the minuscule thing of African booty scratcher, whatever the case.

How young Black kids connect. You, you guys hold hands, right?

So teenagers, you could be 30 years old holding a man's hand, and that's how you bond, right?

But how me and these young Black brothers, we crack on each other.

Yeah.

You could have a [ __ ]. You can have a. You can have a million dollars, and I'mma find a way to make somebody laugh at you. You rich [ __ ]. Get out of my face. That's what Black men do. An African thing.

No, but look, I'm telling you.

We cannot distinguish and understand from your culture.

I apologize.

We have different ways.

I'm glad you brought it up because it allows you to not.

When, when we speak to African brothers and we're making cracking jokes at them, they have that disdain for us, but that's how we bond.

Yeah. So, so what he's saying is, in essence, the term "African booty scratcher" is just like any other thing. Thing like when I was a kid, you know, I, I got called chubby. I got called big head. I got called egghead. All, all that stuff. I got called Simba and Arsenio 'cause I had a high butt. Like that's just part of who we are.

Because that's not something, um, what's the word I'm looking for? That that's something that's not uniquely ingrained in your culture. It can be a core memory insult to you. A.

Sign of disrespect. A sign of disrespect when it's actually a, a, a term of endearment. It means that you're part of the coup, because try, but no.

The Year of Return started in 2019 in Ghana.

Yes.

Do you know how many people have gone to Ghana? A lot. Including Umar Johnson got a citizenship.

Yep.

Did anybody, did anybody in Ghana, Nigeria, Benin, Togo call ya by any name as an endearment? You don't call somebody with a name that is among you and you know he doesn't understand.

So I understand you've done a good job and a lot of.

What you said, they call us, what's the word you said, for the white Black man? Didn't I tell you it's a cultural. We understand you. Everything. [laughter] You are, you are considering just because we said white meaning that anyone who was not born, raised in Africa, it's from a Western country, and we refer to all Western as yo.

Right. And there's no offense.

But that's, but that's a part of your culture, right? When you.

What do you mean though? That's that's specific to you and your culture. That's what you call people that's not from Western, Western Black people.

That cultural thing. I'm just trying to tell you for people to understand a distinction and treat this person differently because he's not from here. He's a Black Westerner, right? But Westerner is usually when you use it, you're talking about European countries,

Right?

So that's it.

It allows us to know that this person can do no wrong because he's not from here.

Mhm.

Okay. Gotcha. Look, look, you want to really understand, then you got to refuse to have these conclusions and all that.

Uh, Steve Harvey went to Ghana.

Mhm.

He come back with big pants on. Did he do a segment to just enlighten anybody here? No, he didn't. And I can go down the list of those of them who've gone there, shook hands with the president, and then come back and don't say anything.

Correct.

Why don't they build a bridge? Why don't they build a disconnect and say, "Guys, look at the way I was treated, man. I just came here. Look at the way I was treated." Um, Johnson, with his head smaller at the top and big at the bottom, went to Ghana, got a citizenship, and grabbed the microphone asking, "Where are my wives at? Where are my wives at?" Is that a respectful thing to do in a country that gave you citizenship? We didn't say anything wrong against him. He's walking around making money, calling himself Prince of Pan-Africanism. Do you know where Pan-Africanism is? Is in Africa. He hijacked it. Have you heard any African tell him, "Stop it. Stop it. Stop it." No. But if I say one thing about African-Americans, you're looking down upon us. You're doing this upon us.

Let's stop it.

Especially for people like us who are more sophisticated.

Mhm.

Oh, trust me.

I came here because he made an impression on me.

Right.

He sent me the question. He said, "Brother, I'm not going to embarrass you."

Now, that is unique.

Mhm.

This conversation, I wouldn't come from my state, drive here, sit with brothers. I'm coming to look down upon you. Not at. What kind of culture is that you're thinking about me? So I shouldn't criticize? Why? Europe was built faster than any culture. You know why?

It's the only place also you have just countless number of philosophers. None of their books was ever pleasing.

You're too sensitive to criticism.

There's some truth in that. Let's open the door a little bit.

Absolutely. Look, in private, we still talk about you guys.

Mhm.

I have been in it. The day you're going to visit Bridgeport.

Yeah.

I'm a commissioner.

Fair. Did you look it up? Fair Rent and Fair Housing Commission. Last.

month alone, three people I prevented from abion. Who are they? They're not Chinese or Koreans. African-Americans.

>> Yeah.

>> The whole city council is African-Americans.

>> My students are all African-Americans.

>> There's a guy who looks down upon you.

>> Well, why not?

>> This is the thing I'm Your sensitivity is not only towards white people. is always towards us because you misunderstand. I wish you call us African African so you can understand. We call you black [laughter] westerners so we can understand.

>> I think we just need to take time to to understand the same way how we just tried to explain to you about the African booty scratcher. I understand that that you

>> No, man. No, man. No, no. The kids just wanted someone also can laugh at Look, the earth is building.

>> Listen as as as That's how you're taking it. I am telling you, as a kid, they used to get picked on all the time. The dozens is a huge part of foundational black American culture. Some people call it snapping. Some people call it busting on each other. It's what we do. DL Hugley when he was hosting Comic View would find people in the audience and be like, "Hey man, listen, stop that right there. Your your neck is too small." Like it's it's because I went to the space. It's a comic space. So, I would take it as a comic. But if I'm brought to come and speak in a school and kids are laughing and throwing things at you, you know what they have heard.

>> Why do you think hanging on a tree?

>> Why do you think it got to that point?

>> It's started from somewhere.

>> It it started in a schoolyard

>> and then evolved into the comedy club.

>> So to your word that I've seen it in my comment section. No, it doesn't at all. I have trained myself.

>> It's a word a person used, right?

>> That's [ __ ] What is there to hurt me about this word? And even with the way you've explained it, as long as I know that is never part of who I am, then the person is free to use that word and it will never never and I don't take people off my comment section. I don't.

>> No. If you're going to go out there to speak on a public platform, be ready that you're going to have people. Okay. And so both those who call me names and those they are all the same to me.

>> They are all the same.

>> Right.

>> I don't I don't differentiate at all among them.

>> Right. I I do want um Ace to ask his last question before we we get up out of here cuz I feel like we could have this conversation for another all day. Like for sure like

>> by the way, how many hours?

>> Uh we had about uh two and a half.

>> Yeah,

>> for real.

>> Yeah.

>> I mean, the conversation is flowing.

>> Yeah, it's good. Go ahead.

>> My last question. Um, is unity across the African diaspora possible or are the differences in history, culture, and class too deep for a black agenda?

>> If what is unity

>> is unity across the African diaspora? Africa, [clears throat] right? Yes.

>> Across the African diaspora meaning African-Americans, Caribbeans.

>> Oh, hell no.

>> Never. What is unity? Describe the unity. Show me a picture of what you mean by unity.

>> Coming together

>> like no. Coming to conference.

>> The European Union is together. No, as countries.

>> Yes.

>> Countries that are uh uh autonomous

>> and because they know that trade and economy would work

>> because they have something. First you have have something to trade for that unity you are asking for. We don't have. So what is the unity? Unity based on what?

>> Why? Why do we need to have something to trade for you?

>> Then why are you going to unite with people?

>> Because we're black and we're black everywhere.

>> Every other culture has unity.

>> Show me one culture that has unity, but they have nothing to trade among themselves.

>> No. Take a continent because you're talking about a continent.

>> Oh, a continent.

>> Asia.

>> Uhhuh.

>> Yeah. What is a unity?

>> Japan invaded China. Yes. colonized Korea, tortured the Philippines, almost went to Okay, so he's hated by many of them. But do you know where Nissan's biggest manufacturing is is in China, Toyota? Okay, they have the best of relationship right now. So, show me a continent where people are united only on Kumbaya.

>> No, nobody's saying Kumbaya. But what

>> Okay, what is it?

>> Here's the thing, Frank. There is a reason and and and if I'm wrong, I apologize in advance, but there is a reason that you became an educator. There is a reason that you took little boys, you know, not unlike me over to Africa. There is a reason that you prevent people who look like me and who come from my particular lineage from getting thrown out in the streets. And I'm willing to say that that reason is because you care. Because whether you understand it or not, and I think that you do, I can't speak for you, but I I'll allow you to tell me if I'm wrong, because you still see me as a brother. You still see me as a black man that you care about because you understand that there is a bigger there is a bigger picture. We're still connected to the motherland. We still have a same ancestral home, do we not?

>> I don't know. If you're talking about what I'm saying, if you are talking about the continent, yes, you are from the continent.

>> But when the continent is only known, let me tell you, if I get to the airport in Benin Republic and I bring my passport out, they see my last name, they know exactly where I come from.

>> If the officer there is not from my place, I'm in trouble. He'll treat me like a piece of crap.

>> Right.

>> And you think that's right.

>> Happens in Jamaica, too.

>> Huh?

>> And you think that's right?

>> No, he don't think that's right. It's not a question of right or wrong. I know why he's doing it. Why?

>> Because he's in a country that was put together by force. He has nothing in common with me except skin color.

>> So he so that gives him the right.

>> It's not a matter of giving the right. It's it's more about that's what they're

>> mistake was for us to accept the country and think we can run it when we have nothing in common.

>> So one country has nothing in common. Now let's talk about the unity, right?

>> What is the youngest country in the world today?

>> The youngest.

>> So only about 14 years old. South Sudan.

>> South Sudan. Yeah. Okay.

>> South Sudan and Sudan, one country.

>> Mhm.

>> Okay. Black people of the same lineage and same skin color,

>> but they couldn't like each other. Danny Glover and George Clooney and some celebrities made it possible. They said, "Yeah, we want to cut off." And they cut off. As we speak in Nigeria, Nami Kalo, Mr. Namu is asking for the EOS to cut away from Nigeria. There's another Euroba man who is asking for the Eurobas to cut off. in Cameroon as I speak the com tribe of Cameroon under the French section is asking for them to secede. This is going on in the continent. You're asking for unity.

>> So you saying because the continent of Africa

>> is not unified then we can't have a global unification of the dias the black diaspora.

>> But what is what are you unified around?

>> That's something that's something we could build. What is the purpose of pan-Africanism if you're saying that unity is impossible? You said as if I believe in Panaffrican is the most stupid bogus thing ever anybody to even say.

>> But you spoke about you spoke about world view earlier, right?

>> Mhm.

>> So what if our world view was to uplift each other?

>> Whose world view?

>> Black people.

>> Which black people?

>> All black people.

>> No, there is no such thing. You can't go to Asia and say all Asian people.

>> But why not?

>> I am telling you this is the mistake. Mhm.

>> We are the only ones who walk the earth and as soon as we see a black person at an airport, oh brother, no, I'm not your brother.

>> What's wrong with that?

>> Oh, Jesus Christ. Have you gone to Europe and he had an Italian man calling calling a German brother?

>> [ __ ] them. What's wrong with What's wrong with me seeing you at the problem?

>> You might have to explain it to me then. I don't get it.

>> Let me ask you.

>> Let me tell you something.

>> The story of Chaka Zulu.

>> Chakulu.

>> What was he what was he famous for before they killed him? tormenting

>> fellow black tribes in that region.

>> Okay.

>> So that's the man you're going to unite with?

>> No.

>> Okay.

>> I'm just telling you,

>> we think that skin color makes you and me the same. We're not.

>> Mhm.

>> I am from a small tribe called the Aja tribe in Benin.

>> Mhm.

>> Benin is only 6.5 million people with over 40 tribe. When I say tribe, I mean the language is like French and Chinese.

>> I don't have anything in common with the 49 other people in my country. Nothing in common.

>> They speak a different language. They have a different god, a different religion, different food, different forms of wear and culture, traditions and customs. We were forced carved and say remain here.

>> He's not my brother.

>> Now you're asking for a global brotherhood of all black people. Why? Why? Why would the black people be different from any continent? Europe is a global community of white people, but they don't go around saying brother and sister. Asia is a community of all yellow Asians in Asia. They don't go around calling each other brother and sister. Same with the Middle East. Same with everywhere. Where only when it comes to black people, you think we are all the same. We're not the same.

>> Okay? And look, look, hold on really quickly. you. This is why FBA was announced because once you guys acknowledge us as color people, right? And then it went from that to African-Americans, we embraced our brothers and sisters that was on the other side, right? and getting [ __ ] on and you know people with selfish mindsets not thinking like how we're thinking like let's connect let's let's be let's adapt to each other when [snorts] you get frowned upon now this is why black Americans foundation black Americans say okay I don't want to be a part of what African-American stands for because I'm not African- they clearly

>> okay

>> then that's where the conversation comes to okay then but look but then you go with oh so what is this foundation you guys was African-American well it's like why the why would I want to be African-American if I know that you guys

>> who is you guys well the people that look at a African-Americans as if you're not African-American unless you know what tribe you're from what else unless you didn't read

>> no

>> no no but what he's what what he's trying to I got you okay so you have to remember when it comes to their show. They have a lot of people throughout the diaspora, a lot of women who come up here and they will say things like, "Well, you guys don't know who you are. You guys don't understand where you are. You guys don't understand your culture because you don't even have a language. You can't tell me where you're from." And and they're like, "I'm from Brooklyn. I'm from Philly." No, no, no. You from you from Africa, but you don't know what tribe. You don't know this, that, and the third. So, you're not really African-American. Y'all don't y'all are lost. Y'all are lost people. [snorts] Like that is a like you could just just taking their show as a case study. You could pick any random episode and find somebody saying something along those lines. None of that does anything.

>> I see

>> for for for things. Let me explain something.

>> So

>> the term African-American

>> is correct.

>> It's Afrobrazilians, Afroubans, Afroamericans. The Afro, you can make it African.

>> Mhm. I am not African-American because I'm from Benin.

>> So I'm a Beninoa American.

>> Obama is Kenyan American.

>> Right.

>> You are African-Americans which means I can look at you and trace that you are from the continent except that I can't trace which specific tribe. That's why we use the continent as a whole as a prefix to your current nationality. So would you call somebody from Haiti Haiti uh Haitian Afro Afrohian or AfroJamaican or Afro Trinidadian?

>> Now very good point. You see those who live on the on in the Caribbean, they are homogeneous by skin color and by they don't have any mix of people. So you just call them Jamaicans, Haitians. You don't say Afro. But Brazil is not originally all black Caribbean country. It was Portuguese and then they took blacks there. So to differentiate you say Afrobrazilians.

>> Yeah. So that is the difference.

>> Mhm.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. So if I look at you I say oh wow these are brothers and sisters who once could have belonged to. Now I bet you if uh the African-Americans who came here had been able to trace their tribes, their country, you know that kind of thing. Oh, you wouldn't look at me and say uh I'm a brother. No. I'm telling you, without that information, I want to call you a brother.

>> Oh, no, I I totally I I admire it.

>> Yeah.

>> I admire it because I know it's a very endearing word that African-Americans use here to show that

>> we are in a struggle together. Okay. I understand. We're unified to build together. I think you're looking.

>> Okay. So, that is what he was saying. He said something was interesting that I educate for a reason. I do.

>> Yeah.

>> I also uneducate.

>> Meaning there are certain promises we are being given. is just diverting us and it's not going to happen. You're not going to have a panafricanism. That is one. It is only for groups of people who are thinking that there's a reason they can't build South Africa. So now you're looking to join because misery loves company.

>> Uh oh, don't let Dr. Umar hear you say that. [laughter]

>> So no, I I don't believe in panafricanism. It was created after Okay. Uhwamian Kruma made it popular, you know, but even though it was created long time ago and why why was it created here? It makes sense. Mhm.

>> Because when you are in captivity outside, you long for the people there.

>> You know, you remember the song by the rivers of Babylon. Here we sat and we remembered Zion even they don't know. So you are remembering Zion.

>> Mhm.

>> So it's fine for you to have that need to say look if I can only connect with my people. But I also I am realistic that unless you and I one onone we decide on how we want to relate, there is nothing common and natural that is going to make me and you

>> ever understand each other easily as an African-American and Impossible.

>> Well, do you think that um we're intentionally divided?

>> Intentionally divided black people.

>> No. No. No. No. Which one? Africa from African-Americans.

>> No, it's just natural because we we don't have anything in common, man.

>> We're not intentionally divided. What do you mean? You were intentionally separated by being taken away from the continent.

>> Mhm.

>> Now, you are asking for a unity with Africans or the continent.

>> Mhm.

>> We have huge problems of our own.

>> Curable diseases we can cure. Okay. All right. Inside the United States. Yeah.

>> The African-Americans themselves don't get along.

>> Yes. Crime in and killings in Chicago, Baltimore, Lake Detroit, you name it. In Bridgeport, you know, I'm the gun violence director for my city.

>> Yep.

>> So, you go to uh uh New Haven, Hartford, Waterberry, and Bridgeport. And we don't shoot Asians and white. We shoot each other. Now when are you going to even fix that to unite in the United States of America first and say now we can look towards the continent when we are divided over there we can't there's better chance you guys can unite here

>> than we can ever dreamed no don't be fooled by that and don't let anybody who comes here tells you anything flowery about the continent as if we have accomplished anything no we haven't

>> I think that's one of the biggest weaknesses of Africa is the lack of unity. I think once the Berlin conference happened and they started putting these invisible borders and created all these um countries, you go in and you you conquer Africa because everybody is so segregated. Then you got things of y' don't have racism over there. Y'all created your own form of racism called xenophobia. Like that's y'all don't even experience racism, but y'all needed to create some system to um divide each other. So y'all created xenophobia. You discriminate against somebody because y'all from a different country, you see them as an enemy is no different from gang violence. These are the same people that look like you and they don't respect or want to unify. They see each other as the enemy and that's the issue.

>> I'm telling you when Frank talks about African-American, he points also onto the continent. You have missed the similarities. I'm trying to It blew me away when I arrived here, man. I'm telling you when I say

>> when I arrived here. Oh, I was yearning for some black women. I mean, I've seen them in movies like sisters are fine. Not the fat ones on [laughter] the continent. Okay. Until I got here and I said, I can't. Yeah,

>> I can't. And I'm telling you the truth.

>> I can't. You African-Americans are impossible.

>> So you wouldn't date a African-American woman?

>> He said he met one his first wife. His first wife.

>> Okay.

>> Seriously, I'm being honest, man. Because as soon as I walk in here today, I knew I would speak freely.

>> Yeah, for sure.

>> Okay.

>> And I'm telling you, I don't take anything against

>> African-Americans come to my city and see me and African-Americans, man. Every Father's Day, cards are coming in from all my students. They call me dad. I I'm a surrogate to three different African-American kids who didn't know their dad.

>> I was an MC yesterday. I have to take one with me.

>> But I'm not fooling them that it's because I love you and I want to connect and I want to unite. No. Because my world view as I was raised in my tribe as my grandfather explained it to me

>> as an aan that's my tribe. Okay. When you step outside here, anything in front of you, find a way to embrace it, find a way for that thing to have part of you. So everywhere I have lived, that world view is the reason I am a human being because that's what I believe.

>> So when I went to Japan, it took only 3 months. I started feeling, you know, uneasy because language difference, everything. So I went to my landlord. I said, "Where is the community center? They call it Kinga." M

>> he said, "What do you want to?" I said, "I want to study Japanese." And he he took me and I said, "I would teach English." Because they were housewives plenty, right? And homeowners and foreigners were coming to Japan back in the uh early '9s and late ' 80s. So they all embraced it. They thought I was being kind. No, that is me being driven to say I need to form oneness. Now I am here

>> and that is it. Next town was asking for me. Next town I became very popular. I have breakfast with the mayor almost every weekend. As soon as I arrived in Bridgeport, yes, I could have left and gone to California. I could have gone anywhere, but I have been, you know, a member, a board member of the International Institute of Connecticut. I've been on two different mayors board, youth, you youth development board for my own. It's me

>> just picking something in front of me because that worldview my culture says everywhere you lead

>> if you don't make yourself part of that place

>> you are not fully human and your success is limited.

>> So that drives me for community service.

>> Yeah. Um, again, I do want to cut the conversation here because we've been here for our editor is probably upset at us right now like, "Damn, I gotta do." But again, longest episode

>> for sure. I do I [laughter] do appreciate both you gentlemen being on this platform. Um, I learned a lot. I hope everybody that was watching, y'all learned something and caused y'all to, you know, maybe think a little deeper. Um, again, Dave, let them know where they can follow you at.

>> Uh, you can follow me on all social media platforms at the businessbully. Make sure you get my book, The Realblack Aaggenda, at theblackaggenda.com, man. Yeah, Frank's got his car and for week it's going to be my reading.

>> Yes, sir.

>> And Frank, let them know where they going to find you at.

>> So, yes, my platform on YouTube, Tik Tok, and Instagram is Zanu Zu. Project Rethink.

>> Yes.

>> And listen, um, we had we got a ton of questions we didn't even get to go through. Yo, join the Patreon, man. We're gonna try to get some extra questions in over there. Um, so make sure y'all join the Patreon link in the description. And we see you guys on the next one. You heard?

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Dave Anderson Snaps After Franck Zanu Calls Black Americans “Lost” | Bro Chat Ep 9

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