Transcription
What's good people? Welcome back to the Onyx Report. Black masculinist news for the day. Hope all is well. Like, share, subscribe, join, donate, hit the like button, support the show so we can continue to bring you this independent blackmail thought. All right.
Well, today I've been asked several times to give comment on uh Cheyenne Bryant. Cheyenne Bryant has been uh kind of tearing up the internet the last couple years uh doing some high-profile interviews in the black celebrity world, most particularly with um some well-known black men, which is not surprising. Uh she's well aware of um her physical attributes. She knows that she's not getting turned down in certain sectors at all. So, hey, she's running she's running her thing. She's doing her thing. I don't have a whole lot to say. I do have a couple of choice thoughts, but I wanted to share with you some other people's thoughts that I ran across that I think are somewhat interesting and along these lines dealing with her because she's in a field of she's in a different field than I am. You know, coming out of psychology, clinical psychology. I don't profess to know the field. I'm not going to pretend to. What they have to do over there is different. And that's the thing, you know, in most fields of study, there's a there's a difference. There's a difference in the training. There's a difference in the material. There's a difference in, you know, um what it takes to be qualified to work in your field. That's not my training. I'm not going to pretend to uh to know what what it takes. But I do I will have some comments from those who are apparently in that field. But here we go.
So this is just Google, you know, and the only reason I'm pointing this out, pulling this up is just to kind of notice how she's classified herself, right? So Cheyenne Bryant says lifestyle guru. Much different from clinical therapist, but that's a that's kind of a catch-all term that's pretty pretty useful. It's pretty slippery. Nothing anybody's going to drag you into court over. And this is her website. And uh you can tell she has the Dr. Bryant in the top left corner, right? And she says here, "Click here to book your life coaching session." She doesn't call herself her therapist, although I do believe she made mention about having a private um uh practice of some sort. Forget the what she calls it, what term she used. Um she implied, I think, that there was some type of therapy happening, but you know, slippery language is the issue here, right? So click here to book your life coaching lesson. Yeah, she might actually fall into this category here which is uh, you know, finding more and more people on. Matter of fact, if they start also adding politicians like I covered yesterday and been talking about for the last year and a half, this list grows exponentially. So it's real interesting the number of black women that have been getting caught. And some of you broke that down in yesterday's comment section even more in terms of identifying other black women that have been outed lately. And it's an interesting kind of dynamic going on. You know, it's an interesting dynamic. How many of them are getting caught at this current moment. What that says is debatable, but I think uh Cheyenne Bryant might find herself added to this list based on how this particular interview went. Why don't you guys check it out?
>> The conversation about your doctorate because people can't find your dissertation online.
>> How are you responding to that in this new era of your life?
>> I'm going to clear it up once on here. I'm not doing it again. And I'm clearing it up for my doc wad, for my fan base, for my audience who deserve to hear me address it. For the folks who have already made up their mind to not like me or not understand me, listen, I don't give a [ __ ] what your narrative is. I would like for you to recreate it, double down on it, and run that [ __ ] because I don't give a [ __ ] about it. Now, to my doc squad, my fan base, my folks, you know, my village, it's very simple. I went to a school university, completed an entire program. I went back online to uh get my official transcripts because I was applying to a law school many years ago to be a professor there. And I had to provide my transcripts, right, to to get hired. And I went to contact the school and said, "Hey, I need my transcripts. I did my entire thing and there was no school. I was like, "Okay, I'm confused." I Google, it says the school has been shut down. I said, "Oh, well, they got to have records." I mean, they were accredited when I attended the school. They were accredited when I finished the program. I go, "Look, there's a third party that has the records." Where I contact a third party. That third party only holds records for 2 years. I was past my two years. So, that means that I had no access to records. And then I contacted uh, you know, financial aid. You can't make up financial aid. It shows that I pay for a doctoral program alongside my masters program and my undergrad program. and they said, "We can fully refund you your money under one circumstance. We give you your money back. You don't get credit for not a class, a course, a program you took in this university at at this this institute." So, do you want us to refund you?
>> That's interesting. I've never heard that before. And it's doctoral, not doctoral, but anyway.
>> Or do you want us not? I said, "No, because I didn't want to risk the chance of them saying, "Well, we're going to give you back your money and it wipes out your entire program." Luckily, I had, you know, do this with all of the schools. I had downloaded from the actual student portal my transcripts at that time and I was able to get all just about all my transcripts including up to like dissertation. Um, but everything else there's no there's just no holding take for any of our um records which I think is completely completely effed up.
>> They're all going to kill you online this week. They say she has no records. They just want to hit you regardless.
>> No, that's fine. And it's not even that there's no records that I don't. The school had a third party that carried the records only for a limit of two years. So it's not me. It's any student that attended artist. Again, it doesn't, how can I say it doesn't affect me because if I chose to go get a license as LMFT, I have my masters in marriage and child therapist. I have my hours. I can just take that and say, "Hey, let me submit these for licenser and I want to go sit for my exam and and I have to do a study." I don't need a doctorate in counseling psychology to go get licensed as a therapist. That's what we're all missing. The conversation about your doctorate because people can't find
Okay, that was interesting. I'm going to give you some people's uh commentary that are in her field. Like I said, I'm not in it. uh I can tell you that without the doctorate if you are if you're teaching at the university level you can still identify as a professor you know with the master's degree if you're teaching you know so I became a professor in 1997 when I finished my master's degree I wasn't doctor but I was professor so some people do that she's not doing that I don't think she holds a teaching position but um she gave you her her kind of excuse there. Now, um like I said, I'm going to show you some uh some other commentary. Let's see what some others have to say.
Now, this is coming from uh let me see, forgot the name of the Substack, the person who wrote this one. This is uh the way she came. Okay, I'm not familiar with her, but she gave some commentary on this whole issue. Let me see if I can uh All right. So, I'll just have to go through it here. All right. So, she talks about Umar and uh and um Bryant and I don't think that kind of works. Now, I know Umar came up in the news a couple years ago and they were really trying to see if his degrees were valid. And I think by the end of that they determined that they were. I want to say that, but I will say it took a little too long for me. My rule of thumb, and this is one of the the the few things I have to say about this whole issue is that if you're dealing with a public figure, you know, and it takes you longer than 5 minutes online to find their degrees, there's a problem. There's something going on. I'll just put it that way. And I'll show you how, you know, I'll show you mine in a second. But I will say I don't think Umar after that, you know, issue a couple years ago, I don't think he should be included in this in terms of whether or not his degrees are valid. I think they I think that's what they found. This is a few years ago. I don't recall, but I'm pretty sure that that his degrees were were found to be valid. Right now, part of the issue here going on with Bryant, and I should have said this earlier. Um, she was black women's darling for the last few years. She recently did a show and I'm not going to play it, but she recently did a show and she was interviewed and asked, I think it was a question along the lines, you know, comparing black men and women who was the most loving or something of that nature. And she actually said black men, which surprised me, and I'm sure it surprised a lot of people, including her base, and her base being black women. Now, she's always defended black women. She's always doubled down on black women. And even though I haven't heard her use feminist, black feminist uh terminology, she still kind of came down on that gyocratic track. So when she made that statement, that raised all kind of questions and it kind of turned her base against her. Now before that, she had come out and identified as a lesbian. She was in a lesbian relationship, but I think there was some implication that there was a man somewhere in the equation. I don't remember how the details kind of broke down, but I I remember people questioning how are you giving, you know, hetero advice to couples and you're in a lesbian relationship while representing yourself to be in a hetero relationship. I think that was an issue. Then she kind of made this statement about black men being more loving, something along those lines. And then her base kind of turned against her. So, even though it was black women that were championing her earlier on, it's actually black women leading the way of trying to tear her down, which is interesting. Um, so I'm going to skip the Umar part cuz this person just raises questions or she doesn't even raise questions. She just, you know, kind of criticizes him. Eh, but since the conversation is about valid degrees, I don't believe he belongs on this. You can criticize him for other things. There's plenty of that, but I'm not going to include that here. But it continues on in regard to Bryant. It says, "Now we're witnessing the dizzying spectacle of Cheyenne Bryant. When pressed about her doctor doc doctorate degree and the missing dissertation, her excuse is that her alma mater, that's what I get for being live on Facebook. Um, Argoi University closed down and she no longer has access to her paperwork. Let us be clear, that is a lie. When a university closes, transcripts and academic records do not simply vanish into the ether. That information is transferred to the Department of Education or managed by entities like the National Student Clearing House. If she earned the degree, the proof exists. Furthermore, where is her prominently displayed degree a standard requirement for practicing professionals? The silence on that question is deafening."
Now, it's not a a requirement. My degrees uh were laying in an envelope here in my office uh until maybe a year and a half, two years ago. I finally hung them up and put them in my living room, but I never hung my degrees up. Hell, I didn't even know where to find them for a number of years. Um, I graduated in 2007, so it was probably 2024 when I finally, you know, bothered to get them framed and hung up. So, not everybody needs to do that. It's not a requirement. Although, if you're in psychology and you're providing something clinical, maybe it is. Maybe that's one of those, you know, differences that I'm not familiar with. The reality is that because she looks good and speaks with rapid fire confidence, too many in the black community are willing to accept her nonsense. This is not just about one woman's questionable background. It is a glaring symptom of the anti-intellectualism running rampant through our community. We're too easily swayed by aesthetics and charisma prioritizing the performance of of expertise over actual verifiable knowledge. This trend is a profound slap in the face to every black practitioner who's done the work. We sit in the classrooms for years, accumulate massive student debt, I can attest to that. My own debt got up to about $180,000 at a certain point. So yeah, and even though I'd always planned to teach at a teaching university because that's where students like myself went to school, so I wanted to help young brothers like me, there were also u you know forgiveness programs for teaching at public universities. So that was a second incentive for me to go. And that's one of the reasons I went to Fresno State and I'm not at a private university or an R1. I purposely sought a teaching university for that purpose. But anyway, uh let me get back to it here. Uh accumulate massive student debt, complete thousands of clinical hours, and navigate systemic barriers just to earn the right to sit across from our patients and offer them safe evidence-based care. They have rightfully worked for the right to be called doctor, be that an MD or PhD. That title is not a decoration or social media handle. Indeed, it is the culmination of years of sacrifice, sleeplessness, sleepless nights, failed exams retaken, and a commitment to a standard of care that protects human lives. To see our community elevate individuals who bypass this necessary rigor is disheartening and dangerous. Black practitioners who have fought to build trust in the communities that have uh every historical reason to be suspicious deserve better than to have their sacrifice undermined by people playing dress up and credentials they cannot prove they earned. Uh-oh, shots fired.
Let me be clear about something else. A hu knows exactly what calling themselves a doctor does. It immediately gives them a stamp of approval by the very folks they are targeting. It signals authority. It signals trustworthiness. It signals that you should lower your guard and open your wallet. The title is weaponized in our community hungry for representation and and affirmation is particularly vulnerable to it. When we see someone who looks like us, speaks our language and carries that title. We want to believe the grifter counts on that. They're not confused about what they're doing. They are deliberate. And let us not pretend that this is a minor issue. When unqualified people position themselves as mental health experts in a community that already struggles to access quality care, real harm follows. Someone in crisis may turn to a grifter instead of a licensed professional. Someone in pain may receive advice rooted in nothing but performance and profit. We're not talking about hurt feelings. We're talking about lives. And indeed, if you're dealing with therapy, most suspic especially if you're dealing with, you know, anything in the psychological field, you might be dealing with issues of selfdeion. You know, it can get that far. So, when you have people who are not qualified for one reason or another, it can be dangerous. There's no question about that. One thing the black community seems to love is a fasttalking, good-looking grifter. The packaging is polished, the rhetoric is a affirming, and the receipts are nowhere to be found. We must ask ourselves why we find it easier to defend the unverified than to protect the verified. We cannot want, expect, and demand better treatment from the world while overlooking the rot in our own backyard. We cannot cannot demand systemic accountability while giving a pass to those who exploit our vulnerabilities for their own gain. As black women especially, we must invest in our own education, our careers, and our critical thinking. We must abandon the expectation that loyalty to community means silence about community failures. Demanding credentials is not an act of betrayal. It is an act of love. It is the bare minimum we owe ourselves and each other. Stop rewarding the grift. Demand the receipts. Protect our people by holding everyone, including our own, to the standard we claim to deserve. We deserve better than snake oil salesmen and fake experts. It's time we start acting like it. So that is why the black community must stop elevating charismatic frauds over qualified professionals. Right? This is on the way she came substack.
This one I think was a little lower key, right? I don't know this person, but apparently she went to the same university as uh Cheyenne Bryant. And she wrote a little bit something here that I thought was interesting. She says someone send this to Miss Bryant. Lady, let's end this conversation. Our goi university was closed due to the parent company's fraudulent practices. She says, "I attended Argo Gosi in Chicago. The c the campus was downtown 20 uh 2003 2007. I have my degree. My dissertation and transcripts are online. Currently, I teach at a university and my degree is valid. It's a doctorate degree in business and I worked my butt off to get it. The toughest chairperson in America won't mention her because she was also crazy. I have the degree hanging on my wall and the dissertation is in ProQuest." Yeah, mine's listed in there as well. Um, my dissertation, the role of major record labels in supporting United States Rhythm and Blues Recording Artists and Achieving Mainstream Success, qualitative study. I interviewed 24 music professionals, artists, and managers, and did a statistical analysis of the demographics, although it wasn't necessarily a mixed method study and was a basic interpretive study. These studies are frequently used when researchers want to explore phenomenon without imposing a rigid pre-existing theory. It's published and also served as a foundation for my book. I've also published a journal article in 2010. I can get transcripts online, I guess through Parchmont. I have mine. When you apply to teach, you must send your transcripts. I've taught at six colleges and universities 2001 to 2026 in the USA and two in Africa.
All right. So, she's basically making the argument that as a former student at the same university that there's some misrepresentation going on in regard to Cheyenne Bryant, right? She says she's able to get her materials. That's her dissertation. Mine is actually in this office. Saw it the other day. Trust me, not all of us, you know, after doing my dissertation, I never wanted to look at it again. That's why I never published it. You go through hell writing that thing and I was done. But um yeah, that is how they look when they print it out. Mine is exactly the same except the the the binding is black and not uh navy blue. And she has her degree there. Right. So she's breaking down how this is uh this this is going sideways.
Now, as for me, this is my website, tassanjson.com. I think you can also get to it at tassanjson.org. I don't remember if I kept that, but I'm pretty sure I did. But you can get to it either way. And if you go into it, you'll see all these different categories. Bio, professor, media, scholar, artist, you know, uh, blog, all this kind of stuff. But if you go to scholar, you'll notice that it says curriculum, vite, all right, or vita. I've heard it pronounced both ways. I, you know, go with vay. But anyway, uh, you can click on that and where it'll take you is to my actual, you know, CV. It's another way we talk about it. And this CV will will basically list, you know, uh where someone went to school, what years they graduated, their publication list, the lectures they've given, and so on and so forth. Matter of fact, mine, oh goodness, I always forget how many pages this is, but you can see how long it is, all the places I worked, all the lectures I've given, the talks, the conference presentations. Um, you can see all the awards. I mean, this is pretty standard. This is about 30 pages. Although this one is outdated. I haven't updated this one in a long time. Um, but still you can see all that information. But a category that's pretty standard on most CVs is the education. And you can see these are my degrees here 1996 through 2007, right? Those are the degrees I've gotten. And you can verify that. And and the last person stuff that I wrote was accurate. you know, if you um you know, if you want to teach anywhere, you got to send transcripts, right? So, that's how that works. So, there's definitely something fishy going on um with Cheyenne Bryant. There's definitely something fishy. It doesn't it doesn't sound accurate, but again, I repeat what I said before. If it takes you longer than five minutes to find somebody, a public intellectual's information regarding their training, their education, then something ain't right. Literally go to my website, go over, you roll your mouse over scholar, click CV. That's all you need to do. It should be that easy. It really should. Otherwise, people are sometimes hiding things. And I didn't spend $180,000. And I was in school from 1992 to 2007 minus 3 years. So about 12 years or so um working on those degrees. And when you do that kind of work, you tend to take it seriously and you tend to not want to see people uh kind of grift off of it.
Now, you know, as far as Cheyenne Bryant, I haven't watched a lot of her stuff. I've seen a few interviews. Obviously, the first thing you notice is what she's wearing, you know, which is nothing accidental. She's a beautiful woman and she wants people to know it. And it's it's definitely distracting cuz the last thing you're thinking about is where she got her degree from when you're looking at uh you know, the things that are exposed and she's well aware. Most women, you know, have a sense about how to weaponize beauty and to serve their ends. So, she's not the first to develop that. She knows how to use it and it works. You can see the platform she's gotten on to. She talks fast and as it was said as I read, she's she sounds confident, you know, but some of the things she said made me raise an eyebrow in a few different interviews. But then again, I'm sure there's plenty of people that do that with me. So, you know, I'm not going to say everybody who's got a legitimate degree is going to sound the same. Um, but usually if you're making public statements based on your academic training, you tend to want to provide evidence. You you tend to want to make it a regular thing that evidence is a priority to you. And that's usually um that's usually a, you know, something you take pretty seriously in the academic world because it can come to bite you in the behind. So, this is why, you know, you'll always see me read from articles or site other people or if I put up charts, you know, you'll see where I got the information from. You know, I I don't hear her do much of that. But, hey, so just a few thoughts. I'm curious to hear yours. Um, what you guys have to say about this. Some of you are probably way more familiar with her than I am. So, give me your thoughts. Let me know what your thoughts, what you think about this situation and anything else related to it uh in the comment section and I will holl at y'all later. Peace.