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June 16, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:15:50
Episode 61 - Black Lives Matter GNY Leader Hawk Newsome
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Hey everybody, get in here.
We've got a very special coffee with Scott Adams.
And as soon as you get in here, we're going to do an introduction.
But those who are early, you get the benefit of the simultaneous sip.
And it goes like this.
So you might see that behind me, dialing in, and looks like we'll have some little connections problems, but Hawk Newsome, leader of Black Lives Matter, New York, Greater New York, is here to have a chat, answer some of our questions, and see if we can move the world forward a little bit.
Let me give a little bit of an introduction to Hawk and then we'll start talking.
And Hawk, correct me if I say anything wrong about your bio.
So you were born and grew up in the Bronx, right?
Yes, indeed. And you had two parents who were both activists and you've been an activist in your adult life.
How would you describe the scope of your activism?
What's in and what's out?
What are you inactive for?
Honestly, if I see a need, I try to fill it.
If it's injustice, if it's a problem in the community, some folks reach out with problems that aren't necessarily criminal justice related or even I'm
going to see if I can turn down your audio a little bit, get a clearer signal over here.
Now, your bio is interesting.
I believe you were first a high school dropout, but then you got your GED and actually got your law degree.
Yes. So you worked your way up from a hard situation, and you've been quite honest about having sort of a rough past.
But one of the things I like is when you describe yourself, your first word is almost always Christian, isn't it?
Yeah, usually.
I give all honor and credit to God.
Right. So that would be very compatible with the mostly Trump-supporting people that would be on this podcast.
So starting there, you've got a lot in common.
Many of you would say Christian first.
I'm not a believer, but I love people who are because it gives them a code of behavior that I consider highly beneficial to the world.
So I'm very pro-religion.
Now you're a leader of Black Lives Matter in the Greater New York chapter.
For the people who don't know much about the organization, how similar are the chapters and the various voices coming out of Black Lives Matter?
Is there a range or are you pretty much on the same page all over?
Not exactly. There are 400 organizations that march under the Black Lives Matter banner that aren't part of the global organization.
Okay. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah, I think so. Okay.
400 organizations around the globe.
And how are the various organizations funded?
Or you could just talk about your organization.
How is your chapter funded?
38 organizations that are part of the global network.
So most of the people you see on television who are out here doing the work in these different states are not part of the official Black Lives Matter network.
The people who are doing the work are folks who are out here, grassroots, boots on the ground, getting it done.
Now, funding. My funding, drum roll please, my funding comes by way of PayPal.
And some people just, you know, send us checks, but we've never received any monies over $10,000.
And I know a lot of folks are thinking, I've never touched a dime from Soros.
Most of my money comes from friends, friends of mine from law school.
Just people we encounter, our average donations are between $50 and $100.
And a lot of people who may have been, who may be watching this podcast, they might have helped out as well.
There's no very godfather who's writing these humongous checks for us.
And if somebody wanted to donate, is there a URL or a place they would go?
Absolutely. It's blacklivesmatter, spelled out, greaterny.com, and just click the donate button.
Or if you're on PayPal, PayPal.com.
You can donate to blmgraterny at gmail.com Alright, great.
And this will be on replay so people can play that back if they missed it the first time.
Now, what do you think...
About all of this Kanye West stuff, does it feel like there's some kind of a shift in the universe?
I've described it as maybe the beginning of a golden age in general, not just on the topic.
But do you feel something in the air?
Yes. I actually speak to a lot of people from a lot of different religious backgrounds.
And I was on the phone with a woman named Allison Charles.
She's titled Rockstar Shaman And we were talking about this heart shift occurring.
And people who we consider lightworkers, like yourself, right?
People who are just trying to bring a message of light and unity into the world, have this feeling that there's a shift coming.
Because right now, our world is cold.
Our world is divided.
Our world is in a really sad, desolate place.
But I believe Who have love in their heart are going to come together and really make this world what it should be.
A place where people care about each other.
A place where people work together to actually accomplish goals and come together to help people.
So I see it. I see it on the horizon.
Kanye West.
I think he could have did a better job of articulating it to the black community.
I think he's on the right page.
Some things, obviously, I don't agree with.
Slavery existed.
But in my opinion, what I think he was saying was, when he said slavery was a choice, this is the way I interpreted it, right?
He was saying that slaves should have revolted, just like people now should stand up.
Now, where he was absolutely and unequivocally wrong, he was like, people should lift themselves up by the bootstrap.
That's kind of hard when you're dealing with systemic racism.
It's achievable.
But there's a lot keeping people in places that they're in.
If I can go back to something, there's so much good stuff here that people are going to want to hear from you on.
Let me ask you another question about Kanye's message about the mental prison and then his reference to slavery.
Now, I heard somebody say, well, what he's saying is it lasted 400 years, but do you think they could have cut a few years off of that if they had been willing to die for the change?
Obviously, lots of people were willing to die to try to get out of slavery.
It's not like that wasn't a common thing, as I understand.
Is it even productive to talk about the past like that?
Do you feel that even having that mental model of slavery, is that helping us in 2018?
Yes. Because this is an important part of our history that we need to address before we can move on.
Because when you see pictures of 9-11, right?
Right. When you see the bombing of Hiroshima, you see things that say never forget.
But when it comes to slavery, people are like, get over it.
You know, like, let's stop harping on it.
That's extremely problematic for me.
Well, hold on.
Let me interrupt for a second.
Now, when people say that, do you hear that as trying to be helpful or trying to be critics?
Well, For the most part, when people tell us as a people to get over it, you find it as dismissive of your feelings.
And if we're talking about this hardship, then we have to get in touch with our feelings.
And most importantly, we have to listen to what the other person is feeling.
We really have to listen and understand and open our hearts to people if we want to heal together.
Yeah, I'm with you.
So connect some dots for it.
I think the very hardest thing to understand if you're not black is to connect the dots between the history of slavery and institutional racism.
Can you put like a little meat on the bones of what the current sort of, I don't know, baseline or background You know, institutional racism is with some examples.
Like, somebody tried to do this and couldn't, you know, some problem happened.
In terms of, like, real on-the-ground problems that affect your life, put a little meat on that for us.
Okay. I'd like to clear up something first, right?
People think that as an activist, I would only have problems with the Republican Party.
I have problems with the Democrats as well.
There was actually a candidate who's running for governor here in New York named Cynthia Nixon.
It made a very ignorant comment earlier this week.
She said that legalizing marijuana would serve as a form of reparations to black people.
OK, when we talk about reparations, you think the Jewish people who received monies, even though that wouldn't come anywhere close to healing their pain.
The Native American, the indigenous folks, they received money.
The Japanese people who suffered under Hiroshima, they received money.
Black people never received reparations.
Now let me bring this back to your point about slavery.
Cotton is what made America king, right?
That industrialized us, that's what built the wealth of this empire.
Black people provided free labor for that.
So you hear about all of this wealth accumulated, all of these families, and we did this for free.
We suffered through it.
We're talking about, you heard the stories of families ripped apart.
You know, Scott, what people don't realize is Irish Americans, Italian Americans, they could celebrate their history, their traditions, their heritage.
They actually have a heritage.
Black people were intentionally cut off from their ceremonies.
You know, it's one thing to be captive, it's one thing to be enslaved.
But all of our ceremonies, our gods, you know, I'm a Christian, but like our gods from back in Africa, all of that was taken away from us.
And... Excuse me.
So, bring that forward to how that affects you sort of day to day.
Put it in an example for us.
Make it real for us. Perfect example.
Starbucks. I like to break in because if there are points where we might get lost on something,
I don't want to go too far. Would you say that the way, let's say, the folks were treated as Starbucks, the story is there were a couple of customers who were African American who were asked to leave because they were not purchasing something.
Is that the right story? Do I have that right?
Yes. And the feeling is that the store and then the police who came were a little overzealous and that It would be hard to attribute that to anything but racism, right?
That's the feeling. Now, how do you know what is the sort of legacy of slavery that's sort of crept into the current, and how much is it the brand of African Americans in 2018?
Meaning that you have a higher crime rate, which influences people in the current, independent of anything that came from slavery.
How do you sort that out?
What are the things that are sort of current versus the things that came from the past?
Yeah, I speak truths that might be hard for some people to accept, but if you just look at the media, We look at, every time they talk about black people, it's not positive lights that mainstream media is paying us in.
It's always the blacks who are robbing, stealing, and killing, right?
Where are the young black people, like the young woman in my organization, who won the Princeton Prize on race relations?
That's not a news story.
That's not what you're conditioned to believe is okay.
Sometimes, you know, I feel like I feel like the news is a tool to make white people feel safer living away from black people.
You know what I mean?
Not being in the same neighborhood.
Because it's so one-sided.
Same as in... Alright, so I agree that whatever people see the most, they think is true.
And the news is serving up images that are painting a picture that's negative.
But if you could look, say, in just the last six months, where we're feeling some kind of a change of heart, as you say, Would you say that the Republican Party has been doing a good job of trying to showcase the positive African-American role models?
Even the news has emphasized everything from Oprah.
What do you make of the fact That when Oprah's name came up as a possibility for president, nearly 100% of the world said, yeah, if she runs, basically, all she has to do is decide to be president and she can just walk into the job.
Doesn't that, I mean, that feels like a big deal, doesn't it?
Yes, but you have to keep in mind, Oprah is heart-centered.
Right.
Oh, interesting.
This is what we're talking about.
People who lead with their hearts.
Oprah is heart-centered.
She's helping people. She's caring.
She's compassionate. She's understanding.
This is what the world wants.
You know? This is what the world wants.
I even changed a lot of the vernacular when I'm in the streets or when I'm marching, when I'm helping people.
I stopped saying we are fighting for this or fighting for that.
I say we're on a mission to end racism.
We're on a mission to a more peaceful and just society.
I think us who are at the forefront...
So, you talked about the Republican Party highlighting black folks.
I personally don't think this...
I love, you know, the fact that Kanye and Colin Kaepernick are being talked about, but I'm more concerned with regular people, right?
Right? I'm more concerned with uniting regular people.
Okay, the Republicans are going on.
Can I just pause for a moment?
Yeah. One of the issues that you correctly pointed out is if you see a lot of examples of African American folks doing bad things on the news, it just makes you biased.
But on the other hand, if you see positive coverage of Candace, You know, I'm saying great things about you all the time.
You know, Kanye got a lot of props from the Republican Party, at least.
You're seeing lots of, like, positive examples of, you know, hugely successful black people in every field.
That helps, right?
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
But we have to, and it's always, damn, I hate that I always have to speak truths, right?
You have to understand that what Candace I'm bringing programs into our communities to help people with just that.
But you can't ignore institutional racism.
You cannot ignore racism and oppression when you talk about it.
Okay, let's get back to that, because it seems to me that, you know, what I'm seeing, you know, talking to mostly Trump supporters, is that there's this great untapped resource of people who would love to embrace, you know, the black community into more the Republican kind of way of thinking.
Because what... A lot of things that you say that Candace says are so compatible with the folks who just say, hey, let's believe in our God, follow the Constitution, obey the law, do everything you can for yourself.
But here's the point.
The Starbucks example could not be more perfect For me to highlight what I think is the remaining barrier.
Because, like you said, it feels like the hearts are lining up correctly on both sides.
It's like people are heart ready, But there's a psychological block, and this Starbucks example is perfect, because I think you know that the white people looking at that story are going to say, all I see is somebody who broke the rules of the store and were asked to leave.
I don't perceive anything beyond that.
Now, you would agree that they don't, forget about right or wrong, they don't perceive what you perceive, right?
So it's not that they have a different opinion of how to solve the problem.
They actually, literally, in every scientific sense, it's invisible.
What do you make of that?
Is it invisible because of confirmation bias, do you think?
It's a willful ignorance.
It's choosing to be ignorant to the plight of your black brothers and sisters, some of whom are your Christian brothers and sisters.
You're choosing.
But wait, when...
Let's say when white people are looking at this story, they're putting their minds into the store employees.
And they're saying, okay, if that were me, and anybody was breaking the rule, I would have done the same thing.
And how do we know that's not true?
They should put their...
Well, if you look at Starbucks' reaction, I think they should put their minds in this place.
What if that was my kid who said, who was waiting at Starbucks until his friend arrived so they could buy some coffee, and these people were jerks to him and then call the police to back up their jerkishness.
If they said, "That was my kid.
"My kid was just waiting for his buddy "before they got a latte." And they were rude to him and then they called the police and the police immediately took the side of those employees They would be really pissed at the store.
Alright, now I think we're getting somewhere.
Now, do you think that different people could interpret whether it was rude or just, you know, they're just not good employees?
Because I can tell you that as a white person who deals with more white service people than anything else, that sometimes they're rude to me.
If I were black, And sometimes somebody was rude to me.
How do I know it's just not the employee?
They're just rude. They just have a rude manner.
How could I ever know the difference?
That's actually a really good way of thinking.
But I think you should analyze it by way of My understanding is that once the employees and the customers who hadn't bought anything yet, once they got into it sort of verbally, probably it was that that caused the police to come.
I don't think it was that they weren't buying anything that caused the police to come.
It was the interaction, wasn't it?
But see, you have to look at it in its totality.
The same thing happened at Waffle House.
A young black woman got into an argument with employees.
She wasn't being loud or irate.
She was actually sitting in a chair and the police were arguing with her, telling her, you know, whatever, whatever.
And then they slammed her down to the ground, ripped her shirt, twisted her arm up, said, I'll break your arm.
It's just black people, whether you We're treated like animals.
Like we're treated like we are less than human.
On a whole, on a grand level, people, businesses, corporations, and the police treat us like we are less than human.
And the problem is, when people look at it, they say, I don't see that.
But it's not about what you see, it's about what we feel.
If someone punches me in the face, I don't expect you to feel it.
It's my experience.
Right.
So I explain this as the two movies on one screen.
It doesn't matter to you that I can't see your pain.
Your pain doesn't go away because I can't see it.
Absolutely. But there's also a legitimate question about why we can't see it.
And do you think that racism is the only reason?
No. I think the classism plays into it too.
Give me an example.
I think probably the audience is wondering this.
Are black police officers More or in any different than white police officers or any other kind of police officers in the treatment to black suspects or citizens that they've detained.
Do you notice that the black officers respond differently or no?
You know, I think, I'm glad, I like your viewers and I like interacting with them on social media.
It would benefit them to know that out of college I worked at a prosecutor's office.
I was a paralegal, I prosecuted cases, then I was their liaison to the community.
And what I witnessed there was the black and brown cops were working so hard to prove to Yeah.
Yeah. They were policing us harder.
Like, we had this place called a complaint room where you make an arrest.
And that room was always filled up with black and brown cops.
Myself, personally, and other black men that I know, most of whom are professional, would be pulled over and be like, you know, listen brother, I'm trying to explain it.
And immediately they would say, I'm not your brother.
Like, yeah, they had to disassociate themselves with their blackness.
And this one cop told me At the Dominican parade here in the city, he said, listen, I'm not black, I'm blue.
I said yes until you take that uniform off and then you're up blank just like the rest of us.
Alright, so that's interesting.
So the black police officers might try to overcompensate so they're not accused of going too easy, right?
Absolutely. Let me ask you the sensitive questions.
You're one of the few people that I'd feel safe even asking the question because I know where you're coming from.
If police officers stop a five-foot-six Asian guy in a good car, are they going to treat him rough or not?
Let's say compared to somebody that they stop is black.
And why not? Do you think there's a difference?
And what would be the source of that difference?
Would that be the legacy stuff?
Perceptions. Perceptions.
Perceptions of an habit that black people are dangerous.
Especially black men.
But I challenge you, I challenge everyone viewing this, to when you're driving by a scene and someone's pulled over, Watch and see where the officer has his hands.
If it's a black person, it's usually on the gun in a vicinity.
They usually don't have their hands on their gun.
This is just something that I noticed.
I love that observation, but let me ask a question.
Do you think that that difference in treatment is based on their statistical likelihood that they can't ignore?
In other words, the number of Asians in jail versus the number of African Americans in jail, just using that as a proxy for likelihood of crime, I would say that it is, right? Backed by systemic racism.
But let me give you this, right?
Let's just stay out of the weeds.
let me give you this isn't every person innocent until proven guilty well right yeah like isn't each crime each person you encounter different like you can't go through like treating an entire race of people a certain way based on these preconceived beliefs well yeah yeah i think we'd all we'd all agree that's where we want to go
I think that's probably the one thing that 100% of all people agree on, is that we'd like to be treated according to the Constitution, according to the Bible, you know, treated equally.
But, But I'm just wondering if...
I make up this non-existent country called Elbonia whenever I want to do an example that's not about real people.
What are the colors of the flag?
What are the colors?
Yeah, I don't know. But if the Elbonians, let's say they existed, and they had a very high crime rate, Don't you expect that the police would have their hand on the gun when they came up to the car?
Even, let's say the Elbonians are all white.
I mean, don't you think the crime rate would be the primary thing that influences somebody whose job is crime?
But I have to look at their guidebooks, right?
And see if it says, and it wouldn't say that, because you can't judge people based on their skin color.
It's unconstitutional.
And if you're doing that, then we need to deal with the psychology of the police officers.
So in my example, the Elbonians who are not a real people, I'm saying that they are white.
But if they also had, they were easily identifiable by their strange ceremonial hats or whatever, don't you think the police would have their hands on their gun just because of the crime rate, even if they were the same race as the police officer?
I can't.
See, this is me.
I'm a purist in many ways.
I don't like breaking the rules to enforce the law.
So the Elbonians can be a bunch of bad mofos, right?
But if it goes against the Constitution and the law of the land, then the police cannot do it.
It's racial profiling, because it's profiling, and profiling is wrong.
It's just absolutely wrong.
You know, because if we look at that example, right, and you look at the wave of shootings across America, these mass shootings, Then America would be on high alert for white men in their late teens and early 20s.
Like, there should be some, I don't know, searches ran, some mass arrests, or something crazy of that nature.
Because the people who are going in and killing multiple people and shooting up schools are white men.
So, if we're going to start, you know, addressing...
These dangers, having these preconceived notions, then America will have to take on a new approach to how they police young white men, because right now they're looking like terrorists on America's soil.
Now, let me throw out an idea that I know is, you know, matches in gasoline, but I love the fact that you'll even engage on this.
So this is why I just love you personally, because your mind is just delightful.
I got pulled over by the police not too long ago for speeding, and I went through the procedure that people tell you to stay safe, which is I immediately pulled over.
I put my hands on the steering wheel so they both could be seen.
I rolled down the thing and asked for permission to reach for my wallet.
I engaged. I made eye contact.
I said, hello, officer.
What can I do?
We engaged in just friendly banter.
And I believe that, you know, with any traffic stop, the policeman, I assume, is going to be a little bit on edge because he doesn't know what he's getting yet, especially if it's a mail.
If you stop a mail, there's always a little higher danger, I would imagine.
And by the end of it, we were best friends and blah, blah, blah, and I ended up getting a warning.
Now, do you...
Do you see any way in which you could separate the cause of the problem, which might be racism and the police, from the solution to the problem, which might be what the black community itself does, even though it's unfair?
Even though they didn't cause the problem, even though you're just a citizen who did absolutely nothing, you just got pulled over, could the solution be, and would you be okay with that, if the solution is that black people simply acted in the most innocent way, would that make any difference?
Now, I know it wouldn't solve it because, you know, that doesn't solve racism or anything, but would it help?
There is so much to unpack here.
So much to unpack here, right?
You talk about crime rates.
Let's talk about desperation.
Let's talk about these schools failing to educate our children.
Failing to keep our children engaged.
Let's talk about jobs, right?
People don't sell drugs because they think it's cool.
Wait a minute.
I'm tying it all in.
I'm coming home. I promise.
I'm coming home. They don't do it because Alright, so bring jobs, bring trade skills into these communities.
There's a lot to go into these crime rates.
Now, for your question, right?
Police are trained to deal with people who are uncooperative.
Dealing with the public, that's their job.
There's something called de-escalation.
They're supposed to de-escalate situations.
So when people say, if they didn't want to get killed, they should not have resisted, I'm sorry, you're wrong.
There are appropriate levels of force to use.
There's a man named Des Morrow, a former football player that was choked unconscious by the police department.
Once the footage was released, this cop was fired from his job.
Appropriate action was taken.
So right now, what we have to say is, no, yes, running from the police is against the law, but the penalty for running from the police is another charge.
It's not death.
Like, we can't...
It's this over-conversation.
It's like a kid spilling a juice on the floor and his parent throwing him out of the window and you're saying, well, that kid shouldn't have spilled juice.
Now, in the case of the example you gave, if that, I'm not familiar as much with the case, but if the football player had, you know, had his, figuratively speaking, his hands on the steering wheel and was saying, hello officers, you know, what can I do for you?
Or was that effectively what he was doing and he got roughed up anyway?
And here's the thing.
Racist people use the police as a weapon.
Some guys ran, drove by him, calling him nigger this and nigger that.
And he followed them.
And they got on the phone with the local police department and said, there's a black guy waving a gun at us that followed us into this parking lot.
Police came and started hitting him, saying, where's the gun?
Where's the gun?
He's like, I don't have a gun.
They slammed him and put their hand over his throat and choked him until he was unconscious.
Since this case went public, and I helped him with strategy on this, since this case went public, the officers were fired and all felony cases were dropped.
See, this is the problem.
There are people out there who know how the police view black people.
There are black people who do this as well, who know how the police view black people and they use police as a weapon against black people.
That's sort of similar to the case recently of the young black man who was suspected of breaking windows or something and he had just a cell phone in his hand when they found him and they shot him, right?
And in both cases it sounds like there's something in common which is that even before the police showed up they were expecting to encounter a dangerous situation.
In both cases. So they had potentially two biases working.
One might have been racial, but one might have been they had been set up for there's a dangerous situation coming, treat it like it is one.
So they had two things going on at the same time.
It's hard to unpack which is the black thing and which is the, you know, they believe there's a gun involved.
I don't think it's hard to unpack it.
I don't. I don't really.
Because... This is why people say, oh, you have a problem with policing.
Maybe you should rewind that a little bit and look at it in its full spectrum.
I have a problem with the way the police are governed.
If these police were better trained, they would know how to tell the difference between a cell phone and a weapon.
Let's go after the legislature.
Let's change the rules that the police play by.
Let's prosecute cops who break the law.
These are your fixes.
Not going after the regular cops on the ground yesterday.
Do something wrong, send them to jail.
But you have to go for legislative change.
So, Hawk, you're talking to mostly the law and order loving group.
And I'm pretty sure 100% of the people listening to this believe that cops that cross the line, break the law, break their own policies need to be you know, dealt with quite harshly because if you can't trust the police, you've got a serious problem.
So I think everybody's on the same page.
Are there specific pieces of legislation that would help keep the police accountable?
Is there anything that's floating around now that needs to happen?
Ah, yes.
Right now we have something called Andrew's Law.
Okay.
And that means, yes, named after Andrew Kearse, he died in a police car after 17 minutes, when in which he screamed for his life 70 times, Officer, I can't believe, I can't breathe, Officer, please help me.
70 times he asked for help for oxygen in 17 minutes.
And a police officer, who was a veteran, who was sitting two feet away from him, ignored him, and he died in the back of that police car.
The tragedy was, on that 15-minute drive, he drove past the hospital, and he taunted him.
And now the Andrews Law would require that if the suspect asks for medical help, that it be provided?
Is that essentially it?
Immediately. Immediately.
And, you know, a lot of people might say, hey, that'll waste time and resources.
It's actually on the books in a lot of states, but it's just not enforced.
Oh, it's already on the books in a lot of states, but not enforced.
So is the legislation sort of in the state assemblies now?
These are all state issues?
Yeah, hopefully we can pass them in enough states, we can pass them federally.
That's what the goal is.
All right. Now, you know, the interesting thing here is that there is so much in common between the white Republican Trump supporters and everything you're saying.
Because I'm sure there's no policeman who ever shot or had somebody die in their custody who was happy about it.
In other words, 100% of the people who did these terrible things...
The overzealous actions, by your interpretation, not one of those people wishes they did that.
They would also treat it as a mistake, don't you think?
I haven't seen that.
I haven't.
Now, this is where I'm truly conflicted.
Well, hold on. I have to say that.
Even though they haven't said the words, don't you believe that they at least wish for themselves that they weren't in trouble?
I mean, they wish the whole situation hadn't happened.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Because you see, like, I've seen cops who had federal civil rights violations, lawsuits brought against them, cops who have punched and kicked people in the face, who...
We're suits to that.
I've seen these people go on and murder folks.
So you have these people who are sick.
There's some sick people who wear badges, and we can all admit that, who hurt people, who actually killed someone, and then they got away with murdering someone.
So yes, I believe that they're sad about the whole trial, but if you have this type of evil in a person, maybe they're happy they took a life.
Well, even independent of that, let's say that there are evil people who don't feel like regular people, but 100% of everybody talking about it and experiencing this wishes it wouldn't happen, albeit for different reasons.
The cops maybe just didn't want to get in trouble and lose their career, lose their lives, whatever, and the victims didn't want any of that.
So, solution-wise, Andrew's Law being, you know, at least one piece of this.
Yes. Everybody's on the same page.
Yeah, this is what I keep seeing, is that although we sometimes disagree about what is the root cause of the problem, there's almost always agreement on what to do about it.
And there's the will and the ability.
Now let me ask you this, which is only a slight change of topic, it's related to all this.
But why do the black community, why does the black community give away its leverage by always voting Democrat, when if they could at least sometimes, you know, split their vote or at least show that they're in play, they would have much more power?
Why do black people give away their power when the Republicans are just begging to help and if they had legislation, for example, that was, let's say, pro-anti-crime or just compatible with their core values, which is don't treat anybody differently, which is a very Republican value.
Why would the black community give up so much leverage?
Right? And I'm not just saying vote Democrat or Republican.
There's, you know, I don't know, Democratic Socialists of America.
There's the Green Party or Libertarian.
There's just so many folks who are out there.
Right? But I think most people believe that the Republicans are racist.
And that's just a fact.
And I know that it might come as a shock to some of you, but it really shouldn't.
You look at someone like Rudy Giuliani, who raised war on black and Latino men when he was mayor of New York City.
For him to be the presidential front-runner, right now I'm looking like, wow, this party does not care about black people.
When you see, I'm just being factual, when you see the president Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
I can't let you get away with that one.
That's sort of a CNN lie.
When the president said there are good people on both sides, he was not referring to Antifa on one side and the racists with the tiki tortures on the other.
That was the CNN interpretation.
He was referring to the fact that the entire event was around confederate statues whether they should stay or not.
There are good people who say they should go away and he said there are good people who say they should stay not for racist reasons but for historical reasons.
Now you may know that I'm anti-statue.
I think that if you have something that's literally a decoration and it's like the most frickin offensive decoration you could ever put up Take down the decoration.
That's it. That's it.
What kind of public decoration offends 30-50% of the entire public or whatever it is?
Of the country. Yeah, of the country.
Of the country.
It's unbelievable. Hold on.
Let me just finish this point.
But you do know that white people hear that and say, oh, both sides of the statute question.
But when CNN, which is anti-Trump, reports it, they say, ah, they're saying the racists are good.
When he was asked, are you saying the racists are good?
He said, no, I didn't mean that.
So he clarified it as clearly as you can.
But what you've got to understand is, right, I was there, I was on the front lines, I got hit with a rock in my face.
There were white supremacists there with guns, with weapons, and some of them were holding Trump signs.
Right, but you understand that the people who were explicitly racist...
The President of the United States, even if he held those feelings in his heart, which I don't believe he does, but he wouldn't go on television and say, yeah, I'm with the guy with the torches.
Honestly, do you believe that he intended to publicly side in an unambiguous way with racists versus my interpretation, which is, oh, there's people on both sides of the statute question.
Which of those... Well, hold on.
Which of those seems more reasonable to you?
It's sad, right?
Because... You know, you agree with me.
You agree with me. The way...
And, you know, the way that this entire thing has been portrayed, the way that the whole presidency is gone, the way that Donald Trump took out an ad calling for the execution...
Hold on, hold on.
I have to say, I have to say, I thought he was taking the side of the people with the tiki torches because he has been on some pretty bad sides of some race-related issues.
Now, hold on, Hawk.
Yeah. You're talking about, what was the year?
That was the 80s. Alright, so the issue was that the police believed that a group of black young men were involved in some horrible crimes, which later they were exonerated for.
After they went to jail.
After they did time. After they did time.
And Private Citizen Trump at the time ran an ad that said they should be maybe executed because they were so bad.
Now, did he say anything about them being black or did Trump's ad only talk about the crimes?
See, this is the problem, right?
This is a problem.
You ran an ad calling for the execution of men And you didn't know the facts of the case.
You were just acting out of sheer emotion.
Now, the thing is, you might be able to say, how do we know race played a part in it?
But everybody in the city of New York knew that this was black teens running around.
They said they were wilding out.
They were called animals.
This was racism.
This was two sides of it.
And it was all about race.
And Donald Trump took out an ad calling for their execution.
I know some of these men.
Some of these men are really doing great work to help end mass incarceration.
They really made a positive out of a negative.
But Donald Trump did this, right?
And when you talk about...
But let me just back up.
When he did that, the police also believed it, right?
Because that was the whole point of why they were arrested and incarcerated.
This is why we talk about racism and stereotypes.
The police wanted to send those men away.
However, there were three other rapes, and everybody feel free to research this, that fit the same description.
This was a pattern.
This was a pattern of several other rapes in that particular area, and they ignored that Yeah, I think clearly, you know, things were far more...
Would you say that things were worse then than they are now?
No. In terms of racism, or about the same?
No, I think now it's a little bit worse.
Really? I think with the use of social media, it's way easier for people to spread their hate.
It's bad. So in the Central Park case that we're talking about, The basic idea is that all people involved, including Trump, would not have jumped to the conclusion that they were guilty had they not been black?
Or is it the level of how much they seem to care about it that's the tell for racism?
Where do you see the racism in Like, how is it expressed exactly?
Is it believing something that isn't true, or is it the level of their, I don't know, their anger or emotions on it?
I just ask people to be really honest with themselves, right?
When you hear that a black person committed a crime, or they're accused of committing a crime, in this system, it's like, you and you're black, you're guilty until proven innocent.
You know, and that's the way we look at things.
I'm just talking to people from a real common sense sort of perspective.
This is the way this country works.
And I'm not asking you to see it the way I see it, but I'm just asking you to see it for what it is.
Like, we just have to operate from a place of truth.
We have to strip ourselves of these protective mechanisms that would make us say, no, it's not like that.
I don't think like that.
We have to strip ourselves from those layers and just see things for what they are.
You know, pardon your expression, call the spade a spade.
Alright, well, I'm not going to say that, but let me pose this interesting question, because this puts in the frame, I always talk about persuasion and how easily people can be misled and see the wrong movie on the screen.
So we have a situation here in which, if you can say asides, that the two points of view believe that the other one is suffering something like an illusion.
You know, I think that you might say, and stop me if I'm characterizing you wrong, that white people are in sort of an illusion about how bad things are, or about maybe how they themselves are being influenced by their bias.
Would that be a fair characterization?
And white people from my observation would say that you're seeing racism where it isn't, or where it at least isn't the dominant theme.
Let's say everybody agrees.
I think everybody agrees there's some kind of baseline racism that's just based on the fact that people use pattern recognition and they're not good at it.
So if you think you see a pattern, sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong, but you can't really turn off the pattern recognition.
The human brain is a pattern-recognizing machine, and it doesn't go off.
The best you can do is you can intellectualize it away.
It's like, ah, it seems like this pattern is true, but I know it can't be intellectually, so I'm going to try to treat it like it isn't.
So, you would agree that the basic problem is that there are two sides that both think the other one is suffering an illusion.
That would be fair, right?
Now, what's interesting is, and the thing I like about you in particular, is that's almost an unsolvable problem.
But you have been good at taking it out of the weeds of the unsolvable, you know, you can never ever solve the Starbucks question.
Because you're never going to convince, neither side will convince the other that they're the ones in the hallucination, right?
So if you can't solve that in the weeds, how do you take it to a higher level?
And this is what I love about you, is that you kind of take it up to love.
You know, you take it up to what's some legislation we can do that we all agree on, and we don't have to settle Starbucks, right?
We can do things that give more opportunity, better jobs, better lives for black folks.
That changes your bias in the long run.
If the incarceration rate for black Americans went down to zero and stayed there for 20 years, racism would change a lot.
And whether or not you believe that was true, you would still want to improve the incarceration rate.
You would still want to do all the same things you do, even if you were in the wrong movie.
So it turns out that the solution...
We can often agree on.
Better education, prison reform, more communication.
Entrepreneurship programs.
So, do you think it's fair to say that the Republicans could help you more than the Democrats?
And if not, why not?
Like right today in 2018.
Honestly, right now, if the Republicans were to do something real, right?
Like say, hey, you know what?
I see that there's this perception of black people that they're stealing, that they're selling drugs.
I'm going to implement financial literacy courses in urban and underserved communities across the country.
I'm going to teach young black kids about money so they can grow up and be smart when it comes and have a high financial IQ and they can help themselves and help their communities.
If Republicans were to take real steps Like Kanye West, you know, Kanye West is awesome.
I love Yeezy's music for a really long time.
It's cool to have him, you know, singing your praises, but do something real and real boots on the ground and you will shame the Democrats because then black America will turn and look at the Democrats and say, hey, you've been our friend for so long.
Why haven't you done this a long time ago?
So there are about three things I know that are going on right now along those lines.
One is Jared Kushner is working on prison reform and I connected you to that effort.
Have you seen their details yet?
Okay, so I've only seen what I saw in the paper, but there was talk about it had something to do with if the prisoners would take certain types of classes that would be useful in the outside world, in other words, something to rehabilitate themselves and train themselves so they could be productive later, they would get time off of their sentence.
Did you hear anything like that?
Yeah, I heard.
I'd love for them to look at food injustice because violence has decreased in some prisons by 46% when they introduced a plant-rich diet.
There's a lot of food in these sodas.
Food injustice is very real, and that's something that I'm pursuing these days.
So food as, essentially food as a drug, because you're saying that certain foods are making people more violent?
What would be an example of food that would have that effect?
There's a study, right, in Dr.
Mark Hyman, he's working with me on this program called Rejuvenation, where we're bringing clean food and mindfulness and meditation into the projects.
I can send you the stats on the prison where it occurred at a little bit later, but at a glimpse, the violence was reduced by like 46% once they changed the diet and another 15% once they the violence was reduced by like 46% once they changed the diet and And when we talk about food injustice, we're talking about fast food companies.
Okay, I'm going to make your viewers real happy right now.
There are fast food companies and beverage companies that run tests and put addictive chemicals into these foods, and they send them into black communities, not only black communities, but poor white communities, to get these folks hooked on food.
Literally hooked on food, and then we turn around and we say, look, it's your fault.
all, you're fat, you're obese.
No, they're literally hooking people on food.
Now, Pepsi Cola, Coca Cola, they're doing it, right?
And they're paying off the NAACP.
So the NAACP won't even call them out for it.
Wow.
That's problematic.
Now, this is mind-blowing because I hadn't heard this before, but I'm a big proponent of good nutrition for all of the right reasons, including attitude and behavior.
And while I've never seen that connection between food and...
Is it aggressive behavior in general?
Aggressive behavior, yes.
That is fascinating, and I wouldn't doubt it a bit.
I'd like to see more about that.
Maybe you can work with us on rejuvenation, brother.
Yeah, tell me more about that later, you know, offline and we'll see about that.
But I love that kind of solution because nobody disagrees with good nutrition, except the lobbyists, etc.
Now, when you're talking about addictive chemicals, it turns out that the addictive chemicals are just getting the right balance of salt to sugar and fat.
There's a book with that title, I think, Salt, Sugar, Fat...
In which the whole story of how the food scientists have figured out the right golden combination that actually causes addiction.
That's true. Behavior problems, crime problems are in fact all related to that one fact that a scientist one day discovered that you could addict people by getting the right mix of these three items.
That is really interesting.
Now that is exactly the kind, you know, I would need to know more about this of course without committing, but in concept that's exactly the kind of thing that you could make progress and And you can make a big difference because nobody's going to disagree with good nutrition.
They might disagree with how to get it, but I love that.
I love that approach.
Find the places that you can agree.
Now, people have asked me a little bit about the topic of reparations, and it would be easy to skip that one because that's just so incendiary, but I've written on the topic.
I think you know. You've seen my writing on the topic?
So, I've made the following point, which is, because the legacy of slavery doesn't really ever leave, you know, we can't really forget it.
We wouldn't want to. And it does have a lingering effect.
You know, some would say it's real, some would say it's psychological.
I say that psychological is real, so that's not as big a difference as you think.
And that I floated the following idea, that if you did a special tax only on the top 1%, you know, the top 1% of earners, and you use that for, let's say, 25 years of free college and or technical, whatever kind of training, vocational training...
For African-Americans below a certain income, so you wouldn't give it to rich African-Americans.
But then you just say, all right, for 25 years, we're going to try to level up, and education is the way to do it.
There will not be a financial limit.
You just have to work hard.
You now have a path. After 25 years, you say...
If we couldn't do it in a generation and a half, maybe there's some other problem we need to work on.
Now the reason that I would limit that to a tax on the top 1% is that they uniquely benefit by helping the most disadvantaged part of society.
So they're the ones who get new people who are trained to work in their factories.
They're the people who don't have to pay higher taxes for social services.
So only in the top 1%, for them it's more like an investment.
You wouldn't tax the middle class because that's just the cost.
They're not getting anything back as directly, but the rich get it back.
So, that was my idea.
Now, when you talked about, I think it was, I forget her first name, Nixon?
Cindy and Nixon, Miranda from Sex and the City.
Now, my understanding is that her idea was to put a special tax on legalized marijuana and then use those funds to pay for reparations under the connection that the drug laws have historically been so anti-black in the way they've been enforced that they're sort of a poetic justice in using that sort of source of money for some amount of time.
And call it reparations.
And it's kind of like free money because you don't need to do, you know, you don't need to smoke marijuana and it hasn't been taxed so much in the past so it feels like it, you know, makes sense.
For me, you want to talk about reparations, then people really need to look to the core of this problem.
Jewish people received Reparations.
Victims in Hiroshima received reparations.
Japanese Americans who were interned in this country received reparations.
That's it. Native Americans, indigenous people, received reparations.
They did. They did.
Undergone. I didn't know about that.
Native Americans... Well, you know, I'm not sure you can call it reparations when you say we'll only take 98% of your land.
Yeah, very true.
Very true. They got something, right?
Right. But, like, black people got zero, sapo, zero.
We were supposed to get it.
The United Nations said we should get it.
And I don't think that this is a topic that can be trivialized.
I think that if people are going to talk about reparations, it should be a real serious conversation.
And I think if we're going that route, then I think we should be given land, right?
I think we should own the land that we're living on.
That we own, and then black dollars can circulate into black communities.
My view, my vision of the African American community is not this far-fetched vision.
It just looks like black people owning their land, controlling the schools in their neighborhoods, and owning businesses.
It's a completely self-sustained community that does business with everyone.
Now, I think most people like the vision you're describing, which is, you know, everybody does well and the black community does well.
But it's sort of like the how to get there.
Now, the education as an emphasis is is something that I think would be easier to go down on the people who had to do the paying, but it also guarantees that if you're black and you get land or you get a business, that it will be successful and you can keep it.
It seems to me that if you just, you know, I don't think it's practical in any way, but just as a mental experiment, if you just gifted land to every black citizen of the United States, They still need a job to pay the property taxes.
They still need to know how to run a business.
It seems like education's first, don't you think?
I don't know. I think we have enough educated people.
And hey, we're talking about a capitalistic society.
So the blacks who don't know how to manage their lives, blacks who have to know how, will come in and buy their land.
And it would just work, you know, in that nature.
There's enough people who are black.
Look at Jewish communities, Scott.
Like, they've mastered this.
And no one's accusing them.
Well, there they are.
But what I'm saying is, they've done this.
They've done this, and they're still able to maintain relationships with the outside world.
Other people still live in their communities.
They're self-sufficient. That's all I want for my people.
But wouldn't you say that the success of Jewish Americans is almost entirely based on education and staying out of jail?
I would say business agreement.
I don't think that a formal education is...
Now, granted, I have a law degree, right?
So I'm not discounting education as a whole.
But I don't think that education is the only way.
I think it's a great way, but I think that there are people...
With trade skills.
Now let me get you out of trouble a little bit.
You fell into a little trouble there, but I don't think you noticed that.
When you said business acumen in relationship to the Jewish community, you mean that in a cultural sense, not a genetic sense, right?
No, that would be impossible.
I want some of that gene if that's the way it runs.
No, in a cultural scene.
There's certain programs in their communities that are meant to strengthen them economically and things of that nature.
But no, it's not genetics.
It's just folks knowing how to do business and working with one another and learning how to corner certain markets.
They've done a real good job at that.
I just want people to do the same thing.
So I've got a book called How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.
And it was written for people who are age, you know, late teens, early 20s is sort of the sweet spot, where it would teach them essentially a strategy for success.
You know, I teach about layering your talents together so that you don't have to be the best at anything, but you've got the right combination and so on.
So it actually covers everything from eating right to staying out of trouble.
And I've often thought that that should be a class.
If that book were available to African Americans when they're 14, Based on the feedback I get, it's changing lives because it gives them a way to proceed that doesn't require you to be rich.
That's it. It's a strategy that you can take advantage of what you have as opposed to being stopped by what you don't have, essentially.
That's it. But Scott, I have to run out to Brooklyn to protest the stop and shout.
I love that you have to get off this call to join a protest and go get arrested again.
Let's leave off on a quick high point.
Thank you so much for sharing your time.
I think everybody here appreciates the communication.
I think there's a friendly disagreement on a lot of points, but people understand where you're coming from.
I think that your willingness to even talk to us, which has been your history, you're willing to talk to everybody.
You were Kanye before Kanye, and willing to talk to the people who can help you.
That's the important part.
You're talking to the people who can help you, as opposed to the people who already agree with you, which puts you on a whole other level, I think, with leadership.
I know you've got to run.
We'll talk again. I'll talk to you privately later.
Have a great time, Walker.
Love you, brother. Peace and love to everyone who's watching.
Remember, we can get there quicker, faster, and sooner together.
God bless. I love it.
Thanks. All right.
Now, I know you've got the appreciators and the haters on here.
How did you like...
Give me your opinion on the conversation.
Was this useful or not?
So don't judge the people or the specific ideas, but was the conversation good?
Was this something you'd like to see more of?
We'll wait for some comments to go by so we can catch up with them.
Alright, so it looks like enough people enjoyed this to stay on here for a long time.
So I would say that the key takeaways from this are that you can see how easy it would be to work with HAWC. Because even if you completely disagree on what's happening in Starbucks that one time or what happened with the police who stopped that guy that one time, it kind of doesn't matter.
If you're disagreeing on the details or what people were thinking, because the solutions end up being very, very similar no matter what you thought was the problem.
You know, training the police better, you know, having a few new regulations that are enforced that are already on the books.
Everybody would agree with that stuff.
Better education, training African Americans to have better strategies young and manage money better.
All things we could agree on.
So we can disagree violently on some of the details.
But don't lose sight of the fact that the solutions are pretty similar and there's a lot to work with.
And if the black community decides to find a productive partner with the Republicans, with Trump, With the folks who have the power and the money, there's just a lot that can be done there, and I think the Republicans are very willing to do it, and they just need to know how.
Just show us what to do, and make your case that it would be productive, and we're in.
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