Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay - Once Again…Kanye West, Plus Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins on ‘Trials to Triumphs’

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

Van and Rachel discuss Kanye West’s antisemitic tweets and how these aren’t the first anti-Jewish comments Van has heard from him (16:22), plus Killer Mike is critical of Stacey Abrams's campaign governor (26:45). Then Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins joins to talk about her podcast ‘Trials to Triumphs’ (40:44), and former pro-basketball player Jack McClinton discusses his now-viral question, “Do white lives not matter?” (1:19:22). Hosts: Van Lathan Jr. and Rachel Lindsay Guests: Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins and Jack McClinton Producer: Donnie Beacham Jr. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yo, yo, thought warriors. What is up? How I learning is on is I, Man Liefen, June. And it's me, Rachel, Lynn Lindsay. Okay, so listen, guys, okay? Me and Rachel just did two fantastic interviews. One is with Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins. Great.

Ashley's amazing. We talk. Some great talk with Ashley. I offer her a role in a movie that we could be doing coming up. that I think would be a great film. She turned me down, but you guys are going to have to see in order to know what role I offered Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins a starring role in a movie that me, Trayvon, and Nick could produce.

She turned it down. She said she'll never do it. You guys have to listen to the interview to figure out what role she said she would never do. Her podcast is called Trials and Triumphs. It is produced by the own network. It was a fantastic, delightful conversation, and we're going to play that for you a little bit later on. This is going to be a longer podcast.

I'm letting you guys right now. Right now, we've already been recording for like an hour and 15 minutes. So we're going to give you probably a supersized higher learning, okay? We're going to try to keep it within the realms of what you guys like to listen to, but it's going to be longer. We also have another interview. Rachel. Okay. We have another interview with Jack McClinton, former All-American Basketball player at the University of Miami.

he runs the active dreamers network and once again he is somebody who's one of Vance friends now me and Jack went semi-viral for going back and forth when Jack asked the question do white lives not matter

on Kanye West's the post I made about Kanye West on my Instagram Rachel you remember this I do remember this and he brings that energy into the interview and so much more

Okay, look, I'm going to do something I never do because analytics show that whenever we go to an interview on any podcast, most podcasts people turn away. Just because they like to hear me and Rachel go back and forth. They love hearing Rachel's voice. They love to hear what they're going to criticize me about next. I am challenging everyone to listen to the entire interview with Jack because I think it's very important.

Jack is a good dude. But I think it's very important. for you guys to listen to the interview. We talk about what he believes is the real problem in America, what he thinks about Kanye shirt himself, what he thinks about the interaction that we have, how technology plays a part of this. It was a challenging talk. I quit.

Rachel tapped out. I was just going to be honest with you guys. I quit half a few interview. But then he kept it going. It brings up some fantastic points. You have to listen to it. It's great. Interesting dialogue.

I want you guys to listen to it, okay? And I also want you guys to understand that sometimes people don't know what they don't know. And, uh, yeah, listen to the interview, though. Okay. Time to get to the pleasantries. Rachel, how was your weekend? My weekend was good. Okay, very nice.

I went to a, I went to a basketball at party for my friend. And we had a good time. It really was, it really was a lot of, as you could tell for my voice. It was a good time. What was this bachelor party at? It was in Scottsdale. Jesus Christ's. Scott'sdale goes hard, man.

Scott, they have this party corner. We call it the hot corner. It's like everywhere you look, there's clubs and they're all that. They don't have windows. So like you can see, it's just a lot. But we have a lot of fun. all had an Airbnb. We played games. We girl talk. We had a chef come for dinner one night. We went out another night, laid by the pool. It was just good fun. And I met some of her friends

before. Everyone came from all over Toronto, North Carolina, Texas, L.A. It was just a good group of girls. You guys have a lot. My friend, she's a friend from Basho. Who was your name? Her name's Astrid. Astrid? Do I know Astrid? What did Ashtra do? She's Negro? No. She was she was she She was on the show. She was a bachelorette. She was yeah, she was on the When I was on the bachelor, she was one of the women

That I was in the house with Oh, okay, so you guys She's a Bachelor first. So she's a bachelor underling Yeah, well we're called Bachelorette's when we're on the Bachelor But yes, she was the bachelor. She would compete against each other. Everyone, so I have my own way to, to like categorize people on the bachelor. Right. So the people that are on the bachelor, I call them bachelors and bachelorets.

The people that were on the show, like you are a bachelorette because you were the bachelorette. You know, then you have the, like the men that were actually on the show, they're bachelors. everybody else is an underling. They're underlings, right? And a guy like Brian who technically won the Bachelorette, right? He's an underling in law. Very special. Wow.

I've never heard she break a down like this before, but okay. She's an underling. So say it. No, I'm not. Rachel, get off your chest. She was, how far did she go in the bachelor's? situation. She only made it to the fourth week because she was

running around the house telling everybody that this was shit. And they were like, we got to get her out of the house. She was like, don't believe them, don't trust them. This is fake. And they were like, she's got to go. I like her. She's an underling. She's an underling with flair. Who is probably somebody who didn't make underlinging in law?

Because I guess Dale will count as an underlinging in law, right? Speaking of that, Claire just announced she's engaged. To whom? Another guy, not a part of the show. Not Chip? Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, not dead.

Chips engaged. Chip, Chip, Chip, Chip, Chip, is Claire. Yeah. So let me see who Claire. What's her Claire's name again? Claire. Claire. But Claire, what, though?

What is Claire's last name? I don't know. Claire the bachelor. Hold on. Claire Crawley. Crawley, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's see, Claire Carly Click Crawley, Instagram

Let's go through Instagram Let's take a little Let's take a trip down memory lane Damn this nigga white Dale fucked her up I knew it was going to happen She's never going to go black And go after Dale

Claire looks so happy This nigga white man We lost her You're proud of yourself, Dale Like, there's very few white women with hips out there. And you call some other lucky brother. You call some ex-point guard for the university of, you call some other lucky brother, a hippie white woman.

I'm happy for Claire. She looks very happy. And Dell was not doing that for her. So this nigga looked like he owned. This nigga looked like he got at least, at least $100,000. tied up in NFTs. Like his this nigga

looks like that. Yes, he does. This nigga looks like he got at least $100,000 tied up in NFTs, man. I guarantee you this guy has NFTs. I got to find him.

I guarantee you this nigga has an NFT. Ryan Dawkins. Let's see. It's his name. We're going too far. Girl Dad, athlete. Ryan Dawkins.

com? Let's see. Mascot sports. Let's see, Ryan Dawkins. Let's go to his page. I want to know about Ryan Dawkins. I want to know mascot sports igniting the rally for innovation through athletes, brands, and events. We are mascot sports.

Hey, Ryan, Ryan, shout out to you, bro. Congratulations. Congratulations to Ryan. Congratulations to Claire. All just aside, Ryan looks like a really nice guy. I'm glad that Claire is happy. What's Dale up to? Let's see what Dale's up to.

Who cares? Who cares? You don't care. So now you mad at? Dale? Dale ain't do nothing to you. He did my girl already. Did he though?

Yeah. Did he? Dale from the Bachelor. Let's see. Dale, what's Dale doing? Dale Moss, 13? Sports entertainment impact. Yeah.

This nigga Dale. Oh, Dale got somebody new too. Dale got a new white woman. Her name is gaily. Alex, Elix. She got a million followers. She got a million followers.

What is she doing? She's some kind of, she's some kind of celebrity. Do you know who this person is? Rachel, why aren't you talking? I'm going back to Batchworld. Because you're going down too far, a place, a road I don't care to go down. Just wanted to congratulate Claire. No idea who Gaylee is.

Sure, she's a nice woman. But. Gaylee, Alex, design. She's got her own design. studio. So I'm happy for everyone. But this means that they... Oh, no.

I've seen this girl before. She's really talented. I've seen her on TikTok. Look, you're hating on her. You're hating on her. No, I said she's a nice girl. You're so mad at dating. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, they've been dating for a while now. Damn, this means that Chippendale are finally done for real. I was always holding out hope that Chippendale would get back together and cause some more fucking commotion. Everybody went. white. The only black nigga involved in the whole shit is is Dale. Everybody went white. The Bachelor is

white. It's a white organization. No. Actually, you want to know something real? I miss it. I miss Batch. You go on your own. You can go back. Rachel, can we please. We talked about it. We talked about black face. We dipped our toe into it. I just want to. Can we do How about this? No.

Can I, am I allowed to just talk about one batch event per month? Once a month, batch. Once a month, fine. Once a month. You're cool with once a month. I'm cold with once a month. I miss batch. Batch was such a great moment in time.

Like we would talk about Dale, we would talk about Chip, did fucking Matt James. And then who came after Dale? Who came after Chip? It was Tasia, wasn't it? Tasia, yeah. Tasia, when they was at that. that fucking place in and me and Kalika stayed at that

hotel. We stayed at that place. And we went to the tennis matches out there. We stayed at that place. I miss batch, man. Well, Dan, once a month. Once a month, you can bring it back. Once a month, but you get to choose what we talk about. No, I don't even know

what's going on. I knew about playing out. I saw that. That's not true. That's not true. That's not true. That's a you know what's going on in batch. No. I don't. It's so funny that Batch is your TMZ. That's your TMZ. Like I have a TMZ a place that like is super controversial that I worked for a long time where I kind of made my name.

Mine is Tennessee. Mine's TMZ. Yours is batch. It is. I'm the Rachel Lindsay of TMZ and you're the Van Lathan of Batch. That is true. That's true. We are.

And you know who doesn't want to talk about TNZ? Me. I don't even want to you. that. Yeah, but that's different, though, but TMZ ain't got no fucking Chippendale. What the fuck they got? They ain't got nothing. What the fuck they got? Harvey, Harvey, Harvey and what's the other guys in name? They're not chippin' deal. What's other guys name? Charles.

Charles. Charlie and Charles. If you want to do TMZ once a month weekend, I'll tell you what, it's not going to bring in the numbers like batch. So you have fun, you have fun this weekend. You had a good time. You have a good weekend? Ellis, you got fucking. destroyed. No. Oh shit. You're right. By weekend was better than I thought. Yeah, Red River Shootout. I got a lot. I can't lie. I was impressive. And I was gone. And Cowboys won. And they played

here. It was a good weekend. Good weekend for my teams. Are the Cowboys a competent football team? They look good. With Cooper Rush, that's the question. That's the question. This is a whole Chip and Dale situation because we don't know that the Cowboys might go white. They might have to go white. you know, Jerry is already trying to pretend like that's going to happen. Yeah, Jerry. He's entertained. Like he's entertaining. Do us a favor.

Trade Dack to the Saints. We'll take them. Seriously. Trade that to the Saints. No, you'll trade him. Because we're either going to get. Cooper Rush might be like a Ryan Fitzpatrick, right?

You know, you perform better when you know you're not the starting quarterback. When you, it's like, you know pretty soon you're about to have to tag team, somebody else sin, he doesn't have that full responsibility. No matter what he does, we're going to cheer him on because he stepped in. Right? He's not ready to be a starting quarterback. I don't think he is either, but that's not going to stop you guys from making the wrong decision.

He a white guy with red hair. You can slinger the pigskin around. Me too. Love that. Yeah, he's like a white guy with red hair. He will be the starter. When you get to the airport, come on down to Dallas. It's your car.

The Cowboys QB. Cooper Rush. rushing over to Irvin, Texas for the stadium and shit. So LSU lost and it sucked because the game came on at 9. If we're going to lose and get pounded out like that, taking the Pound Town by Tennessee, shout out to Josh Hypole and Hendon Hooker and all of those guys. I'd rather the game be at night so I can fucking get destroyed

and go to sleep. But waking up at 9 to watch LSU fat, fucking in bed, shirt off looking at your body like how did I let this happen Bozeman comes in he sees I'm shirtless he's like Jesus Christ this guy walks out of the room you know and then just sitting there Ham Hawk heaven watching LSU get destroyed it's tough it's tough did you see my um sparring on Instagram today I spar with Lewis Rose this morning pro box

how you do that you do first three rounds it did okay Rose was taking it easy on me last round I gassed and I just the adrenaline got to me and I started getting hit a lot but I was just letting him know he couldn't hurt me. He's a middleweight. I'm a super duper heavyweight. Let me see. Let me see. So yeah, I was taking some shots. Donnie, did you see it? No, I missed it.

Donnie, what do you do? Donnie, what the fuck do you do? I'd be running. You let him know, Donnie. Yeah, last month I ran 42 and a half miles. Yeah. That was right for me. You keep running around that neighborhood if you want. Stop.

No, I'm not going to lie. I take Peter, my dog with me, just so it'll let everybody know I'm good. I'm one of the good ones. What kind of? Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. Their thoughts. Not mine.

That was tough. That was tough. Did you see your guy Kanye West going crazy on a different race of people? He turned it. I'm not going to do the whole. Look at you. Go, I'm watching you right now. I do my thing.

Look at you. Yeah, my dear. I'm out there battling. I'm so tired. He's about to tap out. He's got to tap out. I'm so tired. Kanye tweeted that he was a bit sleepy,

but when you woke up, he was going to go DeathCon 3 on Jewish people. The funny thing is I can't actually be anti-Semitic because black people are actually Jew also. You guys have toyed with me and tried to blackball anyone who opposes your agenda. He said that about. the Jewish people. We have to talk about it. I'm sorry, audience. What did you think about that? What did I think about it? Yeah. It definitely is something, you know, I tried to completely

detach from social media and everything that was going on this weekend. Couldn't escape this. Obviously, just when you think Kanye West might not, I thought he was done, but I thought, okay, we're just going to take a little beat because White Lives Matter has been such a big thing. went on Tucker Carlson, all right, you know, like he's just going to chill it for a second. And then you do this and you open up hate in a whole other way. I personally haven't seen this yet from Kanye West. And I know a lot of people were talking about this. A lot of people wanted people to speak out because they were saying, okay, when it has,

when it's something that's anti-Semitic towards Jewish people, you don't have people speak out in the same way. But I did see a lot of people rally around the Jewish community and condemn Kanye for this. what I still find interesting, troubling, not interesting in a good way, it's very troubling that Kanye can spew out hate in this manner and you still have people excusing his behavior as, oh, he's just independent. Oh, he's a genius. Oh, he's just a free thinker.

You guys, this is painful. This is disparaging commentary out there. And it has real consequences. And it is offending a variety of people in the worst way. And you can't sit out here and say, oh, he's just, you don't, you don't understand what he's doing. It boggles my mind. What does Kanye West have to do for people to accept the fact that what he is doing is hateful and it is wrong? I don't understand it.

It's very cult like, right? The way people follow Kanye and the actions that he's taking and they can't. team to excuse it or say, oh, this has to do with his mental health. That's cult-like behavior. And I saw something interesting, and I can't remember the person who said it. They were a person speaking out who was saying basically also acknowledging that they two are bipolar. And they were saying this is the fact that people are excusing this as towards his being bipolar, his mental health, is very harmful to people who actually have bipolar. Because even though you have your, and I'm paraphrasing this, even though you have your ups and downs, it still doesn't mean that this is the way that we are.

This is how we can get. And so to excuse it as that is also harmful to another community as well. I just don't understand how there's still a discourse where people are on both sides of this when there was truly only one side to be on. Yeah. I mean, look. Well, what were you? I mean, to hear him make these.

these type of comments, these antistemitic comments, you weren't taken aback? No, I already heard him say that stuff before. When? At TMZ. When he was at TMZ that time? I was, I mean, I was taking it back because that type of anti-Semitic talk is disgusting.

It's like, I'm taking it back at these times. Anyone does that, right? But as far as him, I knew that that was in him because when he came to TMZ, he said that stuff and they took it out of the interview. He said, I think he said so if you

if you look at what I said at TMZ it goes from me saying like I was saying, I said hey Kanye there's real life, real world implication to everything that you just said there. What I say after that, if I can remember it's been a long time, was actually 12 million people

actually died because of Nazism and Hitler and all of that stuff. Then I say, and then I move on to talk about like, you know, what he said about slavery. It was this whole big thing. Well, the 12 million people part is not in there because they took it out. And the reason why they took it out is because it wouldn't have made sense unless they kept in Kanye saying that he loved Hitler and the Nazis, which he said when he was at TMZ. He said something like, I love Hitler.

I love Nazis. something to that effect when he was there and they took it out of the interview because of whatever reason it wasn't my decision for him to take it. So when I saw this I was like oh I knew that this was eventually coming. As a matter of fact, I had anticipated it coming

like way earlier than this. That was four years ago and he really hasn't attacked Jewish people before then. But one of the predictions, Ducers at TMZ actually stood up and said, I'm Jewish and that is offensive to me, what you just said. Because he said something, he said, I love Hitler or I love Nazis or something like that. But that's what he said.

He said that he, whatever. So, and they took it out. And there was, I guess, conversation between him and whatever. And it came out an interview. So if you go back and watch that clip, and if people want to go back, if people want to go back and watch that clip, I say what I say,

and there's a cut right there. And people might think that they stitches together to make me seem more eloquent, which you can't possibly do. But no, they stitch it together to take out my reference to the Holocaust. And I said 12 million because we talk about 6 million Jews, six million,

six million others that were killed during the Holocaust. And they took that out because they took out him saying he was a Nazi. They took out the part of him. making those type of comments but they kept in the part where he made disparaging comments towards black people?

Correct. Hmm. Correct. So they kept in slavery. Holocaust was a third rail had to get up. Correct. There's a point in that clip

where when he's standing up and talking and I'm assuming that's when he said it up there when he's on the platform where he kind of is like questioning people like, I paraphrasing me like, who feels what I'm saying? were like, who was a problem. Yeah. And people

are raising their hands. So what you're telling me is, he said something anti-Semitic and people were raising their hands. Well, a couple people raised their hands. There were several people who raised their hands. There were several people who raised their hands in that. Because that's what always people raised their hands. People raised their hands. One of the people

that raised their hands was Candace Owens, though. So, you know, she was there. So like, it cult like behavior. Okay. Let's move on from content. It's like, whatever happens. But honestly, that's shocking that that that was

Oh, that they took that out? And he was protected. I'm sorry. I was shocking. It took it out. It was years ago. So I knew that those ideas were in there and that they were

kind of like a thing. But they hadn't, you hadn't heard it since then. I mean, look, uh, I'll say this. I know that we have a lot of Jewish listeners that,

you know, tune in and listen to it. on higher learning. I know that we've had to litigate a couple of things over the last couple of years that involved anti-Semitism. And I know that sometimes it is a conversation that the black community, Jewish community doesn't have enough about how we can protect one another and what it means when someone says something and what it means when someone posits, excuse me, not posits, when someone puts forth an idea that is hurtful, I'll tell you this real quick. Mainstreaming the

type of stuff that Kanye is talking about when he's talking about cancel culture or whatever he's going to say, whatever he's thinking about saying. Mainstreaming in these ideas is incredibly, incredibly incredibly dangerous. I live in a Jewish area of Los Angeles.

And I walk down different places. I'm not going to tell people where I live because y'all crazy. One dude actually stopped me on some, what's your problem with Kanye shit a couple of days ago? I was like, hey, nigga, the fuck out of my face. But when you pass one of these places, a school, synagogue, a place of worship, you can always tell them, you know, down where I live, there's almost always an armed guard outside. Not like, hey, security, we're talking about two or three people with guns, especially during their high holidays. Always an armed guard outside.

The threat is real. So remember, we're not talking about things that just get said and just go away. We're talking about people who are like us. The situations aren't one-to-one. They're different in a lot of ways. But there's always a worry that someone's going to do something absolutely terrible, unforgettable, cruel and evil to them at their most. tender and unsuspecting times when they're worshiping or when their kids are playing.

So y'all make a decision about the guy. Whatever. We're not, we did a little thing about that. We're not going to start with that. We're going to start with the big deal of the day. It's going to be in politics, killer Mike and Georgia. Let's go. Did you know about one in three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis,

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withdrawable and expire seven days after receipt. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tool. Restrictions apply. See terms at fandul.com slash predict slash bonus dash offer dash terms. All right. Rachel.

Killer Mike. Michael Rinder. What half a run of jewels. He was on Charlemagne show. Hell of a week over there on Comedy Central. He spoke on the Georgia gubernatorial race. And some people think he was critical of Stacey Abrams and he was super nice to Brian Kent.

Donnie, give me the audio. But in a state like Georgia, you have to meet people where they are for real. And what I mean is I'm from Atlanta, 15 minutes outside Atlanta's Georgia. Georgia's 35% black, 35% African American, which means, you know, the rest of the people, not black. But they are, they are poor working in middle class. the guy she's running against is running an effective campaign. And Brian Kemp is running an effective campaign. I would advise if I was in Ms. Kemp's camp,

you need to go everywhere he just went. Ms. Abrams. You need to go everywhere Brian Kemp just went because what Brian Kemp did was having an effective week with black people. And I would love to see her do that. But if she doesn't, that ain't our fault. Why are they clapping? What do you think?

Do you think that you have a problem with anything that Mike said? Yeah, I have a problem with what he said. He said that Brian Camp had an effective week. Week. Stacey Abrams has been effective for years, like past and present tense. So no, he didn't directly say anything that was a disparaging remark towards Stacey Abrams or her campaign,

but he implied it. And I think that people really, I mean, obviously he got clapped. Nobody on that panel, at least in that. that clip corrected him on what he said. And so I think that somebody who has killer Mike's influence and status, but take what he just said and really start to think, huh, well, what is Brian Kent doing instead of looking at what Stacey Abrams, Stacey Abrams has been doing? I mean, we have had Stacey Abrams on this podcast. We've talked about, you know, what she's done, the fact that she ran in the state of Georgia, the election was stolen from.

her. And rather than just quitting and saying, I'm done here, doing something different, she stayed dedicated to the cause. She turned her attention to registering people to vote, to turning the state of Georgia blue, to motivating them. She made it bigger than her and the election that she was in, which, as I just said, was stolen from her. She absolutely never stopped. So to minimize Stacey Abrams' accomplishments to a week, to me, is extremely problematic. And I don't understand if Killer Mike is doing this is like, I don't understand the motivation for saying this. I don't understand if he's like trying to say, be the devil's advocate, trying to have an unpopular opinion.

I don't even know if he really means it. I don't know if he was thinking of like it in the bigger picture of things. But I hated that he said this and I hated that nobody corrected him for it and that people just clap because I don't think that he said anything in that statement that was super profound. And I totally think that it waters down what Stacey Abrams. has done and is doing in the state of Georgia. I mean, worldwide.

I mean, countrywide. People are watching what Stacey is doing. And she's been effective, not just in the state of Georgia, but outside of it in regards to, in regards to registering people to vote. So I am not a Georgian. So I don't know, I don't know what Georgians think of Brian Kemp's tenure as governor.

I don't know. He was elected. 2018. we tried our best as a nationwide black group to get Stacey elected. I remember it was a very exciting time. It was Andrew Gillum down there in Florida. It was Stacey's a lot of people. We tried our best.

We did not win. So here's the thing. I can put this. So Killer Mike has, there's context here. The year 2020, Killer Mike went and made. met with Brian Kemp. There is, and Mike would, I've asked Mike to come on this podcast before.

I've asked Mike to come on the Red Pill before. I know Mike very well. And we have never been able to make it happen. But I was just with Mike a couple of weeks ago. Killer Mike is a good guy. Killa Mike is a good man. Killer Mike does a lot. He is, he's been working for a very long time.

He'll tell you he's been organizing for over 20 or 30 years. So he met with Brian Kemp in 2020. and he said politics and policy don't matter to me as much as human decency and principles. He seemed to be a principled human being when I talk to him. That's what he said about Governor Brian Kemp. Now, Governor Brian Kemp is not in, he was a MAGO Republican as much as one could be a Mago Republican. He is not a Mago Republican currently because he fell out with the president after his refusal

to rig the election in Georgia. That's it. This is the issue with Brian Kemp. I don't know issue to issue how good of a governor Brian Kemp has been in Georgia. The Georgians listening, please educate me on that. I don't know. Don't pay attention to the specific politics of the state. But what I do know is that he signed SB 202, which is one of the most egregious voter suppression laws in the country.

We had a conversation, Mike and I on a panel with Derey McKelton and some other people that year, 2020. for the revolt summit and we were talking about the power of the black vote. I asked Mike Venn what he thought about the fact that people were upset about him, upset about him, going to meet and being conciliatory and, I mean, nice to Brian Kemp, a guy who Stacey Abrams claims, we had just had her on our podcast a little bit before then, is trying to disenfranchise the black people of Georgia. And like how that works for Mike. I don't remember his answer

like off the top of my head but I do remember I thought it was insufficient. The question that I'm asking is what if Killer Mike likes Brian Kemp better than Stacey Abrams? What if there are black people in Georgia and the black people in Georgia would have to talk to me

about this that like Brian Kemp better than Stacey Abrams? There's something that Mike was there to talk to the government governor about, and we should make sure that we mention that. He is invested into programs to make sure that black people in Georgia have traits. We're talking about mechanics, barbers, things like that. Mike has a bunch of thriving businesses in Georgia, and that's what he cares about. And there could be a situation to where if he feels like he can work with the governor on that, and he feels like that's

going to help thousands of black people in Atlanta, then that's good enough for him. For me, someone who's trying to disenfranchise Georgia voters, black Georgia voters, specifically, let's be real about it. It's a non-starter with me. You're trying to strip someone of their citizenship.

That plus all of the other bad politics that a MAGA Republican would have to have is just not for me. The question is if in fact, because I think a lot of the pushback to this was pushback that assumes

killer might, should be a fan of Stacey Abrams. I don't know whether he is or whether he's not. I know that if I was a fan of a particular candidate and wanted them to win, I wouldn't say some of the things in the way that he said him on hell over a week. And that's just real.

But what if he does like Brian Kemp? What if he does feel like he can work with Brian Kemp on getting black people jobs in Georgia? Do we fundamentally have a problem? I fundamentally have a problem with Brian Kemp, would never support Brian Kemp, would never speak with Brian Kemp, because Brian Kemp is actively trying to hurt black people,

and that's enough for me. But do we have a problem fundamentally if black people vote Republican? If black people, what? If black people vote Republican. Well, I think... Can you say Republican or is it Brian Kemp? Are we saying probably black people by Republican or just Brian Kemp? Which one?

Which is the question? Well, huh. That's a fantastic retort. I don't know. Take both, Rachel. Well, Brian Kippen in the situation, here's my thing. If there's certain initiatives that Killer Mike

wants to get C done in the state of Georgia that he's personally invested in that he feels like will benefit the black community, my question is, are you also giving Stacey Abrams the chance to implement those if she takes on governor? Because what you just talked about

with SB202, I'm not sure if I got that number right, I'm with you. First, I have not forgotten what happened in the last election for governor. I have not forgotten that Brian Kemp is tied to Trump or was tied to Trump. And I have not forgotten that it's not his choice that he's away from Trump. Trump did that to him. Right.

So to me, he might not be as MAGA, but he's still pretty MAGA. And so that's, maybe I don't know the inner workings of what he's doing in state of Georgia, but from the outside looking in, I know that. So my question to killer Mike is, what have you done to talk to state? Stacey Abrams about getting some of those things that have you given her a fair chance. That's my, and why are you so big on, fine, have a conversation with Brian Kim while he's the governor. He's currently the governor and you're trying to get stuff done now. Okay, but now there's a race coming up.

Why? I don't know if he has. So that's why I'm like, has he given Stacey Abrams that same chance? That's my thing with that. And if he hasn't, then I have a problem with the fact that he's supporting Brian. I have a problem, period. But why? Well, first of all, we should be fair.

We don't know that he's supporting Brian Kim. Speaking in favor, speaking favorably of him. Right? Speaking favorably of him. Speaking favorably of him. I want to know what it is about Stacey Abrams that you can't give her that same respect. That's a question. I don't know the answer to.

Republican? I think that just depends on, do I have a problem with black people or I don't know if he's a killer Mike specifically Republican or black people voting Republican? Yeah. who's the person, you know? How Republican are they? I mean, I'm a MAGA Republican. No.

Are they more of a moderate? I don't know. What issues do they stand on? Are they just, are they Republican only in name? I don't know. That's a hard question to answer. Yeah, I couldn't do it. But, but, but, I did meet Michael Steele in D.C.

When I was there for CBC, delightful name, Michael Steelewell. That's great. What does he consider himself An independent now? He might be an independent now But when I knew him he was Republican Well he ran it

He was the chair of the RNC Yeah Yeah So I guess my thing is You know I'm not quite sure I didn't like this Only because I'm a Stacey's supporter

But if you're not a Stacey supporter Then what is it? It should also be said that SB 202 was signed Because Brian Kemp said he was frustrated with the results of the 2020 election. The 2020 election where Georgia went blue. Has Brian Kipp said anything in favor of Herschel Walker?

No, he hasn't, but I will also say that Mike did get mad at me one time because I posted Herschel Walker on my, and he knows this, I posted Herschel Walker fumbling some words on my on my Instagram and Mike said, why don't you post Biden? He fumbles all these words too. And, you know, Mike had Herschel Walker on love and respect with Killer Mike. his show that comes on PBS. So I don't know. Mike is a conservative guy. Some people are saying that he should have had the same energy for Reverend Warner.

Yeah. Wait, what? Wait, he said, who should have the same energy for who? People were saying he was too soft on Herschel and they're saying, but you seem to be a little bit harder when it comes to Abrams. That's some of the discourse I saw. So. Yeah. Well, look, maybe we'll get Mike on to talk. But once again, uh, Georgians, let me know. let me know all the Georgians that we have listening to Higher Learning. Let me know how you feel about Brian Kemp as a governor.

I know damn well that he's trying to take your voting rights away and that's enough for me to say fuck him. Stacey Abrams niggas. She told us then that he fucked around with the votes in 2018. Republicans always want to act. They want to give out a little shit to whomever and then take away fundamental rights like your right to vote, you're right for your body, all kinds of stuff like that.

I'm not with it. So, but once again, who knows what's happening? Friday, while attending the Georgia State Fair, Brian Kemp was asked if he would continue to support fellow Republican Herschel Walker's Senate candidacy following the allegations that we've talked about on this podcast. He had responded by saying he would support, he would support the Republican candidates on the ballot.

He supports Richard Walker. Come on. I assume that. Okay, so up next we have. our delightful and amazing interview with Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins where I ask her if she would take the role of a lifetime. The role of a lifetime, Rachel. Rachel thinks she should do it.

We're going to meet you guys back on the other side of this. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and make it a mess. You don't need WeatherTech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner or a road truck. Go sideways. Ketchup goes rogue. Ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer.

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Think green goddess chicken, garlic aoli, crumbled bacon, corn salsa, 40 grams of protein. Made to keep up with whatever comes next. New sweet green wraps hit different. Order now at order.com. Hi, Ashley. Hi, Rachel. I'm a huge fan of yours. And Van, you already know that, though Van.

I don't know if you knew that, Rachel, but Van, you already know. No, it's so nice to meet you. Yeah, I'm obsessed with you. Ashley. All right. Let's see, let's, Donnie, keep all this in.

Let's get it started. You guys, we have a very special guest. Ashley Blaine, brothers and Jenkins. She hosts the podcast, trials and triumphs, produced by

own podcast. Oprah. Yeah. Talk about OWW. As my friend Nick calls her. Oprah Winfrey, she talks with friends, colleagues,

and people she admires about the moments when they're trials. have led to triumph. This is also starred on Dear White People, the film and the television show. What an era in time.

What a fantastic piece of art, dear white people was. The horror comedy, bad hair. And most recently on Grand Crew on NBC, give it up for Ashley, everybody. She joins us today. Oh, thank you. I love a good clap. Love a clap. Ashley, I would like to apologize to you for Rachel's

current situation. She was out all weekend getting it, doing it. And she doesn't have any voice left for your interview. That is not true. I am here. All it's time, fresh off a plane coming from Scottsdale. It was, you'll get this, Ashley, as you are a newlywed. I was celebrating a friend's bachelor's at party.

Yes. Yes. Yes. I understand. I was being a good friend. You were. And I love that about you, Rachel. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Ben, stop ragging on Rachel. Stop it. Thanks. I also want Donnie to know I just started recording. Okay. Thank you.

So let's talk about the podcast, trials and triumphs. Yeah. Specific podcasts about overcoming adversity, it seems like. What made you want to do a podcast about that, actually? You know what? I created the podcast. that I wanted. I really, I wanted, my manager gave me the idea to enter into the podcast space. I was not thinking about it at all. And he charged me with trying to figure out what type of podcast

I wanted to come up with. And, you know, I thought and prayed long and hard about it and trials to triumphs is what I came up with. And, you know, the truth is I am always in life looking for inspiration. I think inspiration is everywhere. And so I wanted a space where people, could always come to each and every Monday and get inspiration from the people that they already love and admire. Because the thing is, we so oftentimes focus on the triumphs. We have these highlight reels for people, right? That's why people are like, you know, think people were overnight successes. And it's like, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, wait a minute, let's run the, you know, rewind a little bit. To me, that's where the inspiration is. The inspiration isn't

in oftentimes when people are winning the awards. and all the accolades. It's how they kept going when it didn't even seem like it was anywhere near. And it wasn't in sight. So that's what I wanted to bring. That's what gives me inspiration. And I'm so grateful that people are loving it. I love this because I'm of the same thought. People look at you and they think they know who you are from TV or from social media. And they think that it was easy for you to get there because you do show them the highlight real. So I love that you're giving the full journey for you. What's your biggest trial that you had to overcome?

I think the biggest trial I've had to overcome. It's not so much like one thing. It's honestly, it's putting one foot in front of the other in a career. That's 95% rejection. That's really tough. I don't think people talk about it enough. Like I recently have just been talking a lot about how I'm just feeling exhausted, like exhausted.

I think a lot of it's ancestral trauma. I think a lot of it is like family trauma. And I had to think about, you know, my career and my journey. And I was like, you know, I've been doing this professionally for, oh, for half my life, basically. I've been acting professionally since I was 15, 14. So it, you know, it has been so long of, it has been so much time. spent on the grind, like just literally steady on the grind. And I think that that is a big trial. And the thing is that like, you know, triumphs pop out here and there, right? But I'm mostly in a trial.

But the triumph is genuinely the belief that I still have gratitude and that I'm okay and that everything is working on my behalf. But it's a trial being an actor and entertainer. That is just a trial. And honestly, it's one that I took on. And I knew that it was going to be this way. But when you're like an adult and you have adult things that you want to do and be and whatever, it's much different than when I was 14 when I'm almost 35, you know? Yeah. So I have a question. I know a lot of black actors, you know, and I talk to them a lot of about what a great time we're in, right? There's so many different shows, so many different movies, so many amazing black creatives. So many amazing black creatives and that it's a great time to be in the city, in the industry, the business, as they say,

Ashley. And some of my friends go, yeah, it's great. Some of them go, no, no, not really. We still deal with a ton of discrimination. We still deal with marginalization of the movies and the things that we want to create. And that rejection that you're talking about is still ever present. As far as you're concerned, haven't done this for a long time, is this a renaissance of black creative excellence in Hollywood right now? I'm pausing because I want to answer yes or no.

No. My answer is no. I wouldn't call it quite a rena. I wouldn't quite call it a renaissance. I would call it a space and place in the industry. present moment where we have more opportunity, but we still don't have nearly as much as we should. And I think there was a time, but we had a lot more. Oh.

I think we're getting confused. I do. I think the 90s, there were more black people on television, in my opinion, in the 90s. And what I mean by in television is in things that we, that are, that were created with us in mind, not black people in things that were not created with us in mind, but things that are about specifically about our stories. I think there was a lot of that. You know what I mean?

I think that we get confused just because there's a lot more television. There's a lot more shows. There's a lot like literally the other day I was with some friends and they were naming and I'm an avid TV watcher. I watch a ton of TV. And three friends named TV shows

I had literally never even heard of. And I was like, how is that happening? And then they'll be like, don't you watch that? Don't you watch Space 43 on the street? streaming network? I'm like, no, I never heard that shit. So I think, I think we're getting a little confused, right? Are there, are there, when we turn on the TV, do we see, uh, black faces? Yes, for sure. And, and I think we got out of what was a bit of a law, which I am considering

the law in like the early 2010s. Yeah. It was kind of like scarce. It was, that was when I first moved to L.A. Um, so it's better. But I don't think that it's like this special renaissance. And especially being in it, I don't feel like there's just so much opportunity. I don't know what to do with it. Like, I don't, I don't think that that's what it is. I think that we're working toward it. I think we're getting closer, but we're not anywhere near where we should be. I don't think so.

So what would you say that black creatives need to do to get there? You talked about putting one foot in front of the other. We see what Geeky Palmer just announced is kind of like a full. for us by us? Is that the direction that we need to head to get there? I think so. I do. I think that, one, I think we need to continue to prioritize working together, not being the black person on the majority white show, which again is hard because we want to work, right? And that's going to happen. It's important to provide representation in as many spaces as we can. But I think we can accomplish more, the more we do

together. That's community. Community can accomplish anything. So I, of course, I think that that's, I think that's the biggest hurdle we have to get over. And I think that part of it comes from, you know, and it's not just black actors or entertainers, but because there has been such scarcity, I think we're trying to hold on to like just what we have rather than like what Kiki's doing and breaking out and being like, you know what? Actually, no, I'm going to do my own thing. Now, that has its own set of challenges because you obviously have to have the money and the star power to do that.

I can't just be like, hey, who wants to give me $20 million to start my own platform? Maybe I can after I'm, you know, in the next Jordan Peel movie, but today I can't do that. All I can do is doing what I'm doing right now, which is talking to you all, continuing to put one foot in front of the other, continuing to do projects that I believe in, and I think advance our people in a positive way and show black women in a wonderful, beautiful light. That's all I can do at this point.

So I know the things are good over there at own podcasting. And let me tell you how I know. You got the good podcast and set up. I see you got a good pair of headphones. And I see you got a good mic. So you told them you wanted to start the podcast. You worked for you. with them. You guys got it all figured out. And then they sent a box to your house. And inside of

the box was all of this stuff, right? Oh my gosh. Yes. That's exactly what happened, Van. I know how it goes in this world. You do. I'll ask you another question about art. Because your podcast talks about people's trials and tribulations, right? Trials and Trials is the podcast produced by own podcast. Oprah. Oprah. I just Oprah, but Ava Duvrenet has shows over there. You guys watch Queen Sugar. watch, go support. So, now, a lot of people's trials come from criticism, things that they put out, and it might have not impacted an audience the way that they hoped that it would.

That's something that every creative goes to. Question for you. Had a conversation with a friend of mine who's a critic, and he was talking about the need for criticism of black art to be unvarnished. that we shouldn't be culturally conscious when we're talking about black art just because it's made by black people. There are certain movies that have come out in the past

that behind closed doors, I'm like, I didn't like it. In front of everybody else, I go, hey, guess what, it's great. And the reason why is because I feel compelled to appreciate and say that black art is always amazing because I know what it takes for the artist to get their work out. will it help or hurt the stuff that we make if we're more honest about whether or not we like it or not? There was a specific movie a couple of years ago that came out. I'm not going to name the movie where everyone was kind of afraid to talk about what they really thought about it until months and months after it came out.

Oh my gosh. I have to know what the movie is. Okay. Oh, that's good. the ha so I love this podcast. Okay. My honest answer is that

it would hurt a little bit. I'm keeping it a buck. I'm keeping it a buck. I am. It's real. It's so real. And it and it and it sucks. It sucks.

Honestly, it sucks that we cannot tell our truth you know, for the world to hear. because we know how damaging that could be to the artist, to the next artist. You know what I mean?

Like it's, it's frustrating. But I think that goes back to what you were asking before about like, this is not, if it were the Renaissance, then we could do that. But it's not. That's kind of my point.

It's not. We're still, we're still in a, in a, in a, in the industry as black folks. And I'm not saying people of color, specifically black people,

artists. writers, directors, podcast host, actors, whatever. We are still in a space where we can't just create work and be like, well, I did something. Like, you know, who cares what happens? Who cares what the reviews are? Who cares if anyone watches it? Who cares? So much depends on it.

So much depends on it. And so if we, out of our mouths, publicly trash, another black person's, art, then the powers that be are going to be like, they don't even like it. Why are we, why are we still making this? We, we allocated some dollars to where that. They don't even like it. Well, gosh darn it. We might as well push it over back into the, the, I don't know, the Game of Thrones four that we're trying to make, whatever it is, you know, it's not. But I also think there is a need for us to have spaces that are contained and intimate and honest to have these conversations.

I don't think that that, like, both need to exist. But unfortunately, I don't think that the latter can exist publicly. I don't. Ashley, you know what I call this, that no one wants to get on board with me about? What? S. N.R. Ashley. Secret nigger rooms.

We need secret nigger rooms where we can talk about stuff. and keep it all the way real, all the way culturally authentic. I'm not just talking about art. I'm talking about politics. I'm talking about all of this stuff. I'm not talking about fucking clubhouse. I'm talking about secret nigger rooms,

get-togethers in the back of the gathering spot or little different places where we sit around, we eat apps, we drink, and we just get it out of our system. So we don't have to do it in front of everybody where family business can be secret nigger rooms. And you can't come.

Okay. You can't come. Some of y'all can't come. But can I say if they remain in a secret room, how productive can that actually be? Very. It can be very productive. Ashley, what do you think? I think they can be very productive too, because the thing is you take what you learn

and what you receive in the S&R and then you apply it. Assuming they do. Assuming they do, though. Oh, they're for sure going to apply. It's for sure going to be applied. I think so for sure. Because I think you have to assume that people aren't going to be sensitive about it, aren't going to get,

you know what I mean? Like they're going to be down and open to receive. That's key words you said, right? You have to be open to receiving it. I can't say, I don't have enough faith in people for that. You don't have enough. I don't know your people.

Jesus. That's Rachel. People in general. People in general. I think it's a beautiful idea, but I think that not everybody would be as open. Not everybody can receive constructive criticism. Not everybody's welcome me to that.

Well, here's the thing, though, Rachel. I think that we already do it, right? We're not like, you have your SNRs. Van has his SNRs. I have my SNRs. We need to have. Oh, you don't have an SNR? He knows I'm right.

Van, you don't have an SNR? Oh, I have several different SNRs. I have SNRs that I've been foolish enough to bring people. from my SNRs on this podcast and the audience has hated me for it. I have several different SNRs, you know what I mean? Yeah, I'm here for the SNRs. And honestly, so I think Rachel,

I almost feel like it doesn't matter if the artist necessarily takes it, you know, takes the advice and applies it. I just think it's important that as a community, we remember that support doesn't just mean approval and affinity for something. Support also means being challenged.

It also means having different perspectives. It also means having a healthy debate. It also means, you know, opinion, you know, having a cacophony of opinions. Like that's also what support means. I think especially in Hollywood, we are tricked into believing that support is just saying yes.

Yes. I think it's great. Oh my God. Wonderful. But like it's just it's constant approval. Toxic positivity. And that does not help create better, more impactful art. It just doesn't. Everything can't be good. Like that's impossible. That doesn't make sense. What's the worst thing you are ever in, Ashley? Oh, how man. This is, this is this is a S&R right now. now. Ashley, he's got to tell you first that movie that he was talking about them. Yeah. Thank you, Rachel. So what's the movie? Before he puts you out there. What's the movie?

Squint and Slim. I loved Queen and Slim. Oh, oh. Oh, really? Really? Man. Really? Yeah, Squins and Slim. By the way, every creative, every creative involved in Queen and Slim is fantastic. Mm-hmm. Every single creative, let me, let me give flowers. Every single creative involved in Queen and Slim is top flight The movie was an abomination Okay

A lot of people felt that way we talked about On the slot supported Queen Slim I left Queen Slim mad The reality is Queen and Slim It was some kind of fable That ended up with getting black people splattered on a runway The part in Queen and Slim where the kid shoots the cop

Y'all that never happens So why should we have to go and live out an imaginary story where we get fucked over and by the way, I'll be else with you. I'm going to talk. I made a movie where a kid dies

150,000 times. You know what I mean? So look, but I'm saying this, there were movies and not just that, but other ones where everybody was like, God damn,

I hated that shit. But we love the people that make it. And we love the people that make the movie more than we hate the movie. and that is kind of the thing that happens. Now, you guys might disagree with me about Queensland, but I bet you.

If you start asking around, yeah, Rachel, you know what? If you start asking around, there's a lot of movies. People feel like, hey, can we have an open, honest conversation about it? But it's hard to because we don't want to criticize our own cultural stuff. Now, actually, this stuff you've been in, I've loved. I love dear white people. It's a great show.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I think Grand Cru is funny as hell. I know somebody who went out for it. I know somebody who went out for it didn't get it. Oh. And so they're pretty mad about that. That happens.

Yeah. But yeah. So that's the movie. So now I'm in trouble. Lena and everybody are going to be mad at me. So that's fine. I love them. I'll send them something nice.

She's a genius. She is. Yeah. She's a genius. Lena's a dear friend of mine. We came up in the industry together. Yeah. My first web series in

the early 2010s, we co-created together. And I think that even she knows that it was a movie that created a lot of split dialogue. And I think she knew that was going to be the place. Like Melina Masuka's amazing. And I will agree with you in that I think it was a movie that a lot of black people didn't know which side of the line they fell on. And especially that's what it was. It was like black people were like double dutching like, oh, I don't know which line,

which side of the line I want to land on. And a lot landed on the line where they loved it. and a lot landed on the line where they didn't love it and had a lot of issues with it. But I think ultimately that was a movie that at the time, a lot of people were so happy to see beautiful black people on screen. Very true. And shining and being well lit.

And looking amazing. Looking amazing. And acting well and being in their bodies fully as these dark skin black people. Right. Like there was something really empowering. beautiful about it. But I understand that a lot of people had issues with it. And I think that the creators know that too. And sometimes

art will do that. Sometimes you have to sit back and be like, I'm okay that my art did that. Dear white people is an example of that. There's people who love it and there's people who are like, why was this show ever created? It's the most ridiculous show. Don't know why it's named this.

Don't care for these characters. I feel like I've been a part of a lot of stuff that people are split on, that people are like, either they love it or they or they hate it. That's good art though. It is. And I think I used to be a little like in my head about it.

But now I'm like, I want to be a part of stuff that gets people talking. Yeah. What are you saying about this? I don't want you just to be like, that was great. So anyway. So let me pitch you something then. If you want to be a part of something that, something that I want to pitch you on.

I think you'd be perfect for. Oh my gosh. Yes. What, man? This is going to be some real. art that's going to get people talking. Rachel and I were scared. The name of the movie is

Outcast, the Candace Owens story. No, I... Starring Ashley Bhaitherson Jenkins. As who? As Candice O'Has. Not outcast. No. Outcast.

We're going to start we're going to start in her upbringing when she sued the NAAC or when she used the NWACP to sue for discrimination when she was a kid. We're going to keep going all the way through when she was a liberal and then when she has the epiphany moment that she becomes a conservative outcast the Candace Owen story. White lives matter. Rachel, come on now.

That's a VP Craig. Rachel, we're doing this. It's a higher. learning production. Donnie's on it too. Like, would you star in this movie? Van, what do you think? Literally, this is like, I know this is hypothetical, but no why, my palms are sweaty.

Like, I'm stressed out over here. Like, I can't even, I think what really started to stress me out is that people would go see that movie. Oh, we number one. Yeah, they were. What? We got, we got this. You know, wait, if we actually made the movie?

Hold on for a second. Wait. You know, it's coming off. If we made the movie now, if we made the movie, we're number one on Netflix. We're number one streaming. We're number one. It's a streaming movie for sure. It's not in theaters.

It's streaming. Yeah, we're not streaming. But we're number one on Netflix. We're number one on Amazon. We're number one on Hulu. We're number one if we make the movie. I can look, I can have Trayvon whip up a script. It will probably take them eight days.

We get the money. Lawrence Bender. Ash is Blaine Featherson. No, I'm not attached. Everybody. I'm not attached to this. We're about to pitch it. We about to pitch it.

No. No. People would be talking, Ashley. People would be talking. And they'd be split. I actually have a question. I know this is not what I'm supposed to be doing because you guys are the podcast host, but I actually need to know what you guys think.

How do we make sense of how she is the way that she is? I can't. I need somebody to tell me. I can't. Rachel. She's talking to you. No. She's talking to us.

And I can't either. And I think Ashley, we have to stop trying. Okay. Okay. Okay. I think that's maybe I needed to hear. There's some people you just can't make sense of

because I don't know if it's really rooted in anything that's truthful. I don't believe her. I don't believe her. I think the one way. to tell her story. He's going to be. There's an actor out there. It ain't me, though.

You're not the least big curious, Ashley. Curious. What? Doing the part? No, no, no, no. To watch the story. No, no, no. Oh, I would for a short,

see, that's the thing. This is a movie I would watch and then talk about it in my SNR. I would have to go to the SNR and we'd be talking about it. Like, what do we think? Yeah. What do we think?

But I would also probably be mad at the creators if they were black male creators Like you like I would be like Why did they make this woman story? I would be pissed That would be a whole other thing That probably actually I wouldn't talk about it in SNR I would talk about that publicly

I would be like this insane Because black men chose to make a story About Candace Owens and I'm pissed That's what I would do Oh tell us where and when We can find trials and triumphs Tell us who you've had on it Give us the spiel so that people can go some

support this podcast and really dig into who you are because you're such an amazing creative and an amazing actress. So tell everybody where they can find yourself. Thank you, my friend. You can find Trials to Triumphs, anywhere you listen to podcast. It's at Trials to Triumphs pod on Instagram and on Twitter. I'm at Ashley Blaine. And we have new episodes of Trials to Triumphs each and every Monday on own podcasts. Wow. So good. What the hell? Why are you so polished? You just started doing this. Like, I can't even get through a read. God damn.

No, he cannot. Like, you just did that off the top of your. The higher learning audience, Ashley Blaine for the Jenkins is her name. Trials and Triumphs is the podcast. Where else can they see you? What are you on right now? What are you plugging?

What are we telling you? Oh, yeah. So you might see me back on Grand Cruze season two. Nice. Might see me there. You can obviously watch Dear White People anytime as it's on Netflix. and yeah, I'm just doing all the things. You never know where you're going to find me,

but it'll be in something awesome. Nice. We hope to have you back. Yes. I'm going to put you to the test because I'm going to have that script written. And who are you with CAA? I am. Yeah, so I'm going to talk some people over there.

They already know to not receive this script. So don't worry about it. All right. Bye. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum Business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Rachel, it's time to get what I like to call.

an apology rank. An apology rank? Yeah, we have to get you to rate or may not rank, rate somebody's apology. Rachel, as you guys know here, Rachel is the expert on apologizing. Self-proclaimed. If your apology doesn't meet her standard,

you are trash and it's time to take you to the cancel bin. I don't know if you guys saw this, but Draymond Green fucking detonated Jordan Poole's jaw. Jesus Christ. Like, it was happening at Warriors practice. The two of them got into a minor altercation and all of a sudden Draymond came out of nowhere with

the Hakahasa nigger. Jordan Poole, great kid about to get paid, went down, Drayman collapsed on top of him and that was it. The video came out. Everybody was talking about it. The Warriors

seemingly disciplined Draymond by giving him a couple of days off. He's been away from the team for a while, Draymond finally talked and apologized to Jordan Poole. Let me hear. We're going to play the apology. It's Rachel time. If I'm being 100% honest, I thought it was bullshit. You know, no other video leaks from practice.

You know, we're working on our sets. They don't leak, you know. When we're, you know, when I'm coaching everyone up, that doesn't leak. You know, so I thought. I thought it was bullshit that the video leaves. And saying that, what did I think of myself in a moment? I watched a video 15 times, maybe more. Because when I watched a video, I'm looking at the video, I'm like, yo, this looks awful.

Like, this looks even worse than I thought it was. It's pathetic. Then I had to take a step back, too, and realize that this video was actually released this way to look that way. Oh, my God. For whoever released the video, I don't know who released the video. I am very thankful to the Warriors organization for taking it as serious as they have and launching the investigations that they have because, quite frankly, they don't have to. You know, they're not obligated to launch an investigation for something that I did wrong.

You know, they're not obligated to do that. So I appreciate them taking that as serious. It says they have and are doing. But for whoever leaked the video, it did the same thing to me that is intended to do to the world. Surely there's more. Surely, Donnie? None.

You know, it's an audioless video. It's a video that cussed to me walking right to him. And so the video serves the purpose that it was supposed to serve. And it had me in the same mistakes of like, wow, this is terrible. This is awful. And by the way, it is terrible

and it is awful. Like, just because of the way the video is cut up and it's not released with audio and all those things, what I did was wrong. You know, so the video. Enough, enough. This is an easy one for me. On a scale of one to 10.

10 being the best apology ever, one being Tristan Thompson shit. What is your apology rating for Draymonger? Yeah. This is going to give a one. A one. Are you kidding me? Whoa!

He never apologized. He never even said Jordan Poole's name. If you had not seen the video and you heard this, you would be like, well, what is he apologizing for? He never says, I'm sorry that I, that I, that I, struck my teammate. He says he was wrong after what five minutes of talking. But the point is, is I've never seen somebody make so much a statement that was intended. I thought I was going to hear an apology. It was so much about himself. He is more concerned and how people found out

about it than he is at what he did. That's what he's upset about. I think that he does. He did say something about Jordan Poole somewhere. Donnie, did you hear the part where he said Jordan Poole's mother had to see that? Jordan Poole's family had to see that or something like that. Did you see, I feel like there was another part with that in there. Yeah, I've only been able to read that. I haven't heard that actual audio, but I have read that he has said that he's apologized to Jordan and he apologized to the team. And he's not sure how Jordan is taking the apology, but it was put out there. So why wouldn't he say that? You know what I mean?

This right here, it seems to be him making excuses. Like, oh, the angle is bad. Why would somebody do that unless they wanted to harm me? No, Dremont, the way you apologize is you take responsibility for what you did. Because this is a person who's your teammate who has to play with you. See that he can fully started yet. This is the person. Your team has to play with you.

And like if you couple that with other things that you've heard about how he has been with teammates and stuff, it's a problem. I want to hear from Jordan at this point. I want to hear what Jordan has to say. I want to hear how Jordan has to feel because Jordan was on the receiving end of it. And it didn't just start with him walking over. It looked like he thought about it for a second.

Whatever happened, he thought about it, and then he walked over there to do what he wanted to do. So this gets the one. This was bad. This is bad. So quick story time. The player proof crew we've talked about. before.

One of our older friends that wasn't playerproof crew play proof of Jason. Okay. Ian's big brother

used to fight his boys all the time. Emmett, if you're listening to this, I love you. But there was a time when Emmett was fighting his boys

all the time. Emmett fought, Big Jason, Emmett fought, this guy, for others and whatever. There was only one time

that two members of the player of proof crew came to blows. I'm not going to name any names. but these two guys are two guys that are very dear to me. They're very important people to me.

And they had a fight. What they had a fight over was legendary. They had a fight over the front seat in a seabring. One guy pulled up to the house. He was in the car with somebody else. One of my friends was in the first seat. The other one walked out. The guy who was driving the car happened to be his.

cousin, he said, I sit in the front seat in my cousin car and tried to get the other guy up out the seat. That started a fight that ended up with somebody grabbing a fishing pole, throwing a football at somebody. It was a big deal. This is my point. It has taken a lot of work for these two beautiful gentlemen. In my opinion, to repair.

their relationship after it actually came to blows. It's taking a lot of work for that to happen. When you actually come to blows and somebody gets punched and we're to this age when we're 13, 14, we could get in a fight 3 o'clock by 6 o'clock. The only people that's mad is our parents. come over to the house we play mad and whatever the next day we cool but the older you get the more it actually come into blows is a big deal to me they'll never be the same again

and especially now that everyone saw it those two guys will never be the same again like you can't after that it'll never there'll never be a point where things are quite the same Now I'm not saying that my two friends aren't. I'm saying that we're 40 fucking two years old and everybody got kids and everybody's together and blah blah. We had to go through this. People have changed. Both of these guys are amazing people, amazing fathers, great dudes. I love them both.

They could be prouder of both of them. But for a long time, niggas weren't on the same page. And I understood. They came to blows. So this is a doozy for the Golden State War. Warriors, man. Yeah. When I hear that he took off a couple of days, I'm like,

surely y'all are going to do something else because they're not going to be okay. They're not. Rachel, is it about time we get to this interview? I guess I can't be here wrong from it anymore, can we? You guys, I'm challenging you to listen to this interview, guys.

A friend of mine, Jack McClinton is coming on the show. He's going to talk about why he asked me, do white lives not matter? He's going to talk about how he feels like technology is contributing to racism and dehumanism. He's going to talk about why he feels like we pay too much attention to Kanye. He's going to talk about why he feels like the United States is the only place that this race problem really exists like it does. Rachel, am I missing anything that Jack wants to talk about?

I think we should just let it speak for itself. You are and we should just let it speak for itself. Here it is, guys. We'll see another side of it. You guys, a friend of mine, the guy I've known for a long time. I met him first in the LA Athletic Club League where he was doing work in the league. I'm not going to lie.

Former basketball player, All-American, All-Conference. Hall of Fame. Hall of Fame at the University of Miami. Jersey retired. Jersey retired at the University of Miami. Talk your shit, brother. Get the stats, right?

That's what I'm saying. We'll make sure that we have it all down. I don't know. Talk your shit. A guy who wears many hats, clothing his designer, thought leader, has his own podcast. Somebody that everybody knows and everybody loves. Jack McClinton joins us today on Higher Learning. Now, the reason why Jack is on the show is because Kanye West, as you guys know, came out with a White Lives Matter T-shirt.

I have been publicly very critical with Kanye West in his White Lives Matter T-shirt as have a lot of black people. Jack and I had a back and forth on the Instagram that went viral. He said, don't white lives matter. Or I think what did you say? You said, so white lives don't matter. I think I said, do white lives not matter? Do white lives not matter? Right.

And then my response to Jack was a sort of lengthy one to where I explained why the shirt itself was problematic. And why the term itself, which is, in fact, classified by the ADL, as hate speech is is uh is itself problematic and a lot of people saw that and i think a lot of people that i know uh made determinations on jack or about jack based upon the fact that he put that there he is a friend of mine we disagree about that but i wanted to give him the opportunity to come in there and not just be like an instagram sort of thing and be like a human being and talk about this and we decided he wanted to talk.

So Jack is with us today on Higher Learning. I'll ask you, when you said, do white lives not matter, why did you feel the need to post that under me being critical of Kanye West wearing a shirt? I wasn't that I felt the need, you know, first of all, let's get to the point that, you know, Instagram was a social platform and it's meant to be social, right? So, you know, I just asked the question under your picture that, you know, you had a Kanye West and a white lives matter shirt with the caption that said, y'all. So I said, I saw it. And I mean, I didn't look at it as being Kanye West.

I didn't look at it from nothing, but I'm saying someone have a shirt on that says white lives matter. So I just said, do white lives not matter? And, you know, this kind of gets me to the whole point of this is that without technology, we wouldn't even have been in this situation. So I think a lot of times we're judging each other on black and white, but we might start trying to think about judging the technology that allows us to be able to be vocal on these platforms, that allows us to be opinionated on these platforms, and allows us to have judgment on these platforms. Because at the end of the day, we do live in the United States where you should be able to say what you want to say.

And like you said, a lot of people said, oh, I don't know Jack and they had me, they may have thought about me a certain way. but don't you think that's kind of weird off of a question from a picture, everything is out of context. Just like a lot of things that we see in the media, they don't have much context. We just going on opinionating. We start saying anything. We don't really know anything else, but what we see. So I didn't see your back and forth, but Van Post is the picture of Kanye where white lives mattered.

Do you have a problem with Kanye wearing that shirt? I have suspended judgment. I don't have a problem or I don't have a problem. It's not really about Kanye to me. That's the thing that I want people to understand is that it's not about Kanye. Because if it was about Kanye, if Kanye was such a big deal where people can't stand what he's doing, let's just stop giving it attention.

You know what I mean? So I can't have judgment on anything that I see on a social media platform that really has no context. It's a picture. we don't know anything except it's a picture of him wearing this shirt. And the first thing that we do as people is automatically say, oh, this man is crazy. How could he do that?

It's wild that he's like at the end of the day, Kanye is free to do what he wants to do. We don't have to give it that much attention. Okay, so let's start a couple different places there. Cool. So there are a couple of things that you definitely said. It's just a T-shirt, right? but a lot of things are kind of just what they are.

So a swastika is just a symbol. The Confederate battle flag is just a battle flag. The American flag is just a flag or a picture. Symbols have meanings. And there's an angel's logo on your hat. It's just an A with a halo around the top of it. But I look at that and I know that that means California Angels or the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

I know that they play in Anaheim. I know that they have Mike Trout on their team. I know that they have Otani on their team. I know that they used to be coached by Socha. I know that they used to be called the California Angels. And I know all of that stuff because I know what that means. So because I know what that means, the context of what you're saying to me, when you wear the shirt, you might not, you're not saying,

I hate the angels, but I know what that symbol on your hat means because I know the history and the intent behind it. So saying something is just something doesn't make any sense. Okay. Let me re- Let me finish. Because everything is just something. You are an All-American at the University of Miami. You wear you on your chest. You went there.

I understand that. So White Lives Matter is just letters put together. to make three different words that then got printed on the shirt. See, the thing is, Jack, I know what that means. Just like I just gave you the breakdown of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, right? I know what White Lives Matter means.

And it's a hate slogan. It's a slogan that was invented as a reactionary slogan to the slogan, Black Lives Matter. It was white people trying to, on purpose, snatch back the attention that black Americans were attempting to put on themselves in light of their station in America. The ADL, the Southern Poverty Law Center,

all of these places have categorized white lives matter as a hate slogan. It's not Van Lathen doing that. It's not a bunch of mad people on Instagram doing that. That's the people that's job it is to look out for that stuff. So when I looked at it, it might not have any context to you, but it certainly has some context to me. And that context doesn't get divorced because Kanye West put it on. That context doesn't get divorced because Jesus Christ puts the shirt on.

And if he put it on, he's trying to make that fashionable, like we're going to talk about it. And Instagram is just how I chose to have that discussion. Right. Yeah, I agree with everything you're saying. Maybe, you know, once again, let's go back to how. how this is even a thing. This thing about this phenomenon, how crazy that this is, right?

Let's think about this. I'm able to be in my house right now and speak to you. But at the same time, I'm in Rachel's house. You're in my house. That's a phenomenon that the human body cannot do. It cannot be in two places at one time. And that starts with technology.

All of the things that have been written about white lives, Matter, Black Lives Matter, all of these things is a dupe of the printing press. Let me finish talking, Van. I'll let you talk. I'm not going to. I'm not going to. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I'm looking at your face with his friend. Look, you ready to get into something. So what I'm saying, I just want to like really break this down. And I like, once again, I don't want to make this about black lives matter or white lives matter. I just would like to take this down to figure out how we got here.

How do we figure this thing out and how so we can stop talking about this? and I like to start with the extension of ourselves. We've been so far extended as humans, right? And I always like to break it down from the beginning. I always say to start with the printing press. Before the printing press, that was the first time that you could print something massly in a book and give it to a ton of people. That was the first time we were all on the same page, right?

You know, the printing press. And then we get to the net from the printing press came like the telegraph. The telegraph was an extension of our, ears. We hear something. You put it in Morse code. You figure it out. Then next came to telephone. That's the distinction of our ears and our mouth because we can now talk back to one another. And then we fast forward to the color television or the television. That's an intention of our eyes and our ears. But we couldn't engage back with the telephone. You could just have your own thoughts. Like, oh, man, that was a good player. And then you then you transform to like this Facebook

social media era where it's like, it's a distinction of our eyes, our ears, our mouth. We can engage in it, we can go back and forth. And that from this process from the beginning is it extended us as humans very far. We're so far away from who we truly are. So the fact that you and I are able to act in this space and talk in this space, we don't even know what the space we're in looks like. It has no color, the space that we're talking in. It has no color.

There is no black and white in the space that we're speaking of, right? So when I say just, when I say, oh, it's just a t-shirt, I think we're giving that t-shirt way too much power, way too much emotion when there's a lot more things happening in this world besides Kanye West wearing a white Lives Matter. I heard you say it doesn't matter if it was Kanye West, but also let's use a little bit of logic here, despite people can say Kanye is crazy, whatever, but Kanye is a black man wearing a white Lives Matter shirt. I could see if it was a white dude wearing it and, you know, somebody, that was that was not the case. I just don't see how something like that creates such an emotion in people, I had people telling me,

oh, man, you must hate being black because I asked a question on a social platform. That's the disconnect that I have. It's like, let's stop judging this black and white thing and start thinking about the technology that's making us further and further apart from who we are. We don't have no identification of who we are. You can get on the app right now and be whoever you want. I can make myself skinny. I can get myself muscles. I can get myself braids. I could be whatever I want to be.

So it's like I don't, I just don't see that same conversation being irrelevant today. Kanye's the same person in 2004 that said George Bush don't like black people. He's the same. He's not the same person. He's a different person. He's not, which is why it hits so hard. But Rachel, go ahead. I'm sorry.

What I was going to say is, I know you're talking about technology. I know you're talking about like what we can hear and we can see. We don't have to even do all of that. When Kaya West has been saying things out of his own mouth, did you see the Tucker Carlson interview? Yeah, I watched it. So there's nothing to question or nothing to assume or to say, you know, technology is saying this, so we hear this, so we see this, social media is doing this, when he himself is saying this out of his own mouth. There's nothing to question. And I think it's really problematic what you said about it's not a white man wearing a white lives matter shared. It's a black man. wearing a white lives matter shirt, that's almost more harmful. Because as a black man, as the person in 2004 who said George Bush doesn't care about black people, you understand even more what it means to be black in this country. You understand the consequences of wearing a white lives matter shirt

and how detrimental that is to the culture into us. So when you put that on, you get people the permission to speak those words. You empower those people. So I don't understand how you can separate the two. But I mean, even more so just because I know you can go back to the technology, we heard what Kanye said. We don't have to assume anything else. We know exactly how he feels and where he stands when it comes to being black and white lives matter. I get it. I totally agree. I'm not pushing back on on anything that you're saying. But I guess my whole thing with this is, why are we giving so much energy to Kanye Weston? You just said he's not the same person. He's losing in his mind. If we know if people say, no, what? Go ahead. I'm sorry. If we're saying that he's

lost his mind, he's just going crazy or whatever. Like, I just don't understand why we're giving it so much energy. And most people, when we're on social media, we're reacting off of emotion. We're reacting of what we've been seeing. You don't never see anything positive on social media because it don't get clicks. We don't really, we don't see, we see, we see stuff. But there's more negative stuff that we see in the social media. There's a lot of negative. stuff out here that it's like, you know what? They, okay, Diddy and it was, what is, Diddy and Kanye, the whole conversation comes out.

We're all talking about that. We're talking about Nickyman. It didn't come out. What did me? It was put it out. I'm saying it's, and it's on media and we're talking about it. Yeah. But what I'm saying is there's a lot of other things

that are happening in the world right now that we can be speaking about. Like we're 32 trillion dollars in debt. We're talking about Kanye. Like, let's, let's speak about things that actually I get it. It does matter. It's disheartening to see a black man wear a white lives matter shirt.

Yes, we know that. But we also know what Kanye does. This is not his first time at the rodeo doing something like this that's like questionable. Wait, what is this guy doing right now? Yeah. So let's take things in order here. Right.

As I call on them. Well, first of all, let's go back to technology. Okay. So if we were 5,000 years ago, six thousand years ago, Yeah. When you went out, you'd be looking dead into the sun and you either have to put your hand over your eyes to shield you from the sun or you have to get under something or whatever. You don't have to do that now because on your face right now, there are sunglasses.

And the sunglasses that you have on your face represent human technology. It represents the human ability to see that, hey, looking into the sun is uncomfortable. and it's easier to wear something on your face for a long time that will keep the sun out of your eyes, even a hat or whatever. It's technology, everything, your clothing, your watch, everything, the home that you live in, you can't divorce yourself from technology now. When you're talking about boats, the wheel, a fishing pole, anything that man built to make his job easier is technology, anything, anything that a human.

human being built to make their life easier is technology. The connectivity to one another in terms of the internet, terms of social media, we can debate whether or not that's a good or bad thing. I think there are a lot of people who have a lot of ideas on that. But what we can debate is whether or not you're responsible for the ideas that you put out into the world. You are. And you've always been.

You've been responsible for the ideas that you put out into the world if you could tell them to one person. You've been responsible for the ideas that you put out into the world. if you could tell one million people. People being influenced or having an opinion about what you say is a part of human communication that is never going to change. And there's nothing special about Kanye West that absolves him from the opportunity or the rights to be held accountable for the ideas that he puts out.

So I get that. Number two, when you responded to the Instagram, you didn't say why do we pay so much attention to Kanye? West because that's actually a good question. Yeah, I mean, it was just, bro, when I wrote that, I mean, it was 500 comments. I know, I get you. I get you. But listen.

But let's look at the difference in the two things. If we want to have a conversation right now and we want to litigate and debate as a culture whether or not we've, we spend too much energy on Kanye West. It's something that we've gone back and forth with on this very podcast. That's fine. But that's not what people were mad. People aren't mad because people aren't upset because. people are upset because Kanye West, who spent years and years and years,

let's take a quick career retrospective. Kanye West, how do you stop the Black Panthers? Ronald Reagan gave us an answer. You hear that? What Gil Scott was hearing, when our heroes and heroin got hooked on heroin, crack raised a murder rate in D.C. in Maryland, we invested in that. It's like we got Merrill lynched. Okay.

So we didn't choose to annoy it Kanye West as a, spokesman for what was happening in different parts of black community. Kanye West told us he cared about us. Like that's what happened. Let's be honest. Kanye West, when he started making music, been working in a slave ship,

talking about American consumerism, the entire college dropout all falls down. Jesus walks. Kanye West chose to endear himself to us and make us believe that he understood what was happening in our neighborhoods and who we were as a people. So when magically one day, Kanye West seemingly decides for whatever reason To do everything that he can

To poke fun at what a lot of people to consider Not a monolith. We're not a monolith When Kanye West chose to say, hey, everything else that I said in the past Not really a big deal now. Now what I care about is hanging out with Donald Trump Is wearing black hate slow. on t-shirts and kiki in and having a good time with the turker carlson's the world the people who make it a living to tell the rest of America just how fucked up y'all are that's what i want to do

people are heard about it should we be less hurt maybe but he's he's a grown man and he's making his own decisions and as far as talking about the debt or the russian nuclear crisis or the jackson water crisis or what's happening with climate change or uh what's happening to the mountain lions all over this country that are being treated like shit by people state after state. I'm with talking about it all. But that don't mean I'm going to let somebody say that I'm not going to talk about this nigger too. Because the reality is the interlopers that have come into our communities and come into our heart, then turn around and use their cultural power, the power that we gave them to turn around and turn on us.

Jack, I'm not fucking dealing with that. And I'm not going to spend all of my time talking about it, but I'm going to call it like I see it, bro. And so when you said, don't white lives matter, the answer is everybody's life is precious made by my creator, God. The only difference is one group of people get every single indication in this country that their lives matter. The other group, you can blow their fucking head off on camera

and not even lose your job. I'm not about to act like it's the same. Right, right. No, I don't, I'm not, I'm not, I don't want you to sit here and act like it's the same because we know it's not the same. But I want to continue to go back is that the media shows us what they want to show us, right? I mean, I've seen videos come up from like six years ago about a cop doing something to a black man or torturing them. It's like six or seven years ago. In this video, can I, when I finish?

Yeah, sure. What I'm saying is if we continue to see this stuff and what happens when we get that, we're going to share it to a friend, a friend is going to share it to another friend, and it's going to continue being shared, and this is the top of conversation. That's all we're talking about. And I'm not sitting here saying that it doesn't happen. It happens because we've seen it. I'm not saying that, but at the end of the day, I believe it's about how we respond to what we see.

And I believe it's became a conditioned response for us to respond. respond in a certain way, which I'm not faulting anyone for that. I'm not faulting people to be like, you know what? That's fucked up. It probably is. It is best up. It shouldn't happen. But how do we get past that?

How do we get past saying, okay, how do we get past this point where this is not about a black and white thing, but this is about a humanity thing? Let's make it about humanity. Let's disregard the color. Because if you slice me down the middle and I slice you or some white man, we're all the same inside. there's always been this there's no this what I'm saying

there's always been this barrier between black and white we're like the only country that talks about we talk about color in other country we don't really talk they don't really say I'm black or on white it's just I'm what I am but I just feel like why are we so black? That's like a not a fact

I'm not saying but we always you know so what so we're in what other country are saying yo like obviously we do it but like we're always pushing this black versus white agenda when we're just humans Let's talk about humanity. Oh, my God, Jack.

We can't talk about humanity? We can talk about humanity. But this particular situation is about White Lives Matter. Kanye West, a black man wearing the teacher, White Lives Matter. You got to talk about color and race. You want to have a whole different conversation about humanity. That's something different. But like this particular conversation, you can't separate race from it.

I'm not separating race from it. But what I'm saying is, how do we get past the black and white thing? Yes, he did what he did. Ask white people. Yeah. What do you ask what, I think it's, we have to ask ourselves that too

because I didn't listen. Jack, you ever heard of apartheid? Do you know what that is? A what? A partite. You ever heard that word? Explain that, please.

Okay. Wow. So apartheid is a, this is what I'm saying. Like I say explain that and you say, okay, wow. Like that's what we do. It's not what we do because all due respect.

Why does it have to be? Why does it have to be? Okay, wow. Why does it have to do that? Wow, because you, okay. first of all, I apologize. No, no, I'm just, I'm just asking the question. Let me tell you why there's a while, and I'm going to be all the way, I'm going to keep it all the way real.

Please. I get, I get sick of this. Right. I do. And let me tell you why I get sick of. Jack, you just said a second ago that America is the only country where we talk about color. Right. Then I ask you, I say, you ever heard about apartheid?

What apartheid is and was. was a system of government in South Africa that was legal and operating that separated black people from white people. It was a system that there ended up being a worldwide movement to dismantle because it was essentially legal racism. You could not be seen Trevor Noah,

who is the host of the Daily Show, talks very vividly about how he used to be walking with his mother and would see people that his mother could not be seen with his father they couldn't be seen showing any affection there were entire parts of South Africa that were dilapidated

basically shanties where the black people lived the white people controlled all the power all the wealth all the money and it was legal during the 80s when I was a kid there's a big movement to divest from South Africa to make specific countries divest from South Africa to make specific entities divest from South Africa you too wouldn't play in Sun City

the reason why you two wouldn't play in Sun City was because they didn't want to support a government where racism was legal right so the reason why I said wow is because just to be honest with you not even trying to dis you don't know what you're talking about. And so, and so, and so, like, because of that, it's incredibly frustrating to, and I, and I, and I, and I have these conversations all the time.

We need to be better as a, as a group, as a people, as individual citizens of this earth and this America to know exactly the framework of what it is that we're dealing with. Even the example, even the explanation I gave of apartheid is quaint compared to what, and by the way, I can point to different situations all over the globe that involve white supremacy. All right. So let me finish. So for you to say that, by the way, America has a race problem and it has a specific race problem. Yeah, I'm not saying that it doesn't. But what I'm telling you right now, is black people Black people There is a diaspora of black people

that are catching hell all over the world, Jack. It is here. Some would say that they do it best here. It's like baseball. They play it everywhere, but here in America, we're the best at it. Okay?

But I'm telling you right now that before we talk about and litigate what some of these different things mean, respectfully and with love and gentle care, we need to have an understanding of what we mean in the community of this country and also in the world community. And if you say something like America is the only place

where we talk about black versus white. Now I know I need to add more context of what I'm saying. Please do. We're talking about, okay, understood, understood. Because every time I say something, we go back to book culture. We go back to literate culture. We go about all this

Did you just say? You went back to say Literate culture We don't we don't live in a literate society You don't need to know how to read or anything to make it in this day We live in a literate But Jack Am I going to tell you how to come off a pin down

And get free And no no no I'm like I want you to listen I'm listening So what I'm telling you If I step on the court And it's you and is you and is I wasn't going to say Vick but not Vick But if if I was if I was step on the court

and is you and David Blue and Jay Williams and all the guys that you're with. Am I going to step on the court and tell y'all how to come off a pin down, get free, shoot a two, or how to run a back action, or how to do any of that stuff. If I don't know what's going on and then tell y'all, and if y'all tell y'all I don't know, then say, hey, you guys, it's basketball culture?

No, it's knowing the ins and outs of the game. and we're going to have a conversation on racial consciousness in America or racial consciousness in the globe or or racial disparities in America or worldwide. You have to do some reading what's with you guys and this book aversion. I don't understand. I'm not, you're not even, you didn't let me finish it. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going against books. I'm just saying we have to know where we are now. We don't live in a society where you need.

I could tell Siri to, I can tell, I don't need to know how to read. I could literally tell my phone what to write down for me. So everything you're saying, I understand what you're saying, but we're going back to old cultures that doesn't apply to now. That doesn't, the literate thing does not apply to now right now, what we're talking about. It does not apply. We're still having a conversation about black people and white people in 2022. Yes, we know racism is still here.

No one is saying that is, no one. is saying that racism is not here. But it's almost like there's a fire brewing. And every time something happens, you're just adding more fuel to the fire. The fire is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until when? Until what happens? How do we change this? That's my whole point in this whole conversation.

How do we change this? And I say we change it from thinking as a whole collective, not dividing. I'll give you a problem. I was talking to somebody the other day that went to a magnet school. and what's the guy that hired you at TMZ? Who's the, what's the guy's name? Harvey. Yeah.

So he went to a, I was talking to a guy. He said, yeah. He didn't hire me. Shout out to Mike Leonardo, but go ahead. Okay, shout out Mike Leonardo. But what I'm saying, one of the first time they taught in school was, the easiest way to divide people is race. You know, it's being, it's being taught early.

It starts, my nephews don't know about race. They don't know, like, it's black or white. They're going to find out. Yeah, exactly. You know what I'm saying. What I'm saying is they enjoy life. They go out. They have fun. They don't look at their white friend and say, oh, man, you're white. I'm black. They're just living life. And the thing is this stuff comes from like, okay, my grandfather, pipe taught my father this and it passes on to me and then it keeps going. It keeps going. But I think we need to get past this race thing, man. Like, I get it. It's there. It's black and white is there. I get it. Systematic. I get that we don't get the same opportunities as other people. Have we ever as black people? Have we ever as black people? people, I don't know. Have we got, have we got the smartest minds and did a think tank of the smartest minds in the world, the smartest minds and create a think tank, get funding and start a think tank. We don't, as black people, we don't really come together in our community. We don't. And, man, I could think you can attest of that. Just think about how much power that we have in

sports alone. Just say sports alone. I mean, as we took every black athlete on every team, and we said, yo, we're going to create this dope think tank and get some of the smartest minds in the world to try to get over this this issue of racism, right? And we say, look, we have to try to, Rachel. What do you mean? What do we? Can I finish talking? Can I finish talking?

When I say we, I'm just saying as a people, because we're the main one saying that we need to change, right? So you know what? This is what I think we should do. All right, look, let's say every, every athlete, yo, we're going on put up $500. You know, there's 450 guys in the NBA. I don't know how many players in MLB that are black. like on each team.

I don't know how many NFL, whatever. How about we put a fund together? How about we start our own banks? We're talking about all these things that we need to change, but we're not really being proactive in doing it. It's almost like we're sitting back and like, okay, waiting for someone else to change what we want to change. But at the end of the day, we don't come together as a community.

We don't. We're waiting for someone else to come in and maybe change that when we all put our best foot forward in trying to do it ourselves. Okay, so race, you got anything? Nothing. Okay, so I'm gonna say this and then I'm, we appreciate you coming on. So every single thing that black people have ever gotten in America is because of black people. What do you mean?

Every single thing that black people have ever gotten in America is because of black people. Meaning that whatever black people have gotten or gotten or accomplished in America is because of the ingenuity, the persistence, the soul, the genius of black people. So let me tell you some think tanks that have come together

and worked on black issues. Snick. Back in the day, some of the greatest minds come out of there. And what year was this? What year was this? It's in the 60s.

John Lewis. What about talking like right now? Because we're still having this conversation right now. So Project Zero, like D. Project Zero. First of all, let me say something. Everybody has a think tank. Alicia Garza has the Black Futures Lab.

DeRay has Campaign Zero. BLM for all its criticism was a movement of people. There are movements everywhere. There are movements that don't rely on intellectualism. Jason Adullum, Jason Wilson for the Cave of Adulam up in Detroit, has a movement where he brings young black males. Okay. What I'm saying is I'm talking about people of, when I'm talking about the smartest minds,

the most culturally, we need to bring all these people together. Yeah. The people that, because let me say something. Just think about this. If we were trying to get a point across or something, right? And all the most influential people in our community, the African-American community, came together and said, yo, this is a narrative we're going to push out. This is what it's going to be.

Have we ever tried that with the most powerful people in? The culture, whether it's basketball, whether it's music, whether it's. So, yeah, we do try it. There's a couple of, your point is well taken. So let me break down. Number of 40 million black people in America, not a monolith, different people have different things that they want. Right.

This is the most important thing. Right. And we got to go. The more, this is the most important thing to black people right now. We're going to figure out what we want to do economically. We're figuring out what we want to do socially and politically. There are black banks. There are several different black banks that people are pushing.

Some of these banks exist only on apps. Some of these banks are brick and mortar. We're pushing out black banks. We're pushing out controlling your dollar. We're pushing out how we're going to caucus for whatever political sort of campaigns and parties that we want. You have guys like Lee Merritt who are pushing our own black party, which is backed by Diddy and all of these.

You have so many different things that are going on, so many different conversations about how we should be moving in this country. You have black people who are abolitionists who believe in dismantling the carceral system, who believe in defunding police. You have other people who believe that there needs to be a more moderator poach. They're thinkers on all sides of this

doing the work all the time. And when I have questions, I call these people. I call Alicia Garza. I call Philip McHarris. I call people, I call my man Phil. from from from from from from from from from from from from philipa lawton i call tamika mallory these are the people who are doing this i call jason i call all of these people because these are the people

who are working on this every day and they're doing this work every day see the reason why i know that these people are doing this work every day and that i know that some of the smartest people are doing this now and have ever done it before is because i'm curious about it jack right it's because i do the work to go find out how to make my community better i don't deserve a sticker or or any sort of adulation for that. But what I'm saying is, that's your job. If you don't, if you don't have an understanding of what black people are doing in America to change their situation and how even the places that you're talking about,

I was just on a panel in D.C., black men built where there was a representative from the NBA there. And he talked about the initiatives that the players in the NBA have put together around social justice, around criminal justice reform, around all of these things. Well, I'm telling you, dog, you got to plug in. We're working. No, no, I'm not saying. But this is the last thing I'm going to say.

This is the last thing I'm going to say. This is the last thing I'm going to say is you know what the most important thing to do is? The most important thing you can do to black people. Most important thing you do for black people, in my opinion. Not do harm. not do harm. That is the most important thing. The black American experience has been defined by a purposeful and intentional harm.

And when you wake up in the morning and decide you're going to put on a shirt with a slogan that the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center have deemed a white supremacist hate slogan. you're doing harm. And whatever happens after that, happens. I'll give you the last word, Jack. Right. Listen, I'm not pushing against anything that you're saying. And I agree with everything you're saying. But at the end of the day, what I'm trying to get across is,

how do we as a people get past? As we've been doing it, we've been doing the same thing for a long time. And I'm not saying that people aren't working on these things and there's not things happening. but I want to be how do we bring together the people that actually can say one thing in the media world in the media space where people say oh wow they have came together and done something together as a whole these are the people that I look up to these are these are the guys that I see every day on TV these are the people that can say one thing that could change everything but black people are some black people are in a position of power right now and some don't speak up some do and like you said you do a great job of speaking up for color people which is a great. But I don't think as a whole, the people that actually can move the needle in media and culture, we don't really come together like that. And then we demand a respect. We want from other races. But sometimes we don't always respect ourselves when it comes to certain things. And at the end of the day, I think I said something on the thing like, you know, we kill each other.

We do things. And someone like, oh, well, white people kill you. Yeah, that's not the conversation. but I can't demand, try to demand a respect to try to get something from another race if we're sitting out like killing each other. That's like me going to my basketball coach saying, yo, coach, you know, I got the best jump shot. I mean, I'm nice, coach. Like, I'm nice. I'm knocking him down and practice. Like, you got to put me on this floor.

And when I get on this floor, I do everything that I said I was going to, I don't do it. I go on the court. I shoot a million bricks. I don't make no shots. And I'm like, yo, coach, put me in the game. I demand I should be in this game. At the end of the day, I think as black people, I don't even like to use the race thing,

but the only way that I can say this with logic is, we demand certain things, but we don't hold each other accountable for the things that we demand. We demand other races respecting us or whatever. White people are killing black people. Yes, we've seen that. But black people, we also kill some of the most influential people that are influential of culture.

Look at guys like Nissy Huffel. look at what he was, look at what he was preaching. Look at what he was really given us as a culture, like putting people on game, ownership, equity, everything. And he was gunned down by someone in black. Like we killed each other all the time, bro. And now it's almost a thing where it's like, another rapper just got shot.

And now it's like normal. Remember when Pock and Biggie got shot? I was like, yo, it's crazy. Now it's like another rapper gets shot. I mean, like, once a week now. It's almost, it seems it's not normal, but it is nobody talks. about it's weird. It's way

too normal. We got to go. Look, I'm going to see you some books because even what you're just talking about right now there's a systemic answer to that question, Jack. I'm not going to get into it right now because we got to move on with the show. But when I see you the books, Jack, you got to read the books. We can't be a, we can't, I'm going to see you.

I'm going to see you. Jack, Jack, Jack, no, no, no, no, we got to go. Go ahead. I'm going to see you. I'm going to take the books. I'm going to check the books out, baby. I'm just, I'm going to see you. I'm going to read the books. But if we can, can I say one more thing before we get off?

I'm going to read the books. God damn it, no. We got to go. Man, I'm going to read the books. Right. But all I'm saying is, let's remember, bro. We're in 2022. We're going to get the knowledge.

I'm going to get the knowledge from the books. I don't want to. We can't keep going back. We can't use yesterday's tools. No, the books were written recently. You got to. Give it out of your books. Give me out of your books.

All right, all right. All right. Jack. Love you, bro. Thanks for having me. Rachel, thanks for having me. Appreciate you. Thank you.

Good man with a good heart. Do some of the work. All right, Jack. Peace, brother. We are. All right. Cool. Peace.

Your thoughts. Rachel. I'm usually not at a loss for words. But it was hard. I think it's important. Let me just say this. I think it's important for people. As frustrating as that conversation was for me to be a part of you and for people,

and for people, our thought warriors are going to listen to it. I wasn't frustrated at all. Well, I was and I think people will be, but I think it's important to talk about it because there are a lot of people who talk like that. And so I was taken aback because I was, I did not know that that's where the conversation was going to go, but I think it's important because a lot of people think like that out there. And a lot of people don't do the research and they don't have a full understanding or they

want to not acknowledge history to understand why things are the way they are right now. And that's what we just witnessed in that whatever, 45-minute conversation. And I was, and I'm still recovering from the weekend. So that was, I wasn't sure if I was still okay for, like, imagining some things or did that really happen? But, Van, don't do that again. So this is what I'm going to do, because you guys, I'm like, Okay, so this is what I'm going to do. Seriously. Seriously. I'm not shooting a very high percentage and get my friends on the podcast. Okay? This to be honest with you. I have a lot of people that I've invited on the podcast. A lot of people that have come on the podcast, almost routinely everybody hates them. I talk to a ridiculous spectrum of people. Like you guys wouldn't even, I talk to so many different types of people. Like a ridiculous spectrum of people. Of all of these, I talk to super progressive.

abolitionists all down to the most problematic or the problematic niggas. I try to maintain the entire diaspora and talk to a bunch of different people. A bunch of different. And sometimes people want to come on and they want to talk to our audience. But I realize that I don't think our audience

wants to talk to these people because to be honest with you, I think we're increasingly living in a time where and I don't mean to say this and I really mean this. I don't mean to say this in a critical way. I don't. I think I've really come to understand this where people don't,

people, people know when they're going to be challenged or know when they're about to hear some bullshit. And I think more than anything, they want to be able to choose those times. Like if you're going to watch something where you know that it's always contentious, that there's some bad attitudes or some bad opinions, then, I think you're ready for it.

I don't think that our audience likes it. I don't think they like hearing what we've heard from some people who were educated in their discourse. We've heard for some people that, quite frankly, don't know what the fuck that they're talking about, you know? But I don't...

So there's the difference. Well, I mean... Like a Camille is different from Jack. Or Camille is different from the Hamilton lady. Or from the Hamilton lady. And so I think what people want what I see is if you're going to call your podcast a certain thing, then if you're going to have people that disagree with you or have a difference of opinion, at least have them like them being able to back it up with some thought,

understanding or I do get that. I think I'd be welcome to that, open to that. I get that. I think so. but I also think that the response to the Camille episode wasn't what I thought it was going to be. And I think Camille is as bright as anyone. I think Camille's way smarter than me. Not smarter than you.

Camille's very smart. He's smarter than 50%. But what I'd say is that like I understand what you're saying. And for our audience, I think it's very important. I think that you're right. But I also think that that's not kind of the way the world works. I think that people have bad ideas and people have ideas that aren't flushed out. And for me personally, I get a lot smarter from understanding how I'm not supposed to think

and interrogating within myself and with other people around me, what is the counter to a bad idea? Because I know a bad idea when I hear it, right? So even when we talk about earlier, we talk about Brian Kemp and what's going on in Georgia. So, like, it's important for me now to understand exactly what Brian Kemp's platform is and what he's done in Georgia that even makes this a situation. I know that voting for Brian Kemp is a bad idea, but what I don't know, because I know the little that I do know about him is that he's trying to disenfranchise him. And that's enough. But I do know, I do need to know why we're even having this conversation about what he's doing in contrast to a blunt. woman who's made her life as a freedom fighter.

That makes me think, oh, well, I need to talk to somebody who actually supports Brian Kemp and likes him who is black because there's more, I need context to that. And sometimes having conversations with somebody who even, okay, because I don't want to offend anyone or call anyone out, having conversations like we just had with Jack. I don't want to call any names or nothing. That to me reinforces the importance of being well read and well researched in society. To me, it's like, yo, we're having conversations about things when all the information is right there for you. And this is how it goes left.

This is how it can, this is how a well-meaning, good-hearted person can have what they, don't know weaponize into making them say things that don't pass the smell test. And so I think that's always useful. I think that's always good. When I did the red pill, we had all kinds of people on, but this is not the red pill. We have a different audience. And I think our audience wants something different. So what I'm saying is that in good faith, without any judgment on anyone, that is the last time you will see one of my partners come on the podcast.

and say some shit that I know y'all don't like. That is it. But I had to, Jack was getting his ass kick so bad. And I felt guilty because I responded to what he said in the way that I did. So I wanted to give him the opportunity to come on and expound upon what he was trying to say. You didn't help. Shut the hell up. Oh my gosh.

Shall we go? We're done. We're done. I want to say shout out to real quick. Donnie, give me the sound. Real quick. Real quick. Real quick. Real quick. We're quick. We're quick. I saw my guy P-22 who was caught chilling Los Feliz on somebody's doorstep. Next time you see a mountain lion chilling. Next time you see a mountain lion. Next time you see a mountain lion. Maybe you shouldn't be living where P-22 lives. Shout out P-22 to drink. Look out for a mountain lion. You see what I'm saying? P-22 was just chilling. Looked a little scared actually. Maybe you shouldn't be living where P-22 lives. Shout out P-22. 22, I'm going to start walking around with little bits of steak. And when I see you, I'm just going to throw the steak. Go get the steak, P22. I'm willing to get scratched up by P22 a little bit to show my love for Mountain Lion. How does that sound? Crazy.

That's exactly how it sounds. Have you done anything about your Mountain Lion initiative? So many people have reached out. We're about to start a nationwide. Yeah. Because, yeah, a nationwide movement. not just for Mount Lion, for displaced animals due to human encroachment into their environments. I'm about to start it.

I'm going to think I'm going to call it the Bozeman Foundation. The Bozeman Foundation for animals. I'm serious. So the answer is no, Donnie. He hasn't yet. Tell you the thing he kept off, but do not stop learning. I have Van Leithin, Jr. Thank you, Lizzie.

Bye, guys.