Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay - Sage Steele and Biracial Identity With Marc Lamont Hill

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay are joined by activist, scholar, and media personality Marc Lamont Hill to discuss the Green Party, Dr. Cornel West’s presidential candidacy, and Sage Steele’s comments about being biracial (20:04). Then, a reaction to the shooting of a California shop owner over a Pride flag (1:13:51), and a preview of the Republican Presidential Debate (1:19:53). Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay Guest: Marc Lamont Hill Producers: Donnie Beacham Jr. and Ashleigh Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yo, yo, yo, thought warriors. What is up? Our learning is on. It is I Van Lathen, Jr. And it's me, Rachel Lynn Lindsay. Rachel, I have a story to tell. Oh, I love story to tell. So this popped in my head, and I can't remember why.

It happened in 2002. Okay, we're taking it way back. I asked the fellas, and it was either 2001 or 2002, that this happened. Mm-hmm. All right. So we're leaving the club. Maybe it was 2000.

Maybe it was a little bit before. I can't remember. We're leaving the club. There's a party at the club. We're leaving the club. We're feeling good. And that sometimes happens in Baton Rouge. I'm sure this happens at Fuel City as well.

There was a fight. Two guys are getting ready to fight. And it doesn't look like it's going to be a good one. one of the dudes was gigantic. Okay. But not just gigantic in a like, this is a big dude way. Like a gigantic in this,

all right, man, we got to do this. We got to put our best foot forward and get busy. But, you know, it's going to be a huge dude, dreads, goals in his mouth,

the whole nine. Baton Rouge, it don't matter. You got to fight. You got to fight. And we're saying that. Like, we're drunk.

We're looking at the, we're looking at the smaller guy, regular guy. I didn't know this dude I didn't know the bigger dude This dude was not in the club with us Because the clubs that we go to You have to dress up to get into him

That was the thing back in the day It's like it's not a thing anymore Clubs we went to you had to have You couldn't wear no sneakers It was like Upscale dress code So this guy wasn't in there Whatever had happened

Either he knew him from somewhere else Or whatever So he getting ready to fight And we're talking our shit We're like hey bro Hey bro you got to handle yours man You gotta handle yours Because the big dude is going crazy

and the other guy looks a little bit like he looks scared. It's like, hey, bro, fuck that shit, bro. Give a fuck how big that nigga is, bro. You got to handle your shit, dog. Handle your shit, bro. We're doing that whole thing. All of a sudden, the big dude starts talking.

And, like, he has, like, a voice and it's coming out like a fucking dragon. And this is a big motherfucker. And he says, and he says some stuff that makes everybody change their mind. I'll never forget this. He goes, yeah, yeah, I'm a whoop you.

nigga, I'm a whoop you in front of all of these people. And after I'll whoop you right here, I'm a fuck you. And we were like, hmm. And he was like, yeah, nigga, I'm a whoop you. And then I'll fuck you. And his boys was laughing. He's like, them niggers, no, I don't give a fuck. I'll fuck a nigga or bitch.

Shit, I don't give a fuck. I'm a whoop you. I'm a fuck you. I'm a fuck you right here. You about to get fucked. I just remember like a hush came over the fucking crowd. Where's this going? Because we were all like, it might not be worth it.

You know, like, you know what I mean? Like that, that changes the dynamic a little bit. You know what I mean? It was before, if it's like a, see, here's the thing, and this is the thing. You don't know whether or not this is okay to laugh at, but you know, because it's like, it, it, I was thinking to myself, I remember I was thinking to myself, well, now, I didn't. but I didn't sign up for that outcome. So I'm thinking to myself, if you want to run, I think it's okay.

Because the consequences here seem pretty upsetting. And I don't know why this popped in my mind I was writing. I don't either. And it popped in my mind after all of these years that the moment was, it was really, illuminating from a lot of reasons. Number one, I've never been more scared of a human in my life that I wasn't that guy at that point. I was like, that's not, you know.

And then number two, I was like, oh, well, that might be the first time I've ever heard like a man say, hey, I like to have sex with guys. That was the way. He was going to sexually assault him. No, but think of what he said in front of his boys, his boys was laughing. He said they niggas laughing

because they know I'll fuck a nigga or a bitch. Okay, he did say that part. So it's kind of, this moment is wrong because it's rape, you know? Yes. But it's also progressive. Because. Van, I cannot jump on this with you.

I'm really struggling with this. Okay. So, It's wrong. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

It's wrong. I'm not saying it's not wrong. It's wrong. But there was, in a way, he's brave. No? That pails in comparison to the fact that he was not only going to physically assault this man, the threat of physical assault, but the threat of sexual assault. I know you know it's wrong. But I can't even see that he just admitted that he's also, you know, likes men and women.

I can't even see that part because I'm. I'm focused on the fact of what he's threatening to this guy. I can't even look at him like, oh, but you know what? It was progressive. I can't go there, man. I can't. I can't even. Where is this?

Why did this story come about today? Because I was writing and. What are you writing? I'm writing. I'm doing, we're doing a movie. We're like, I'm writing a movie right now. Why would this? Oh, because it was, the question was, has there ever been a situation in Baton Rouge where

somebody just came out and talked about their sexuality like a guy. Like, and they just said, hey, I'm gay. And that was something we were writing the scene. And I was like, no. And then I was like, actually, kind of. Not necessarily gay, but like there was this one time this guy got super bad. And he was like, and I just thought about the fact that I had never, I hadn't thought about that as many stories from back home as I've told.

I didn't tell that story. And this is because I blocked it. Donnie, jump in real quick. Donnie's back. Donnie, do you see what I'm saying? Is this moment not the most problematically progressive moment that you've seen? Do you understand what my mind is working? I see exactly where you're coming from.

Because like when I think of the word progressive or progression, you think of new moving forward. That doesn't take out the fact that what he said and how he said it was wrong. It's like he's wrong in a progressive way. It's a new way to be a violent. violent, a sexually violent person in a brand new way. So I get it. Yeah.

Man, Donnie. It's wrong. It's definitely wrong. I know you know it's wrong. You know what I would appreciate it a little bit of, not that I would change what I said, but a little bit of context before because you just go into the story. And it's like, oh, there was this question that made me think of this that I had thought about this story.

You know, just it would, maybe it would have. off in the blow. I could still like feel the moment, man. I just remember when he said that because he obviously had been drinking. You know, you got that Hennessy sweat smell. He obviously had been drinking. He's going back and forth. This nigga

was big. I'd say probably like probably like 6'4, probably 260. You know what I'm saying? Just a huge. And I didn't know, didn't know where he come from. Like, yeah, nigga, talk that shit to me. Yeah, I'm a whoop you. Then I'm a Fuck you, nigga. I fuck a nigga or bitch.

I just remember when he hit bitch. We heard it the first time. He hit bitch like with heart. It was like, I'll fuck a nigga or a bitch. And now the third. And I was like, and I remember at that moment it was like, you know, nah, if you want to run, we support it, bro, because you're going to get worked. Did he run?

I don't know what happened. You ran. I might have. I don't know. I think maybe. I think maybe we did bounce because maybe we was like, okay, well, I don't want to see somebody again. I don't want to stay for this. Yeah.

So, hey, hey, y'all think Taco Bell open? Hey, good luck, dog. We out. Having said that, how was your weekend? I hope that young man was okay. 20 years like, I was okay. Maybe they got married. Who knows?

What could have happened? What did you ask me? How was my weekend? Yeah. Super lazy. didn't do too much. Me and Brian. Yeah.

You know, the weather, I'm in L.A. You're not. So you, I don't know if you, you weren't here at all for the weather. I flew out Sunday morning. Okay. Good thing you flew out. You flew out just in time. Yeah, like the weather didn't really allow us to do much this weekend.

So, you know, we just kind of hunkered down and chill, did stuff around the house. Did it get really bad? I was talking to Galica. I guess it didn't get that bad. It's certain areas, right? Like we were fortunate. We got a lot of rain, but not flooding. I mean, walking out in the neighborhood today, I see some trees and, like, limbs and stuff have fallen.

But we were really fortunate. I did feel the earthquake, though. I did feel the earthquake. Did you like it? And that was, no, I mean, it's weird. It's the, the whole earthquake thing is just weird to me. the chandelier started shaking. I was like, am I moving?

Am I tripping? Or is this happening? Then copper wanted to fight. Like copper starts barking. Like he wanted to fight the ground. And I was like, oh, okay, there's an earthquake. He feels it. Yeah.

So it was a weird day yesterday. Yeah. Earthquake and hurricane situation come back to back. Some people were, you know, the whole hurricane thing and the whole thing around it mildly triggering for me even still. Hurricane. Yeah. It's like, because, you know,

hurricanes come and it's like, you think it's going to be a hurricane and then there's no hurricane. And then we thought that that one hurricane was going to be a hurricane like any other hurricane because I've been through so many hurricanes

and then it wasn't. And it it out, it was like, you ask a leek, I was, I, I had to fly out.

We couldn't bring the dog to the whole knob. I was hitting every fucking 30, 30 minutes. How are things? How are things? How are things? Every fucking minute. How are things? I knew it wasn't going to be shit. But just hearing people talk that much about a hurricane is just I thought I moved away

from it. Like it's just like, you know? And it wasn't about, it was like I moved out here. I moved to California. She'd say like right after it. happened. Like it happened. Yeah, like right after it happened.

Like it, I had a little bit of bread. It happened. I was there maybe, I don't know, three or four more months and then boom, I left. You know, so it's like, I already out here. Nah. No, I was, I was there for Katrina. Katrina. We got a big show today.

We got Mark Lamont Hill on the show. Okay. I should have told them the story. I'm glad you didn't. I don't, I feel like. We had enough to talk about, I get you. I get you. And Donnie solidified it.

I get you. But we got enough to talk to Mark about. We don't need to bring him into that conversation. We talked about Sage Steele, which we're going to throw to at the beginning of this break, give Rachel a chance to cook on Sage. I know she loves her. We talked about Sage Still. We talked about the Green Party. We talked about a lot of different things with one of the smartest men.

It marks smart. Yeah. Smart and funny. Explains things in a way that's like it doesn't have to be up here. It's on a level where everybody can understand it. It's engaging. Yeah, he's great. I remember one time I heard him talk about vulgar Marxism.

And I was like, God damn. Snicker knows all the different Marxisms. I wouldn't look it up. Big show. On the other side of the break, Let's talk a little bit about Sage Steele. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals

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All right, Rach. Sage Steel is on a biracial barrage. Bage rage in the fullest effect. I'll talk to Mark, who she got in a tiff with on Twitter about in a second, but she's left ESPN. She's gone. It's over. If you guys aren't familiar with Sage Shield, she is a black lady, biracial lady. should I say on ESPN who has come under fire sometimes for her conservative viewpoints. Not necessarily her conservative viewpoints, but more so the way she expresses them. She talked about Barack Obama one time.

She's been very anti-vaccine. She sued ESPN about all kinds of stuff. People don't like some of the stage's stances. They feel like some of the stuff that she says is anti-black. She's left ESPN. She's going to exercise her first amendment rights more freely. she will be on Fox. That will happen.

She will on to Megan Kelly's show, said all kinds of stuff and stuff, different stuff. She claims that people say that she's a sellout because she's biracial and not because of any of the things she says. We talked to Mark a little bit about this

a little bit a little while ago. But Rachel, were your thoughts on Sage Still? I know that you have some history with her. Yeah, I mean, I have explained my history with Sage Still before on this podcast, and I talk a little bit about it in the interview with Mark, I, Sage just is so disappointing to me.

Like, she's such a hypocrite and she's so full of contradictions. And she tries to disguise it all by saying she's just exercising her First Amendment rights. But like, if you look at when Sage still has spoken out before, when she talked about Collin-Capturna, she said that he has the right to do what he wants to do. and there are repercussions for that, right? He's going to do what's best for him and he can express his opinion for his brand in his career, but there are repercussions to that.

But now she can't understand why there were repercussions for her with ESPN or even the way that people reacted to the things that she said. Even with Jamel Hill, she said that Jamel Hill, you know, it's unfortunate what happened to her, but she said something like, you have to try to abide by the rules. well, that's exactly

Jamel Hill spoke out about something. She spoke out about something. Jamel had to abide by the rules, but somehow the rules don't apply to Sage Still. I just, she's just, she just goes so hard to me, to other herself from black people. She wants to say that, you know,

black people attack her and they call her a sellout, but a lot of the stuff that she stands for are the certain things that she says are very anti-black. Last thing before we get to Mark, because you guys in the conversation that we're going to have with Mark, it's really going to take us through the rest of the podcast. We talked Cornell West. We talked the Green Party, all the things that we were going to discuss on the podcast today.

We got literally a podcast interview with Mark and it was good. But I want to ask you one more thing before we get to them. The stuff that we discussed in terms of race and racial identity, as it relates to Sage Steele or anybody else, we jump into it in an interview. there's complexity to it. And that complexity has to do sometimes with one of the most fundamental things about our experiences as human beings, which is how we want to show up and be seen in the world.

It's not something that's necessarily easy to discover. I mean, a lot of people spend in their whole lives trying to discover how they want to be seen and how they want to show up. So it's something that we do approach mostly, mostly with some degree of grace. What do you feel like is the thing that happens to where we should and we are okay to turn that grace switch off? Right. Like, because there is a point where it's anti-black. There is a point to where it's. it seems like you're using the word black as a pejorative.

And we're going to get into all of this again. You've got to hear some of this stuff again, guys. But I just want to make sure I want to get Rachel on her own here. What do you think is the point to where we're okay to where we're like, you know what? Now there needs to be some accountability for what you're doing and how you're showing up and all of that. What do you feel like that point is if that's even a ping ponging around in your mind right now?

Well, I mean, I think that Sage is an example of it. because time after time, she's used her huge platform to separate herself from blackness and reinforce ideas that are also anti-black. So I think Sage is where that grace disappears. I dislike to me that it seems like you'd rather separate, like, other yourself, rather than try to understand or connect to the black community. I have an issue with anybody who does that. I do think that there is grace there because you are navigating the world

with parents that don't, you know, parents of two different races, you know, you're being told this, maybe you grew up in this certain situation. I do understand that there's grace for that. I can't imagine. I don't know what it's like to navigate the world. biracial. I don't. But I guess my grace falls off a bit when you become an adult, and I feel like there should be a desire and curiosity to understand both sides. So like, you'll hear in this conversation where we talk about both. I am not a person who believes, I believe you could say I'm

this and this. But what I don't like is when you say, don't call me that. But you have no issues being affiliated with the other side of it. That's my thing. And then I have an issue when you pretend that you're down and you're not. That is fair. And that takes us to our interview with Mark Lamont Hill. We're going to talk about a whole podcast worth of stuff here. We're going to talk about Sage Steele.

We're going to talk about how biracial people show up. Sometimes maybe weaponize. We'll talk about it. We're going to get into it. Hold on to your hats. We're going to talk about Trump, the Green Party, culture of altruism, all kinds of stuff on the other side of this break

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All right, we have a very special guest on higher learning right now. It's just, I'll just be honest with you. I'll be real with you. And he probably wouldn't say this about himself. Just one of the smartest motherfuckers on the face of the planet, man. literally one of the few people that you can watch them and actually learn a ton of shit author activist professor of media studies and urban education at temple university uh hosts the bt news the grillo aljazeera formerly at cn i first saw him on fox news that's actually true uh a member

of kappa alpha side fraternity incorporated so them show does work overtime also the author of a new book Them versus Me My War Against Biracial People in America Dr. Mark Lamont Hill joins us today on our learning Mark, how you doing? I'm good, bro. Can we talk about the biratious forbidden, bad? Like, just for a second.

The frustration I have, man. And look, it ain't got nothing to do about it. Look, shout out to anybody out there who's That's your business. They ain't got to do with you, really. No one controls how to get here. But the fake angst from people like Sage Steele about how they are being dragged and criticized and bullied because of their curls is like so ridiculous. And it allows us to ignore the actual issues that people might have. She went on Megan Kelly's show and talked about, you know, finally having the space to be courageous. and talk about how she's been called a sell-out her whole life for being biracial. And I was mind of my own business.

I reminded of retweeted it or something because I thought it was funny. That and her talking about getting trashed by Barbara Walters backstage on The View. And I'm like, she's 85. Like, this shouldn't happen no matter what, right? I can't even be outraged. But she then tagged me. Me and I think Professor Roxanne Gay, you know, saying that we don't know her experience, how dare we doubt her.

And so I've been, I spent the last day or two on the internet. And my mentions are still in shambles. There's a whole lot of biracial sympathizers out there. And again, I'm not counting about racial people. I'm counting the people who are making this out being biracial. It's just the way you phrase it. You're just effortlessly funny. I know you're not.

I know you're not doing that. But you're right. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, we got to name that. First of all, we want to say something right now. this has to do with Sage Steele. This is not a black biracial thing. At all. At all.

At all. We understand that there's a thing, but the way Sage weaponized it was inappropriate. The statement, biracial sympathizing, that's hilarious. So you went through with Sage Still, and Sage Still, essentially used the fact that she's biracial sympathizing. racial. She weaponized that to say that that's the reason why people might have an issue with you, and you took issue with that. Yeah, and why people might call you a sellout because it, it makes sense to people who don't think, right? If you were to read the statement she's made,

her history, you know, talking about black people, black, this, black that, her refusal to identify as black. She's saying, I don't identify as black, right? I'm biriracial. And she said, I don't know why Obama would identify as black. His black dad would nowhere be around. He's playing on all the tropes. that's why people call you a sellout. It's life choices. You know, our history is filled with biracial heroes. Black people don't make distinctions.

Like, I don't walk around thinking, oh, Obama's the first biracial president. You know what I mean? You know, even Drake. You know, I identify as black. He does shit I find irritating at times. But I don't attribute it to like his white guy. He's a black dude.

You know what I'm saying? Who does light skin things, right? But not biracial things. You know what I'm saying? I don't make a distinction. Black people don't make a distinction. We got so many people in our family who've been complicated, whose biological ancestry is complicated.

We don't, race is about how the world reads you and how you navigate the world. And blackness is the thing. You're not biracial to the cops. You're black to the cops. And so for her to reduce that and go out in front of white people, right, to go on these majority white platforms and conservative platforms and construct black people as somehow the ones who are, are holding people hostage to their color,

or that black people are somehow denying complex racial makeups. And we've always embraced it. White people that made the one drop rules. White people that don't like biracialities. White people that have historically said, no, if you're too much of this or not enough of that, you don't count. Black people have never done it.

We've embraced the whole tent. And we continue to. We love, there's nothing about Sage Steele that I dislike in terms of her racial makeup. It's her politics. It's the anti-black politics. That's all. Mm.

You know, Sage, I have my own experience with Sage that I detailed before on this podcast. And it is the anti-blackness. Like she ran up to me and was thrilled that I chose somebody that wasn't black on The Bachelor. And she, in a group of people was just real loud about it. It was embarrassing to me. And she's somebody I actually looked up to because I'm a big, I love sports. And so I would see this black woman doing her thing in sports.

But what Sage feels, and I'm not going to mention somebody else, but there are other people who are biracial who don't like to necessarily identify as black. She's talking about Tasha from The Bachelor. So, I'd like to go home now. I like to go home. I hate that. My co-host doesn't have my back anyways,

who don't, who have an. issue with being identified as just black. Even though they may be black presenting, they have this issue. Do you feel with a not all biracial people feel this way, you name, you name several that that don't. Do you feel that that is a form of self-hatred? Is it a, you know, I think that becomes complicated. I think in practice, yes. Yes. Yes. In practice, I think most people who deny being black, who are biracial, are doing so because they've been fed a steady diet of anti-blackness and white supremacy, as we all have, and think that identifying as black is somehow problematic, dangerous, that it diminishes who they are. And so they would have to hold on to at least half of something else so that they don't have to be all of this thing that makes you a social pariah. That's in practice.

Now, in the abstract, in theory, I could imagine someone who says, I don't want to be hostage to American racial logics. I don't want to be hostage to a history that says, if you're one drop of this, then you're all black. And it doesn't matter that the rest of your family was white or vice versa or what have you. I don't, I could understand somebody wanting to do that. I can understand somebody, particularly people like, what do you sage one more time, not to beat up on her at all. I have no issue with Sage Steel as a person. But if you say, for example, I was raised by, you know, let me take stage still off the table. I don't want to get into her biography.

If a person says I am raised by a white mom, I was raised around white people, and I identify with their stuff, their culture, their identity. I grew up in a place where there weren't in many black people. Whiteness is just as significant to me as my blackness, and they're framing it as a personal choice. I could understand somebody wanting to do that in the abstract. The problem with that, of course, is that that's not what race means. And that's not how race means.

Race comes to mean something, not based on our individual choices, but how the world responds to our bodies and our language and our skin color and our hair, all underbodies in some ways. And so you've got to accept that. Like, even if you might feel really white inside or half and half inside or whatever the thing is, to the world you are black. And by definition, you are black. And to ignore that is only at your own peril because you go still navigate the world. And they don't care how you feel inside.

So I want to name something and then I want to ask a question to everybody here. One, I want to name the fact that there's nobody biracial that's talking about this on this podcast right now. Because there are a lot of people listening going, hey, these are three non-biracial people that are talking about an experience and talking about something. we're not there and our perspective and some of the things that we might have been through aren't being talked about. I want to say that and then I want to ask something else, piggybacking on what Mark just said. We,

particularly me, Rachel, you, we, the we that's here, I do feel like we're approaching this from a traditional worldview. And I want to see if you guys agree. Where I'm from,

not only are the kids black, the woman that fuck the nigger to make the kids, she might as well be black too now. I'll just be honest with you. Like, where I'm from, you,

you and Piggly Wiggly with two little beige motherfuckers, you get in line with, you gotta come to a fresh fire with us. They're not fucking with you. That's, I mean,

that's just the way that they, I mean, they're not going to fuck with you, all right? Um, I will say this, though, I do feel like in today,

in today's world, in today's climate, we're approaching issues with an increased complexity that allows space for maybe more and different conversations than what we used to have. We're doing that with sexuality. We're doing that with gender. We're doing that politically. Isn't it fair to do that with racial identity, ethnicity, and things of that nature as well. Don't you think there's some daylight to maybe explore whether or not some of the commonly held definitions from the past actually serve people

in the way that they want to live their lives? Yeah, I think that's an important. So I'm going to the first part first. I think that as a cultural reality, yes, we often embrace those women, those white women who have babies with black men and walk around.

They burn us all the time when we do that. Oh, no, no doubt. Yeah. And that's our go, go with it. Like, yes, we often do it again at our own peril. You know, you think that black girl to be walking through the, I mean, excuse me, you think that white girl that be walking through the supermarket or, like you said, that the pigly-wiggly

with scrubs on, and she got on some doorka earring. She got that short hair cut. She doesn't name the baby Jaylen. She did all the things. that you do when you're a white girl that's a couple black people, right? All that shit happens. I'm with you.

But they always have the escape hatch. They do. They can always opt out of whiteness. They can get them kids up. They can wait from them to get grown. They can just go another direction. When the police come, that's when, you know, they get less black.

You know, when it's time they're not snitch oftentimes. They get less black. When it's time to confront certain realities, they go, well, you know, I am white. And in fairness, a whole bunch of Negroes do the same thing if they had the escape hatch. We just ain't got it. You can't opt out of blackness in the same way.

So I'm always skeptical. We're big tent people and I'm always open to embrace allies and people who love us and who we love. But there's still something about blackness that can't be, you can't pledge grad chapter. You know what I'm saying? Like, either you did it or you didn't. And you can't as a white person come on later

into the scene and do it. As far as the new constructs, yeah, I mean, I think we always have to think about the present reality and say, are these old systems, these old names, these old logics, these old approaches still relevant and effective? Can we do some new ones? I think, though, when it comes to blackness, the answer is still not. Right? It's just not. Like, certain things, sure. But there's certain realities about our world. And one of them is that we live in a white supremacist world. We have lived in a white supremacist world. This world is organized around logics of white supremacy. And as long as that is the case, blackness will be seen not as the opposite side of whiteness, right? But as an alternative to a thing called whiteness that is considered normal, natural, logical. White people don't have a race we do. That's the logic.

And so you can't be both sides of that. You either black or you're not. And it doesn't mean you deny your white family. You can have white family, love white family, engage, embrace white family. But again, our world is not organized around those lodges. It just doesn't work that way. Yeah. I would agree.

And to your point, Van, what you were saying, I wouldn't say, I would say that our conversation is more so centered around biracial people who do not want to identify as black, right? You're completely shy away from their blackness. biracial people who say I am black and I'm white and and and and embrace both both of those things because I have but you're not white but you're not white I guess that's a bit of you're black and you have right family you're black and you have a right mom you're white so in your you really don't believe as a biracial versus you can say I'm both No, you can't say you both.

Imagine saying you're gay and you're straight because you have sex with both people. Right? You'd be like, no. Right? At some point, one is a negation of the other. Well, you would say you were by. That's a different thing.

Right, which is not straight. I, e, and straight becomes the norm, right? So let's follow this logically out. Similarly, a biracial person is not the norm, right? In the white supremac society, that is what? White. So you can't be biracial. and white anymore you can be bisexual and straight.

Because in both cases, you are doing something that by violation, by definition, rather, compromises the other because they're both framed around purity. Now, again, these are problematic ideas. Rach, Rach, fight back. This nigga body in you right now. I'm not trying to fight. We're not to bait it. Don't let this nigga down here and pipe you up to think we badly.

We just talk. I don't worry. I'm not. I'm not. But I do, I do. I mean, again, I'm not. biracial, I don't understand necessarily what that is to go through. I don't know what it is to navigate through life to have, you know, a white mother, but then you look in the mirror and you

see yourself as, as black. I have no idea what that is. But I guess I do understand the argument of I'm black. I also, you know, I'm white as well, but I identify as black. Like, I guess I just don't, I don't have an issue with people recognizing. Can I ask you some question? Seriously, why is this so hilarious to me? It's just, it's, it's, it's hilarious. The notion that Stave still would look in the mirror and be like, you know, I'm white. Like, I don't think she does. I know, but no, I'm just being for real.

Like, I'm toxic. Mark. Mark. Mark. I think she looks in the mirror and says she's biracial and she does that to other herself from black people. That's what I do believe she does. Let me, let me tell you the first, the first go around, I want to ask Mark, I, thank you for Mark for being so gracious with time.

I want to ask you one more thing moving off this. But I want to say the first time I ever heard this, my first spin was this was Tiger Woods, right? My first spin with this was 97 Tiger Woods, destroys it at the Masters. We all buy golf clubs. We go out to LSU. We're doing our whole thing.

And then my daddy goes, you know, that boy said he ain't black. And it's like, what? That boy said he a cock o'blazion or something like that. I was like, oh, my God. And you know what we collected? did to Tiger, I fuck out of here.

Right. Like, I mean, collectively, we didn't even, like collectively, we didn't, we didn't think piece it. We didn't do none of that.

We laughed and went, when is the next golf tournament, nigga? Like, go out there and make us proud. I mean, that's essentially what we did. Like, you know what I mean?

Also, there was no Twitter for us to dive into it. I think now, though, with the place that we are, I do think that we want a little bit more clarity on who's in this fight with us. And I think that's maybe where some of this comes from because when you do other yourself,

I want to ask you about that, Mark, and then I want to move on to the Green Party, Cornell West stuff. But when you do think about that, I feel like it's somebody that's saying, hey, that whole thing that you guys are doing, this whole normalized, legalize, blackness thing, this whole our lives matter, our point of view matters.

I just want to let you know I'm not a part of that when you deny your blackness or you minimize it. Do you emotionalize it like that? Do you think that that's why people have such a visceral reaction when Sage Steele or whomever else comes out and puts their blackness on the back burner? I think in general, I think we don't, care that much, right? Like, this is like a solution in search of a problem. Like, like, nobody is

running around trying to figure out how to navigate biracial people who don't want to admit that or acknowledge their blackness, right? Or who don't want to, because I don't want to say Sage Steel doesn't acknowledge her blackness. Sage Steel simply doesn't identify as black. She's saying I'm black and I'm white, right? Which to me, again, is like saying, I'm straight and I'm bi. Right? Like, you just, you can't be, you know, I'm straight and I'm gay. Like, you can't be both, right? to the extent that we do have a reaction to these people, it is because I have yet to meet someone who makes a decision to say, I am not black,

I am biracial, and actively advocates for the interests of black people in any kind of substantive way. That's the problem. It's like, what else? Yeah. What else makes you? You know, you know, it's a symptom of something. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way. But it's a something or something. So I'm like, well, if you're this committed to not being black, right, as your identity, what's at stake for you? What's at stake for you when you make that choice? Why are you making that choice? And what other choices will you make from the position of someone who is not black?

Can I ask you this just before you move on to this? Should we just not engage with people like Sage-Dill or whoever might take this? Take a, is it best that we, because are we giving her what she wants? Is it best that we just say, there, there goes sage again and keep it moving? Or is it important that we actually address it because it is problematic? That's a great question. You know, people always tell me don't platform people. You know what I mean? Whether it's Candace Owens, whether it's who is. And my thing is, some of these people got way bigger platforms than me. So sometimes, like, I'm not platforming Candace Always, right? If I debate her, like, she got 10 times in my reach I have. So in some, ways, I'm intervening in that space to have a different conversation. When Sage Steel is privately identifying as this or that, or if I'd been to a speech of hers or a talk she gave somewhere, I wouldn't have thought about it. I wouldn't have responded to it. I wouldn't care.

She wrote a memoir. I probably wouldn't care because people would read it, right? But when you go on Megan Kelly's platform, which actually is a very large platform, and you make these claims. But these claims now are doing a certain kind of work in the world. And the work in the world that her comments are doing is to influence lots of people to re-amet. In a world where people already don't want to be black, we don't need to give people any more options, right? We don't need people to pull people away from their blackness because, again, there's no, there's no functional endgame to that.

And so we can't ignore it because if we do, if we do, we do it at the expense of the other people watching her and listening to her. And that's what I'm really, really afraid of. I don't actually care. State stills a grown woman who's going to make her own choices. For me, people watching her and trying to figure out the world for themselves, what's at stake for them when they hear somebody say that, you know? And it's only us that are saying that, right?

There are no biracial people who are fighting to, you know, to say, I'm not white. you know what I'm saying? I'm just black and I don't want my way because white people are like, yeah, go ahead. It's not an issue which also tells you something, right? If this only happens on the I'm not black side, right? Then that probably tells you something about the value of the purchase of whiteness in this country.

So before you got out of here, Mark, once again, this is Mark Lamont Hill. He's everywhere he's doing. everything. I've been watching Mark Lamont Hill literally since I was in college. Like, oh, shit. I'm going to be honest with you real quick. So they, they, they brought Mark, Mark popped up on the O'Reilly factor because my, my homeboys used to diss the shit out of me because I would watch the O'Reilly factor. I was just fucking curious. I'd be like, really? This nigga hates common? Like, that's the one that should be, you know, I was like,

there's other guys. Yeah. Yeah, I'm like, it's other guys out there. I'd be like, he hates common. I got to watch this. And then Mark pops up on this. The first thing I said was, oh, shit. They got them one. Let's see what this nigga got to say. And then Mark was on his shit. And I was like, oh, my God.

That used to be his ass. You used to be. Bro, that's so crazy, bro. I thought one day that you would have a show on Fox because you were so much smarter than Bill O'Reilly. Because Bill O'Reilly's thing is the culture wars. The first time I ever heard anybody say that. All the deal.

I thought it was one day it was going to be like, hi, Fox. This is Fox News tonight with Mark Lamont Hill. they weren't fucking with it. They like, Oh, you know, you know, you know, you know why they fired me. I mean, I don't know if you know, like Roger Ailes before he died,

he made sure I got fired because he, he said I was a bad guest. And what made me a bad guest, obviously was I wasn't willing to lose. Like, like, Fox, and I know y'all got to do other shit, but like,

you just say this real quick, Fox is like pro wrestling. It is to pro wrestling. It is to news, but pro wrestling is to sports, right? It's in the vicinity of it, but it's not exactly that. thing. And so, you know, the Fox News approach, Roger used to tell me was, you know, we have pretty

people argue, right, which is pretty much what he did, right? His idea, pretty, all that stuff, you know, very particular. He wanted blind white women. He wanted, you know, white men with dark hair. He encouraged what they look like. And he went relatively young people arguing, debating, right? But the entertainment part of it also was that your side has to win. When you grew up watching wrestling on Saturday morning, right, you want to see, you. You want to see. your hero. Yeah. There's a jobber and then Ultimate Warrior beats the jobber.

You're not watching it for the job or the fucking pin Ultimate Warrior. No, no. You want to watch Miel Mosqued us get his ass kicked by the Ultimate Warrior, right? Right. And that's how you win. And every once in a while, there'll be a formidable match, but it's never at this level, right? The Fox News is Saturday morning wrestling. You just want to watch your guy win in relatively easy fashion.

And so imagine if, like, Like, you know, you're watching wrestling, all of a sudden, El Conquistador just decides to just body slam, Hulk Hogan and pin him for three, right? Like that. And that's basically what I kept doing. And the difference is Bill O'Reilly's ego. And I mean this with love. And I like to, you know, Bill did a lot from me, you know, whatever, right? But I say it's with love.

He, um, his ego does not allow him to think that he lost. And if it did, it would only make him want to bring me on again to show that it was an upset. So he was down and keep having the fight. But Roger Ailes was like, nah, nah, this nigga win it. You know what I'm saying? He probably said it just like that. So that's why I ended up leaving. I mean, they fired me for a very concrete reason.

They said I had radical ties, you know, the Sada Shakur and all that shit. But at the, but that was the real reason, you know, it was that. So I take great pride of being fired by Fox News. The same thing. I'm in a similar situation. I don't know if you know that. I heard something. So presidential election coming up real quick.

There is a third party candidate, a couple of third party. Actually, not a third party candidate. Actually, he is. RFK Jr. is not third party candidate. He is running as a Democrat. Cornell West is running under the banner of the Green Party. A lot of conversation about alternative candidates, about what the no labels movement is doing, whether or not that's a serious political movement,

about even non-traditional candidates from the Democratic Party like RFK Jr. And there's some conversation about Cornell West. In 2016, you supported Jill Stein for president. He was still mad about that shit. They still pissed off about it. They pissed off at you, Mark. Do you think at this particular point,

do you see Cornell West as a viable presidential candidate in this election? election. Do you think people should be open to listening to Dr. West? He's been a very important academic and intellectual voice for a very long time. When you listen to him, you can't help but love him. Do you see a potential situation, something that a lot of people are afraid of, that the left could get Jill Stein into Donald Trump skating back into the White House again if Cornell West becomes too popular and garners to a larger percentage of the vote? Yeah, that's an interesting and complicated question. I'm going to say a couple of things.

Okay. And I'm a lifelong Green Party member, you know, pretty much all my adult life I've been a Green Party member, for the most part. Why? Why? Before you get there, just give us a quick primer on why? Because I believe in the Green Party platform. And I believe that we had to advocate for economic justice, environmental justice. We had to end a doctrine of permanent war that the current economic arrangement. don't work, that we have to pay attention to women's reproductive freedoms and rights and justice. We have to dismantle a criminal legal system that doesn't work. And for me, some of these conversations that we're just starting to have on the mainstream left, we've been having in the Green Party for decades. And so I've always felt like it was a space for political organizing, but also political education.

When you run for office, you're telling people your platform and you're teaching them why this perspective versus that perspective matters. That's the beauty of the third party political run. That's also the beauty of less likely candidates within the Democratic Party running. When Sharpton used to run, Dennis Kucinich, who I loved and supported, used to run, to some extent Bernie Sanders even, to some extent. You know, you're looking at people who are willing to offer an alternative vision that then organizes the people around different issues, but also drags the mainstream candidate to the, back to the edge again, back to the, away from the center, I'll say, depending on whether you're right wing or left wing, away from the center. We saw that with Ron Paul, right?

Like, you'd see these people like Ron Paul say, wait a minute, I got a perspective here. And now, George Bush or Donald Trump or whoever has to be accountable or responsive to it. You know, when Dennis Kucinner, Al Sharpton ran, right, you had to be responsive to it. You had to say something about it. You couldn't because if you get too much of a vote, well, I'll get rid of that law too or I'll change that tax code too or I'll end this war too. I mean, in 2008, presidential candidates were like to use car sales and who's going to get you out of Iraq faster. That was not the doctrine in like 2000. That was not the doctrine in 2004 yet, you know, but by 2008 you had to say it.

Even war criminals who ran for Democratic office were saying. So, you know, we have to think about it in that way. In 2016 in particular, I endorsed Joe Stein. I actually was asked to run. on that ticket as VP and declined. I don't know if I've ever said that in public, but yeah, I declined to run as a VP for a couple of reasons. But not the least of which was I thought me being VP on the ticket.

And I didn't know who else was the option. I think Ajama Baraka did a great job. That's my brother. This is nothing about him at all. But when they asked me, I was like, well, I imagine you'll do better with me than without me. and I don't want to I want to expand the Green Party vote

but what I don't want to do is create a situation where where we undermine where we push Donald Trump into office. That was my logic. But I did go around

endorsing Joe Stein. I did go around endorsing the Green Party ticket. Now I said a whole lot of other stuff too that often gets ignored. People tend to take one clip from the breakfast club, one quote, one sentence,

and they make that the whole of my political analysis and my political. It's always the breakfast club. Sons of bitches. So I, shout out to my brother, Charlotte, man. It's my man. My guys. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love them, man.

And I, and that's the one people go back to. They don't look at any other speeches, any other commentary. Where I also advocated strategic ballot, I advocated vote trading. You know, if you're in California, you can vote for a green party. It don't matter. You're in Texas. You can vote for a green party. Don't matter.

I'm in Pennsylvania. It might matter. So in Pennsylvania, I might call up Rachel and say, yo, you vote for the green party there and I will vote for Hillary here. That way we get, I still get my green party vote, but we don't compromise Pennsylvania. You know, I talked about that a lot. that didn't get talked about. There's one interview where I talked about it very carefully on DJ Vlad,

which I don't like to advertise because he's the trash. But, I mean, really, real human garbage. But, you know, that interview is important for talking about the strategic balloting thing, even though he's the Fed. So what's what you in Vlad? These are just, I'm just, nothing. Nothing. I just, I just, if I, if I,

keep watching platforms where people go to jail. I have two concerns. One, I'm concerned that you keep going on a platform knowing that you do things that will lead you to go to jail, right, individual responsibility and accountability. But if you're an outside to our culture and you find that your platform is used as literal state's evidence, then maybe you should have a different orientation to the culture if you're trying to be down. This goes back to the the the the women who make the babies with the black dudes and are down. What does down look like in practice, right? What does solidarity look like in practice? Blad also has a habit of going to, and this is just being a terrible interviewer. He also has this, this knack for always going to the most

tawdry, the most sensationalistic, the most anti-black narratives when he interviews people, right? I mean, he can interview Chi Ali 10 times, and each time he's going to ask him to talk about, you know, the worst parts of his journey, the worst parts of his life because it's sensational and it gets clicks, right? He doesn't prepare because he doesn't care about that. He's John Sallion, and he talks about Pira-Bul-Jabar. He says, what was it like playing with him? And fucking John Sall didn't play with Pira-Bul-Jabar, but you don't need to know that if you don't actually care about their stories, you just have to, you're just looking for clips. And he represents, I think the epitome of what people talk about when they say culture vultures.

All that said, I happened to an interview before I knew that stuff about him. And I talked about the vote trading. And I talked about the strategic ballot and how important it was to keep Trump out of the White House. People heard me say, well, you know, we can afford to lose an election. I was making a, I was sort of riffing off of a Jesse Jackson quote about voters rights where he said, I don't, we can afford to lose an election. We can't afford to lose our vote. And I was saying, we could afford to lose an election. we can't afford to lose our values, meaning we have to organize for black liberation regardless.

I wasn't literally saying we can afford a Trump presidency or that we should afford a Trump presidency. Because in the most literal sense, can we? Maybe, right, we can afford black people with slavery. We can certainly withstand Trump. But I don't want to make those mistakes. I don't want to make those the odds. And as a person of relative privilege, yeah, I'll survive a Trump presidency. I might even benefit from it in certain ways in terms of taxes and terms of, you know, other things. But I don't want that world. I don't want a world where. the vulnerable or, I mean, COVID alone showed us that, right? Like, we can't be president. And so, you know, while I don't think the worst critiques of me are accurate about my advocacy for the

Green Party and my continued advocacy for the Green Party, I do wish that I had been more clear and articulate on these bigger platforms about how we can support third parties and how we can advocate for a grassroots movement. I don't think I'm the reason that Trump is president. I don't give me that much power. No, I was, yeah, I don't think anybody. They're not you. This would be good. It's saying online. Oh, yeah. I'm saying don't, don't give me that much power and don't take away responsibility from, from, from Hillary Clinton for not running a powerful enough campaign, for ignoring black and brown voters, for not targeting and campaigning in certain areas where she was told to, for having an actual record

that people didn't want to vote for. And let's not ignore the empirical evidence, right? A lot of people who voted green, if they had just done hadn't been on the ballot, they weren't to vote for Hillary. No one votes green first and Hillary second. Very few people do. If you're voting green, you've already made a decision that you don't want to support a mainstream candidate. You're already making a decision that you're not voting based on the horse race. And you often are voting anti-government. You're voting outsider. You're voting insurgent. And so many people, according to the data, who did vote for Jill, even in Pennsylvania, their second choice was Trump. Their second choice was Johnson. Their second choice was not the person closest to them

politically in terms of their political ideology. So I don't want to ignore any of that, but I want to be very clear. You know, if I could do it again, I would do a better job of making my political strategy clear. I would do a better job of articulating the need, the urgency of keeping Trump out of the White House as the biggest, as the biggest issue in that moment. And I don't also want to ignore that. I probably, to some of the time, I probably, to some it did underestimate the likelihood of Trump winning. I thought he could win. I didn't think so.

I didn't. I wasn't at a certain point I was coasting on it. I'll be honest with you. And I wasn't paying attention to all the real polling that was saying that was, hey, sound the alarm, we got a horse race, guys. Right. Like it was actually, if you were paying attention to it

and not like preparing for Hillary's victory party, at that time, there were a lot of people going, hey, let you guys know there's an election here. But I want you to touch on, I do want you to touch on Cornell West. Do you see any of the same things? Do you see Professor West as a viable candidate?

Do you like what he's doing? We're going to be talking about a little bit later on in the podcast. Yeah. I enjoy hearing Cornell on the campaign trail. He's my brother. He's my friend. I share his most of his political vision.

I don't share anyone's 100%. So that's not like shade or I'm not alluding to anything. I'm just speaking in general terms. I think he's an important voice right now. And I'm glad to hear people talking about it. I thought it would have been interesting for him to run as a Democrat the way Robert Kennedy Jr. is and the way Marion Williamson are because I thought that that would be an opportunity to force Biden to the left rather than them just ignore him. but I think we need a viable green party movement and a third party movement, and I'm glad that Cornell is running.

I think, though, we cannot wage a ideological and political war against fascism while ignoring the fact that there are real fascists on the ballot right now on the Republican side. They're like legit fascist on the ballot, right? So I think we do have to embrace a voting strategy that prioritizes keeping Trump out of the White. And DeSantis, although I don't think DeSantis is going to win based on just how things are going right now. But we got to keep Trump and DeSantis out of the White House. We have to keep actual fascists out of the White House. That has to be priority number one. And whatever voting formation we make, it has to result in Trump and DeSantis not winning.

That is not a negotiable. think that that can look a few different ways, but that has to be the priority. Do I think that Cornel West could get the number of votes necessary to defeat DeSantis and Trump head on? Does dissenters and Trump head on or to defeat Biden? No. I don't think any part, any third party candidate can write down in 2024. That's not about Cornell. That's just about a two-party representative democracy. That's just about the way our voting patterns are. That's just the way where funding is. It's just not a possibility. And so whatever choice is, people make in the voting booth, I think it has to end, again, with Trump and DeSantis,

not in the White House. Because if we allow that to happen again, we see this as evidence by the Supreme Court right now. We see this as evidence by, you know, a range of federal laws and executive orders that are just starting to be undone in the era of Biden, but that are very vulnerable. And we see the permanency of certain decisions. Again, you might be a decade. or a generation, not a decade, a generation, before you see a reorganized Supreme Court. So we have to think about those things because we have to think about the most vulnerable among us. But I don't want people to embrace the kind of simplistic narrative that Cornell is stealing votes from Biden. Biden doesn't own those votes. Biden, we don't owe Biden a vote. Biden has to make the best argument.

and earn that vote. Now, at the end of the day, if we get to this tension where Biden hasn't earned our vote and we're persuaded by the third party, but we know that the third party is going to result in dissentist and Trump, now you have a, it's, that can't just be an individual decision. That has to be a collective moral decision, where otherwise it becomes an exercise of ego. I'm talking about for the voters. I can't. I don't want to say, well, I voted green to pass a political purity test. And then I end up with four years of Trump and DeSantis and or DeSantis. Or Nikki Haley, right?

Who might be like Trump who can read, you know, or DeSantis with personality, right? So we have to watch for those as well. And I don't think that we can't think about voting as an individual assessment or referent. them on our political or our political ideology. I don't think we can. I think it has to be strategic and tactical. Now, there are moments in history where I think the third party is the last thing I'll say where the third party makes sense. You know, there are moments where the Democratic and the Republican Party aren't wildly different. And we might be able to make that decision in that judgment. The problem, of course, has been the Democrats, every election, I told you the sky

is falling, that the Republican candidate is the worst thing since whoever and we can't afford to lose an election. It just so happened that in the era of Trump, it's true. In the era of DeSantis, it's true. And so we have to make different decisions, not because we care about Democrats, but because we care about the most vulnerable. And the question for me ultimately has to rest on what outcome will be the most harmful to the most vulnerable, and how do we prevent that from happening? Mark, tell them what they can see at, Mark. You wear a suit when you're on TV. I will be on, I'm on the griot every day.

Every day on the Rio. The Rio, it used to be Black News Channel before, you know, things happen. And you go there, check that out. It's called the Rio with Mark Lamont Hill. You know, we spend a lot of money on titles. And you can check that out every single day, Monday to Friday. You can also check out me on Al Jazeera. The new season starts at the end of September.

I'm on up from Al Jazeera, which if you're watching the show internationally, you're going to check it out. You can find where Al Jazeera is. is in the U.S. We don't do so well on putting out zero on cable post 9-11. So, you know, catch me on YouTube, but it's still there.

But it's broadcast around the world. I have a podcast called Coffee and Books that people should check out. And, you know, I'm still host to BET News. So the next time there is a, an R&B singer dies or, you know,

there's a police shooting. You'll see more on your television. All right. Mark, get the fuck off the show, bro. What? Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Mark. That's Mark Lamont.

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Dot sweetgreen.com. Okay. Look, let's talk about Cornell West real quick. I want to get your opinion on this. I watch them on a breakfast club. I've been following this no labels thing very much. At this point,

the candidates that are the mainstream candidates, they're not as interesting to me right now. What I mean is like, you know, Biden is where he is. Trump is, to me, unelectable, unvotable for me. So I'm finding myself being a little bit more

interested, not serious about guys, not serious about, but interested in the Williamson's, in the RFK juniors. He's a kook. I'm not trying to legitimize him or saying that I'm voting for him, but when I'm finding out and learning about candidates, I'm more learning

about these guys and their movements. Cornell West is in there. I've seen some of the stuff that he's been doing. We talked about it when he declared. I think a lot of the criticism about Cornell West's presidential race has been interesting in that. I don't think that he is a hyper-viable candidate that can still a lot of the vote. But there are people who have strong feelings. Rachel, where do you stand?

I do think that he's taking away the votes. And I understand. I listen to Dr. Cornell-West. And I agree with a lot of the things that he says. It makes sense to me. I understand why he wants to run. I understand his platform of truth and justice. And I understand what he says, when he says Biden doesn't own votes.

But we constantly talk about on this podcast about the game that the Republicans are playing and sometimes the games that the other side doesn't play. Because they're playing games, we have to as well. And you can't deny that there's interest with Dr. West, that people are intrigued by the things that he's saying. And people are not intrigued at a lot, especially the black vote when it comes to Biden. And the young vote. Biden's losing a lot of young voters. Biden's losing a lot of black men. Trump gained a lot of black men in 2020. And I would imagine that number's only going to increase as a lot of black men are.

dissatisfied with the Biden administration. And so you can't deny that Dr. Cornell West running or anybody or no labels, whoever the no labels candidate said, you know, Mansions talked about that he hasn't ruled it out. Those type of people will take away votes from the left. We've seen it before. And so I don't want to say that he doesn't have the right to be running, but I just think right now is not the time. And I don't, and I think both of those things can be true. You can like what he has to say. You can understand the movement, but also understand the fact that him running will take away votes from the left. And inevitably, and because he cannot win against running against Biden or Trump, you have to understand that it will take away votes. Okay. So, so a lot of polling shows

that maybe there is a reason to be a little concerned. 538 has a poll that says if this like he will take away votes. So look, getting to what Mark was talking about, there's a way to frame this. There's a way to frame this that doesn't have anything to do with a specific loyalty to any politicians or any political parties. Because when we get into that conversation, it's just very easy. it's very easy to to unearth the truth of those narratives, which is

there's not really a political party, in my opinion, that has earned blanket loyalty or support from black Americans or from progressive Americans, besides perhaps the Green Party, which doesn't seem to be a viable party in terms of winning a presidential election. So I think if we start talking about ruining,

then that makes it feel like to some people that we should have some allegiance to Joe Biden. You guys, once again, this isn't to say that the economy isn't in a decent place. I talked to Mark Gold wine, shout to Mark. And, you know, a lot of the metrics that you use to judge a strong economy, things are pretty good.

There are other things we could be doing better. on, but things are pretty decent. If you listen to some of the specific issues that Cornell West is talking about, Biden hasn't been good on them, and no American president, it really has been. Because no American president is really going to be able to govern from the standpoint of the Green Party platform. It's going to be difficult. It's going to be difficult to make America into an anti-imperialist nation.

It's going to be difficult to recall our troops from running. around the world, have them come back home, right? It's going to be difficult to put people first in terms of housing reform. It's going to be difficult to consider policies like single payer health care or universal basic income or a lot of those things. I think some of those things are things that are possible in the future, you know. Mark is an abolitionist. I talk to my abolitionist friends all the time about what it means to be an abolitionist.

Some of them will tell you, if I got all the power in the world, I'd all law jails and prisons tomorrow. Some of them say that the importance of abolition is to offer a counter argument to the American carcarsal system so that we don't think that things have to be the way they are right now. And so that we continue to push for a society that doesn't look at people. as future awards of the state. And that doesn't mean that what we're saying can work. That means that what we're doing isn't working. And I look at all of that stuff with the utmost optimism.

And I think that all of those are powerful statements. So a lot of what Cornel-West is talking about doing is really about dragging a political movement or a political um intelligentsia back to the left away from the center and away and to remind them that there are still things that they have to deal with one thing that cornell west says a lot is that Joe Biden who we know was a major major figure

in the contemporary issue of mass incarceration that you need people to hold his feet to the flame so that him and his party of the Democrats realize that they have a responsibility to fix mass incarceration. So I don't think any of that stuff is wrong. We talked to Mark about this. I don't think any of that stuff is wrong. I don't think any of that stuff is wrong. I do think that Dr. West, who I have an unbelievable amount of respect for,

and I'm not going to speculate into why Dr. West has decided to run. There are enough people who are doing that. Some people say it's a vanity place. Some people say Dr. West has money problems. All kinds of things. Obviously, if you run for president, your disability goes through the roof. You know, it goes through the roof. You're going to get a whole bunch of interviews you wouldn't have gotten.

You're going to get donations you wouldn't have gotten. You're going to get opportunities to talk in places. Maybe even you write a book. The book is framed in a different way or it comes out with a different level of publicity. Maybe there's a documentary, all kinds of stuff, right? So all of that stuff. It's a big deal. So we'll be talking about that.

I do think that Dr. West, who is not afraid of Donald Trump, it's not afraid of a Donald Trump president. Dr. West isn't afraid of anything. I think it's important for Dr. West and for other people to consider whether or not other people are afraid. And if you truly caucus with people and you truly care about what they care about, then sometimes you have to consider not just their freedom, but you have to consider their fear. And if you're doing something that's scary to them,

either you have to make them braver, which is going to be hard because Mark just said that there's a fascist on the ballot, multiple fascists on the ballot. There's a whole school of right thought that is, in bed with fascism and in my opinion needs to be put down until they evolve if they ever will.

Maybe they won't. Maybe it just gets worse from here. You either have to make them braver or you have to protect them. And so everybody has responsibility to do this. I'm not going to tell somebody

that wants to run for president here in America not to run for president. But what I would say is to somebody who I know has our best interest in heart. So don't be reckless. Just don't be reckless. The consequences are real. The Dobbs decision is real.

Affirmative action is real. These things are real. So don't be reckless. It's not me condemning anyone or anything like that. There's not, there are few people, should I say, that I enjoy listening to that I've listened to as much

as I have Cornell West. But he does having responsibility to people other than Cornell West. And that's not me telling Cornell West not to run for president. Okay. There's an unbelievably sad story out of California. A California store owner was shot and killed over a pride flag that was to spare a spare shot.

I want to take a little time to highlight the life, remember the life of Laura Ann Carlton. who owned the Mad Pie clothing store in Cedar Glen, California. There was a dispute that allegedly started over a pri flag that she had in front of her store. Several disparaging remarks were made about the pried flag that was outside of the store. That led to a shooting. She was shot. She has passed away at 66. That suspect was, at the time that we were doing this for the podcast, had not been caught yet.

But they located the suspect a little while after that was confronted by deputies and was killed in a lethal force encounter. She had a husband and nine children. Leaves behind a husband and nine children. She owned and operated the store. And according to people in the community, she was a tireless ally activist and friend of the LGBT plus community. Um The only thing I'll say about this is

It's all real All of it It's all real And we don't really think that it is I'm not going to do a whole fucking sermon But It's real Your words

Become energy That hateful energy Infects people People get affected With a disease And a disease has symptoms I don't know what to tell you.

Like, I know that you guys think that you live in the world where you can jump on Twitter and say, I hate niggas, I hate niggas, I hate niggas all day and that doesn't mean anything. I know that you guys get on the world, think that you can live in the world where you can go on there, support politicians, support people, support anti-LGBQ policies where you can have a whole state that criminalizes the word gay, basically. You can't say it. You'll lose your job. You get kicked out of school, whatever.

That you can push people into holes and then nobody will take that further. It just doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. Like this is a community. Yeah. Like this is a society. And most things lead to other things. And your hate leads to people being killed, ran away from their home, harming themselves, the whole thing.

And we saw it right there. Right. Yeah. No, I mean, I don't have much to add. It's such a tragedy. and, you know, this individual who did this, did this out of hate, and also to try to make other people fearful to stand up for other people and for what they believe in. And Laura Ann was a supporter of the community, LGBTQ Plus community,

and stood by them and, you know, lost her life standing up for what she believed in. And it's just scary. because that is exactly what I was talking towards the fear, right? It's hate, but they want to make you hate them too. They want to make you fearful of supporting people that they hate. And, you know, I don't know. I don't really have the words for it. It's just when I saw this, it's just, it's so sad.

It's so sad to me that you could just hate something, somebody's so much that you take somebody else's life just because they love them. I just don't understand the thought. Right. And if I have one thing to ask people, and I'll try to do this too, think about this with your group chat mind, not with the mind that you want everybody to see. I want people when you think about things and you think about the conversations we're trying to have because we don't do them all the time correctly here on hiring.

learning. We don't, we do them wrong most of the time, right? Think about things with your group chat mind. And when I say that, I mean, when you're talking and you're, and you're, and you're really considering things and you're with the people that you know, that you know, are going to protect you and you're going to say the real thing, think about it then. Because, look, when you're in front of people, the majority of you are going to try to say the right thing. But when people know who you really are and what you're really about, that's the version of you that people are normally inspired by, that people normally put a lot of stock into. And that's the person that needs to look at this a little differently. That's the person that needs to protect and make space for people.

That's the person. So when you think about, you know, any of the people that we've talked about, when you think about Breonna Taylor, when you think about any of the trans people that are being murdered, when you think about. Lori and what happened to her. When you think about all of these different people, think with your group chat mind, with how you're actually challenging yourself in a real way, and I'll do the same thing. All right, that's a heavy show.

But it's okay because we're going to be back. And I promise you guys, when we come back, it's going to be nothing but bullshit. It's going to be wall-to-wall, stories about Louisiana. Actually, it won't be that because we got a presidential debate coming. I was going to say.

Unless that's the bullshit that you're referred to, we got a Republican debate on our hands. We got a debate. Which I'm looking forward to. All right. Okay. Put your money on somebody. Who do you have on your,

who do you have money on right now? Who's going to be the dark horse? Who's going to be the dark horse? Wait, who's taking the stage. I know who the dark horse is. It's Tim's Scott. Ha! Excuse me.

You're right. You're right. That's who the dark horse. He should be running is that. See, that's the type of shit that Tim Scott's not capable of. Tim Scott. And they would love that. I'm the dark horse.

horse running for president. And they would love it. Would they not? Like they get an excuse. They get to say dark horse. You know what I mean? They get away with it. But wait, who's taking the stage? DeSantis? Hayley. Scott, Haley, Ramoswamy. Pence? Tim Scott, Pence. I thought it was seven. Donnie, we haven't even. Who else is there? I don't think Larry Elder's going to make it. Who are our guys? Wait. Oh, Chris Christian. Oh, Chris.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go. Chris Christie. Chris Christie will be on stage too. So out of all of those people, I need a prediction from you and from Donnie. Rachel, who are you going to predict to win the debate? To win the debate, I'm going to pick. I'm going to pick Christy. Okay.

Because that's this moment is his entire purpose, right? He wants to be on the debate stage. He wants to call out people. he doesn't get Trump because Trump's not going to be there. So I'm going to go with Christy because this is what he's been waiting for. Donnie, who you got? We did forget Asa or Asa Hutchinson. Aza Hutchinson.

Oh, Asa Hutchinson. So he's there too. But I'm going to say Nikki Haley. Oh, nigger, you're wrong as shit. That sucks. That's a terrible case, sweetly. Okay, we'll see. We'll see.

We'll revisit this. Thank you for supporting women, Donnie. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'm supporting one woman on the stage. Let's go. Nikki Haley. Um, this is easy for me.

This is an easy choice for me. Vivek Ramoswamy is going to fucking destroy those guys. Donnie, you missed it. Last week, Van is a total fan. You saw the videos he was sending us about M&M. He loves Vivek. He follows everything he does. In the same way he follows all the media that Dr.

Cornel West is doing, he equally on the other side follows Vivek. He loves the man. Oh my gosh, you're going to be watching it with a t-shirt on. I tell you, shut up. I'll tell you straight up right now. I'll tell you straight up right now. He's unelectable, straight up, unelectable. Okay, I would never, but he is in impressive order.

It's going to be tough. Now, for Ron DeSantis, remember the memo leaked from Ron DeSantis. And Ron DeSantis, his debate prep kind of came out. So it was like Hammer Ramaswamy, Be Good to Trump and all that. So it would be in. interesting to see what Ron DeSantis is actually able to do being that people feel like they know his strategy. But if you put these bunch of guys on the stage with that fucking snake oil salesman,

they're going to get decimated, all right? That fucking dude talked up an Alzheimer's drug, got crazy money from the IPO. Then the drug didn't even fucking work. And he said, peace. I'm moving on. So like this is going to be actually a fun debate. Trump will not be there. Before I go, Rachel, I think Trump's going to do a whole thing with Tucker Carlson.

What do you think more people watch the debate or Trump with Tucker Carlson? Oh, really at the same time? I think he is. I think he said that he was going to do that. I think more people will watch the debate. I think more people watch. Maybe I just want them to. I think more people will watch.

I think more people will watch. watch the debate. Oh, you do too? I agree. I think more people are going to watch the debate. A lot of people on the left, I feel like you're going to watch a debate. So I'm not just looking at, you know, people who are right leaning. I'm so interested in this debate.

I'm prepared to be fully entertained. I think it's like what Trump's going to say, the same stuff we've already heard, Tucker's going to do the same thing. It's like, we've seen that before. They'll watch that later on Twitter. Excuse me, X. All right. Are you going to invite Vivek to your Juneteenth party next year? Shut the fuck up, sweet booty.

He'll be there and he'll be performing. All because you know, Daddy, there were performances. He'll say right in. That'll be so funny. I'll be so funny if Vivik was there. But Vivik hates your Juneteeth. We're going to get Vivik on here. We're going to get to the bottom of Vividus anti-blackness.

You guys, it's going to be a problematic fall on higher learning. We got Vivik Ramoswamy. We got Larry's. elder. We got a bunch of people coming up to piss. Reddit off. Take a thinking caps off, but do not stop learning. I'm Van Lathen Jr. And I'm Rachel Lynn Lindsay. Bye, guys.