The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Dr. Lawrence Chatters Motivational Speaker & Author

Episode Date: June 28, 2020

Dr. Lawrence Chatters Motivational Speaker & Author Facebook.com/Drchatters

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to go subscribe to the show. Refer to your friends, neighbors, relatives, dogs, cats, mistresses, pool boys. Get them all in the show and everything because we all have the greatest guests ever. The Chris Voss Show has all the best guests. We have a great slate of people coming up and well as the guests that we have here today.

So go check that out. Today we have a very brilliant man, a doctor, if you will. So you know he's smart. He's got a doctorate. It's Dr. Lawrence Chatters. He currently serves as the vice president for student affairs at Midland University. Dr. Chatters holds a doctorate and master's degree in counseling psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He's an avid reader, entrepreneur, even a rap artist and international DJ. So there you go. We may spend some sounds later.

He's been engaged in diversity, equity, and inclusion work for the past 14 years through a range of professional experiences, including diversity concentration in his post doctoral fellowship at Penn State University, and his role as diversity inclusion coordinator of the Nebraska Athletic Department. Dr. Chatters considers his most important roles to being father of his two children and a partner to his wife of 15 years, Katie. And I picked him up. He was doing an interesting webinar that we'll talk about here in a bit. But welcome to the show, Dr. Chatters. How are you today? Chris, thank you so much for the opportunity to spend some time with you today. I am awesome and I want to refute something that

you said already. I'm not very smart. I just have a degree in psychology, and so I guess that makes me learned. Well, I don't have a degree, so you're smarter than me. Oh, no. I know how to do 2 plus 2, though, on a calculator. So welcome to the show. Like I said, I'd seen you on a

father's thing, but let's get your plugs first on where people can find you on the interwebs. Sure. So on the interwebs, people can find me on Twitter at L chat, L C H a T the number one on Twitter and on Facebook. I have a page that is Dr. Lawrence chatters,

motivational speaker. I like to inspire and motivate people through my story and through telling stories of other successes that I've seen over the course of my lifetime. And so they can find me there as well. And yeah, for the most part, they can reach out to me anytime via email at lawrence.chatters at gmail.com. And that's where I usually entertain questions and conversations about some of the things we'll be talking about today. Awesome sauce. And I believe you're an author or co-author? Yes. So I had a chance to work on the Fathering Together volumes, one book that we just put out

through our Facebook page, Dads with Daughters by Fathering Together, that recently was published, and it's currently on Amazon. So make sure you get out and get that. It's just kind of, in that story, I got a chance to tell about my journey of, I guess, recognizing some of the challenges that still exist in our country surrounding racial connections and such through my family experience, which I'll talk a little bit more about today too. But there's a lot of other great stories in that book of fatherhood and just in general about being a dad. And so I encourage people to check that out as well. Well, daughters, fathering daughters is an adventure in and of itself, from what I understand from my, from my fellow friends who, who do daughters, daughters are very smart people. And so you're

negotiating with, with quite the, quite the group there. Yeah. Raising daughters is a unique journey. And I think there's, there's absolutely a beauty in understanding young women and their development and such. And, and so, you know, I've, I've definitely had my share of struggles with it. Me and my wife, but at the same time, it's one of the most rewarding things too. And so as well, right. Nothing, nothing that's easy is rewarding so there you go but yeah i mean over the course of my lifetime being single in my life and dating a lot i've nothing is uh i think i well i don't know about nothing but i would almost say nothing is more important than the uh father

in a in a daughter father daughter relationship in making sure that uh they have a good foundation in the relationship with men with fathers fathers and et cetera, et cetera. So let's, let's talk a little bit about your journey growing up your early years, if you will. Yeah, sure. So, you know, what's so unique about my journey, Chris, is just that I was born with a condition called albinism and albinism is essentially lack of pigment in the skin and also the eyes.

And so I was born with a pigment in the skin and also the eyes. And so I was born with a pretty significant vision disability and also born to two darker complected individuals, my parents, and my skin color, folks can't see me as very light skin. And so I actually have white skin. What that created for me, I guess, from an early age was just a lot of confusion because of the way that the United States was essentially founded and the struggles that we've seen between African American or black individuals and white individuals in our country and the history of slavery and everything else. So from a young age, I was always confused. Like, you know, am I white? Am I black? Like,

am I neither? Which group do I fit in with? My dad was in the military. We moved around a lot. So and my older sister also has albinism, which is very rare that there's one family. But moving around to different places, we were always the new weird kids. And unfortunately, that didn't work out very well. You know, dealt with a lot of bullying, a lot of name calling. The black kids thought that we were too white. The white kids thought we were too weird. We just didn't really fit in. And so for me, that really created a unique perspective on this idea of inclusion

because I never felt included. I always felt like that outside guy. And kind of an in-between? Maybe you were like, where do I fit in? Yeah, exactly. And just knowing that honestly literally at most of the places that we ever were i there was never anyone else that looked like me besides my older sister which i'm very fortunate that i at least had her because

then i didn't think that i was an alien or something you know but um it just it created in me a lot of desire to try to fight for people who don't feel like they fit in or feel that the world has left them behind by virtue of the fact that they're marginalized or whatever else the case might be. So that's kind of like my earlier years. We moved around a lot. My sixth grade years, I moved three times. Okay. That was a crazy year. And it just really stuck out to me and my journey as a year where I had to kind of make a decision of, am I going to keep just not fitting in? Or am I going to do whatever I can to try to find my uniqueness? And so in sixth grade is where I kind of started turning away from this idea that I'm worthless,

I'm ugly, I'm disabled, and turn more toward what are some things that I can find some strengths that I might have in the fact that I did have a different way of seeing the world. I did have a different skin color. I did have a different experience from a lot of the people around me. So that was really that pivot for me. So that was kind of a nice part of the story for me as sixth grade. Kind of a journey of self to try and find out what you're about. I often wonder because I didn't, of course,

I wasn't faced with some of the prejudices that you've experienced, but I did move around a lot as a child and to different schools. And that was just bad enough as it was without those prejudices. But yeah, I sometimes wonder if because of that bullying and the crisis of self that you go through and that punishment, if sometimes that isn't life-shaping in some way to make you a better person. Yeah, I do think it makes you a better person because it makes you tough. You know, it really, when you struggle through some of that pain and that rejection, I think you start to understand the importance of not inflicting that

upon other people. And I think when you have the privilege of not having to suffer through those things, it never really becomes a part of your mindset that other people are out there struggling or not feeling like they belong. Because if you're the person in the majority, you always look around and you see people that look like you, you see unique experiences that are very similar to yours. You think, well, this is the way that things are supposed to be. But that pain for me put me on a journey and a trajectory of trying to help to figure out how we could create, could create spaces that are more inclusive for people who struggle with those things. So, and I think, you know, if you move around a lot,

you just recognize that when you're new and when you have to struggle through all the newness of being in a new place and not knowing anyone, like that's not an experience that everybody has because some people grow up in one area for all of their life. Right. And so whenever you go to a new place or you see new people come in, you automatically gravitate toward them and you're like, wow, I want to make you feel like you belong here because I know what it feels like to be new and not to belong. So it does create that uniqueness and a mindset, I think. And I think it's cool that you've turned that into a career and what you do for the college and everything, right? Yeah, that is really what in the early stages started getting

me to think more about how can I really use my career? How can I use my learning to understand more different types of people and recognize some of the similarities they may have with the majority folks, wherever that may be? And how can I bridge those gaps? And so that honestly led me on a journey to thinking about psychology as a, as a area of study, because I wanted to understand the behavior of people. I knew that in the behavior of people and why we exclude and include, I would be able to figure out some key components of how I could bridge those gaps. And I continue to be who I am, which is that odd person that looks different, that has a different experience through that whole experience. And so in those spaces, I was able to bring that perspective, really connect it to my studies

and understanding of theory and psychology, and then start to make some changes there. And again, becoming more comfortable with myself going through my own process of learning about my culture, and things of that nature, which, you know, will shift a little bit in that direction. As far as talking about college for me, I was one of two African American men on my entire campus was not at my school on an athletic scholarship. Okay. So it was it was a unique experience for me because every time I'd have class or something, you know, the professor would be like, well, I wonder what he's here to play. You know, I'll just describe it folks. I have abnormally long arms. Okay. My height is actually six foot, but my wingspan is actually six foot five. Okay. So I have super long arms.

Just imagine that everybody thought I was there to play basketball, right? What's this guy doing here? But anyways, through that journey of college and taking some sociology courses and being a psychology major, I started to get exposed to just the historical context of the United States, a lot of the systematic racism, where some of that stuff came from the foundation of it. And I started to understand my place in all of that. And so my dad's side of the family is from Georgia. So you go back a couple of generations and there's slavery. My mom's side of the family is from Trinidad and Tobago. And so my mom is from the West Indies. So what I would also say complicated my cultural journey and my family's is that we were not raised in what you would call a traditional African American household. We were raised more West Indian and the people out there who are listening, who are from a West Indian background understand what that means. And the people from

an African American cultural perspective may not recognize the difference between the two, but when we get together, it's not like we just connect, right? It's like there's differences in our upbringing. And so in that, and seeing kind of that unique complication of my history and recognizing the roots in slavery, and then also the West Indian story of Trinidad and Tobago, I started to just wonder more about how does that impact me? And how does that impact other people of color? And so that's that path I continued on. As I got into my latter years of college and started thinking about graduate school, I started to focus my research a little more on systematic racism. And one of the first things I did was write a paper with a law professor at Nebraska on the high incarceration rate of the African American male. And at that time, you know, I'm like 17, 18 years old. And I start

to realize that one out of three of me would end up in the criminal justice system at that time. Right. And that just blew my mind because I have two other brothers. So I started thinking, which one of us will it be? Right. Which one of us will it be? And guess what? One of my brothers has in fact, and still is still is you know theoretically involved in the criminal justice system he's been to jail quite a few times he struggled through that process statistics don't lie right and so during that time i'm doing that research i'm starting to recognize other things about the system in general i learned about redlining i learned about black codes i learned about jim crow right and it just I mean, it didn't give me a really positive outlook on life, of course,

because I thought to myself, well, here I am living this journey and having to walk through all of this stuff and understand it. And how am I going to reckon with that and still be successful in life? And how are my brothers, my direct brothers and my brothers in a greater sense, other African-American men, how are we going to navigate all those challenges? You know, so, so in continues my racial identity development through that process. But the thing that complicated it more for me at the point at that point was just that here I am again, still who I am the weird African American guy with the white skin and the, you know, less than perfect vision,

of course. And that's being generous to say that. But I still am not accepted by other black people at my college because they look at me and they're like, oh, well, here you are on this educational journey, learning all these things, thinking that you're better than us. You're light skinned, so you think you're better than us, right mean so I'm like well if I'm gonna fight for other people of color but people of color are still not even accepting me where do I belong right so that same kind of struggle with belonging and the challenges that I experienced as a result of my color and my appearance persisted but so that's just kind of a little taste of like that early part of my journey and getting through college and not really having a significant amount of friends of color in college

because I was an oddball I was a nerd right I'm not here on athletic scholarship I'm here on an academic scholarship and and you know here they come and talk to me and I'm talking differently or and I've had a different upbringing because of my West Indian mother. And, you know, so I just want to paint that picture for everybody to recognize that, you know, even though I've been making some progress, I was still struggling with that feeling of being on the outside, looking in, in many ways. You know, one thing that was just surprising to me, I was over playing pool with a friend of mine and his, you know, his family's African American. His mom was really sweet to me uh she cooked the most wonderful food and that was half the reason i go over there um but when you're a single guy

you you forage for homemade food anywhere you go um but he was he was a cool dude and we used to play pool um and uh one time i don't know how the topic came up i think they were they were uh knocking somebody in the African-American community. But they explained to me that there are prejudiced differences between the shades of color in the African-American community, you know, like darks and lights. And you're just like, really? You guys are as awful as we are.

And I was just – and they explained it to me. And I was like, seriously? You guys do that? Like, I mean, it just seemed to me after experiencing what African-American people have to put up with white people, you would think that they wouldn't do that to each other. But clearly through your journey, you experienced a lot of that. Yes. it to is that when we are going through this process, of course, as young African American children growing up with this idealism toward whiteness, we are essentially taught, especially by history. And if you look at some of the historical context of the U.S., that the closer you are to white, the closer you are to right. Okay. And so essentially, and there's there's much history of course about the plantation and

certain uh slaves that were uh mixed with the slave master and how they were treated better because that was the family of the slave master and such right the house slave versus the field slave concept and some of those things that started then and have continued and continue to impact people of color in many ways. So if you think about it, if the oppressed are also oppressing the oppressed versus the oppressor oppressing the oppressed, then the oppressed is really going to have a tough time ever getting out of that, right? Because they have other people around them who are going to essentially pull them down, even if they're trying to get further along. So I understood that. And I forgave a lot

of people that treated me that way as a result of my skin color, because I recognized that it was a result of their indoctrination and perhaps their, in some ways, potential self-hatred that led them to believe that. And I get it. And I still get it to this day. And trust me, when I move into certain circles, even to this day, and I'm trying to do this work, there's still a group of people that look at me like, well, you know, yeah, you certainly are doing this inclusivity work, but do you truly understand what it means to be black in America? I mean, look at you.

You don't necessarily fit. I see. I see how that works. Okay. I just learned something new. fit. I see. I see how that works. Okay. I just learned something new. Okay. I see. So they discriminate against you because they feel that you haven't gone deep enough in the journey, even though you really have.

Because, I mean, you see yourself in the same category. That's interesting. I have to prove myself, Chris. I have to prove myself in a lot of different spaces that I go in. So as a black man, I need to prove myself to certain people in my own black community. And I have to prove myself to people in the white community. And so I'm constantly in a state of proving myself. And that's kind of what the early part of my story shows you is that I never really was given a pass. It's always been now where, which box can I put you in?

You know, where do you belong? Because, you know, you don't fit over there, but you don't fit over here either. You're, you're just who you are. You're just weird, you know? And I own that. I mean, I'm fine with that now. Now, let me ask you this. Do you, do you factor a lot of that to the albinism or is that just pretty standard when it becomes to lighter and darker African-Americans and the prejudices that they have against each other? It's hard to dissect it, actually. So in inclusion work, and when you're thinking about

different aspects of marginalization, we talk about intersectionalities. So I see my intersectionalities as being a black male of color, who has a disability, who also has, you know, other challenges that I deal with. And I see all of those as intersectionalities. And so it's hard to figure out which one it is. But what I will tell you is that regardless of what it is, it always kind of hurts. Yeah, it never feels good, right? I never experienced that feeling of othering in a space and say, oh, well, that doesn't hurt as much as the other thing does. It always feels kind of like I can't be normal because I am such a rare individual in this society. So again, this is why I've dedicated my life to trying to help people who have the

opportunity and the power to create more inclusive spaces for people to do that. Because I know there's much larger groups of people who are also marginalized, who if we make some, I'm not going to call them simple changes, but intentional changes in different spaces that we can appear at least to be more, you know, accepting. So I'll give you an example. In most restaurants that I go into, there is a menu on the wall and that menu has really tiny writing on it, right? So when I go in and I want to order a number six, I have no idea what it says because I can't get close enough to the menu. You know what would make me feel much more comfortable if there was a QR code right there on the counter and I could just snap it and I could look at the menu on my phone, right? I'd all of a sudden feel like maybe

they thought about people who have a vision disability or if they had a large print menu, or if they said, Hey, if you would like us, we can read through the menu for you, right? That would be considered a people with vision disabilities, but there's not many places that do that. So people who have a vision issue automatically walk in and they're like, yep, this place wasn't made for me. Does that make sense? It definitely does. I mean, I have keratoconus in my left eye, which is a sagging cornea and it's a degenerative disease. You know, eventually I'll have to have a cornea transplant, but, uh, and I'm getting old. So I'm reaching that point like you are. I certainly probably don't suffer as much as you do but i'm getting to the point where you know i've got to hold the phone 50 million miles away and you know uh um some things i can't read anymore

in fact your email to me i had to blow up because that's where i'm at but i i feel i feel a little bit of pain yeah i feel a little bit of your pain not all of it i because i i didn't grow up that way but it's uh it's not getting better let's go that way as i get old but um no it it's it's sad and discouraging um that and and hopefully this is what a lot of people are starting to empathize with with black lives matter um because uh to to have to i i can't imagine growing up. And to me, I deal with enough depression and discouragement as it is just, I don't know, it's just kind of built into my DNA with depression. But to grow up and look at like what you talked about, the factor of being like one in three of me and my brothers will end up in prison. And we've seen the targeting that's going on with uh police racial brutality and racial uh profiling and you know i've known about that for years it's no surprise

to me um but you know we've seen like the the depth of it the ugliness of it um and i never really i never really put together police uh racial profiling i kind of knew that it was there uh and and i knew it was a factor in filling our prisons but i think more and more that discussion has come out but the black lives matter uh and what we've seen police officers do even when they're under a microscope they're still doing it and you're just like you know after uh the sadness of george floyd we're like hey we're gonna march the streets over police brutality and Black Lives Matter. And police just seem to go, oh, yeah, hold my beer. You're just

like seeing the videos and you're just like seeing this entitlement come out from, and I don't want to throw all the police under the bus, but you're seeing a real culture of entitlement and racial issues i mean even shocking me was recently i forget what part of the country i want to say kentucky but there was three officers recorded that uh you know we're talking about trump's race war and the white nationalist kkk race war agenda which which is amazing because they think they can win it, which is just a short-term idea. And it's funny how that ties into the NRA narrative and gun narrative. And then, you know, for years I've always had arguments with people over guns and, you know, I'm a liberal.

So I've always had this argument, and it's finally occurred to me that that's actually a racial thing now. I mean, I'm not saying 100% of everybody who owns a gun is racially motivated, but when they think crime and, like, I have to protect my family, they're thinking of a certain group of people. And I've been seeing that. In fact, I had friends that went and bought guns after Black Lives Matter. And they're like, we just went and bought guns.

And I'm like, are you guys fucking serious? Like, you guys are liberals. But, no, getting back to my original uh i segued a little bit um i don't think people realize how discouraging growing up that way is looking at like you said redlining and all these other prejudice i mean it's just to stack against you that uh i would probably turn to crime just thinking about that. It's really tough. And you point out a really important point, Chris, which is just that the ideals that are in and of themselves the American dream are only accessible to a certain amount of people. And that's been a part of our country for an extended period of time,

that certain people can make that journey, can actually go about that process in a way that is reasonable and realistic, that they're not going to run into some of the significant barriers that end up in your way when you do come from a low socioeconomic status area, or you do come from a place where all you have for role models is people who are involved in crime, or a place that is over-policed, or a place that's under-educated, or you grow up in a space where there's not enough nutrition for your brain to develop the way that it should, right? These are all different components that have existed for an extended period of time in

certain communities where you see generation after generation had less of an opportunity to essentially read American Dream. And when you talk about the NRA, when you talk about some of these other agendas that are out there, it takes more of a depth of understanding and research and making connections and connecting the dots, so to speak, to make those connections for people. So when they hear things like Black Lives Matter and they don't understand it, it does, it makes them become fearful because they don't have a deeper understanding of what the movement is and why it is what it is

and how, you know, there's different agendas that Black Lives Matter has. So I think that this is all a result of the history of our country. This is all a result of things that are hardwired into us and built into our processes as a country is that so long as the marginalized are happy with what they have and not seeking what the majority has in a way that is in any way, shape or form scary, right? Or pushy, then we can be okay with these mini revolutions that

are happening. But when Black Lives Matter starts and when people are angry in this process of trying to seek equality and justice, now the majority starts to become more scared because now they think, you're telling me these folks are about to recognize all the time that they've been oppressed and now they want something back. Where does that come from? It has to come from the majority and that's what the majority folks are thinking that someone has to take something that I have to get. The pie is only so big.

They had a small piece now they're coming to take a piece of mine. That in and of itself is a scary idea but that's the way that the United States was built. But it's not just black people who have suffered the results of this country and the way that it has grown. It's many other people. And so you're right.

When you dig deeper and you start to see how that connects to the police department and how the police department started and the Fugitive Slave Act and all of these different things right and black codes and and all these rules that led to due to the 13th amendment saying essentially that you're free unless you commit a crime right when you see all of these things and you piece it all together um it's it's daunting so some people are seeing it chris like you said they're seeing it and they're coming to a recognition of these things, but other people are living it, right? Other people are experiencing it. Other people have experienced it. They have family members that are in prison. They have family members who have essentially been accosted by the police. And again, not to disparage police officers. There are a lot of wonderful police officers out there, but there is an impact of this great system that is the United States and what it represents. There's an impact that that has on the police department.

And so we cannot separate the two. And that makes it very difficult for some people, I think, to come to terms with that from an intellectual perspective. You know, you brought up a good point earlier. You're talking about, um, uh, about the house, uh, uh, about the people that work in the house of the master in the old days. I think that's what the GOP calls Tim Scott. Um, the, uh, Scott, I was seeing him today talking about stuff. So I'll just make that reference. Um, but it's interesting to me when people get richer and power than the African American community, many times community, many times they go against their community. I got an argument last week with a gentleman who's a, I guess, a big rap guy or something or rap producer or something.

I guess he's got money. I saw pictures on Facebook. But I got an argument with him, he told me that he's only experienced racism once in his whole life and that he feels that Black Lives Matter is a democratic corporate construct to get reelected. And, you know, this the whole GOP narrative of what Black Lives Matter is purported to be in their minds. You know, he's even saying, you black lives matter as a corporation which i i guess it is uh sean what's his face incorporated it um and he gets a lot of um he gets a lot of stuff from his uh sean king he gets a lot of uh stuff from he seems to create a lot of organizations that yes that raise a lot of money and never fall through but uh yeah that's for another day. Um, uh, but, uh, uh, where was I going with that?

So, uh, we got into an argument and he literally was saying, it's not a problem. Anybody can do anything they want. I mean, it was like talking to a white guy. Um, and I was like, okay, I don't, I, you know, I mean, what do I do with that? I don't know. But, uh, and I, I think the police are the same way. You see a lot of police, like I watch a lot of the faces of the African American police officers who stand in those lines at the rallies, the protests. And I think, you know, what's going through their head? They're watching, you know, this movement. They've got to have some feelings on it. And it's an interesting journey we're on.

I'm learning a lot. I've learned a lot since 2015 with Donald Trump about African-American communities and African-Americans. I grew up in California, so I grew up in a melting pot of everybody. And so to me, you know, everybody's everybody, you know, that's how I was. And then when I came to utah in my teens utah is 90 white and so i was like there's a lot of damn ass white people here you know i went to a mexican restaurant and i said give me some hot sauce and they gave me ketchup and i'm like this is really screwed up um you know because in california you know you

know different cultures and different sub subdivisions you go to that, you know, are culture-driven, and I loved all that. I love food, if you can't tell. So, it's interesting to me. So, you work with different colleges and different stuff that you write and talk about, that inclusion and getting people to understand these differences.

One of the things that was important that I came out of, uh, 2015 and Donald Trump's extreme racism, you know, very early on I studied and, and, you know, this new white nationalism that no one had heard about, you know, realizing it was just a rebranding of the KKK and their agendas and stuff. And, and, uh, you know, I had friends that were, um, I remember after he was elected, I had friends that were Kuwaiti, you know, darker skinned Kuwaiti.

They were thrown out of cabs by Pakistani drivers, you know, calling them the N word. And that was how deep the racist goes. And you're just like, this is fucking insane. And, you know, to me, I'm a big john lennon imagine fan everybody's human and let's all get together but understanding the the challenges that the african-american community goes through and you know i when i was a kid i had this stupid car that had these annoying stickers i put on it and i used to speed and do stupid stuff with it um and so i used to get pulled over a lot i know what it's like to lot. I know what it's like to,

I don't know what it's like to get targeted, but I kind of know, cause you know, I, I stacked up like six warrants and, you know, I didn't pay the things. And so I know,

I know how it works. And I've had a lot of friends that have not a lot of friends, but I have friends that gone to prison and the parole system, you know, they do everything to get you back. You know, once they get you, you're entangled and it's really hard to get away,

especially the way the system's built. And then, of course, there's the discrimination of voting, where you can't get your voting rights back in most states when you come out. So it's an interesting journey, and so I hope everyone that's watching Black Lives Matter is doing their research. You know, it's surprising to me. I, like most people thought the confederate statues had been built you know sometime shortly after the revolution or the uh civil war and you

know to find out the dive it was the daughters of the rebel or daughters of the confederacy that were a jim crow era sort of group went through and built all these statues and put up all these um put up you know they put names on schools and everything else and this was basically an fu it was a it was a like they were seeing the rise of civil rights and martin luther king um and they're like well okay you can get your civil rights but we're going to still remind you that we're in control um and it made me also realize that we're really not that far. We're only what, 50, 60 years that removed from civil rights era. Yes. And, and, you know, between the redlining and everything else, the systematic racism

that's still going on, you guys are still persecuted and that's all going to change. And so I'm hoping that as we tear down these statues and, you know, I listened to somebody, um, somebody was talking the other day and said, my African-American father wouldn't drive down streets that were named after Confederate generals. And a light went on my head because I used to own a mortgage company and I went, they named the streets that way so that African-Americans wouldn't move into those neighborhoods. Oh, my God. I mean, it was just like Donald Trump and his father when they were, um, when they were not allowing African-Americans to move into their place and they got sued by the justice department back in the sixties or early seventies. Um, so yeah, it's definitely a thing. And I hope everyone that's, uh, following

black lives matter. In fact, one of the things I did, I don't, I don't even know if this is a psychology thing, but I started doing a thing, I don't even know if this is a psychology thing, but I started doing a thing because I was learning all these words, like, you know, these keywords that the white nationalists use because Trump was using them, like our legacy and the code

of what those things mean. And you're like, wait, okay. And when, you know, their culture, you know, different code words that they use that are racist. And I was like, wow, okay. And when, you know, their culture, you know, different, different code words that they use that are racist. And I was like, wow, okay. All right. So I need to eliminate this from my vocabulary. And then I started doing an experiment where when I go out in public, I'd start looking, I start trying to be conscious about how I felt when I would look at people's faces and what my reactions were. And I started, you know,

dealing with some of my biases that way. And that really helped me learn a lot about myself and going, Hey, why do I do that? Because, you know, I, I, I don't ever know that I was fully racist. I grew up, you know, loving everyone. I grew up, uh, knowing people, but some of these little prejudices kind of creep in from your environment. And I don't think we realize how some of them are. We, we, you know, we talk to people and, and then I don't, I, you know, it's definitely a psychology. And I think everyone needs to do an inventory, especially with Black Lives Matter and go, how can we do better? How can we lift everyone up? And, and I'm sorry, I'm, I'm carrying on here and i need to let you talk um because uh no one wants to hear me but uh uh one thing you talked about was that uh theory of scarcity where people

believe that if they're the majority and they have to lift up the minority that they have to give up something they do that's not the great way america was built it wasn't built on scarcity. It was built on a rising tide lifts on boats. Yeah. So there's, I mean, there's a ton of great points that you've made, Chris. I do want to go back to address this idea that, you know, African-American black people who end up gaining some wealth or, or essentially status and power leave people in their culture behind. There is certainly a group of them that leave their culture behind or choose to do that because the circles that they're running in,

perhaps they feel that they truly have been able to ascend some of those challenges, but there's also a lot of them that continue to help their community and continue to be champions of their culture and inclusion and bringing other people along. So I just want to point that out. Another thing I want to say is that, and this is a, this is an analogy that I did want to share with you today. I think that the racial history of the United States in very many ways aligns with the development of food in the United States. And I'm going to follow me on this journey. So have you ever tried to diet, Chris?

It's a serious question. I'm just asking you, have you ever tried to diet? I'm not sure how to take that question. Like you're looking at me like this guy's never done. I'm just kidding. I'm doing funny. I'm doing funny, but no, I have tried to diet. Yes. You said you love food, right? You said you love food, right? Okay. All right. So the, the, the, the, the picture of this metaphor that I want to paint for you is that the United States and the way that food is developed in this country has moved from things that early on in the 20th century were very organic. I mean, they kind of came, they were sourced in different markets around people's neighborhoods and things eventually became more and more processed. Right. So then you started having less and less of the organic side, more and more of the process side. And that process side of things really did ramp up with the industrial era.

So where people could make food faster and easier through a process, it became processed. They started using preservatives so it could last longer. And a lot of that was based on money, right? Because you didn't want your stuff to spoil in a day. But it used to be that stuff would spoil. So they started putting more and more preservatives in it so follow me on this metaphor so when we try to diet nowadays we go out to the store we try to look and see what different types of things are offered there and we see a lot of processed foods they're easy right chunky soup it's in a can you

pour it out you warm it up uh This frozen food or that frozen food, that is very simple because they flash freeze it and now you can use it 20 days later, right? It's hard to find things that are going to be extremely healthy because the way the food has been changed over the years, it's become more processed and full of all kinds of things. Some things we don't even know about, right? This is the same way our society is with race. When you think about the foundation of the United States, and you think about how we kind of came from a struggle of a civil war where there were actually people fighting for different sides. One side wanted to protect, of course, their economics, you know, and slavery was involved in that. The other side was like, well, we don't

want you to have that advantage. We actually want to make sure that everybody has equal rights. And however, that all came together, right? You look at how manifest destiny impacted the United States, the thought process behind it. We deserve this entire land mass from the Atlantic to the that we deserve this, we have to have this. And what I'm saying is that when people nowadays, despite the Black Lives Matter movement, despite some of the movements that have come up over the years, try to turn away from the racist past of the United States, it's very similar to dieting. It's hard to find spaces in American culture where racism doesn't exist, where privilege doesn't exist, and where those things don't feel more comfortable than thinking the opposite. The same way it stinks to go out and get a burger if it's not going to have a bun on it because you're used to eating the bun and the meat, right? And I'm just talking to you about this because I've struggled with the dieting side of things too. And when I was diagnosed back in 2015 being pre-diabetic, okay,

which is essentially metaphorically like some people learning at some point in time that they do have racist beliefs, they do have implicit bias. I had to go on a diet, and it was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. I had to not eat the things that I wanted to eat. I had to pass up on things. I had to go to events where the only food that was available was food that I wasn't supposed to eat. I had to pass up on things. I had to go to events where the only food that was available was food that I wasn't supposed to eat. This is the same way that racism exists in our country. If you try to turn away from it, there's going to be something else that kind of pulls you

back in. Right. And, you know, during that process, very fortunately, I was able to discipline the heck out of myself. I had to eat the right thing. My wife had to change the way that we cooked at home. I had to exercise my behind off. Man, I went through a significant amount of depression and just wanted to die sometimes. But I lost 40 pounds, Chris. And in order to turn away from racism in this country, because of the history and the foundation of what we've experienced, people have to intellectually diet from what is the traditional processed foods

that are readily accessible for the mind of essentially the supremacy, this nationalism, this manifest destiny, this idea that anybody can make it in our society. These are things that are woven into the fabric and the food of our country. So dieting is hard. We all know that. We all try a little bit. You know, you might get a terrible report from the doctor, which is what we're seeing with Black Lives Matter. Hey, look, what? I think I'm going to diet. I think I'm not going to engage in watching some of the stuff that I was watching because it's been, you know, it's, it's racist, right? I'm not going to listen to the things I listened to because they're racist. But then eventually those things just keep coming after you, just like McDonald's or Golden Arches or Burger King or Chick-fil-A, which most of those places use extremely processed foods so they can

make the massive amount of profits with the fastest amount getting to you, and they're feeding a lot of people. That's the same way our society functions. So it's hard to diet, and it's going to be hard for America to turn away from its racist past unless we make some significant changes. That starts with teaching a different type of history to our students and our kids. As parents, we have to teach our kids essentially about the racist past of the United States and that, yes, we've made a significant amount of progress, but we still have a long way to go. We have to change the history books. We have to make sure that a lot of these things, which they're going through this process of, you know, in my opinion, it's a certain sense of atonement by tearing down some of these statues and renaming

places and everything else. But let us not forget that we at one point thought it was okay to name them those things, right? There needs to be a little plaque off to the side that says, at one point in time, this statue stood here because a certain group of people felt that it was appropriate. But then later in time, now this new statue that is certain group of people felt that it was appropriate. But then later in time, now this new statue that is a representation of people who had beliefs that weren't so problematic now stands here, right? There has to be that caption. But we can go through this process as a country, but it's going to be just as hard as dieting. And we know, Chris, that America has an obesity problem, right? We know that.

And we know that it's a problem too. Exactly. It's the same thing. It's the same idea of this rugged individualism that I deserve to be able to do what I want to do. Let's not even start talking about coronavirus, right? But this is what's woven into America. This rugged individualism is very synonymous with the ideal of supremacy that has happened over the years. And that's what our country truly does rest upon. And I think I've tapped into that individualism to a certain extent to overcome some of my own personal struggles, right? Because I've looked at other people. I've looked at people that, you know, of course, have been known to be fallible individuals and seen, well, gosh, they overcome challenges. They've been able to, you know, be flawed at one point,

but then they turn toward being more, you know, righteous and doing the right thing. And I recognize that people are human. We're all going to make mistakes. But I think as a country, we have to turn and we have to not forget our past but we have to fight it just like we fight obesity which is a daily struggle it's tough most days you're going to consume more uh things that are biased than you are going to consume things that aren't biased you understand where i'm coming from it's like it makes it tough and this is the part where a lot of people get stuck intellectually and they say well i don't think i can do this. Maybe my behavior isn't that. I'm just going to live my life in a way that I think is colorblind. I'm using air quotes for the folks that can't see. as tough as it was for me to lose weight and everybody else that tries to go on that journey because of what our country has become and how much is available for us to eat. That's not good for us.

It's just the same way that racism works in this country. And I love the analogy you bring up of the manifest destiny of America and how that, how that's really deeply woven into our, our perception of our culture. And, and would you would you say entitlement would be part of that? Absolutely. Think about the entitlement to go into a country and essentially march coast to coast, killing, displacing. There was just the anniversary of the Trail of Tears the other day, right?

I mean, think about that. This is something that is just enshrined in our culture, and people live on that land now and call it theirs. They live on that land, and there's people who have taken over the land, and they farm it, and they produce from it, and they feel like that land is actually owned by them, right? So every time we talk about land ownership in this country, and nowadays when people are doing talks,

they will do an acknowledgement of the original peoples of that land, which I think is important, right? Every time you say this is my land and there's a value to that land, at what cost did that land end up becoming yours? It was at the behest of a whole other group of people. This is what we learn in our country. Oh, well, there's reservations now. They have something. That was an enslavement into

itself, really. Exactly. Have people been to a reservation? Do they know the struggles that the people on reservations currently deal with? I mean, there's reservations in Nebraska. I've been to some of these places and although there are people that are there that are struggling towards success and trying

to make the most of themselves, there are also lots of issues in this day and age with those peoples because of what happened to them. Yeah. And they're being even more with coronavirus, too. Absolutely. Yes. And again, this same obesity kind of concept and how certain groups of people have had less access to health care and stuff. Coronavirus is killing them at a much higher clip, right? It's just another facet of the racism that is in the historical context of our country. So as you see these things play out, and again,

as we were connecting dots earlier in this conversation, it all makes sense. But that's tough to plug into, Chris. Like you you said how do we plug into that and step away and still be inspired and motivated and and i remember the black lives matter movement uh at the end of obama's administration and uh i think a lot of it they were seeing the rise of donald trump and his following and you know back then he was still touting that nixon line rule of law um uh but i think one thing that's really changed this time um the visuals of joyce floyd were were something that impacted everybody i mean watching it um uh which was weird because the visuals of i remember watching for the first time the Rodney King beating.

And for me, that was just extraordinarily shocking. I, you know, the, I mean, that, that was just, you, I would have thought that would have been a sea change right there. But I think one thing that we're doing better this time with the, with this movement and maybe that was, you know, it's just, it's just the, the keeping, keeping to come back to this, we're finally getting to it. But learning how it's woven into our history, learning about the monuments and these implicit biases like you speak of, where they've been around forever and how we really, I think we've really come to a moment where like,

we got to disassemble all this crap. We got a lot of, we got piles of crap and there's a lot we got to disassemble. And there's a lot of conversations we need to have. And, you know, I, you know, everyone's always in this history.

And I think that's, I, I, you know, you'll hear from people, well, this is our history. This is our culture.

This is our, you can't tear down, can't tear down the monuments because it's part of our history. Well, I learned about history in a book. It's fine with me uh but that comes into what you were talking about earlier that manifest destiny where people feel that this is their entitled right you know this this is my ancestor um hey i'd known a few of my ancestors they were assholes so they did some stuff i'm not proud of so uh you know i'm cool with it

but realizing how repressive some of that stuff was and the basis of it i mean those daughters of the confederacy holy shit they're they did a lot of stuff i mean like like 6 000 monuments or something and schools i i saw a graph back back in the day of all the different things they'd enacted throughout the South, and they had little dots, and I was just like, holy crap, those people are busy. And the Jim Crow laws and everything else. And so, you know, I think it's a reckoning we all have to go through. I think every American needs to sit down and do an inventory search, like you said. And, you know, I'm even seeing john wayne now

john wayne was getting attacked uh for some of his racist i think he said some racist stuff and some of his uh attitudes um you know he's he's kind of being pulled down a few notch and pins you know i've had to look at you know i grew up idolizing him as a dad sort of figure, as what a man was. I grew up in the 70s. So you look at John, he's a tough guy. But then there was also the element of what you grew up with, guns and the sort of element of Wild West and all this stuff. But I think it's great we're doing this.

I think I'm just going to be so happy when they remove the rebel flag from the Mississippi flag. Yes. I think that's going to be sea change. But I love that we're tearing down this history and that we're understanding this, these implicit prejudice or non-implicit prejudices over. And we're realizing how it's you know for years i railed against our uh i forget the word i term i use for it but you know the super uh prison system that we have that's just out of control you know it's america's great yo what are we great at we're

like number one at imprisoning people like how is how is that? How is that great? And you just, now you can really see through some of the things we've exposed with the police racial bias and different things that they have. You know, I even talked to friends that are police officers, and there's like, there's some laws that we have to do to get pushed on us

that we can see in a legislative basis that they aren't good for the communities that they have that they end up technically targeting yes and uh a lot of that's just got to get unwound yes i agree and so this uh you know i call the prison industrial complex you know it's like that's the term i'm looking for process of just you know the the the, the funds that kind of go to that. And if we were to take those funds and shift them toward education and healthcare and everything else and how we have better outcomes and stuff. One thing you pointed out though, Chris, that I want to go back to is I really do want to kind of focus in more on this idea that we can make change because

I do think that we can make change. I do think that we can make change. I do think that this is a watershed moment. We are going to make significant progress in this time. But again, you have to go back to changing the policy, changing the laws, the legislation, all of these things that have happened in the past. There has to be some adjustment so that those things can't continue. And all of these systems haven't been uncovered. If you look at the judiciary and how it's being shaped currently, you're going to recognize how these things and some of the rule changes and legislation changes and laws would persist for many years beyond where we are as a result of the change of the judiciary right now.

But there's a certain change that has to happen that has to be from outside and from inside, without and within, right? And everybody has a part in that. Every single American has a part in that. We can all fight that. Remember, too, as we talked about George Floyd and why this has caused such an upheaval right now in our country. that there aren't so many Americans who had actively watched and seen a lynching to this point, right? What they watched in George Floyd's murder was a lynching that happened that so many people were exposed to that trauma. But remember that they used to put the lynchings of African Americans in this country on postcards and send them out in case you missed it. Okay. That's part of our country. Yes. That is a part of our country. People who were burned, black people who were burned and pictures went out and it was a, it was a thing that you'd go to and you take a picnic and everything and you'd

go and sit and watch the lynching of the day. There's certain trauma that is so in twined intertwined in the fabric of this country that you don't want to plug into it but i encourage people to just step in every now and then and there was one case uh where i and there's probably more cases sadly uh but i think there's one case where they put the head of someone they would put them in the shops windows yes you know someone who'd been uh murdered and um i know that one place i want to go to when i i believe it's in georgia uh i always get georgia and alabama confused because i just think of it as one big racist pot but i know that's me sorry i just lost

the alabama georgia audience but uh uh there's a lynching museum that they've taken and made. And I watched Oprah Winfrey walk through it and it was sobering. Like it was sobering because you, we're not really taught like you say in, in the history books, the mass of that. And there's a reason for that. There's a reason for that, Chris,

that is a part of that other agenda that we're talking about. That was, well, so long as we can explain this as something that happened and now it's done, then most people aren't going to continue worrying about it. They're going to say, well, that was a different time. I mean, we don't do that anymore. There are many lynchings all the time in the United States still, and I'm not talking about the actual rope in the neck. I'm just talking about other mechanisms that are used to choke the life out of people of color across

this country. We turn a blind eye to those things. We don't think about them often. But if you look at some of the educational systems, if you look at some of the neighborhoods that people live in and things of that nature, these things are still going on, but it's just, it's more covert, you know? And essentially, so that's kind of the bigger picture is just that these things are still happening. It's just the Black Lives Matter movement has kind of pulled the top off of it. And everybody's looking in like, wow, those things are still happening. The people who are living those things, by the way, as we talked about them, you know, more power to them because they're experiencing this every day.

They don't need us to talk about it. They're living it. They don't need someone outside to look in and say, oh, that looks bad. They're living that. They've seen people die. They've, you know, experienced that. So, but I do have hope still, Chris. You know, I mean, this has been such a wonderful discussion,

but I do want to kind of end on a very hopeful note in saying that I do feel that there's been an awakening recently. I think there's been an awakening of our youth who, again, going through that same indoctrination and learning from the same history system that we all did, probably felt like their prospects were so much better because they had made it through all this and now they're standing on the shoulders of their ancestors right um but i do think that they've been awakened now

they've been activated you see them in the streets they're at protests they're trying to learn about this whole legislative process that in and of itself if you look at the makeup of legislators across the country is another representation of that systematic racism in our country, right? So they're getting more aware and attuned to how they can make change. And people like yourself and other people who I know, even middle aged people who are white are saying, what can I do? They're asking questions. They're learning more. They're having discussions with their other white friends about racism, which is very uncommon, right? I mean, what other white friend do you usually sit down with unless maybe you have that kind of conversation with them that you say, you know, we really need to do more to end racism, right? Like, right. Kind of like this concept of men sitting around and talking about how to end rape, right? Against women, right? It's kind of this new thought

process, I think, where the people who are in charge or responsible for it need to talk more about it. We have events all the time for inclusion. And guess who shows up? The choir, right? All the people of color show up and they're like, yay, we should do these things. The people who need to be in those spaces are now at least being encouraged to move to those spaces. And they're recognizing that it is a part of their duty. I want that to be the new destiny of the United States. I want us to truthfully believe that we can be a country where everyone can be equal and there is room for social justice. Those are some of the tenets that our country were founded upon, but we still have yet to realize that as a country, liberty and justice for all. Yeah. Not yet.

Right. So I hope we continue to bend toward that part of our, our, our history and hopefully, you know, we can, we can all be better. It is an interesting time,

as you mentioned before, where we're going through the me too, and we're having to learn to listen there. We're going through black lives matter and having to learn to listen there. In the argument that I had with the guy who I guess is an African-American Trump supporter, judging by the way he was claiming Black Lives Matter is a democratic construct, everybody has the ability to rise up. You know, he accused me of virtue signaling.

And I'm like, dude, I've really been on a journey, uh, for a long time. In fact, Trump really set me on a journey of self inventory. Um, uh, president Obama, um, the one thing that has kept me sane these past few years, president Obama said, you know, America goes through a zigs and zags, and we're going to go through a zag with donald trump addressing that and uh the key is that we come back from it and that's keeping me safe this whole year because i mean it became very clear he wanted to drag us back to 1950 i grew up in the 70s i didn't want to go back to i was born in 68 um i've studied martin luther king a lot and uh bobby kennedy bobby kennedy's one of my favorite people in history um and uh and god knows we don't ever want to go back to that but i i hope we've

turned a page and i hope people are learning i think they're learning we just need everybody to get learning so in fact i was heartened today that donald trump took down his racist tweet uh that he posted with the person screaming white power. GOP Senator Tim Scott was on, as we mentioned earlier, he was on the channels going, he needs to take that down. And he finally did over at the golf course. of scarcity where people feel in danger that, hey, if we lift up a segment of our society that's marginalized, it's got to come out of our pockets. That's not necessarily true. Reverend Al Sharpton, who I'm an atheist, and so I'm not really big with revs, but Reverend

Al Sharpton is one of my favorite people on the planet. And he mentioned in a comment, I think it was on Morning Joe one time, where he said, you know, if you look at this whole thing of worrying about, well, you know, we've got to spend some money and we've got to do these things and we've got to defund the police and things, and where is this money going to come from? You know, he brought up, he said, you know, look at the contributions of African-Americans in our society,

technically really our society when you look at rock and roll blues uh sports everything else in the world the great contributions of the thing we need to stop looking at people as as to you know how much they cost or you know something like that or this this theory of scarcity and start realizing that a rising tide lifts all boats if we can lift these communities up if we can make these communities up if we can make black lives matter if we can eliminate these repressive and uh and these these uh these racist sort of things that have come in and these kind of subconscious ways that we've targeted uh a thing and start dealing with it and start looking at it and i'm you know i'm and start looking at these

rules and going wait okay is this there's some element of racist and targeting that we're doing with this law or that law, and we can just instill that. So I'm really heartened by it. I love the fact that we're defunding the police and looking at, okay, let's not send to a domestic situation that isn't violent or out of control that would require a gun. Let's send a social worker there so that they can sit down with those people and go,

how come, you know, maybe we can set some goals or go to counseling for your marriage as opposed to dealing with the violence. Um, so hopefully we'll become a more enlightened society. I'm sure we're gonna have more zigs and zags. We're going to fall down.

We're going to do, uh, uh, we're going to learn from our lessons. So this seems to be the way this stupid country seems I just wish I could go 100 years in the future right now or in fact it may have to be 200 or 300 years

I finally my friend said you know there is a generation that does have to die out before I think a lot of stuff will be closed that or they've got to just deal with it you know I mean the argument that I mean, the, the argument that I have with the African-American gentleman, you know,

he was like, there is no racism in America. And I just want to say, I'm in the white country club. I think I know what they say. And I think there is racism. Like I, I know. Cause I know there may not, there may not be racism in the spaces where he finds himself at certain points. Right. But like you said, I mean, again, we know, just like you were making the example of the Me Too movement, and also connecting that to the Black Lives Matter movement, men knew during the Me Too movement that there were spaces

where women were not in those spaces, that men said certain things that they should not say about women. Men were not brave enough to stand up and say, we should not say those things about women. The same way that some white people in spaces where there are no people of color hear other things that they know people should not be saying. So in the Me Too movement, I think some of those men were empowered by thinking that now I can say something in these spaces and guys know, hey, this is serious, right? Because this is something that could take you down, this could take your career or whatever. It's the same way in the Black Lives Matter movement. I think there are some white individuals who are starting to think now,

we do need to be allies and not only just, you know, okay with the world being the way it is, but we need to be anti-racist. And they're stepping over that juncture of going from just being, to I'm anti-racist now. Anything you say that doesn't fit where I think we should be as human beings and how we should accept people, I'm going to reject it. And that's a tough life to live, Chris, it is. You recognize, I'm sure,

that it's hard to be around your, you know, potential sum of your friends if you're constantly always talking about these ideals that are different from what they believe or how they think. And it's difficult to be a man in spaces where other men want to be misogynistic and you don't want to be that way. Sometimes you end up being by yourself, you know? For me, I've always had a big mouth and a powerful

platform. So I just talk about it and I lose a lot of friends. I lost some friends last week. You know, I mean, I'm always losing friends. But to me, I'm either going to push what I think is the right agenda, and the agenda changed the world. You know, I grew up, I kind of went through a journey, and I don't want to take you along if you have other things you need to get to, but I went through a journey where I voted for George Bush. I was a Republican.

I got rich. I come from being poor. And so my attitude was the same sort of thing. Everybody can rise up and get their own shit if they just have the right attitude. That sort of rap line. And 9-11 happened. And it was shocking to me. It kind of took me down and built me back up again.

I realized a lot of things, and I realized there was a world out there. I realized there was people in other countries that really hated me, and America maybe wasn't that cool. And I started realizing that there were people in our world, in our nation, that were marginalized, that didn't have the advantages I had. And even though I did grow up poor, I still had more than most, I think, that grow up in a poor environment or in a prejudiced environment where there's, you know, racism and prejudice and all those other things like you talked about early on where you look around and go redlining and one out of three of us end up in prison. Who will it be?

I mean, thinking about that psychology and having to grow up with that, it would be challenging to me, as I'm sure it was to you and everyone else. And so then that's when I became, I didn't really become a Democrat at that point, but I started to switch my politics because I was like, hold on, this whole get rich quick and you get yours bullshit.

That's not really true. And kind of became my journey. I actually became a Democrat just because of the values I had and how I saw the world and realizing that there are people that, you know, need to be lifted up. You know, you, you have an affliction you were born with. My sister has got MS. I can't, she's in a wheelchair. I can't yell at her and be like, you can become a great person. I can't send her to a Tony Robbins thing that, you know, you could be anybody you want. She can't, she has MS and she has dementia. And it's, it's in decline.

So there are people that we have to take care of. There are people we have to lift up. There are people that we have to give care of. There are people we have to lift up. There are people that we have to give voices to and, uh, and lobby for. So I hope we're at that thing. I think, uh,

my biggest, my biggest fun is going to be when they put black lives matter and they paint it, I guess build the Blase is going to paint that right in front of Trump tower. Um, but you know, hopefully we come out of this journey and it's an ugly way to go through this

i mean i i'm constantly been saying um it's really sad that we had to go through something as dark as george floyd and other things of course i'm sure this has been going on for a long time we just barely saw it on video but it it's sad to me that so many people had to die uh and in the horrors that had to take place for us to get to this place in time um and i'm hoping that the referendum of the presidential election will get us uh biden of course as a president in in november i remember reading an account from an african-american i i'm forgetting the comedian i believe who said it or it was somebody who said it that's on my list um but they said you know the thing about donald trump is is it's better that he's in your face with it and that he brings it out because now we can see it before that and i

went through the journey with my friends i you know obama was elected i voted for obama in the first term um in his i didn't vote for him the second term because i kind of felt like he betrayed me a lot in the whole he was going to give change right and a lot of that was resisted by the republicans you got to blame that on him but i i just kind of felt like he flipped on me with the whole change thing but but you can give me he was a great president, probably the best president we ever had, ethics-wise. And I felt like he was my president, which I don't feel with this one. I don't feel this guy has any interest in me.

Well, he's a narcissist. He doesn't have it. But anyway, this gentleman made a point. He says it's better that we drug this out in the light, that these people feel that they don't have to be PC anymore. And I had a ton of friends come out of the racist closet when Trump was elected. And these are people that, you know, they were going, Kumbaya, we have a black president. Yeah, we all like Obama. But I started seeing in the year before, in the last year of Obama's, you know, a lot of my friends

starting to tout that Fox News line and it started to really bash obama you know tan suit evil obama and it started to really the thickness of it started to really become obvious and you're just like finally i called out this is this is pre-donald trump election i called out my friends and i go you guys are just fucking racist i mean that's just it all this bullshit you're bashing obama with you guys are just racist and you know i got a lot of blowback for that i lost a lot of friends but you know then i lost a lot of friends when trump became an office and i was like holy crap and all these racists came out and i was like ah you don't get to be near me i don't want anybody associating

with you and so you know maybe this is the journey we had to go to get to where you are you know you go through your life and you but it's sad to me that so many people had to die and so many people had to suffer for us to get to this point but um hopefully we come out the other side of this better people and and we come out i think we still have a lot of cleansing that we're gonna have to do of the donald trump era um i think there's i think we're seeing these like these karens that you're seeing these racist karens that are coming out i think there's going to be over the next few months this battle where these people are going to come out even more so i mean i was astounded me to see you know number one a president tweeting white power uh someone's

saying it but to see someone saying on a video i'm just like wow okay so we're really i mean there's going to be there's the rise of uh black lives matter but there's also going to be this rise of these racists that we're going to be fighting with for the next two or three months and i'm sure they're not going to be happy with the results of the election. Cross your fingers that we're going to have to reset this because they're going to be angry that they've lost, you know, I have the new PC anymore. Anyway, Dr. Chatters, I really appreciate you spending a lot of time with us.

And one thing I've loved out of these different conversations is trying to give people from my side of the table, the white people a roadmap to think about and to start considering and doing that inventory cleansing where they go, okay, so what sort of things, it's interesting, even just sometimes, sometimes the word we think like culture or, or something, uh, it ends up being racist or prejudice and we don't realize that we have to take those things out and work on them. So give me your, any final thoughts you want,

if you would, and then your.com. Yeah, absolutely. Chris, thank you so much for the opportunity to spend time with you today. And thank you for being vulnerable and talking about your own personal journey.

That means a lot to me that you're willing to actually talk about that. And I think that's what more people like yourself need to do. You need to think about your own personal journey in the context of what things have you benefited from in our society as a result of where you came from or what your last name is that is actually your last name and how you came to the United States or your family and things of that nature. I think doing that makes you better as a person. We have to see

being inclusive as making our culture better for everyone rather than just maintaining a certain sense of superiority. And I did want to make one point, and that is that I do believe that these last four years have been positive for the United States in the sense that it helped us to realize that we had not made as much progress as a lot of people thought we made. And in order to do that, it took really going to the depths that we've been in these last few years with children being locked up in cages on the border and people, you know, going un, you know, accosted with some of their rhetoric and everything else and some of the shifts that have happened on a national level with national security and things of that nature. So we have to have these zigs and

these zags as a country. And I think that hopefully the true essence and what will essentially be the history of the United States is that when we do see these things, these inequities between people, we band together as a country and we come out of it better than we went into it. And I hope that's what the legacy of the country is. And I think that opportunities like this, where people like yourself share your experience, I get a chance to share my experience. We connect. We just bring these things up. They're unique opportunities to really encourage other people to do the same thing. Folks can find me at LCHAT, the number one on Twitter. Dr. Lawrence Chatter is a motivational speaker on Facebook. I love to have conversations with people. I'm a really easy person to get along with,

regardless of what perspective you're coming from. I like to have discussions, you know, from an intellectual level. And I hope that folks continue to listen to stuff like this and, you know, encourage them to seek out their own information, learn about the history of the U S learn about their own personal history and do better. Thank you very much for being on the show, Dr. Chatters. And I'd love to have you on anytime you want to come on, just let me know, ping me and let's have you on.

I'd love to have more of these discussions. The more we need to learn. And like I said, it's going to get a little bit darker. I think this president is going to race bait a whole lot more as the more desperate and into a corner he gets um and uh and then you know there's got to be a reckoning after this uh hopefully biden wins i mean certainly if trump were to win man i don't even know man it's just uh i i think we might hit a revolution where people would run overrun the the white house um but uh and they probably should at that point but uh i i hope we become a better country after this i'm really you know if i ever meet president obama again i'm just gonna probably hug him and cry i don't know i really miss that

guy i really miss even like george bush like i hated him after the uh iraq war and seeing everything dick cheney did. I don't even know why they call him President Dick Cheney. But, I mean, even him I kind of like nowadays. I'm like, oh, we actually had a pretty good deal with that guy. So, you know, hopefully we become a better place. So everyone check out some of the materials from Dr. Chatters and everything else and we'll have them on and I implore everyone to do Journey and

Reckoning and everything else be sure to go to the CVPN you can subscribe to all nine podcasts there thechrisfossshow.com you can go to our YouTube channel if you're listening to the audio version of this Dr. Chatters will be on our YouTube channel so you can watch the video version if you like

you can go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss, hit that bell notification button for all that good stuff. I appreciate you being honest for being with us, and we'll see you next time.