The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Dr. Lawrence Chatters on Black Lives Matter & John Lewis RIP

Episode Date: July 19, 2020

Dr. Lawrence Chatters on Black Lives Matter & John Lewis RIP Facebook.com/Drchatters

you're listening to the chris voss show podcast we interview the smartest people in the room the ceos authors thought leaders visionaries and motivators to fill up your brain and make you better looking here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in today. We've been covering a lot of Black Lives Matter stuff. We've been having this discussion with a lot of different brilliant minds, great authors, speakers, et cetera, people that have these wonderful minds and sharing the experience of what we're going through culturally in America,

what different things we need to improve, what things we need to change, what we need to look at internally into our own selves and our own mirrors, because that's really what all of this world is, is a wilderness of mirrors. It's reflecting back on us things that we need to change on the inside. And so it's been great to have some of these wonderful people on. Today we have a guest making his second appearance. There you go. He's up for the yes and no robe, I guess, in a few more appearances.

Dr. Lawrence Chatters currently serves as the Vice President for Student Affairs at Midland University. Dr. Chatters holds a doctorate and a master's degree in counseling psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He's an avid reader, entrepreneur, rap artist, and international DJ. Dr. Chatters has been engaged in diversity, equity, and inclusion work for the past 14 years through a range of professional experiences, including a diversity concentration in his post-doctoral fellowship at Penn State University and his role as the diversity and inclusion coordinator for the Nebraska Athletic Department. Dr. Chatters considers his most important roles, though,

a father to his two daughters and a partner to his wife of 15 years, Katie. How are you doing? Welcome to the show again, Lawrence. Chris, it is so awesome to be here again. And i do expect a robe at least after the fifth time so i hope you have i think there's a there's a rover there's a coffee cup or i don't know we're working on it it's a covet test that's more valuable exactly right now that's a box it's a box of toilet paper with the chris voss show on it or something. Nice. I should probably give that out.

Cause we're dying. Cotton swabs too, you know, stick them all the way up your nose and brain, but no, it's wonderful to have you on again. You know, as I mentioned before,

you're welcome to come on anytime so we can discuss all sorts of different intelligent issues because that's the sort of discussions we love to have on the show. So how are you doing?? How are things over there on your side of the world? Well, right here in Omaha, Nebraska, you know, we're experiencing an uptick in coronavirus cases like many people across the country are. And, you know, that's challenging. I think people want to try to get back to some sense of normalcy, but we're watching it very closely. Here in Nebraska, we were able to flatten the curve and not necessarily through extremely restrictive measures, but we gave people the opportunity, the autonomy to do what they thought was best, back moving in that direction, but with even less restrictions.

So it's interesting, you know, we kind of talked a little bit offline about the rugged individualism of the United States and the autonomy of our people here in this country. And I think that's really one of the challenges we're up against with coronavirus, right, is that people want to manage it however they see fit. They don't want to have to listen to doctors. I mean, think about it. When you go to the doctor, they give you a recommendation. Sometimes you follow it as long as it doesn't impact your life too significantly. And I think that's what we're facing now, right? Is this wide range of people's opinions and decisions to do what they think is best for them despite medical advice. And so it's challenging, right? There's been a lot of discussion we've been having with that. In fact, yesterday I was bored last night i couldn't sleep and uh

i started going through my facebook feed and i started to notice like really crazy stuff like people talking about how the testing sites are they're actually injecting you with the virus the testing sites oh my goodness and people doing these expert car videos which i finally spoke out against this you know if you're if you're listening listening to this, I've had a professional studio for, I don't know, 10 years. And, you know, it's not professional professional. It's in my house. It's in my office. I mean, at one point I had the whole kitchen turned into a studio.

But, like, seriously, if you're listening to experts sitting in their car, especially when they're driving, endangering people as they're driving, you may want to check your, like, here's your sign. Like, seriously. Yes. You know, honestly, if you listen to someone who has a degree, like you have a degree. Like you've got a, what is it? You've got a master's degree in counseling psychology and a doctorate. Like, I'm going to listen to you.

Some guy in a car who's like, I don't know, a janitor part-time or he's an Uber driver or something. I'm not saying they're bad people, but you just might be out of your depth. Well, you know, that's, that's a, it's an important point that you bring up that, you know, people don't really follow the sources of a lot of their information all the way back to the start of where that source is. And it's one of the unfortunate things about the rise of some of the news sources that are specifically funded by, you know, different interests. And when you follow the money, and I think that's where you'll always find influence, right? If you follow the money, you'll find that some of these things that are being floated around, as far as conspiracy theories and things

of that nature, may even be coming from outside of the United States and actually increasing the potential of chaos and things of that nature. And I never rule those things out. Because I understand how smart some people are and how they can sow seeds of discontent and actually force a country to implode on itself. And so, you know, that's what I see happening around. But today, hopefully, we can talk about something really positive and awesome, which is this idea, Chris, of moving from awareness to action. I've watched and listened to a lot of your podcasts, and I see that, you know, you really are using your platform in a very positive way to bring on highly skilled and educated people to talk about complex issues. And I think that's awesome because, you know, other intellectuals like myself, we like to listen to that. We like

to listen to people's development and how they conceptualize different complex issues in their journey. And I think I've heard that from you. I've started to hear the development of that in you. And so I'm really interested to kind of keep talking about your development today through some of the concepts that I've come up with. And I want to talk to you about each one of these areas. So we'll hopefully get a chance to do that today. Let's do it. So yeah. So Chris, today I want to talk to you a little bit more about awareness to action. We have a lot of people out there that are, in my opinion, in the process of learning more. They're becoming more aware of what's happening around them. They're seeking out additional information regarding institutional racism and some of the other challenges that people of color face in the United States. And I've actually had a chance to talk with some of those people, some of my friends from high school who just say, hey, Lawrence, you know, I want to call you and talk about white

privilege. This is not a concept I ever understood or believed in. But now that I've done more research, I get it. And I really want to talk to you about it. And I've tried to make myself available, as I'm sure many people of color out there have made themselves available, to have discussions because we know that it forwards the movement as we can get more people to be a part of it. But I want to talk to you a little more about your journey today, Chris. So this is – it is the Chris Voss Show, and today it's really going to be the Chris Voss Journey because I hear about it. I'm scared and thrilled at the same time. You should be because anytime a psychologist comes on here and gets to ask you questions, you know.

Oh, crap. I just forgot you're a psychologist. I'm screwed now. Well, no, you'll be fine. But the acronym that I've come up with that kind of describes the journey that a lot of people are on right now is power. And when I think of power,

specifically, I want you to understand that I'm thinking of the superpower that most of us have as human beings to really raise our awareness and become advocates. And in us realizing our power, as I will spell out the acronym for you, I think we help other people realize their power. So the P of the power is privilege. So the first thing we're going to talk about today, Chris, is tell me, what are some of the privileges you feel you have in this country as you have looked at the current circumstances that we're experiencing?

What are some of the privileges that you've seen you have? Good. I thought we were going to talk about how my father didn't hug enough as a child. Not yet. No. Sorry, I had to throw that in there. I mean, there's an endless amount of white privilege that I have. When I get pulled over by a police officer, I know I don't have to worry about it. I don't have to sweat at all. I don't have to think about it.

In fact, I know, especially in my older fat age, when I was younger, they liked to ticket me for speeding, but I had a BMW, so I was speeding. But no, I know that I don't have to worry about that, and I'm likely to get off. Like, there's kind of a code. I don't have to worry about when I apply for a job or if I work with people that people are going to judge me based upon my name. I'm pretty familiar with, I forget the different reports and studies have been done on it, but they found that people, when HR people are looking at different names, they identify certain names racially. And if they have racial bias,

then they, then they, you know, they tend to go for, well, this person isn't, you know, it's all racial profile.

God, there's like a, probably a long list. I know that I'm probably never going to get along jail sins for any of the crap i've ever done how about that uh when i look at um when i look at the amount of people that are in prison and the racial makeup of everyone that's in the prison um you know you see the racial bias there i don't have to worry about getting beaten by a cop you know i see we see this all the time right now on the videos of these cops, you know, you have some white guy, he pulls

some crap and the cops like, Hey, just calm down. You know, it's going to be fine. You see the white kids, like the young man who shot up the, uh, church, um, and kill all the parishioners there. Uh, you know, they, they let him out in cuffs and even took him for McDonald's burger. You know, meanwhile, if you're just, uh, selling cigarettes on the side of the road or, um, you, you might've passed the bill that's bad, a counterfeit bill. Um, you know, then we got to beat you over the head. Um, and, um, God, what else, what else do I have white privilege? No, I think that's, that's a great place to start. And you are certainly aware of those privileges. Um, and all of the things that you're saying are things that are real.

There's, uh, statistics to back these things up. There's real life experiences to back those things up. There's, um, real life experiences that people of color have where they've suffered through the opposite end of those privileges, not necessarily being extended that privilege. I think that's honestly one of the first things that people have to understand, Chris, when they're going about this from awareness to action is the need to understand what their privileges are. Likely you understand your privileges and male as well. Right here in the United States. That's a important thing to recognize. And so then as you start to layer those things on top of each other, white, male, you know, likely have some socioeconomic status, some opportunities, a platform, all of these things, their privileges. And so in that, those privileges, I think, as other people start to think about the beginning of this journey from awareness to action, they need to think about what their privileges are. I also think of my

privileges. You know, I think of the fact that I have an education, right? I have a few degrees. I have access in some specific areas. I have the ability to intellectually articulate myself. So if I need to make a point, I can do that. I can be in certain spaces that other people may not have the opportunity to be in. I'm good at writing. And so from that perspective, I can express myself as well if I need to. If I need to send a letter to somewhere to get something, I can do that. I have privilege of being able to walk. Some people don't have that privilege.

I have the ability to hear. I have the ability to see. Now I'm stepping into some other privileges, Chris, that people don't usually think about, right? So that's the first step. And I think you have done a great job of being able to articulate and understand those privileges. So that's one of the things I want to encourage people to do is do that self-reflection. You had an individual on your show the other day talking about the James Baldwin book. And one of the things he said that was very enlightening to me that I've always felt is that

the challenging part about going about this journey of understanding institutional racism in the United States is that it first takes an internal journey before you can understand the external. If you don't go on that introspective journey, it's difficult to understand how you and other people fit into this mix of things. And so I want to know from you at this point, what kind of internal journey did you go on to understand all of those privileges? How did you go about that process internally? Oh, one thing I thought of while you were talking, because you made the point actually, I was given a pretty good school that was well-funded and I had a good education for the most part, even though I failed at most of it, but that's me. Um, but I had a good education and a lot of people, uh, in poor communities or like Harlem or different things have, have schools that aren't funded well,

probably from racial systematic racism. Um, and so they don't have the same opportunities, especially when it comes to getting a job. Where did my journey begin with race? You know, my introspection has been kind of weird. I grew up in a Mormon cult. And there are two religions that I refer to as a cult, Scientology and Mormonism. They're both space cults. And from three years old, I knew it was kind of, this stuff wasn't logically working for me.

I couldn't put, you know, two and two together. And so ever since then, I always questioned things, like what I was told and stuff. And so I always had this seeking mind. It was, you know, people tell me things, and I try and put stuff together. Fortunately, I was raised in California, and it was a melting pot of everyone. I was a kid, whatever. And I think when I first became really strongly aware of race was when I moved to Utah,

which is 90% white, and one of my best friends was African American. I hadn't noticed it, which you'd think I would in 90% white Utah, but I just didn't notice it. And when I was in, it was in like 10th grade, we were in history class, and he was the only African American in the room. And the teacher said, well, you know, we were talking about slavery and history and stuff. And he said, you know, what do you, what do you think about this? What's your opinion? That was like the first time I looked at it and went, oh, I have a black friend. And for there, you know, I went through most of the journey of life. I tried to always, I was never religious, I'm atheist, but I always tried to hold to some principles, John Lennon's imagine, do good to others, the basic principles of morality that anyone should really espouse to.

But I'm not sure I really understood white privilege and race and stuff. on uh about 30 years ago i met dr france davis at his church and i was there selling some stuff that was like religious materials and stuff that uh company i was working for selling and it was the first time that i felt when i first met him he was very suspicious of me i've been trying to get him on the show actually um he was very suspicious of me uh and, and I could feel, I could feel that he, that I was white and he was black and the way, you know, he, he walked with, he walked with Martin Luther King, uh, and Selma and Birmingham bridge. And he's a great civil rights guy here in Utah. Um, and I could feel that there was this difference based upon us. And I, I knew what he was, you know, I mean, here I was this stupid, you know, white kid showing up in his thing.

And he was like, you know, what is, what does this guy want? Right. And over time, over, over that hour or two that I spent with him, I got to know him, warm up to him. You know, he, he finally went, okay, this is another one of those dudes who's just trying to figure out how to use me. And I guess he decided

i was a nice enough guy he gave me tour of the church uh and it left an impression on me too at the time i just kind of i saw the band thing and uh the the the band uh set up the drums and everything and i was like i was like black people have really cool churches, man. I don't want to come to this thing, right? The Mormon church, like Mormon church is like a funeral. And so, and so that had an impression on me 30 years later. In fact, we're trying to get him on the show. He's retired. So I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get him on. And it's, I don't know if he's good at zoom.

So there's that. But he left an impression on me for 30 years. And in Black Lives Matter in Obama, I voted for Obama, and I voted for Obama not because he was black. I voted, and it was probably one of the principles, but I really bought that he was a great leader, he was a great speaker, he was a great motivator. I bought the change, man.

Everything was about change with Obama, and I bought it. And I said to myself, I'm going to give you a shot at the vote because this is the last time I vote for a politician because I just felt like they were all garbage before. And I said, I'm voting because I believe in change, man, but if you don't change, I'm never voting for anybody ever again. But we saw the rise of Black Lives Matter, and a lot of my friends were having issues with it,

and we started having discussions of white privilege and why this is important. And even back then, what was this, 2015? Yeah. 2015. And then the discussions came about Black Lives Matter, all lives matter. What does it mean? Everything else. And I think that's when I kind of started seriously going down the journey, but a lot of those early things had an impression on me. Um, and, uh, you know, a lot of my friends, we were, you know, we do what we do in our social sphere. We argue about different points and kind of learn from those.

And it made me start to realize that there are people that are disadvantaged. One of the things I woke up to was someone said something, we just barely give civil rights to African-American people in the 65. And so we're like really like, what, 50, 60, 70 years out of that. We're just barely a generation out of that or two. There hasn't been a lot of significant, you know, time that's changed or things that we've really changed because we kind of didn't really do much after that. And so that was kind of my journey. And then, of course, it got deeper when Donald Trump was running for election because I could see the racism coming out.

I could see it from my friends coming out that were closet racists who had been singing, Kumbaya, Obama's president. And then all of a sudden you started seeing the creep from come out from uh the closet racist with the oh uh trump says we don't have to be pc so we can say the n-word and whatever we want now and you're just like wait i thought you were like uh all like let's all be one and they're like no no we're gonna call out uh you know racist or be racist and do what we want because trump says okay and so i i kind of started going on this journey of looking at racism, looking at my contribution to things because that's what I usually do is I go,

you know, what am I contributing to this? I actually did something that was kind of interesting that I've never heard a lot of people doing, but I started doing a thing after Trump became president. And I learned all the white nationalist codes, you know, words like culture, you know, and when he says are like our culture, he doesn't mean like all Americans. He means like white people, especially white nationalist people. Um, and so I started learning the code words and I started reading and learning about white nationalism and I'm like, Holy, there's like a whole thing with this thing. You know, I, I thought, I thought we buried these people in 1950 or something, but we didn't. And so one of the things I started doing was I started

walking around and looking at faces and I learned that I, you know, there's this thing that we do with faces and it goes back to our caveman days where we look at someone's face and we make judgments and decisions about them. And a lot of times they're very inaccurate, right? So I started doing that and I started kind of looking at my own prejudices and my unconscious bias. I'm like, so what did I just judge about that person? Did, you know, what did I fear them because of maybe they looked a little subversive and why did they look subversive to me you know and and i'm talking everybody i just started looking at everybody's faces and started kind of listening to what my unconscious bias is and i probably

still have them i don't know if i'm perfect on it but this is part of the journey and i started talking about it so sorry for going along no so. No, so what you've described, Chris, in your own personal journey is that it's taken you a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of exposure, and a lot of deep thinking to recognize what your privileges are and where you currently stand. And I think that's so important

because people in this moment who haven't done that long-term introspection, they feel as though they're supposed to come to an understanding right now about what's happening, but it's not something that happens so quickly. It actually takes time and it takes energy and it takes pain to be honest with you. Right? So I think you've described that you've described likely some of the pain that you felt when you couldn't change some of those beliefs and perspectives that you had of other people. And you're like, gosh, that that hurts. Like, why would I think that of somebody just because they look a certain way, and I need to change that I need to actively be aware that this is what I'm attributing to that person, because maybe that's what my experience was

in the past with people that look like that. Or maybe I had a bad experience with someone that looked like that. So my brain is telling me, don't interact with someone like that again, because it might lead to another bad experience. That could be anyone across the board, you know, not specifically talking about anything from a cultural perspective, but our brains do that for us automatically, by the way, they say yes and no. That's what our brain does for us in an instant. It's a split second decision. It's a millisecond actually. That is brought on by, like you said, our evolutionary amygdala, our animal brain tells us we should either fight

or we should take off, right? Yeah. And so if you think about the United States and you think about the history of certain peoples in America, there had been a concerted effort to create a difference, a shift, a change between people's thinking about certain types of people. So it automatically led to looking at something

and making an attribution. And so, and what I can honestly say is that when has that been positive for people of color in the United States? When have we ever, as a country, taken a concerted effort to say, when you see people of color, think positively, right? The news doesn't do that. Our criminal justice system doesn't do that. There are no major institutions that attribute the positives to people of color at this point. It's the opposite. So that's the same world that we all grow up in, all of us. As a matter of fact, me personally, in my own personal cultural identity journey, there was certainly a timeframe of potential self-hatred and just not necessarily. And I appreciate you being vulnerable enough to talk about when it started for you, which wasn't necessarily super young with the cultural understanding, but it was kind of at a little bit older of an age when you had that experience with

that classmate of yours and it raised your awareness, right? But then later in the process, you really started to feel comfortable enough, I think, in your own personal journey, and correct me if I'm wrong, but to do the next thing in the POWER acronym, which is to actually reach out to people of different cultures and start talking to them about your personal journey. And not only other people of other cultures, but people within your own culture. And you started having these discussions, which I think is an important point to make is that as people of color, we have these discussions all throughout growing up. It's something we do in our household. It's something we do with our families. It's something we do with our friends. It's a constant

narrative. But for a lot of white people in the United States, having cultural discussions is not a constant narrative. It's actually something that they sometimes shy away from because they don't feel perhaps that they can, you know, speak eloquently about culture, even though they do have cultures that they grow up in. They have certain traditions that they have in their families and things of that nature. But the next point I want to ask you is, when did you start to feel comfortable with this outreach piece of talking to other white people about, you know, maybe we do need to observe and understand our implicit bias. Maybe we do need to figure this out. And then when did you feel comfortable enough to step from that journey into talking to people of color about their experience and even learning more? Cause that's that next step. Um, I've always been a big mouth in social media. I've

always been a big mouth, like all my life, you know, my companies, I used to do the, all the newsletters and I've always just been a big mouth. Uh, you know, when you own companies, I was CEO since I was 18, you know, you talk to everybody, um, you're always selling. Uh, and so when social media came along, it was very natural for me cause you know, I got a big mouth. So, you know, we've always talked about a lot of different things. I don't, I, I'm not sure when it exactly started about race. I mean, certainly over time. I really became conscious of it probably during the Obama years

because that narrative started coming out of Fox, and you would see my friends pick it up. He's got the tan suit. And you're like, seriously? out of Fox and you would see my friends pick it up, you know, well, you know, he's got the tan suit and you're like, seriously? Like, and then you would start to see there was a, there's an old post. I have, you can find it somewhere in 2014 or 15, um, where I'd really just gotten sick of the narrative from my friends, some of my friends. Um, it sounds like I have all racist friends. Some of my friends that aren't friends with me anymore. And I'm like, you know what? I've seen

so many posts about how you hate Obama for this and how you hate Obama for that and how you hate Obama for this. And you know what? It's clear that you just don't like having a black president. You don't like having number one, someone someone who's over you who's black, and number two, someone who's probably more successful than you. And that's something I've been thinking about a lot lately too with Obama. People, you know, a lot of people voted for Trump because they didn't feel like their lives were being successful and they hated looking at, you looking at an African-American gentleman

who was more successful than them, and aspired to be the president. And here they're living in, I don't know, some backwoods, whatever. I'm mean to my white people that way. But there was a lot of that blowback and resentment for that, and that's really what Trump is, is that crawling out of that guttural closet of racism um so it's probably about 2015 i actually called some people out lost like a wholeness of friends

one day because i'm like you know what i've seen so much anti-obama crap of so much stupid stuff from your fox news narrative that clearly you have a deeper issue that isn't about the tan suit you know yeah it's not about you know he put his feet on the desk like whatever dude um like he put his feet on the resolute desk and that was like a big crisis we got a guy selling goya freaking beans off the resolute death right now if that isn't a crisis so anyway and so I've always been that big mouth and I've always gotten into it and it's been one of the ways that I flush out ideas

too that I test my ideas and I go here am I crazy or am I not and sometimes I'm right or sometimes a lot of people call me out and go Chris you're being really stupid right now which they probably should do more of I'm surprised they don't um and so i started talking about but during black lives matter the resurgent i mean ferguson was just jesus i mean seeing the riot uh gear the army militarizes ferguson riots um the abusive protesters you know the whole militarization

of it they even had you know i i remember calling out early on the uh that rule that i think was the bush era rule where they you know gave all the militarization stuff to the police i'm like this isn't good it's going to become all soldiers war um and so that's when the discussion really began because a lot of people started talking about it back then um you know uh you know uh it was just and i think shortly after that there was other people gunned down they're african-american and so uh the obama administration was doing the thing through i believe eric holder where they were doing those uh contracts with the police departments to try and get them to weed out racism.

And so that's when I got comfortable. And unfortunately, I don't know why I don't have many black friends. I don't know why. I game with a lot of black people. I don't know why. I don't know. Maybe it's, I don't know why i game with a lot of black people um i don't know why i don't know maybe it's i don't know why so hi folks i want to insert a editorial comment and correction here if i might but i'm going to leave my original statement up because i think a lot of white people uh have the same issues um but uh my my statement that i don't have a lot of African-American friends is not true.

Uh, I have worked at homes since 2004. I don't have a wife and kids. So most of my social life is social media, being a social media rockstar. Um, all of my friends are online. So if you go to my Facebook, if you go to my Twitter, I have lots of African-American friends. And I think I kind of slided them with a comment here that I, when I said, uh, that I don't have any African-American friends and I'll explain why. Um, a lot of them are active in my discussions, either privately I've sussed out these ideas on how to talk better and what's right, what's wrong, what should be done, uh, what's going on in our, in our society, et cetera, et cetera. And many of them have, have, have done wonderful contributions to what I've tried to do and the discussions that I've tried to have and, and trying to make the world

a better place. And, um, I think the problem in my mind is I don't make that distinction. You know, you saw Trump make that statement. Well, there's my African American friend over there. I don't really make that distinction, uh, with them in my friends group. Like I, I just don't even think about it. There's all my friends. And so I want to make that correction because they're listening. They're like, Chris, you do actually have African-American friends, you idiot. And, yeah, I'm not the most brilliant guy in my old age. There you go.

So I just want to make that clarification because it was unfair to them. When Black Lives Matter came about again, I started inviting people on the show. And I really didn't start. I really didn't go out and say, I want I started inviting people on the show. And I really didn't start, I really didn't go out and say, I want to invite black people on the show. I just realized that we need more exposure, and we reached out to a lot of authors, and so we started having more authors on.

I think I brought you on because you were an author of a book, and I was just looking for really good guests. So I didn't really set out with the mindset of like, let's bring more black people on the show to talk to them. One of my good friends, Darlene McDonald, she'll be on tomorrow. She's been on before. She's running for politics here in Utah.

So the only reason I had her on the show was just because I want Utah to turn blue. And so I brought you on as an author, and I knew you had a great degree and stuff. So I really didn't bring you on to talk about African American stuff. I was just looking to fill out the show since in the last few weeks, we've done a huge deals with book publishers to, to bring more people to show. And there was kind of a, you could call it more serendipity than agenda,

if you will. Does that make sense? Yeah. And you know what, Chris, even if it's a good serendipity, it is absolutely. Even if you specifically do reach out to hear people's perspectives because they are from a specific

cultural background, it's okay. It's being intentional about your journey and also giving those individuals an opportunity to have a platform with an audience that may not necessarily hear that perspective because like you, there are quite a few people across our country that do not have a significant amount of friends of different cultures. And that happens for a reason, right? It kind of depends on where you live. Sometimes it depends on where you worship. Sometimes it depends on where you work. All of those places, unfortunately, are not very diverse in a lot of areas across our country. So where do you find those friends? Where do you find someone who you can be comfortable enough

talking to about some of your most intimate thoughts about what your own personal development is from a cultural perspective, right? So I think that you bring up a great point in that you did start to feel more comfortable when you had space, but it's still a journey that you're on, right? So in this process of outreach,

I think that's what folks need to be thinking about. They need to say, who do I know that I could potentially reach out to? My own personal friends that might be the same culture as me or people of other cultures who I can have these discussions with because I believe that steel sharpens steel. So the more we can have difficult conversations

and I can run ideas by you about my thoughts about certain concepts, that's how we start to really learn more, not only about ourselves but other people's perspectives. That's the outreach. The next point of this acronym is the W, and that is work. I want to commend you with some of the work that you've been doing and putting in the time and the effort and the reading and the research, all of that is work that is so incredibly important in moving from awareness to action. And it's something that honestly, a lot of folks out there don't have the time to do. They don't have the time to sit down and read an entire book about white fragility or privilege or

read the 13th, right? I mean, they have lives, they have things that they're doing that unfortunately make it complicated. But I want to ask you, where do you find the time and the energy to do this extra work to create more awareness for yourself? And how do you, where do you find those sources and how do you get all that information? Help people that listen to your show understand what that journey is like for you. Well, the answer is pretty simple. I don't have a wife and kids. Okay, all right.

That's an old, long joke from my Facebook friends. But, you know, honestly, I search it out. So I listen. You know, at Black Lives Matter in 2014, 15, I was listening, and so I was watching. And it comes from an analogy that, you know, I believe rising tide lifts all boats. That's one of my pillars, I suppose.

And I was like, there's people that are calling out for help. Like if you, if you called me out, uh, the analogy I recently came up with, if you, if you were drowning and, or vice versa, uh, if one of us was drowning and the other one called out to the shore and said, Hey, can you save me? I need help right now. I really need some help. And you're like, Hey man, you're, you know, it's not drowning lives matter. It's all lives matter, man. And I can't get wet right now. You know what I mean?

That's kind of the, I don't know if that's a good analogy. That's the first time I've ever expressed that, but it's kind of that way. I mean, there, there are people that are calling out saying, Hey man, we're really hurting right now. It's not working out. And you guys are part of the problem and we'd really like some help from your end. Can you listen and learn, and can we work together, and can we all hold hands and make America better? And so to me, that's what this whole thing really is about. When you look at the percentage of the population,

the people in the room are largely white. We certainly have 400 years of very ugly, nasty history, very violent, look at the percentage of the population the people in the room are largely white uh we certainly have 400 years of very ugly nasty history very violent being we're not we're not the greatest people let's put it that way um and uh so some of it does have not having wife and kids it would be very hard for me to do a lot of what i do without uh with having those challenges so i i feel for people have families because it's hard chasing those kids. Challenges, that's funny. But I listen and learn a lot too.

Like one of the things I do is I do a lot of Audible books while I'm working. So there's stuff playing in the background and everything else. I watch a lot of videos, but I listen and learn or I try to as much as I can. I'm always working on being a better listener uh and so i just you just have to apply to yourself and some of it's not material that's um i think the biggest challenge and you'll probably validate this for me but the biggest challenge is it's not the it's it's not stuff that makes you feel good you know like we like stuff that makes you feel good like i don't know marvel tv or whatever you know dealing with the shame and the pain and the

realization that maybe america is not great maybe this whole fabric that we built the 400 years of kind of manifest destiny and this whole america is the greatest you know um you know a long time ago i i studied i don't know 10 years seven years or something every time someone says america's great i was given that was that newsroom or whatever uh bit that what's his face does on the tv where he goes what are we great in like people believe in angels and people who in prison or people in our country their prisons the most people in the world like what are we great in? Like people who believe in angels and people who are in prison, people in our country that are in prison are the most people in the world. Like what are we great at? We suck at education.

We suck at everything else. And, I mean, if you look at the numbers, we're failing on so many different levels, especially compared to other countries. We have this attitude that we just think we're great. Well, Chris, one of the things I do want to validate is that this is very difficult work. And I think it doesn't make people feel good to go on this journey and find a better understanding of yourself through this process, to reach out to other people and hear their pain, to

experience your own pain as a result of this process. And then all of the challenges that people find with finding time to do this, it's very difficult. And you're not going to walk away feeling good ever, really, when you're doing some of this work. And I think that that's one of the challenges that people who are allies and advocates face is that anytime you want to disconnect from that negative journey, you can. You can just step back and say, you know what? I'm just going to be who I am. Like I've done enough work.

I'm okay where I am, and I don't need to make any more progress. I'm fine. I'm good. That's what a lot of people have done prematurely, in my opinion, in a lot of these discussions, is they have thought that they've learned enough. They think that they understand enough to articulate what they see and what they believe and everything else.

But they haven't done a deep enough dive or journey into the research. And so, you know, from writing a dissertation and understanding how deep down the rabbit hole you have to go with some concepts and understand those things and bring them together. That's honestly just the beginning. And that's where a lot of people stop. They see things, they hear things, they read things, and then they never really discuss them. Getting a degree is very difficult because you have to see all the pieces, how they fit together, and then you have to be able to understand and even get to a point where you can teach these things at some point. So it is a difficult journey. And one of the other points that you made that I really wanted to emphasize here is that one of the biggest challenges of the Black Lives Matter movement is those very three words agitate some people in our country. Okay, so Black

Lives Matter. People are thinking automatically in our country, but what about everybody else? That is what automatically comes to so many people's minds when they hear Black Lives Matter. And in a country where from the very beginning of the inception of this country, there has been a concerted effort to dehumanize people of color in many ways, devalue them, take away their accomplishments, co-opt the things that they've come up a, it's contradictory to put those people first, right? So it agitates some people when they hear Black Lives Matter, they automatically say, no, all lives matter. How could Black Lives Matter any more than anyone else? Because they've learned all their life that that is not the case. So, and I've seen that and I've heard that and people won't necessarily say

it out loud, but that is the genius of the Black Lives Matter movement, is that if you are to say Black Lives Matter, honestly, you're not necessarily saying that Black Lives Matter any more than anyone else. What you're saying is that Black Lives have not mattered for such a long time in our country. It's high time that they do matter. And it isn't something that just recently happened. It didn't start with George Floyd. It didn't start with Trayvon Martin. It didn't start with Rodney King. It didn't start with Medgar Evers.

It started long before that. People have been trying to struggle for equality since the time that they were, you know, against their will brought to this country, forced to work for no money. Their families were torn apart. Their culture was taken away. It was torn away from them. to this country, forced to work for no money, their families were torn apart, their culture was taken away, it was torn away from them. All of these negative things that are part of the

fabric of our country, those are the things that when you say Black Lives Matter, all of a sudden people just start feeling really uncomfortable. And so I appreciate the fact that you can articulate that and you can understand that the essential opposite of that is this patriotism that some people really throw in your face sometimes. Like, don't you love this country? Do you understand what this country has given you and all the people that live here? Right? I mean, I think that, I mean, I absolutely love this country. Don't get me wrong. I do. I love America. I love the United States. I actually, I absolutely love this country. Don't get me wrong. I do. I love America. I love the United States.

I actually love the foundation that this country was built on to an extent, because in the foundation of this country, there are the bones of millions of people that build the foundation of this country. And in the process of this manifest destiny that we talk about, many, many people have died over the years. And so where the weaponization of patriotism comes in my mind is this idea that if you're waving the flag and you've never really had to fight for your own personal rights, I'm sorry, you don't truly

understand what America is about, right? You don't understand that this experiment that continues to develop and will continue to change over many years because we're not done with this experiment that continues to develop and will continue to change over many years, because we're not done with this experiment. We're still in the process of finding some balance of equality for people in our country. And many years after it was founded, by the way, like you said, we're babies, right? As far as some of the other countries and their establishment across the world and greater civilizations and everything else, which by the way, American history doesn't just start with America. It goes far back beyond that. So again, that is a perfect example of people doing some of the work, but not the deeper introspection

and journey of understanding how all of these different pieces of the puzzle fit together, you know? And so I'm happy that you're willing to talk about having extra time because you don't have a partner and kids and, you know, doing all of this extra work on the side. But again, you make a great point, which is that a lot of people don't have the time, the energy, or the desire to do that extra work. And I want to convince them to go on that journey. I want to convince them to do some of the extra work, but it's, it's, it's hard to do. So it is, you know, but it's also a choice to, um, aside from my jokes, um, you know, I could watch the Kardashians or I can watch, I don't know, some of their mind numbing crap on Netflix. Um, but I, that's what I choose to do. I mean, to me, it just,

I don't know, I have this weird thing where I want to make the world better and I'm stupid. To me, that's my contribution because I didn't have children. So instead of making some children better to put out in the world or worse, if I had children, the, you know, my, my, the world is kind of my, like, my contribution, my children. So to me, that's, I don't know, I'm weird. I love that. That's, that's a, that's a great, that's a great, uh, way to think about that. I've never really thought about that. You know, that your contribution is just, you know, really increasing your knowledge, increasing your awareness, and then turning that into action. And it kind of leads to the next thing that we're going to talk about, Chris. Um,

how have you become empathic to the struggles of other people? Tell me about your personal journey and what has allowed you, has given you access to this idea that you can say, you know what? I feel for you. Like you said, if you see people drowning, what has encouraged you? What has compelled you to reach out to try to save them through the process of understanding how you've saved yourself? I'm not sure why I'm built the way that I'm built, but it seems to work for me. So it's, it's going pretty good. I'm not on cops or in prison. Although I probably should be, I seem like that white trash guy who always gets picked up at the trailer house. But I probably look like him too. But I don't know. I've always been empathetic.

I don't know why. Uh, I've always, uh, sometimes try to save people in a crazy sense, um, or, or help people reach out. Um, it may, it might come from, uh, it might come from a bully experience I had as a kid where, uh, I was being bullied at school. And this kid and his little friends were having, you know, they're just ruining everybody's day, taking their lunch money. And I think my mom or my dad said, you know, you should just pop them in the face. And they tortured me just for the longest time. They used to follow me home

and torture me on the way home. Um, and one day I snapped and this is like, I think it was eight. I was in fourth grade, whatever age that is. And I snapped one day, I just freaking hit that point that people hit. And I laid into him, uh, and I bloodied him. I put him on the floor and I just lost it. I completely lost it. And he never bullied me ever again. And my father, I really don't want to get into too much of this, but my father wasn't the nicest person in the world. He liked using his belt a little too much.

But he taught me a lesson by antithesis that I took from my father. It was one of those lessons that I learned that be nice to the nice people and be viciously mean to the mean people. And the reason you'd be viciously mean to the mean people is because they're the people who prey on the nice people. They're the people who come down the beach and kick everyone's sandcastle over. But be nice to the nice people because if you reach that point in your mentality where you're mean to everyone because someone was mean to you, that's not right. What you have to focus on is who the problem are, the mean people. So I've always been one of those people that I'll be on the beach with everyone else really nicely and the mean person comes down and kicks everyone's things and when he comes to kick mine, I'll rip his arms off and everyone else really nicely, and the mean person comes down and kicks everyone's things,

and when he comes to kick mine, I'll rip his arms off and his legs off and teach him a lesson. And I'll be like, don't be mean to the mean people. I just did that to someone legally recently. I use legal methods, at least now I do. But for some reason, coming out of that experience with my father and making that rule in life, I have a thing about bullies. I don't like bullies.

I have a real problem with it. So anyway, I think that just made me more empathetic. I know that early on, I used to get these history cards. And I forget what they're called. I need to look them up. But we had cards about history. And a lot of them were about the race experience in the 60s. And so I saw the young girls, and I'm sorry, I can't remember their names,

but they were led into the colleges there in, I think it was Alabama. I remember seeing where they were finally allowed to let to school, and they had the military there and then there was the governor of birmingham i think it was george wallace or governor of alabama george wallace and i would look at these pictures and you know i had to work back and then was this you know this is 40 years ago so there was just the medium of pictures i didn't have videos and i would look at the pictures and i'd study them because there was just like nothing else to do and so you look at the pictures and you look at the hate and you look at the pictures and I'd study them because there was just like nothing else to do.

And so you'd look at the pictures and you'd look at the hate and you'd look at the innocence and you'd see these people that were angry and the anger in their eyes, the viciousness of them. And you're just like, well, that little girl just wants to go to school. Like, I don't understand what the hell these people's problem is. And you would just, you would, you'd study these things. And like one of the photos that had a really big impact on me was Martin Luther King standing on his front lawn next to his two-year-old son. And there's a burnt cross there. And I remember just

looking at that for, I've walked, I've looked at a times, just thinking, what is that experience like? Like, what does that have to explain to your son? Like, why people burn across, what that fear is. You know, a lot of my friends that are of different races have had to have the conversation. I mean, every time one of these killings happens by the police, they go, we had to have a discussion again with our kids about what how to deal with police and and you're just like my god the discussion i don't know what made me more empathetic as a person um uh but but somehow i just really about what other people what other people um what other people are are feeling maybe because i don't know i just put myself in their thing but

whatever my problem is in life that sometimes i wish i wasn't more empathetic but i don't know i wouldn't be chris you better person you know i i've actually i've i've heard you talk about that experience before um when you were interviewing the uh the guy that wrote the book on Baldwin. And, you know, that really moved me because I think that's the space where some people can actually move into that empathy is through understanding the interaction between a parent and a child. And something else you described

as far as your experience with bullying. And you talked about this juxtaposition of love and innocence and hate, right? So this idea that people want an experience, they want to move towards something because perhaps it's a love of education or a love of something. And there's a hatred in between them and that thing, right?

And when you're thinking about bullying, you're thinking about the innocence of being young and wanting to just be long and be a part of something special as a young person. And there's a person that's between you and that experience who, for whatever reason, just takes advantage of you, you know? And what you're really describing, Chris, is you're describing the relationship, I believe, that a lot of people of color have with the United States of America. We want to have a chance to get an education. We want to have access to spaces and live places. We want to take our kids to places and they have a great time and enjoy themselves. But there is a hatred that is woven into our country based on the historical context of what we've experienced as a people that stands

in the way of that. And I truly do believe that it is through the understanding of this childlike curiosity of what would it be like to live in someone else's space or experience what someone else experiences. That is where that empathy can be found. And I think that's where you found that empathy. And I appreciate you being vulnerable enough to talk about not only that journey, but also your father and how he, he really told you, in my opinion, something that's extremely important in life. That is in order to keep people from taking advantage of you, sometimes you have to appear to be bigger than you are. You have to be mean, you have to be nasty, right? Like there's this thought process, I think, that exists in that, that a lot of people, including myself, who were bullied over the years, recognize that

the bullies don't mess with the people who they don't necessarily think they can take advantage of. And this therein lies why, and this will take a bit of a digression, but therein lies kind of this genesis of the black male in hip hop music, right? It is this tough guy, this bigger, over, you know, hyper masculine individual who you better not mess with, right? Where do you think that caricature came from? It came from all of the pain and the hurt and the struggle that men of color in this country were dealing with over the years. And it is one of the things that I connected with from a young age, hip hop music in general, that lifted me out of my own feelings of inadequacy. Because I could look at a hip hop artist like a Nas or a Jay-Z or a Run DMC, Public Enemy. And I could say, those are black men who are powerful. They know what they want in this life. They sing about it. They rap about it. They talk

about all of the inequities that are in the system, but we can beat it. That's where a lot of people of color find that step up out of their personal inadequacies is through hearing the stories of other people. And so I apologize for that digression, but I thought it was a- No, I actually learned something new right there. Yeah, so simply put, what I have to tell you is that your journey toward empathy,

it speaks volumes. And I want to share that with other folks that are listening to this podcast, that find empathy where you can, but do an introspection and think of what it was like for you when you didn't have the opportunity to do something or you were kept from going somewhere because of some particular reason. And in that empathy, perhaps you will find a bridge to better

understand the experience of people who are marginalized in this country. Yeah. You just taught me something right there about rap music and understanding the thing behind it. You know, one thing I had a problem with and a lot of people had a problem with was why can't why can't we use the N-word and you can? And fortunately, one of my favorite comedians, Bill Maher, went through an issue where he used the N-word inappropriately and ice cube came on to a show and did this beautiful bit on why we're not allowed to use it you guys are um and he he explained it just so concisely so perfectly and i went oh a moment okay there it is now i understand that makes complete sense and and you know it made me understand that's what the beauty of these conversations are, is that we need to have more of these conversations. They're uncomfortable.

You know, facing the, you know, one of the problems I keep having is I keep watching more and more videos, especially in my research and James Baldwin and the era I was watching the videos again with who will probably talk about later in the show, John Lewis, the, the beating, the violence, the anger. You see it, you know, you mentioned Manifest Destiny earlier where we went back to the Indians. And, you know, this 400 years, just this ugly violence of white people. So you taught me something new there.

And, you know, it's been all about listening and journeying. You know, one of the reasons I don't have more African-American friends is I really don't like rap. And it's not that I'm racist. I just grew up in old school rock and roll. I'm a Metallica fan. And I don't like Christian music. I don't like gospel music. I don't like gospel music,

I don't like country music, which is racist as hell, and I just don't like rap, I just don't get it musically, I get, I get the beat thing, and I, I just, it's just not my cup of tea, I just don't get it, and so a lot of my gaming friends that I have that are African-American stuff, you know, once they start playing the rap, you know, I go, man, I got to go. I can't. It's like playing country music for me. It's just the way it is. What you've opened up to me in my mind is why the hustle or the – one of the things I haven't liked about rap is that chest pounding or that – kind of the hustle. What's the word?

It's bravado. That's what it is. The bravado of it. It's not that there's a racial element to it. It's just that I'm like a really succinct guy when it comes to who I am and being real. And I don't know, maybe that's the reason I'm depressed all the time is because I'm too real. But, you know, I don't have a problem with people being too much bravado, but maybe now I understand more why that is in the core root of it.

Because I don't, I don't like being the person who sells you something that isn't true. And that's, that doesn't have anything to do with color for me. That's just being real and, and not being a bullshitter. But you know, like I hate the word hustle.

I hate the word hustle because hustle and maybe it may be my age, but hustle to me means that I steal from you. Like I, you know, but for a lot of people now, it's changed now. The word hustle means, and this is for white folk too, hustle means, you know, you just work really hard, which, you know, I just got to learn a new brain or sometimes you can't teach an old dog new tricks. As long as hustle means that, you know, that's fine.

But you've helped me understand why the bravado is there can't teach an old new tricks as long as hustle means that you know that's fine but uh but you you've helped me understand what that why the bravado is there and why that's important um i don't know i listened a lot of heavy metal so i have my own depressive issues probably psychoanalyze this way well that's my thing well chris i i know i appreciate you i appreciate you talking about your uh you know you haven't stepped deeply into hip hop music uh which is which is understandable but i and honestly if i play my metal because i always tell them i go guys i love you but if i start playing metallica you guys are going to turn me off too it's like it's like i i love playing with them we have fun they'll even make jokes hey you're

the toko white guy on our team you know and i'll be like yeah cool i'm i can roll with it but as soon as they play a rap i'm just like i can't i can't just can't do this on the gaming channels i just can't oh man i i totally understand but but again i i want to encourage you um and and just just really quick so a lot of the stuff we've been talking about today um or over the course of our last couple of conversations, I want to share something with you here. And this is going to be a little bit off the cuff. But this is a quick verse by Jay-Z. And I just want you to listen to the essence of it, okay? So the year is 94, and my trunk is raw, and in my rearview mirror, all I see is the law. I got two choices, y'all,

pull over the car or bounce on the double, put my pedal to the floor. Now, I ain't trying to see no highway chase with Jake, plus I got a few dollars I could fight the case. So, I pull over to the side of the road. I heard, son, do you know what I'm stopping you for? Because I'm young and I'm black and my house is low. Do I look like a mind reader, sir? I don't know. Now, I'm under arrest or can I leave for war? He says, well, you was doing 55 in a 54, license and registration. Please step out of the car. Are you carrying a weapon on you? I know a lot of you are.

I ain't stepping out this. All my papers legit. Well, do you mind if I look around the car a little bit? Want my license? My glove compartment is locked, so is the trunk in the back. And I know my rights, so you're going to need a warrant for that. Well, aren't you sharp as a tack? You some type of lawyer or something, somebody important or something?

I didn't pass the bar, but I know a little bit enough that you won't illegally search my, well, we'll see how smart you are when the canine come. I got 99 problems, but ain't one. That's from his song, 99 Problems. Now in that verse, Chris, he says so much about the criminal justice system and having money and being able to fight the case. And this idea that black people are pulled over for minor infractions, you was doing 55 and a 54, right? License and registration, please step out of the car. Should you step out of the car for driving 55 and a 54, right? Well, Jay-Z knows the law. So he says his glove compartment's locked and so is the trunk. So you're going to need a warrant, right? An understanding of the criminal justice system and how you can perhaps get off or get away if you have enough money or an understanding,

right? And then when everything's said and done, they still bring the canine out, right? Just in case. So what I want you to understand from that verse is that there's so much understanding and learning that is woven into certain types of music for African American people and people of color through people's experience that you listen to these things and you're like, wow, there's power in that. Right. So I want you to your homework assignment, Chris, is I want you to just consider the types of understanding that you can reach through listening to different types of music. And specifically, since you're on a journey to better understand the African-American experience, I want you to consider listening to some hip hop music of some different artists and you and I can talk about those artists and if nothing else, just read the lyrics because that's where a lot of my understanding of different

experiences that I haven't been able to, you know, actually have myself because of the way that I grew up. That's where it's come from. It's almost like a different art form, just like Metallica. And I love Metallica too, by the way. And their music is so, I mean, it's like a spiritual experience, right? Like to hear what they are playing. And one of my favorites was when they actually played with an orchestra and it was just beautiful. Yeah. I mean, it's just absolutely beautiful. So that's different types of art forms that people share that, you know, I want you to just consider, you know, it's, I will, I will, you've given me a background to it. There used to be this whole thing that, um, if you want to get your wife to watch football with you, you have to get your wife to, you have to talk to your wife about how, uh, the relationships that the football players have, like their wife and kids and, you know, the contributions to society and you know the more in-depth thing that is and so you've kind of done that with me with rap where now i'm going to be listening to rap from a different perception i i think the lyrics are going to be beautiful it's the i just don't i just don't get the beat thing like i get the beat thing like but i don't

get the beat thing it's like to me it just it sounds like people yelling bravado into a mic. Honestly, I think there is some prejudice to me. I'm kind of resentful that they take my Steely Dan and my 80s clips and they incorporate it in their music. You're upset at Pete Diddy for using all the samples? Not really. I don't even know who does it. There's certain things that you shouldn't touch. You should never cover Stairway to Heaven. who does it but but i i you know there's certain things that you shouldn't touch like you should

never cover uh stairway to heaven like that's like you know i don't care who it is they just there's things you shouldn't touch like jimmy hendrix you shouldn't never touch jimmy hendrix but but you know honestly in fairness if i can defend myself just a little bit i'm i i love the blues like muddy waters all that early blue stuff like i have one of my favorites uh uh things who did sinner man um um oh god i love early jazz like i i love the early blues and i have a real appreciation for how the blues and everything came out of that experience i mean if it weren't for't for African-American people, we'd have some really crappy music, which, you know, there's anthrax. So, you know, so a lot of it and a lot of the blues is about the experience of people of color in the South and everything else in struggle.

It's like gospel. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, gospel music is okay, but I just, it's my personal thing. Same thing with country music. Like if you play country music, I'll be punching nails into my head. Like you'll have me on a ledge so fast with that stuff. And I, you know, I hate to lose the country music crowd, but you know, it's me personally. I totally understand. And so, so Chris, this last, this last component that we're going to talk about is really, um, an important one. And I think that you and I have really exemplified this, I believe by the last time that we've come together and talked, but it's relationships, that's the R in power. And I guess I just want people who are listening to

continue to think about how you can leverage the relationships that you have with people who are different from you to learn have any questions or if I have any questions about how you see things in your perspective and definitely want to understand more about your early life and kind of your understanding of Mormonism and that journey, like I'm going to call you and I'm going to say, hey, Chris, you know, like, tell me about this because I want to know your perspective. And I think it's important for people to know it's not everybody in that culture's perspective, right? It's just your perspective. You have a perspective that you experienced something in your life. And if I want to learn more about that, I think that's just your perspective.

And so don't try to generalize based on relationships that you have. That's why we always laugh in this space where people are like, well, I asked my black friend and he or she said X, you know, it's like, great. That's their experience of something in particular that happened at a moment in time. There's so many other people's perspectives. And so relationships are so incredibly important. And that's why it's important, as you said, Chris, for us to seek out unique opportunities to connect with people, value people's opinions, you know, talk, have discussions, laugh at each other, cry with each other, all of those different things. And so I just want to tell you, I appreciate the relationship that we're building. I appreciate the friendship too. I've got you friends on Facebook, so now you have to listen.

Yes. Now I get to see your dogs, you know, and your life, which is fun, fun you know to look in on that posts and stuff um no i i think it's really good and what's really nice is is and this is really half my serendipity i didn't sit out to like let's have more black lives matter discussions it was really serendipity i was like looking for people out on the show and i was i came across your thing and you had a book and i'm like i want more authors on we were working on these book deals. And then, um, the fire, um, uh, Nicholas Bacola, the, the fire within, or the fire, uh, book that he wrote on William F. Buckley and,

and the thing came after yours and you and I had this great discussion that went into manifest destiny and a lot of different things um uh about your experience too and that's a great uh people should go back and listen to that podcast because something has to do with the internal racism of some of the shades of darkness in the african-american community and the racial uh things that go on there which i always found just amazing beyond i'm just like seriously they're as awful as we are sometimes um but we're all human i guess so yes welcome to the human nature this brain um the um it's a disease we're all stuck with um so uh and then i just happened to have him on and just there was a serendipity and we talked about the stuff uh and uh and then i i wanted uh

eddie on so we had eddie on and and it was all about the james baldwin stuff and james baldwin has really been helping me out like really helping me out uh i talked about this on eddie's show um where you know i love malcolm x and what MLK said and stuff, but he wasn't talking to me, white people. He wasn't talking to me. He kind of was like, hey, you should listen to this people. But for the most part, I just didn't feel he was ever talking to me. Maybe that's my personal opinion. But James Baldwin talks to me and he talks about, you know, something you mentioned i love this country and we all love this country we all we're all americans uh and

even people who want to come to this country and and and they love it so bad they want to miss their life here um and um but you know like you say we're always going to be, you know, this is a melting pot in a debate session that's lasted for 240 some odd years and probably always will be. And that's the beauty of it when we're not ugly and we listen and we talk. But so it's kind of turned into that. It didn't really, like I said, I had Darlene McDonald, who will be on tomorrow. We'll talk about the Rev who passed away and John Lewis. And so it kind of became that way through the serendipity of the conversation

and just learning and listening. And I'm glad for it because it's really helped me out. But James Baldwin has really, like really just been the dude who's gone, here's what your problem is, Chris, and your folks. And so you're bringing up an excellent point, which is find the person who speaks to you. And not everybody in the movement over time has spoken to folks in a way that they are willing to receive a message. Right. But I think in James Baldwin, you've found a lot of connection with your own personal journey and understanding what is going on in this country.

And I think that's beautiful that there is someone who you can connect with that way, because I think James Baldwin is a beautiful writer, was a beautiful person. And really at a time that it was difficult to separate himself from being within and without was able to do that in a very unique way and intellectualize and articulate what was going on in our country. And so he's really been someone who I resonate with, but I also resonate with Malcolm X and his journey as well. So, you know, and, and so, you know, the last thing I want to do, Chris, and I truly appreciate the opportunity to be on your

show today, talk about power, privilege, outreach, work, empathy, and relationships. Everyone has power, by the way, we all have the opportunity to really work toward a better understanding of those concepts and moving things forward in this country. We make up the fabric of this Monet, right? Every dot that is beautiful as you stand back and look at this country as a big picture. I did want to take just a minute to, you know, express my sincere, sincere sadness about the passing of Congressman John Lewis from Georgia. And just there's really no way, nothing qualifies me to in any way, shape or form memorialize him. I just, I really don't know enough about his personal journey, have not spent the time that I should studying his progression and everything that he did.

But what I will say, Chris, is that we lost an absolutely amazing human being in John Lewis and everything that I have read about him, which has been quite a bit, but I just don't consider myself to be a scholar by any means. He is such a gentle individual who has thrown himself physically, mentally, and spiritually into the movement that is civil rights in the United States from a very young age, from leading the march in Selma to becoming a congressman at a young age to being one of the first individuals to integrate the college that he went to. He's been there at every juncture, Chris. He's been at the side of the leaders for many years and for him to be gone. And as we talked about early in this podcast,

to be gone in a year where there's been so much vitriol and negativity that continues to swim, I just hope that he was able to recognize how much of a contribution he's made and how many people have been able to stand upon the foundation that he set forth. And I think that's so important. Obama, in a post he put up, said that he told John Lewis that he stood, Obama stood on John Lewis's shoulders. And to see the picture of those two embracing and understand how it took the beating and the fracturing of skulls and the hosing of people with fire hoses

and the biting of people, of dogs in the 60s and the 70s and the lynchings and all of those things, to see those things comprehensively create a foundation for people of color in this day and age to stand upon is tragic and it's also beautiful. It is to recognize that the blood that flowed, that the tears that have fallen, that the voices that have gone unheard, they're not silent. Those things are not imaginary. Those things are real tangible steps that we've been able to walk up in order to move toward a more perfect union, toward a country that truly does espouse the promise that was given to folks that, you know, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all people are created equal. I changed that for a reason. I think John Lewis is a representation of what an individual can do when they harness all

of their power and their time and their energy, and they make that contribution toward the good of the cause. And he's going to be missed dearly, Chris. He's a brilliant individual. He's left significant contributions to this world. And I just wanted to take a moment just to say my own personal condolence to his son who's still alive. His wife passed some years back, but, you know, he's a juggernaut in the civil rights movement. And, you know, I hope that we can continue on without him, but not without him because his spirit, you know, I was just thinking this morning of this cool thing that maybe him and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Marvin Gaye and, you know, Medgar Evers, all of them are getting back together again and saying, would you believe what's going on down there?

Can you believe it? I mean, it's just, oh, man. So I just wanted to take a second, Chris, and I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show today. Oh, yeah, I wanted to talk about him today. I think a beautiful thing that I saw, and I went back and watched a lot of videos yesterday, last night, and this morning um of some

of those selma moments crossing the the the bridge and uh the beating and getting hit in the head and bloodied uh and the all the experiences they're going through in the 60s and then watching you know him over the years rise through um everything his speech at the I Have a Dream Million Man March at the steps there of Lincoln. And he went back, I think, 50 years later, just before 50 years later, there was an interview he did. And so I watched that whole thing, and he kept talking about Lincoln and just being able to give that speech at the feet of Lincoln

and how much that meant to him. And then to see, I think one of the most beautiful things I saw over the last 24 hours was the pictures of him down on the Black Lives Matter mural. Is it a mural or what would you call that? It's the thing that's painted. Painted on the street, yeah. Painted on the street. Painted on the street, and you can see the White House, which has got an interesting definition these days, and the Washington Monument behind it.

And he's down on the street, and you can just see the look on his face where he's feeling the moment. At that time, he was really sick with cancer and probably shouldn't have been out there, especially with the COVID. But it meant something to him. I remember reading someone wrote that. And then there's another picture of him where he's up on a balcony somewhere on that street looking down. You can see the whole stretch of it. And you look at the juxtaposition of coming from, you know, the dogs and the beatings and the concussions to, you you know here's where you are but then you also look at

the other juxtaposition of like where we're at with donald trump and the racism um in this mountain we still have to climb in november and even we climb it we don't even know what's going on the secret police thing is getting out of control too um you know who knows what sort of constitutional crisis we may face if if we de-elect this guy de-elect um so i you know i watched a lot of videos and one of the things i was watching about him and this is i don't know you're a psychologist so you can know i have empathy um and uh uh i watched his eyes and I watched his face during the interviews, and the fact that he could forgive, and the fact that he didn't have any animosity, and part of the reason I look at that is because I don't know that I'd be that person,

because I have a very ugly side when people screw with me, but you have to screw with me really bad. You have to come up with a knife, and then you meet that Chris Voss, but you, you really have to be coming at me with a knife. Other than that, I'm nice to the nice people being to the vicious, I mean to the mean people. Um, and so when I was, I was looking at his eyes and he talked to one of the things he was talking about in his interview is how actually one of the people who had beaten him in Montgomery or Birmingham came to his office almost 50 years later with his son. And his son had been encouraging to have this conversation with him. And he came and he apologized and he cried. The police officer cried.

The police officer, his son cried. They hugged. He asked for forgiveness. And I kept watching his face going, man, he's for real, man. He's like, I don't know that I could be that sort of person. So he's way better than I am. But the humanness of that, you know, the core being the Christ-like sort of humanness of being you know the the core being the the the christ-like sort of humanness of being able to forgive like that and stuff um i'm not sure i could be that better

person and maybe the reason i look for that is because i'm trying to figure out how to be that better person um maybe that's the psychology of it but uh um seeing that seeing the being able to be the better human being after going through so much of that ugliness and and seeing i mean you know 50 years we've had some real ugly stuff that's gone on the reagan years um you know the racism uh even in spite of everything that he championed elijah cummings champion i was a big fan fan of Elijah Cummings. Um, and just seeing everything that he had to, the mountains that he had to climb and go through. And then at the end, he could still have that Christlike, uh, humility and, and forgiveness. Uh, even in the age of Trump, like we, you know, if I started seeing Trump and man, I fired up. But, and he, I think he understood

where we have to go and what we have to do and, and together as a people, as all Americans. And, you know, Chris, the point that you're making is that there are a lot of people who have experienced significant, you know, struggle within this country who find it in their hearts to forgive and then continue to move on and continue to fight for the cause and the movement and have hope. And hope is so important. And it's hard to have hope without willingness to forgive. And I think that this is one of the things that has happened in our country is that a lot of people who have done wrong to other people expect those people to forgive them rather than changing their behavior, right? So we can't really make progress if people keep doing

the same thing over and over again, and then other people keep forgiving them. We're not making any progress. You're not learning anything. And don't apologize if you're not going to follow that apology by, you know, updated actions that are going to lead to a different, you know, consequence. But that is something that a lot that John Lewis actually said. He said, if not us, who, if not now, when? And so that's really what I want to end on today is we've talked about moving from this idea of awareness to action today. We've talked about the power that people have, but now it's time for people to stop thinking or conceptualizing and actually get out in the field

and do what they need to do to help bring this country forward in a positive way. And politics and all of this conversation, it really doesn't have to matter. Everyone can make a difference. Everyone can do that introspection. They can better understand themselves and move forward. We have to do this as a country. If we don't do it, who's going to do it? If we don't better ourselves as a country, no one else is going to come along and say, hey, I'd love to make America better, right? We Americans have to go on that journey. And it's a painful journey that, as you described, it's not fun, right? You're not going to go and read a lot of information that's going to just make you giggly happy

about the history of our country when it comes to some of these dark secrets that our country has. But in doing that, we are helping our country become better. So we have to do the heavy lifting. And I'm happy that you started with your show and using your platform to facilitate these discussions. in doing that, we are helping our country become better. So we have to do the heavy lifting and I'm happy that you started with your show and using your platform to facilitate these discussions. It's awesome. Yeah. The more, the more we can bring, the more conversation we have. One, one video series I've been really enjoying is, uh, um, hard conversations, uh, um, or something on it's it's on YouTube. Yeah. With a black man. Yeah. With a black man. It's a sports caster, I think,

or a sports athlete gentleman. I gotten out of sports, so forgive me. But you know, the more conversation we can have, the more, the more we can listen, the more we can understand each other. You know, one thing that's become very apparent to me is this, this huge prison complex, industrial complex that we have. And in the way that everything moves very apparent to me is this, this huge prison complex, industrial complex that we have and, and the way that everything moves from front to back, the tapestry or this fabric we have of institutional racism and,

and unconscious bias. And I mean, there's just so much that we have to de-thread or de deconstruct and, and, and deal with. And it's, it's not pretty and it's not fun and and but it's ugly and until we reach a point with with lifting all boats and and helping everybody up and and uh making america better because i don't i don't maybe america make america great isn't the right words to use and probably never should be considering you know the historically abusive racial uh tones they've been

used that or ways they've been used but maybe make america better because the better i don't know to my mind would mean that it's a journey that we never arrive at when you say make america great it's like sounds like it's and there's an ending to that journey i don't know maybe well it's a journey that we never arrive at. When you say make America great, it's like, it sounds like it's, and there's an ending to that journey. I don't know. Well, it's the again part that really complicates it. Right. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Make America great again. Like when, wait a minute. Wait, when was it? Yeah. But again, you know, originally,

originally coined by Reagan and for who, right. Exactly. For who? That's right. So I think, yes, let's make America better together. And let's go about that journey. It's going to be tough. It's going to be really painful at some times. But honestly, I think we're making it a better place for our future generations. And, you know, like you said, I mean, if that's kind of one of the things that you do and your legacy, and that's one of the things that I consider to be my legacy as well. Um, you know, we'll, we'll be in some, uh, we'll be in great

company with the other people who take on that journey. Yeah. It's better to talk things out than beat everyone over the head with these clubs on each other. That's right. Um, so anyway, thanks for tuning in. Uh, I certainly appreciate you guys being here Lawrence you're welcome to come back anytime I think you know that and and you know just learn to listen and I think Lawrence has done a great job explaining a lot of different things that we should be thinking about to my honest for tuning in be sure

to go to the UCBPN.com and the YouTube channel Lawrence give us your plugs again so people can look you up on the interwebs yes my plugs mainly on Facebook my page page is Lawrence Chatter's Motivational Speaker. I put different conversations that I have just like this on there and other really positive things and just share some different stories about my own personal journey. And so definitely encourage people to like that page and just continue to engage in your own development and understanding of things that might be, you know,

not necessarily as important to you, but very important to other people. Thank you. And thanks for tuning in guys. We'll see you next time.