The Rich Roll Podcast - This Is America: Byron Davis & Phil Allen, Jr.

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

Mass demonstrations continue to spread across the nation — and now, the world — for the 20th day and counting. For many, this has been a wake-up call. An uncomfortable reckoning with the vast extent to which misuse of power, police abuse, and racism (both overt and covert) are baked into the very fabric of our nation. But for black people, African Americans and people of color, that pain, violence, and fear is an everyday reality. On a personal note, I’m determined to better understanding this unfortunate dynamic. The history that led to it. The systemic nature of it. The institutions that perpetuate it. And the solutions required for its long-overdue undoing. Part of that commitment is sharing an increased diversity voices. Towards that end, today I reconnect with my friend Byron Davis, alongside Pastor Phil Allen, Jr. An O.G. podcast guest dating back to early 2013 (RRP #14), Byron is a former USA Swimming National Team member, American Record holder, UCLA All-American, and Ironman who holds the distinction of falling just three-tenths of a second shy of becoming the first African-American to make the USA Olympic Men's Swimming Team. Phil is a pastor, teacher, poet, and the filmmaker behind Open Wounds, a powerful documentary that delves into the reality of intergenerational trauma through the story of his grandfather’s murder and the police’s subsequent refusal to investigate it (now available on Vimeo on demand). Today Byron and Phil share their perspective on the protests. The BLM movement as a whole. And its potential to catalyze significant structural change.  Bluntly put, this is an important conversation about what it means to be black in America.  It’s about the economic history of slavery in the United States. It’s about the extent to which racism is perpetuated systemically — by way of policy, law, economics, politics & generations of socialization. It’s about the ways in which white supremacy is embedded into the bedrock of our institutions — from religious and political to educational and judicial. And it’s about confronting the pernicious manner in which racism lives, breathes, and persists — often completely unconsciously — within ourselves. This country has arrived at a critical crossroads. A choice to implode or heal. The higher path demands responsibility. The awakening requires we examine history from a different perspective. It demands we define our personal and national values. And it dictates that we align those values with action. To dismantle what is broken. To rebuild our institutions. To reframe our relationships -- and ourselves. I’m grateful to Byron & Phil for their openness, patience & vulnerability. For sharing their perspective on race, personal encounters with racism, and stories of pain. The visually inclined can watch our conversation on YouTube. And as always, the audio version streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I truly believe that conversations like this are crucial if we want to finally transcend our past, learn, grow, and lead by example. To echo Cornel West, what we don’t need are lukewarm folk. We don’t need 'summer soldiers’.  What we need are all season love warriors. It is this spirit that I offer today's conversation. May you receive it with an open heart. Peace + Plants, Rich

This is a time of courage, a time of intestinal fortitude where white people also have to confront their ignorance. Ignorance is the beginning of enlightenment. It's learning. You can't learn until you confront and wrestle through your ignorance, right? That's the foundation or the fundamentals of learning. That's the foundation or the fundamentals of learning. So adults have to embrace the fear and the risk of being vulnerable. What they may say out of just sheer ignorance is proven to be untrue. take this opportunity to now do some deep dive surgery into the systemic issues that allow this thing to exist? I don't know what else we can do. I really don't. If you look at literature, you look at music, you look at movies, you look at marches. We've done it peacefully.

You look at marches. We've done it peacefully. We've done it angrily. We've knelt fist in the air. We've used our bodies. That's one of the primary resources we have, our bodies. We've done everything we know to do, and we're still here. Not just incidents, but a culture.

I think it takes the white allies to be the voices advocating in solidarity to the white community because they're not going to listen to us necessarily. Not all, some will, but the masses won't listen to us. That's Byron Davis and Phil Allen Jr. And this is the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Greetings, all-season love warriors. It is I, Rich Roll, your host. This is my transmission. Welcome to it.

Okay, so as I record this, mass demonstrations continue to spread across the nation. And now the world for what I believe is something like the 20th night in a row. a row, and for many, grappling with, recognizing, coming to terms with the vast extent to which things like police abuse, misuse of power, racism, both overt and covert, and the toxic racial divide that persists and that is woven into the very fabric of our society has been a wake-up call. But it's important to recognize and to confront that for Black people, for Indigenous people, people of color, that this is just reality. That pain, that violence, that pain, that violence, that fear is every day. I'm committed to better understanding this dynamic, the history that led to it, the systemic nature of it, the institutions that perpetuate it,

and the solutions for its long overdue undoing. And part of that commitment is sharing an increased diversity of voices here on the podcast, hearing more from Black and African American and people of color thought leaders right now in this current moment and moving forward. On that note, today, I reconnect with my friend and fellow swimmer, Byron Davis, along with his friend, my new friend, Pastor Phil Allen Jr. Byron was one of my very first guests on this show, dating all the way back to early 2013, RRP 14. I suggest you mine through the podcast archive, give that one a listen. Byron is just a wildly inspiring human being. He's overcome quite the obstacles to be this incredible individual.

And in that episode, we go deep into his personal story and his journey. Aside from being a former USA national team member, an American record holder, a UCLA All-American, and an Ironman. Byron was just three-tenths of a second shy of becoming the very first African-American to make the USA Olympic swimming team. He remains a role model for thousands of young athletes across the country. He's a sought-after speaker and consultant, and just one of those very special

few with an innate penchant for helping other people unlock their inner potential. Phil Allen Jr. is a pastor, a teacher, a poet, and a filmmaker behind the documentary Open Wounds, which delves into the reality of intergenerational trauma through the story of his grandfather's murder and the police's subsequent refusal to investigate it. Phil is also the founding pastor of Own Your Faith Ministries in Santa Clarita, California, and a second-year PhD student at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he's studying Christian ethics and theology and culture with a focus on Dr. King's theology and ethics, as well as the intersection of race theory and theology. I got a bunch more I want to say about these gentlemen and the conversation to come, but first. come, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it

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And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay. To put it bluntly, this is what I think an important, way of policy, law, economics, politics, and generations of socialization. It's about the ways in which white supremacy is embedded in our religious, political, educational, and basically every institution in this country. And it's about getting honest about the extent to which and the manner in which

the embedded nature of racism persists, often completely unconsciously, within ourselves, myself included. This moment is an important crossroads for this country. It's an opportunity, moment is an important crossroads for this country. It's an opportunity, a potential awakening, and a collective responsibility to gain objective clarity on historical truth, to define what our values truly are and put them into action, to dismantle that which is broken, and to rebuild from the ground up, not just our country and our institutions, but ourselves as well. I'm grateful to Byron and Phil for showing up, for being open, for being patient and vulnerable with me, for sharing their perspective on race, their very personal encounters with racism, and their stories of pain. And I'm well aware that this conversation might be

uncomfortable for some, but I truly believe that conversations like this are crucial if we want to finally transcend our past, if we want to learn, if we want to grow, if we want to do better and lead by example. I, for one, am committed to being teachable, to being challenged, to leaning in, and to being part of positive change. Final note, in the week that has elapsed since we recorded this, Phil decided to make his documentary Open Wounds, which again is about the lynching of his grandfather and the subsequent police cover-up, available on Vimeo On Demand. It's a powerful 41 minutes. I strongly suggest you check it out. And you can find a link to that film in the show notes or on Phil's website at philallenjr.com. Second, Phil is also an amazing poet and spoken word artist, and I was remiss in not

exploring this with him during the podcast. I sincerely regret not asking him to perform one of his pieces. So, I also encourage you to check out his art on his YouTube page, which I've also linked in the show notes. And you should start with his poem, Colorblind But Not Colorless, which I found particularly powerful. Finally, and especially to those who may be feeling some resistance to this conversation, I would encourage you to watch the documentary 13th on Netflix, if you haven't already, which I think does an amazing job at contextualizing and explaining the systemic aspect of racism. I rewatched it with my family the other night, and it's just unbelievably powerful and illuminating. To echo Cornel West, what we don't need are lukewarm folk. We don't need summer soldiers. We don't need summer soldiers. What we need are all season love warriors.

And it is in that spirit that I give you Byron Davis and Phil Allen Jr. Gentlemen, welcome. Thank you for doing this. Thank you, man. This is great. It's good to have you guys here. So why don't we start with just you guys briefly introducing yourselves, kind of what you do. And then perhaps we can pivot into taking a 10,000-foot view on kind of where we're at right now.

Okay. Well, my name is Phil Allen. I'm a founding pastor of Own Your Faith Ministries in Santa Clarita, California. I'm a second year PhD student at Fuller Theological Seminary, studying Christian ethics and theology and culture. And my focus is Dr. King's theology and ethics, as well as the intersection of race theory and theology. So that's my study and my research will center on that. I'm an author and filmmaker, just produced a short film, Open Wounds, about my grandfather's murder in 1953.

Family Never Got Justice. And it talks a lot about intergenerational trauma from racial tragedies and systems and structures and where do we go? What do we do now? I tried to find the film online. I watched the trailer, but it's not publicly available right now, right?

Yeah, soon, soon. Yeah, but I know the producers, so I can get you a link. All right, man. That's the deal. I'd like to see it. And what does that mean, Christian ethics? Maybe explain that a little bit. Just ethics, you know, we have terms like social ethics, ethics in particular, context. a biblically informed, scripture informing the ethics, how we, like right now, how do we respond to a murder that we see on camera for the world to see? How do we respond in a biblically informed

manner to this? How do we respond to what's happening in politics? How does the Bible inform that? So. Yeah. It would seem that everything that's happening right now, like your whole life and everything that you've been studying has been preparing you for this moment. Yes. Yeah. I wasn't going to release the film. I was trying to get it in film festivals. And when this happened, people who have seen it, because I've screened it a few times in LA,

said, you got to show the film. You got to show the film. Right. And I thought about it this past week and I said, you know what? This is the time. And there are other projects I want to do. And so maybe this is what this is for because we did it in six months. We filmed, edited,

produced, and screened it within six months, raised the funds. And so maybe this is what that was for. Yeah, I support that. I mean, I think you could take it to a bunch of film festivals, which now are all on hold or don't exist anymore for a couple small audiences, or you could release it publicly

and attract a wide amount of attention to the issue. I mean, essentially the film is about your grandfather who was without mincing, lynched, right? Yes. And kind of getting to the bottom of what happened and how that, you know, played out and was covered up. Yes. Yes. And how it affected my grandmother 60 years later.

She still, the trauma was still there. She couldn't talk about it. And then how it affected my father when he found out that his father was killed by a man that lived a few doors down from them. And it changed his life. And so that was the man who raised me or who was my father. Right. That was the man who raised me or who was my father. So therefore, there's going to be some things going on in my life that I'm dealing with because of what's been passed on to me.

And I had no idea the root of it. Yeah. And so I started to do this research and I realized where the pain, my grandmother's pain was, like why she was the way she was. Right. Why my father was the way he was. And it actually led to having more compassion for my dad when I first found out because we didn't have a good relationship. And there was a lot of forgiveness that needed to happen on my part. Because of the trauma that he experienced that got passed down and wasn't ever fully processed or communicated to you in a way where you guys could get past it. Yeah.

My father, he never, you know, we had a conversation a few years ago where he was healing or grieving his mother and my uncle, his brother's death, which were like seven months apart. And I asked him, do you think you are grieving his brother's death, which was like seven months apart. And I asked him, do you think you are grieving your father's death too? He said, well, I never knew my father. I was two when he died. And I said, that's my point. Because domestic violence, I grew up in domestic violence. I saw it for the first 15 years of my life. My father had drug addiction, alcohol addiction, anger, serious anger problems. And there was hate in my heart towards my dad. And so when I found this out,

then it was like, wait a minute. He was nine when he found out. He's still processing this stuff. Like, what would I do if I was nine years old and I found out that my father was killed? Yeah. Right? So it led me to forgive.

The story was that he fell off a boat or something like that? They say he fell off a boat, but my grandmother told me her father went to the funeral home and told the funeral director don't do anything to the body until i get there and he got there and he saw the bullet hole in the back of his head or neck um his body came up um a couple days later and so um they know it was murder um And then I recently found out

the man who shot him confessed it before he passed away. Someone knew him and he was in his later years and he had confessed. I guess he felt he could trust that person. Right. And he confessed it,

but he's no longer here. Right. Yeah. Yeah, so it's a justice that could never be redressed. Absolutely. And what does that do to a young man at age nine when he finds out,

and how does he carry that throughout his life and pass it along? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to get into that a little bit more deeply, but Byron, we go way back. Yeah, we go way back. I'll be quick. Of course, Rich, you and I, you were at Stanford. I was UCLA swimming. And I'm a former athlete turned speaker, consultant. Phil and I became good friends and

brothers when we were both on staff at a church called Shepherd Church out in Porter Ranch. But we've been connected for, you know, close to 15 years now, 13, 15 years, and both he and I, you know, didn't necessarily start out in this journey of becoming activists in this issue, but by, by nature of, you know, how he grew up, how I grew up, um, uh, it's, and even in the climate that we're in now, it, uh, it, it just makes sense. And, uh, you know, I think part of our, our mission and our, our goal, our heart is to elevate the conversation around race and,, you know, superiority, around racism, and, you know, just around people, groups of people in their silos, constantly pointing out, you know, the wrong in other people and causing so much division that we don't get smart minds

on all sides working together to actually address and deal and ultimately heal the problem. Right. He's so humble, man. You know what I mean? I mean, let's just like lay it out for people that are watching or listening.

Like Byron was, Byron's a legend. Like this guy was an incredible athlete. You know, were you the first African-American to make the USA national team? Actually, no, there was one person right before me. Now I'm blanking, which is terrible, but yeah, I was one of the first. Right, and just three tenths of a second separated you

from becoming the first African-American to make a USA Olympic team in swimming. I was there at Olympic trials. I watched that race because Mark Henderson was my teammate going way back. I think it was episode 17 and we went through his whole life story. So I encourage everybody to go back and listen to that to get a full picture of your life. But you had to overcome incredible obstacles to not just become the athlete that you became, but to become the man, the father, and the husband that you are today.

And I got nothing but mad respect for that journey that you went on. And you've always comported yourself with just tremendous grace and just composure through what I would imagine was incredibly difficult at times. And the fact that you kind of just didn't even mention any of those things. I just want to make sure that people really understood. Like, I remember, you know, we talked about this before, but I remember being at swim meets and seeing Byron on the deck and he was just, the guy was like a Greek God. It was incredible, you know, watching this guy perform. And so I'm, you know, honored to be your friend and to have you guys here today. So why don't we, I want to get your perspective on, you know, what's going on right

now from like a 10,000 foot view. Like how are you perceiving the current climate and series of events that we're seeing unfold like rapidly, like everything is accelerating very quickly right now. But give me a sense of kind of where your head is at. The first thing that comes to mind is pain is manifesting itself, particularly from the black community, because George Floyd represents a lineage of black bodies that die senselessly. It just so happens there was a camera to capture it. And I don't know many African-American men particularly that don't have stories, whether it's police officers or civilians, where it could turn ugly it could lead to something like that because you come across people that just want to flex um authority or superiority um i've i've got those stories matter of fact this

this last um incident impacted me harder than the others. Because? Well, what's interesting is I realized on Thursday, just a few days ago, that my body responded when I saw the video, but my mind did not understand why this thing was so heavy until a few days ago. understand why this thing was so heavy until a few days ago. So when I saw it, there's this response here, this traumatic response in my body. And my mind knew that this was heavy. I'm crying throughout the day. I can't write. I can't study and read. And then a few days ago, I realized this is why, because it took me back 19 years to my personal experience in New York being pulled over, profiled. And it didn't lead to brutality or anything, but he was instigating me, the cop. He told me what he could do, and there's nothing I could do about it.

And he stood in front of me, and he stared at me. And I guarantee you, if he stood in front of me today, if he was in a lineup, I could point him out 19 years later. So I never forgot that look. So when I saw the cop's eyes, that's what did it. Meaning, like, I'm the one in control here. This evil and this hate. Like he was looking at me like he despised me.

And he was in my face right here, maybe not even this far away, and just staring at me. And I wouldn't bow my head. I just stared back at him. And when I saw the cop's eyes, it reminded me, it took me back. And I said, that's why this is so heavy for me. There was something just so brazen about it and casual. And there was an awareness that they were being filmed and it didn't seem to matter.

And I think that is really chilling. Yes. Yes. And just to add, I think, one, I am grateful that it was finally, that was finally captured on video because events up until this point, again, this isn't the first incident of police abuse and brutality that's been caught on video. incident of police abuse and brutality that's been caught on video. But what was caught was you had a police officer who in his posture had full control over the situation and intentionally decided to put his hand in his pocket and stand in a position of dominance over this black man until the black man died. Capturing that.

With other officers standing in witness of that. hey, I think we got this under control. And him like, no, you're a rookie on the job. You go over there. That all was captured. And I think for the first time in this age of social media, more people actually saw that. Not the black kid running away and being shot or brutally being beat up. And we come in halfway through the video. We don't know the story in the narrative.

Right. We were able to see that. I think that's, in addition to pain, I think it also evokes a lot of anger among the African-American community, because this is what we speak about behind closed doors all the way to the 21st century. I'll never forget my son right before he went off to college. He's a freshman at USC now. He and I in sophomore year had the talk. And what's the talk? It's the talk that black men have with their black sons and nephews about how to engage in an encounter, interact with the police if you're pulled over or anything of that nature. I actually had to have the talk with my son. That's gone on for, I mean, we can't even count. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. There is a palpable sense that this is an inflection point and what allowed this moment to capture the attention of the world in such a huge way seems to be unclear. Like, it seems to be that it's the confluence of a bunch of these events happening in serial fashion, all of a sudden compounded by people being cloistered in their homes and jobs being stripped away.

Like there's a rawness right now to everybody that I think has contributed to this just being an extraordinary flashpoint for not just America, but the world. And I'm interested in whether you think that there is the possibility that this is going to be different. We've been here before. We were here in Ferguson in 2014, and there was a sense that things were going to change and they didn't really change. The world was paying attention very closely for a short period of time. And then it moved on. I'm sure in 1968, there was a sense that we were going to emerge into a post-race nation

and we've made progress, but we've fallen far short of that mark. So do you feel like we're now in a position to make the changes that are necessary to make? And what are those changes? I think we are. I'm skeptical, but I think we have the potential to make significant change. Like you said, we've been here multiple times before. That's one reason why I'm a little skeptical. But if we don't make the mistake of just simply responding to the incident, the moment, like that's the only thing that we're responding to. And then once it dies down, we think everything is okay.

Maybe justice is served and they go to the cops, go to prison and the family may get some money. And so justice is served. So now let's move on. baptized, to be immersed in a culture, a history, perspectives that are not your own. So I talk to, I'll teach a class or I'll preach or have a workshop. And one of the things I hear, one of the most consistent things I hear is I never knew that. because I usually will do a survey of history to walk us, go back and bring us to this point so people can get context and people are stunned because they never knew, they never knew Emmett Till. They never knew about the amount of, the extent of lynching. They never knew that veterans, African-American veterans from the war, World War II, would come

back, and many of them were lynched because now they're a threat. They have been empowered as soldiers and they wanted equal, but they would be lynched or killed or beaten, what have you. And people just didn't know the extent of this. For whatever reason, they think it's just these particular isolated incidents. Then the systemic, the structural, the institutional racism, the laws and policies from decades ago that we're living out the legacy of today that perpetuate disparities along racial lines, where it doesn't need to be an individual doing something. The laws and policies do them for you as a friend. That is the definition of systemic, right? It doesn't matter. Like the narrative that gets spun is there is no systemic racism.

I'm not racist. I don't have racist friends, but the very definition of systemic means that you don't have to be individually racist. You can opt out of that completely. If nobody's racist, the system is constructed in a manner that still leans towards favoring those that have against those that have not. And it will continue to repress the African-American community until it's deconstructed and rebuilt with checks and balances that ensure

proper equality and freedom for all. Yep. And that's, okay. Well, one other thing. I think one thing that is different now is it's not just black folks angry. Like when you go to these protests, like you said, you see everybody there. Now, my hope is that from this, that's why I use the term baptized, now immerse yourself in understanding how we got here.

Because if we don't, we will compound the issue, trying to fix it, especially trying to fix it really quick. We'll just compound the issue because we don't understand it fully. So that's one reason it gives me a little bit of hope. This is different because the people who I see are angry and out there. It's multicultural, not just primarily black people.

Yeah. That has been a big difference. Go ahead. Right. History has always been told from the perspective of the victors, right? Right. People who can control the narrative. look at the foundation in the history of the United States of America, it was founded on the backs of slavery. Okay. I mean, even when you just go all the way back to when you had the Europeans

coming over and in conquest and adventure, it was economically driven, right? It was all the foundation. And when they tried to initially enslave indigenous people and Native Americans, that didn't work out very well because Native Americans knew the lay of the land. You couldn't keep them captive. that was actually going to work. And so from the very beginning of our history, all the way through, up and through today, you see the systemic, you know, can there be change? There won't be change until those who have a vested interest in keeping the status quo the way it is are willing to challenge their own worldview and when their blind spots are actually pointed out, have the courage to change because then that's going to actually shift a lot of the power and a lot of the privilege that exists even to today. Yeah, people don't like to do that, though. Exactly. Right. Exactly. You know what I mean? Right. And that's where it's scary. Yeah. And so when you get this narrative, a good book is a book called White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. Robin DiAngelo, thank you.

That actually speaks, puts a lot of good language and articulates this big fear that many white people have about confronting their own racism. because you don't necessarily have to be a person that hates, overtly hates another person because of their skin color to still perpetuate racism. You just have to recognize when you are asserting yourself and catch yourself or one has to catch themselves on what is the benchmark and the gold standard or the norm by which they define and rate everything else. You know, my daughter, for instance, you know, when a white kid comes up to her,

not meaning anything malicious, and tells her, you look cute for a black girl, right? Right. Right? It's this idea of, wait a minute, I'm comparing her beauty to a came from a mixed race parents and one looked very white and one looked very black. And the newscaster was complimenting the white looking twin and saying, good on you that you got the one. It was just like, wow. Right. That is prevalent and that's baked into every facet of our system. I can only speak to my own experience as a white privileged male.

And, you know, I can tell you that, that I've had to do my own experience as a white privileged male. And I can tell you that I've had to do my own soul searching to look for where I've, I was going to say like gone awry, but I think that's the wrong phrase, like more where my blind spots are in all of this. Have I done an adequate job of ensuring that I have a diversity of voices on the podcast and what are the things that I'm doing, you know, throughout my daily life that I'm not consciously aware of, but yet are part of the problem, right? And I think, you know, one of the things that I've been struggling with over the last couple of weeks as somebody somebody who has a platform, is how do I communicate about this? And what I've noticed in myself

is a resistance to speaking because I don't wanna say the wrong thing, or I'm afraid that if I say this, it's gonna be misinterpreted. I don't care about people being, like the people, the trolls and all that, like that, that doesn't bother me at all, but I do want to get this right. And I want to make sure that I'm effective in my communication. And I think that that, but that fear of, of

needing or wanting it to be as accurate as possible has prevented me from speaking up or as, as possible has prevented me from speaking up or as frequently as I could and should be doing. And I think that's something that's probably, you know, a common thing that a lot of, you know, white people have right now. So, you know, what are the questions, like what is the right question to ask right now? Like if you're speaking to a white person, like, what are the things that they should be thinking about and how can they contribute and participate in this in the most effective way?

You know, I think a great question should be asking, how did we get here? Because I think a lot, I listen to a lot of people speak as if they have the answers, again, because of this event and recent events. And the anger that you see is not just because of these events. This is anger that stretches back 400 years. Because as an African American, in our community, when we see something happen, it's never just about the thing that happened. we see something happen, it's never just about the thing that happened. It's typically about the history. This is another thing that's happening. So it's like, it's a natural thing. We don't just look at Arbery's situation. We don't just look at George Floyd or Breonna Taylor. We literally, it's like a file that you just recall the faces and names like that.

Or I could go back to Emmett Till immediately. I could go back. And your own personal experiences. Yeah, personal experiences. So I think a good question to ask is, how did we get here? And I don't think enough people ask that question. I think for one reason, it's going to force people, particularly white folks, to look at this country differently. It's going to force them to, you're talking about white fragility, what D'Angelo was talking about, it forces them to look at themselves.

Because to be American subconsciously is to be white, right? And everything else is measured against that. I've had people say it in conversations where a guy would say, yeah, I was in this room and it was a bunch of people, diverse, you know, and Americans were there. And then he began to list the African-American or the black folks, Hispanics. They weren't American, I guess. But when he was saying American, he was talking about the white folks that were there.

And he wasn't a bad person. He was a great guy. But subconsciously, he just associated American with white. That's typically what happens. And so to look at how we got here is to now have to open up yourselves to seeing this country differently. Because I always ask the question, when you say America is so great, what's your definition of greatness and when? Because if you're talking about power, military might, and prosperity, certainly. might and prosperity? Certainly. If you're talking morally and being a just society,

you have to go back and help me understand when was that? Because there's always been systemic and legalized oppression in this country. There's never been a decade or never been a time in history, in our history, that it wasn't the case. And so I challenged that notion of greatness. Do we have the potential to be? Absolutely. And so I think, how do we get here? Is a great question to ask. And in addition to that, also, I think people have to, this is a time of courage, a time of have to, this is a time of courage, a time of intestinal fortitude where white people also have to confront their ignorance. When we don't know and that's exposed, that's vulnerable. And it doesn't, I mean, this goes beyond race. This is just human nature, right? Human condition. just human nature, right? Human condition. If we're not something, if we don't know something and our current idea or point of view or answer that we thought was true is shown not to be by

just based on evidence, that's a very vulnerable position to be in. Okay. No one likes their ignorance exposed. But if you look at that, even that term ignorance from just the sheer educational definition, ignorance is the beginning of enlightenment. It's learning. You can't learn until you confront and wrestle through your ignorance, right? That's the foundation or the fundamentals of learning. That's the foundation or the fundamentals of learning. So adults have to embrace the fear and the risk of being vulnerable. You know, when they, what they may say out of just sheer ignorance is proven to be untrue.

Well, it requires a certain humility too. And I'm uplifted because I'm seeing a willingness to embrace this conversation in a way that I can't recall in my lifetime. And that gives me hope, but it's juxtaposed against a climate and a culture that is more deeply entrenched in being right and their silos and the division that we're seeing right now. It's sort of a war between those two things right now. Social media fomenting this division across America where people just want to yell at each other and no one is taking a pause to actually listen and take stock and perform a little bit of forensic self-analysis. That's it.

But I think these events have led us to a point where we are seeing a certain portion of the population doing that. I'm attempting to do that here today. And I think that's really the only path to healing and to really reconstructing society around more equitable lines. Rich, I think you're totally right.

You hit the nail on the head. You have to be willing to have those kind of conversations. When intelligent people are stuck in their silos and their echo chambers and spend more energy trying to defend their position than admit that this is a multifaceted, complex problem that is going to take rigorous and consistent attention to in order to really write, in order to really solve the problem, until we're willing to really embrace that, then it's going to be an uphill battle. It's going to be hard because we feel more comfortable when we think we're right or when we have the upper hand. And so when you have people on all sides digging in and having good points on every side, but spending most of our energy trying to point out where and why the other side is wrong, as opposed to instead of being on opposite sides of the table, coming together on one side and actually pouring

all of that energy into the problem, I think that's the heavy lifting that has to be. And conversations like this is a start. But I think what message we want to continue to really advocate is after the protesting, after the news cycle has died down, after the shift in attention moves to something else, will we have enough boots on the ground committed to wrestling within the trenches to right the wrong that we clearly see right now? Yeah, that energy has to get channeled into some kind of productive change that is architected around strategies and tactics to actually enact the changes that are necessary rather than just sort of outrage that just dissipates into the atmosphere. Which is, again, why you hear people really pointing the spotlight on the dysfunction within the justice system.

And you get a lot of people on one side saying, you know, that's just, those are just bad apple cops and deflecting the attention on, no, this is just, if we look at it in terms of a virus, this is just a flare-up of something that is still alive on the inside. And what we're seeing is just a flare-up happening. But if we just deal with the surface issue and not deal with the root cause on the inside, it's just going to be a matter of time before this little thing heals. But in months, weeks, years, another flare-up happens. So we definitely have to take this opportunity to now do some deep dive surgery into the systemic issues that allow this thing to exist. Yeah, I think listening to you, Byron, I think one of the things to look at is the power dynamics. When you come to the table, and we're talking about division, and everyone wants to be right.

When you come to the table, you have to relinquish power because it has to be a compromise. come to the table, you have to relinquish power because it has to be a compromise. Well, as an African-American man, I come to the table, I'm already behind. I'm marginalized already. I don't want to let go of power. Whatever power I do have, I need to have that one to protect myself at this table, to speak up for myself because I don't have much. When a white person comes to the table, they're used to having power, not as an individual necessarily, but representing the group that's in power. And they get to decide how much power everybody else has.

And that's uncomfortable if you have to relinquish that to come to the table to have discussion, right? So it's uncomfortable for both sides. It's a power struggle, right? And so I don't know how you self-police that. I don't know how you hold each other accountable. But that's, that's, that next time I'm going to be at the table. I don't know what decisions are going to be made that's going to affect my life. So I have to come with my power, my agency. And then my white brothers and sisters, when they come to the table, they're used to being, it's natural to be in that position. I've been in these meetings before, even in the church,

where I see this and I have to flex. I have to assert myself because if I don't, I will get crushed. And then it becomes this battle. And then I'm looked at as the person who's out of control. Why are you being so aggressive? The angry black man. Right. And I'm like, no, just because you're composed and I'm passionate over here,

I'm frustrated because you have this power and you're trying to assert that, impose that upon me and I'm passionate over here. I'm frustrated because you have this power and you're trying to assert that, impose that upon me and I'm not letting you. So I'm the one that's out of control. I'm the angry black guy. And so that's where the struggle comes in. I just had a conversation with a pastor recently and it didn't go well.

I mean, it was bad. And I didn't know, I didn't really know the guy, but it was bad. And I saw't know, I didn't really know the guy, but it was bad. And I saw the power dynamics in there. Right? And I wasn't going to relinquish mine because I wasn't going to let him dictate for me, one, how I should respond to this George Floyd situation. I wasn't going to let him dictate to me my understanding of racism. Like, literally, this is all I do every day, every week.

Other than bald-faced racism and these systemic problems that have created these institutions that create inequality, a huge obstacle or opposing force to Black Lives Matter is a huge swath of underprivileged, disenfranchised white Americans who have lost their jobs or are seeing, you know, declines in their ability to make a living, et cetera, who are hurting. And it seems to me that that's the most activated group of people who, because they feel like

they're not being heard, right? So their natural inclination is to voice their anger in an unproductive way by opposing this movement. And I think you have to, on some level, that has to be addressed in order for everybody to come to the table to compromise, I suppose. So how do you think about that issue?

Richard, one, I think it's a great point to bring up, but it goes back to a point that Phil, you were making earlier, and this is where getting an accurate perspective of history is so important. When you look back on even after slavery was over and blacks were able to, in especially different pockets, go out and actually start making a living. They got their own land, started opening up their own businesses, actually started thriving. I mean, underneath military protection at that point, support, but they were actually thriving and starting to grow. One of the sectors that really began to feel the brunt of this new shift in opportunity and power was the lower class white community of which the Ku Klux Klan was birthed and born. Because even back then, they started seeing and feeling and interpreting their lack was coming from these black people who were taking their jobs. Right, like a zero-sum game.

Like a zero-sum game. Where black empowerment and advancement was at the cost of their own empowerment. Exactly. X's and O's or binary, this whole binary relationship. And that's not true. And you continue to see that throughout history and not just with the African-American community. We can talk about the Asian community and the railroad, transatlantic railroad that was built

and how there was a huge, you know, skift on employing Asian workers to build the railroad. And by the time the railroad met in the middle of America, you look at the picture of the two sides joining and the big picture of all these men, they were all white faces. The Asian community who actually built that from the Pacific all the way to the Midwest, no sign that they were even involved in this whole process because all the way through, you had disenfranchised whites attacking people who thought were taking their opportunity away. So you're definitely right. What's being felt now is, again, another symptom of a dysfunctional structure that has to be examined and looked at rigorously. It's not an

easy answer. Um, and on top of that, when you have, uh, not getting too political with this, uh, but, but when you have voices, um, recognizing the divide and then throwing fuel on, on, or, you know, uh, gasoline on the fuel to keep the division necessary, it doesn't help the problem. But I hope that that kind of speaks to why it's so important for us to, again, really take this, you know, take the long, this is the long game that we have to be willing to wrestle with. And then look at, you know, why are a lot of white, traditionally white communities suffering, white lower class

community suffering? Well, it's not because blacks or Latinos are taking their jobs. It's because the system that actually created economic opportunity maybe in that environment or that local area has shifted. So it's not coal any longer. It's not an industrialized support system or infrastructure that's generating the revenue for that community. Things have shifted. Automation. A lot of things have changed that have now taken dollars and cash flow out of that community. And so we've got to look at that. We have to look at this problem in a very compound, complex way. And then in the process of solving the problem together, be willing to look at our blind spots when our blind spots are exposed.

Yeah. Let's go back a little further. 1600s. I think it was around 1680. This is one of the things that I try to get people to understand. White supremacy is a very exclusive, originally a very exclusive club. It was white and wealthy. So the lower class or the working class, the poor whites actually had more in common with indentured black servants and slaves back in the 1600s than they did with the merchants. And there was an uprising. I think Bacon's Rebellion, there was an uprising. This is when the term white became a legal term and privileges became attached to it and this is

how they divided the African Americans the African slaves or African indentured servants and the whites the white poor whites if you're white you could have property you could vote you could be a citizen you had privileges so this is where we start with the white privileges and so that divided because now the poor whites saw themselves on the hierarchy here and blacks were here. We're not like them. Well, just a few weeks ago, we were this. And so white supremacy actually crushes its own. But there's such an allegiance even from poor whites to whiteness and its privilege, its superiority.

It doesn't see that. They actually have more in common with other marginalized groups because white supremacy by nature is not just whiteness, but it's wealthy. And it's, again, a power struggle. It'll crush anything that's not in that group yeah it'll turn on each other because it's built on greed and avarice what have you and when you can have a person who remains nameless uh position himself as the um blue collar billionaire you can name him. Trump, you know, it's, when you have a person who's able to, in his own narrative and his own campaign to the presidency, hijack the narrative and convince those who are marginalized, who

had nothing in common with this guy, you know, to then vote and to then vote and allow him to be the voice of their disenfranchisement, if I can say that, was brilliant from a marketing standpoint. It was brilliant because he was able to do that and then point their angst and their anger toward, again, other marginalized groups. I mean, we see this even back in the days of, and I'm not comparing Hitler to Trump by any means, but we can see, what was it that allowed Hitler to create such a strong

narrative that permeated outside of Germany to the rest of the European world and demonized the Jewish community. Well, it was a narrative of pointing the finger at all of these Jewish mertens and business owners and saying they are the reason why you're poor. They are the reason why you don't have opportunity. It's them. And that message, that narrative was allowed to, again, echo and echo and echo. And pretty much before you know it, and even the minister of propaganda of the Nazi movement says, if you tell a lie long enough, the masses will believe it. Yeah, certainly he's a master of creating reality out of his own delusional narrative and energizing his base by putting a face on what that enemy is without expressly saying it, but through every action and everything that comes out of his mouth. It is gasoline on this fire.

And I think it's gonna blow up in his face. And I think we're seeing that right now. My hope is that this is gonna energize young voters to turn out. I mean, just what we're seeing in the streets right now, I've never seen public activism on this level. And so I'm hopeful that change will come in November, but if we've learned anything, these things, there's nothing off the table right now in terms of what could happen. But his ability to leverage that anger and sense of disenfranchisement for his own personal gain and do it under the rubric that he is in their interest is one of the great snake oil hat tricks of all time.

Yeah, definitely. time. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I was just with, um, actually having a conversation with a good friend of mine, um, who happens to be a very right-wing conservative Christian. He and I were on a, on a conversation, a long conversation. And, uh, I just share, it was, it was a, um, a thought experiment. You know, I decided, I asked him, I said, Hey, let's, let's, let's do a thought experiment really quickly. He and I were, were, uh, roommates at UCLA freshman year. Okay. And he came from, uh, Iowa and I'm from inner city, East Cleveland. Okay. Both coming together and having to room together, um, and learn a lot about each other through this whole, you know, first year at through this whole first year in college.

And I shared with him, I said, hey, look, let's put race aside and let's just look at this from an aspect of privilege. I said, you and I were athletes who were blessed to get scholarships to UCLA, correct? And he's like, yes. And I said, well, be honest. correct? And he's like, yes. And I said, well, be honest. Could you have gotten into UCLA on sheerly your SAT scores and your GPA? And he was like, no. And I was like, well, guess what? Join the club. Me too. We were both there. Here's a white guy saying the exact same thing. And I said, guess you and I were beneficiaries of the privilege that was extended to us in the form of an athletic scholarship.

You know, our names were put higher on the list of admissions because of some perceived value that we were bringing to the university. That's privilege. That's the privilege that you nor I deserved. Yeah, we can both make the argument that we worked hard in the pool. We got faster and we demonstrated that we were good enough to compete at the college level. Sure, that doesn't take away our effort at all.

But what we have to really recognize and be honest about is if there was not an infrastructure that valued swimming at the D1 level enough that they were willing to say, we would love to give you equivalent to your tuition and books if you decide to swim with us. If that construct, if that infrastructure didn't exist, we probably wouldn't have been able to get in. infrastructure didn't exist, we probably wouldn't have been able to get in. But you might not have put so much energy into being a good swimmer had that opportunity not existed like in your horizon, right? You might've channeled your energy in a different direction. And I kept saying, I should have been a basketball player. So that's interesting though, this idea of how Christianity fits into all of this

and another juxtaposition with how Christianity has been leveraged by the right in a manner that contravenes the core principles of what this religion is founded upon and yourself as a pastor and Byron as a former pastor. Like, let's talk about that. Like I listened, you did a sermon, like a recent podcast, "'I'm Not Okay' that I listened to

where you kind of break all this down and you don't pull punches at all in that, which I appreciated. So where does faith play into this politically and also spiritually with respect to the movement that we're seeing at the moment? Well, two things. One, I think we have to be honest. We've been deceiving ourselves into thinking that we are practicing the Christianity that's in Scripture.

American Christianity looks very differently, and it's intertwined with Americanism, it's individualism, capitalism. I just wrote a paper. I think I'm going to turn it into a book one day, The Neoliberal Gospel. And it's a business, all right? And we forget the fact that we're in a people business, actually. So I think the way we live out Christianity,

we have to be honest that we're far from, and I'm pretty critical about the church, we're far from, as a group, living out what we see in scripture. It's very Americanized. But as a pastor, what I'm seeing happening is I'm seeing trauma. You said earlier, we witnessed a lynching, a public lynching. I had a guy come up to me once. I preached a sermon, and the last couple of years, almost everywhere I go, I weave in justice into it. I share my grandfather's story. confess, you know, my grandfather was, he has pictures in the house of him standing in a crowd, proudly smiling, and there's a lynched black body hanging behind him when he was younger. Or maybe when he was an adult, I don't know. He said, those pictures are all around the house,

were all around my grandfather's house growing up. They were just normal. That's crazy. Yeah. He's in tears and he's apologizing, but he doesn't know what to do with that. And what I'm seeing in this man, I had to get past my offense to that. It wasn't hard.

I was in pastor mode, but this man was genuinely in tears, broken. What does a child seeing that, what does that do? Like our souls aren't meant to see that and be normal or experience it or engage it and be normal. What we saw was a public lynching two weeks ago. That's not normal to move past that and not address the pain, the woundedness, the trauma, that wouldn't be normal. So for me, I think that we can't, and I see too many people trying to fix the problem. They're trying to rush to fix the problem. So how many of us have ever been in a relationship with someone who's wounded, like deeply, deeply wounded and end up being toxic? Doesn't have to be a romantic relationship. It could be a friendship.

They're just toxic, right? Well, they're still dealing with some stuff that they've never addressed in their lives. They've never walked through the healing process. And I think it is critical right now that we be intentional as a church. If we say we're about those core principles, that we tend to the wounds of those who witnessed this lynching. And I see too many people in the church, they say nothing about the murder. Their focus on the either the looting and the violence there or their focus is on trying to um what's the word i want to look for trying to debate against this idea of systemic racism and they they weave that into politics they make they politicize it yeah they spend more energy there. And he's a,

I'm detoxing my social media as we speak. I'm saying, keep posting, keep posting so I'll know who to unfriend. Because I don't want that in my, you know, I'm detoxing, man.

I'm like, you're not even open. Okay, I'm unfriending. I don't want that in my feed. Right? Maybe I shouldn't unfriend. Maybe I should just unfollow that they could still see my stuff, but I have nothing to do with their stuff.

Here's something, too, just to continue to add. So what does the church do? Like Phil, I'm coming down pretty hard on the church because if you just look at the life and teachings of Jesus, you can't be so gripped on your ideological and political beliefs, whether you're from the right or the left, to the point where you forget about what Scripture teaches you about how to engage in love your fellow man, your fellow brother and sister. I mean, the foundation and the message of Jesus and his teachings is love. And if you can't start there at all, and I'm not just being like

the kumbaya type of, you know, let's we all get along. I love you. I don't see color. I'm not even talking about that. I hope you see color. I want you to see color. I want you to see the differences because that's, I think, where the beauty is. What I think is important is if you care more about your political posturing and positioning more than you do about being an example and a model, a vessel of the love that Jesus actually died for, then your religion is deaf, it's mute, it's dead, because that's not what he lived and ultimately died for. You know, so that's the voice or that's my charge and encouragement to the Christian community is, hey, we're supposed to have the playbook to lead through this time right now, right? We're supposed to be the ones that people can actually look to to see how do

you bring two people who have different ideas, totally different walks of life and come together in a way, in a supernatural, miraculous way. I mean, the church should be leading the charge. Yeah. What are the moral and ethical guideposts that are gonna dictate how we navigate this landfill, right? And I love the example, the analogy of the wounded friend. It's like, if you think of a friend who's deeply wounded or has suffered tremendous trauma and use that as a stand-in for the African-American community,

how do you interact with that person? Do you come to them and say, "'Well, I'm gonna fix you with these three things.'" And we can talk about how we need to overhaul policing and police brutality, and there's several steps that we can take towards redressing that, but that's not gonna heal that wound overnight. You come to a wounded friend with compassion

and with understanding and with patience, not with a motivation to change or to fix, but to understand. To your point, I think about the story of the Samaritan man. The man's left on the side of the road to be beaten. Dr. King preaches on this, brilliant. The African-American community, for the sake of this conversation, is the man left to die on the road.

The Samaritan man, well, the church is the priest and the Levite who walk to the other side, leave him laying there, doesn't want to touch him, just walks to the other side. The Samaritan man is supposedly like this person who's not connected to God, like the priest and the Levi, but this person comes and gets to his knees and tends to the wounds. He's taking a risk because there could be some other robbers hiding out, waiting for the next person to walk on that road. He's taking a risk by tending to this man's wounds. He takes this man and puts this man on his animal while he walks to the end. So he's now sharing resources and he's giving up access to those resources to a degree. He gets to the end. He says, here's for his stay till he gets better. And then whatever, if he stays longer, charge it to me. I'll take care of it because he has the resources.

Now, that should be the church's response for the tending to the wounds part. But then here's the church's other response. And Dr. King brings this out. should speak to the conditions that allow the road to be conducive for robbers to hide and beat people up in the first place. Because if we don't address that tomorrow, somebody's going to be back on that road and robbers are going to be hiding out because the road is conducive for that, the curves and everything. If it was modern day, it would be something like, we got to put lighting up on the road so it's not as dark.

We got to have patrolmen coming. So it scares the robbers. We have to do something to make the road safer for those who are traveling that road. Right. Otherwise, we're going to be back in this situation again. Yeah. An example of that that comes to mind is what DeRay McKesson is doing with Eight Can't Wait.

Are you familiar with that? He's got these steps and things that are immediately actionable in terms of changing how policing is done. And he seems to be at the forefront of addressing that ever since Ferguson. Yeah, which I think is a beautiful step. And, okay, here are some handles that you can actually implement, and we can hold you accountable in measures that are available to,

okay, police departments, what do we do? Well, here are the eight that you can actually look at. Look at how you train your officers. Look at the current rules and things that are currently in place that contribute to this type of abuse and power. Let's attack those things. Let's address those things. We don't want to put policemen in harm's way any more than they are currently. That's not the intent of reconstructing this whole thing. It's to look at which of these things are not working. I mean, if we were looking at a business, right, and a business decided to launch, a startup decides to launch, they create a software

and all, what do they recognize inherently in the process? They have a minimum viable product that they know is not going to fly completely and perfectly when they release it to market, right? They release it knowing full well that when the system begins to be in contact with reality, bugs are going to show up. But they also, in addition to that, have a plan of rapid implementation, rapid ideation to improve the system. That's the type of mindset we need to have when we're talking about our judicial system, when we're talking about our policing system, is recognize that, hey, what you have in place, okay, it's a good start. You may have been well-intended in these rules and regulations and structures, but we see that the real world is showing where this stuff is dysfunctional. Let's change that. Let's implement

rapid tooling to improve what's there. And I think eight can't wait is a great suggestion and a great step in doing that because police departments who've already put that into effect, we're seeing positive benefits. We're seeing decrease in senseless police killings. Yeah. And I think what's great about it is that it's not about rhetoric, it's data driven. So it's not just, we need to defund the police. Like, what does that even mean? I mean, I understand that's an emotional reaction to seeing a militarized police state

that does nothing but instill fear and exacerbate whatever violence is happening on the street. But to actually look at the statistics and say, what are the levers that we can pull that will actually make a difference? And some of them are counterintuitive. Like I heard him talking about it on a podcast the other day,

where you would think like, well, if you just hire more black police officers, that'll solve it. But they realized that that isn't effective until they reach something like 34% of the police department being black or instituting psychological psych training or whatever. They found out that that's really not that.

Things that you think might work actually don't, but looking at the data can show you, but these simple things that every police department can do actually could make a huge difference in reducing fatality rates and all of the abuse instances. Yeah. Is there any part of eight can't wait that suggests those who are in power, those who have the power to, I don't know who would it be, but captains and commissioners, because if they've already bought into the previous ideology that actually has been passed on since the 1800s, when policing was designed

to patrol the slaves and protect the property of the wealthy, that's been passed on. So if they've bought into that and that's who they are, we're asking them to buy into something that is foreign to them. Right, it's checks and balances on individuals and systems in which there is a systemic problem, right? These are good solutions, but you're speaking to the broader problem

of dealing with the systemic aspect of it. And that goes to the psychology of the people that are administering these departments as well. Right. I was talking to another person, a police officer, and we were just talking about this was actually a while back. We were just talking about the emotional health of police officers going into and having their life be every time they step out of the door, it's depending on their beat, you know, it isn't known whether or not they're going to come home. All right. So that's the reality that they live in. And he and I, in our conversation, he was sharing, well, here are some things that I think we need to improve. And I thought it was really interesting.

He said, number one, some of the systemic issues for police officers, number one, good cops have to actually be supported and protected enough to call out bad cops. When you have a fraternity and a subculture within the precincts themselves where a good cop doesn't feel safe and actually calling out and holding accountable a bad cop, that's dysfunction in the system that needs to change. On top of that, you have to have a support system where, again, we're not even going to get into the domestic violence of police officers, the drug and alcohol abuse that's systemic and you see the divorce rate that you see from police officers. All of these things are, again, flare up conditions that are coming as a result of a dysfunctional system.

So, you know, I'm all for and we support, and we support police officers. So this rhetoric of, you got to be for the blue. If you're protesting, then you're not supporting our police officers. We got to get past that. It's no, let's look at the system in which these guys and gals have to work. And let's be honest about how can we go about helping them win. And this then also, in addition to what I've just listed, also includes, you know, their sense and their fear of African-American males. I mean, there is a huge subconscious. I mean, I've experienced it my whole life. And actually, Phil and I were talking about this. And if you look at, I've shared this before, and that is, there is a secret language that all African American men and women who work in the white collar sector have learned to speak.

And I'm not just talking about being able to speak proper and articulate. I'm talking about there is a way that when we walk into a boardroom, when we walk into an environment, when we walk down the street and a white woman is approaching us, we've learned how to signal to them that, hey, we're friendly. You're safe. We're safe. Yeah. You know? You're non-threatening. We're non-threat. You're not an angry black man.

Exactly. You know what? That is real. Uh-huh. And so those things have to be addressed. And again, the onus has to, a lot of the onus has to fall on white America and not being so fragile in that context and be willing to step up and be willing to, hey, if I'm passionate, at least arguing my point across a boardroom table, don't dismiss it as an angry black man. No, let's rigorously argue and deal with the points that I'm bringing up.

Because if my counterpart who happens to be white is just as adamant, just as committed in expressing their point of view on this, on a particular issue, they're going to get a pass on that. You know, they're going to probably walk away from the meeting, wow, he was really, really, you know, excited about, you know, his idea. Passionate. He's passionate. Yeah. Right? Not angry. Yeah, that double about his idea. Passionate. He's passionate, right? Not angry. Yeah, that double standard. Right. It's exhausting.

It's gotta be exhausting, right? I was just saying, some days I just don't care. When I'm going running and I have to think about when I see that white woman. She hasn't realized she has more power in this situation. I'm more nervous than she is. Because if she says anything, she's going to get the benefit of the doubt.

And sometimes you're just tired. You just, you know, when you work at a mega church, I'm not there now, but when you work at a megachurch, it's like working in a big company. And it's the same thing. And you have to think about it. You have to consider it. And it's mentally draining. And some days you just don't care. Some days I want to be really, really passionate.

And I just don't care what you think. But then you can't be like that all the time, so you got to monitor that. And it's those little microaggressions that, if we look at, you said 10,000 feet, let's look at where we are, going back to earlier. If you look at everything, the fatigue, the anger, it's about all of this of what we're talking about.

It's about the microaggressions. It's about being of this of what we're talking about. It's about the microaggressions. It's about being in the workplace and my voice is muted by everyone else's voice is heard. It's about being in the grocery store or in a store and having the surveillance. We call it the white gaze. It's about walking. Like a hypervigilance everywhere you go. It's like walking into Starbucks and the guy over there just sitting, he's just staring at you. And you're like, okay. And you feel the eyes on you. Or the guy that almost hit me

purposely coming out of Whole Foods a few months back, purposely, like he came within inches, did not slow down, didn't stop. Well, he slowed down, but he didn't stop. And he tried to make it seem like he knew I'd already cleared, but I'm inches away from your car. Right. And just those daily occurrences, just getting put into the file cabinet, you know, week after week after week. I think that what's so special and unique about right now is we're seeing every flavor and color of that kind of experience writ large on social media, because the most impactful, and you're a filmmaker, but the most impactful and powerful filmmaking that we're seeing right now is what's coming out of everybody's cell phone, you know, from the birder in Central Park with that woman and the encounter that they had from the cops

that knocked over that elderly white man in Buffalo. And then all the police officers that, you know, resigned in their omerta to those guys being fired, like, and everything in between from the police, the good police officers who, you know, took a knee or marched with the protesters, the bad behavior, the good behavior, and we're having conversations about it. That can't be a bad thing. This boil is being lanced. It's out in the open right now.

And we have this extraordinary opportunity to leverage the energy around this to actually do some good with lasting change. It's interesting you brought that up with the cops taking the knee. It goes back to coming to the table and the relinquishing of power where those who are protesting, it could be a young girl. It could be a small, petite woman that's fiery. She's holding on to whatever power she has. But that cop has to be willing to relinquish power. And he may get backlash that you're showing a sign of weakness. But you notice whenever they do that, it's usually peaceful. It's usually something that shifts the tenor of the protests, right? But that was him or whoever they are coming to the table at that moment and the willingness to relinquish some power

and humble themselves and say, you know what? I get it. I'm still going to be a cop. I get it, but I'm going to kneel with you. And it's meeting them where they are. And they see now they're no longer threatened by your power. And I think that's a perfect example of what I was talking about coming to the table. If that can happen behind the scenes, when you come up with legislation or police reform or institutional reform in companies, corporations, if that can

happen, then you'll see some significant change, right? And lasting change. Lasting change, but those power dynamics are at play. Yeah. And you also mentioned the example of the elderly gentleman being pushed over by the police officers. If you look at that tape, I think also, I think that's a great snapshot of the systemic dysfunction as well, because- There's the great snapshot of the systemic dysfunction as well. There's the one guy who wanted to help them.

Right. He was on duty and his orders were to march forward. He, in his humanity, recognized what just happened. And in his humanity, wanted to stop to help him. But whoever was the commanding officer at that time or whoever, physically said no you continue to march forward that i think again it tells us a strong story of just how insidious how complicated um yet how urgent the problem we're facing is and and we have to be willing to stop looking at the status quo or looking at our job as normal, as usual, and start, again, challenging what is not working and taking the time to figure out how can we do it better. My hope and my encouragement is I believe we can. I believe that we are intelligent enough

and we are compassionate enough to actually make inroads and solve this thing. I truly do. But it's going to take courageous voices and a staying power that will allow us to eventually get escape velocity, one, get off the ground, and then two, escape velocity and fight through all of that natural resistance that we've been talking about this whole time to the point where we get to an inflection point that then allows this thing to really take on a life of its own.

We're nowhere near that yet. And so this gravitational pull is the area that we're in and we have to just understand that and recognize we're in for a fight. So let's buckle up, let's lock arms and let's stay committed. Yeah, I think it's gonna require an appreciation of the incredible complexity of all of it too.

When you were speaking there, I was thinking about the situation in Flint where the, was it the chief and the cops were marching with the protesters and a distinguishing factor there, at least according to my understanding, is that the police officers live in the community there. Whereas due to socioeconomic disparity, a lot of police officers

can't afford to live in the communities in which they police, which creates a lack of connectivity to the people that they're supposed to be protecting and serving, right? So that's just another like layer or issue that needs to be unpacked and addressed that goes, you know, that's almost beyond, like how do we solve economic disparity so that, you know, police officers can live in the same area where they're patrolling. Like these problems are huge, right?

They're huge, huge. And I like what, I mean, Phil has a program. I call them the 4Ls. I want to speak to that a little bit more. And you talk about, okay, what do we do now? You know, the 8 Can't Wait, I think, is a great start. Right, which I think is a subset of Campaign Zero. Campaign Zero, exactly, exactly.

Great website. And there's some other, I can't think of it right now, but resources. But those are two great resources that I think people can go to and look at, okay, what can I do now where I'm at? Because a lot of people feel defenseless. A lot of people feel hopeless

and don't feel like their voice counts or what they do would actually matter. And that's not the case. And so hopefully in the show notes, we'll be able to, you know, give the links to organizations that are bipartisan and that are just, they're, they're boots on the ground, really trying to figure this thing out, I think would be important. But, but Phil, can you speak to just the, the, the, the four L's that kind of helps people walk through this process? Yeah, we've heard a couple of those L's,

the listen and the learn. You hear that all the time. Just a little background. We were watching a film in class four years ago, MLK class, and they showed Emmett Till. And that's when I first realized, wait a minute, Emmett Till reminds me of my grandfather. My grandfather's body would have probably looked like that. And we broke up into small groups, and I shared with my two classmates, I can't see Emmett Till without seeing my grandfather. And it kind of shocked them. So they were intently listening to me. shocked them. So they were intently listening to me. They were in a context where they were learning from a Korean MLK scholar, Hak Joon Lee, about an African-American pastor, scholar,

theologian, MLK. So they were listening and learning. That was happening at the same time. They were learning from my story, but they were learning theology and ethics, Christian theology and ethics about Dr. King from a Korean man, from people of color. But what shocked me, what never happened before, I'd never seen this, was when they began to cry. I'd never seen a white person moved or feel for mine or my people's pain as it relates to racism. They were in tears to the point where one kid said, as you see your grandfather in Emmett Till, I see my grandfather in the men who killed him. And that's a huge, that's huge, right? Then I shared with the whole class, the whole class, not the whole class, but many people in the class began to just be in tears. And so I just wanted to document what I had experienced in that class that day.

And I said, they were listening, they were learning, they lamented. And for me in this journey to what do we do, that's the soul work that needs to happen. this journey to what do we do, that's the soul work that needs to happen. That makes up the soul work, but the inner work, because we can jump into fixing stuff and compound the issue because we don't understand the issue. We don't understand the depth of the pain. We don't feel it. We're just in here trying to fix a problem that we think we can take care of real quick. Then it's the labor. And the reason why the lament part is so important, I don't know anybody who sustains something that causes change without passion, without a burden, without something in the gut that drives them, right? So now the labor labor but the labor is depending on context the person's influence

their relationships um who they have you know it depends on where they are in in their life so like somebody could have a platform a huge platform so their labor could be as you said earlier bringing making sure there's diverse voices or black voices have a platform, sharing a platform, whatever. A teacher, like at my school, some of them are now forced to relearn some of their theological positions, perspectives. They're being challenged by people of color, the perspectives of color. So now they're having to diversify their reading lists and their curriculums. Schools are now having to bring in, change up the dynamics of their administration, their board of trustees. These are some things that need to happen,

but those things won't be sustained without the inner work, the listening, learning, the lamenting. And so the labor part, it depends on context, where you are. For somebody, it could mean joining an organization in your local community that is doing the work of social justice. For somebody else, it could be funding as well as how you handle your social media platform, being responsible there. I mean, it could mean a number of things. And I tell people in the church, your labor should start with prayer. If I'm praying for this daily, you need to be praying for this daily too. And again, on the labor part as well, another high-profile example is the co-founder of Reddit,

deciding to- Right, I saw that. Alexis Ohanian. Yeah, Ohanian says, you know what? Okay, I recognize my privilege. I recognize the position that I'm in. I'm going to, you know, again, he was more of a head of a chair role and things of that nature, but he's like, I am going to use this as an opportunity to remove myself and then strongly recommend that an African-American person be put in this place, not in some affirmative action type way, but recognizing that, hey, look, this is something that I'm going to be a part of the solution and not a part of

the problem through my complicitness or my, because I don't know what I can do, decide to remain frozen and do nothing. He's like, I'm going to try this. I'm going to do this. And this is an example. But I'm also going to call out anyone else who is in a position where they can purposely and willfully render or give over to them the power that's necessary to right the ship faster. Those moves have to continue to take place as well. And again, this isn't about, you know, giving black people something that they don't deserve or unqualified for, because you hear that argument too.

You hear that argument against affirmative action. You hear that argument against a lot of these different problems. Well, you know, these people are not really qualified to do this, so that's unfair that they would take a spot from someone who's more deserving, not even getting into all of that. Well, what I'm what I the point that I really want to highlight is, no, there are enough qualified African Americans. And if you want to even broaden it out, other minority groups who are just as capable of excelling in that role. But if your networks aren't healthy enough so that when you go through the hiring process, most of those jobs in influential positions are done through network. It's the buddy system.

All right. And then they kick the tires through HR. Right. But the people have been hired. I mean, I've had that experience. We know that that's how it works until your network becomes diversified. And I would challenge, I used to challenge executives and pastors this. I said, if you're in a hiring position and there's a role that needs to be hired for, but it's an important role, what do you normally do? And they normally pick up the phone

and they start calling their buddies. Yeah, who's good. Who's good? Who do you got? Who do you know? And then I say, well, the first five people you call, think about it. Think about your first five people in your Rolodex or your contacts list. Now, I get them to think about it. And then I say, all right, now, what color are they? If all five of those people who you would pick up the phone and call, their first five calls, all of them look like you, recognize that in that moment, you're still now perpetuating the problem because you're only exhausting and exploring a network that's going to continue to produce the same thing. Instead, why not in this time actively begin to diversify your network? It could even start there.

This guy from Reddit, I don't know if he should have done that. I don't know because if he removes himself, he's already an advocate. I don't know because if he removes himself, he's already an advocate. He removes himself and brings in this black guy. Is this black guy going to be at the table by himself with no other voice advocating with him? So rather than removing himself from the table, I think they should add more seats to the table. I think that because I don't want to come into a context where the guy that was just advocating for me, he leaves and I find myself there. Now you're the target. And no one else really feels the way he feels. Now I'm fighting a battle, but he's gone. Well, the

argument that gets thrown around is that this is a performance of white guilt for the purpose of virtue signaling. And that's where the pendulum can't swing the other way. White guilt of doing that, it's like, but here's where I extend a lot of grace. It's almost like you look at a kid who's just learning how to ride a bike. If they have a commitment and intent to learn to ride this bike, right? The initial push off is going to look rocky. It's going to look shaky and it's not going to look pretty. And they're going to make a lot of mistakes. They're going to fall. I see a lot of movements and gestures, just like I see that out of the gate, it's not going to be necessarily right and pretty, and it could err on the side of

white guilt, but let's not demonize it. Let's not throw it away. But instead, let's just, again, continue to solve for the problem. It's outcome thinking versus process thinking. If we just think about the process, we'll get overwhelmed and we'll get discouraged and we'll shut down. But if we think, okay, everything that we do, everything that we test, everything that we apply, it always has to be laid against the outcome, the desired result we want. And make informed decisions based upon how well we're moving in that direction. I think that's the momentum. That's the posture. That's the flow I think we need to be able to be in and sustain.

That's the flow I think we need to be able to be in and sustain. But I also think that if we don't rush, if we don't move too quickly, we can avoid many of those mistakes. So when we talk about listen, learn, lament, part of that is to give the space of processing. So we're not out of the gate trying to swing the pendulum to the other side and just right the ship right away. That's the whole point of that process. And I shared that yesterday on my social media. Slow down. We just experienced trauma.

All of us experienced trauma. So there are going to be those decisions that are made to right the ship, and some of them are going to compound the issue. But if we process this thing together, slow down, and I would say, listen to the voices of color, we'll make less mistakes. We won't come out of the gate exacerbating the problem. But isn't the fear that we can't allow this energy and this momentum to dissipate? Yeah, that is the fear, but I don't think it will. I'm not saying we don't do anything.

I'm just saying, let's not try to fix everything right away. Of course. In that processing, we'll make wiser decisions. Now, this is where as a pastor, I share, this is where I'm allowing God to lead me. This is where I'm allowing, not just lead me, but us in community as we wrestle with things. Even right now, as we're talking, we're processing, we have different, maybe some different views and suggestions and stuff like that. But in this context, there can be something, we can give birth to something. So the process doesn't have to be long.

I mean, it could be weeks. It could be a matter of weeks, but it's just like take out time and let's do this together rather than trying to fix it because we're not going to fix it right away. I don't believe that this gets fixed in my generation. I'm a cynic. I believe we can make it better for the next generation. And when I say generation, maybe in my lifetime, the next generation, those Gen Zs, they have a better starting point. they have a better starting point.

Everything I do is not for me or for us necessarily. It's for my niece. It's for my godson. So when they're older, they don't have to have the same conversation. They may have some conversations, but not the same conversation. So that's why I'm thinking it's critical that we don't try to fix it today. I don't think we'll lose the urgency. I think, because again, I'm not saying wait until like next year or anything like that.

I'm just saying, let's just make sure we're taking the right steps. I believe the healing part is critical, man. I think making certain decisions from a hurt, angry, or traumatized space can actually make the problem worse. And so I think really tending to that because the civil rights movement, the work that they put in, even before it started, the work that they put in behind the scenes,

the women, before King even came on board, the ship was already rolling. And then he comes on board and he's this dynamic personality. But even every step of the way, every week, every month, they were strategizing. They were meeting, praying, strategizing. And so if they can do that and give us a model, then I think we can do the same thing. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And I agree with you on that. I think what I would like to add, at least highlight, is I think it's and both. I think the waiting allows the healing, because I think that's the point. We, I think, all agree to that. That's important. The lamenting part of the four Ls,

you've got listen, you've got listen, you've got learn, you've got lament, which is mourning. Many times you have people from different sides, they'll have to mourn the power and the white supremacy that they didn't know they were perpetuating. How the world was, the way they thought is different. So definitely, I think that is a necessary part and process. But more, I mean, pragmatically, I see it as and both. Right, yeah, we don't want to rush things so that we make a lot of, you know, unforced errors, so to speak. But at the same time, I think we continue to move in ways, and

if things happen and they make mistakes, let's not demonize. That's the point that I wanted to really highlight is, okay, if something happens and someone, I mean, we see this in administrations all the time. You go into the Affordable Care Act, right? And this thing rolls out, and it was far from perfect, far from perfect. But instead of, again, seeing it as a rollout and then identifying what works, what doesn't, and then changing, political parties demonize and want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And we see that happening over and over again from the left to the right, right to the left. We see it in social groups, different dynamics. I just keep wanting to advocate that can't be our approach because,

like you said, Rich, the problem is too complex for us to have lazy logic in this and be stuck in our silos so much that we spend more energy defending our point than solving the problem. Another, switching gears a little bit, another narrative that's out there is that this problem is not for black people to solve. It's for white people to solve. The problem is not for black people to solve.

It's for white people to solve. So what is the role of white America in redressing this? Other than, you know, that you talked about the L's and we need to educate people. We need to appreciate the complexity of this. We need time to heal. We need, you know, a longer conversation that isn't bifurcated around political lines. Like how do we, how does, how do the white people listening to this

wrap their heads around how they can be a most productive member of this movement? I think, I go back and forth because I believe that it's voices of color that need to lead because we feel it. You know, this idea you can't lead me someplace you've never been or you can't give to me what you've never had. A hundred percent. It would just, it's preposterous to think otherwise.

So there's a learning from voices of color, but I think taking the power and the privilege and being a part of helping to reach the white, the broader white community. I think right now, whether it's in government, those congressmen and women using their positions to reach them, family members on the family level, reaching them, and corporations reaching them. I think because we can't reach them. We can share, we can put pressure on, we can protest, we can do all these things. We can

write books, but they're not going to listen to us necessarily. So I think one way, this is just one, it's not the only way. This is one thing is I ask white friends, you have to be the voice to reach the people that we're not going to be able to reach on all these levels, wherever your influence is. That's one way, because i don't know what else we can do i i really don't if you look at literature you look at music you look at movies you look at um marches we've done it peacefully we've done it angrily we've kneeled we'veelt, we've fist in the air. We've used our bodies in ways that that's our, that's one of the primary resources we have, our bodies. We've done everything we know to do and we're still here.

Not just incidents, but a culture, right? I think it takes the white allies or whatever word you want to use for that to be the voices advocating in solidarity to the white community because they're not going to listen to us necessarily. Not all, some will, but the masses won't listen to us. Yeah. To add to that, I think that's a great point. You know, we talk about Dr. Martin Luther King during the civil rights movement, and we forget about another voice that was even more demonized, but I think was as equally an integral part in advancing was Malcolm X, right? That name is still demonized, and a lot of people, when they hear that name, they're immediately fearful because of what he stood for. And his platform was he, you know, saw and started to bring different nationalities and cultures together. And he shared something that I think is important and it speaks to your question about what do white people do in this moment. And one thing he recognized is right now, of course, everybody's binging Netflix. There's a Netflix or no, I think it's on HBO, but The Defiant Ones.

It's a four-part episode or series on the relationship between Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, right? Two moguls in the hip hop or the music industry and how they come together and how they're taking over the world with Beez and Apple and all that stuff, right? Well, interesting. And the point that Malcolm X really tried to highlight that I see illustrated in their relationship is at some point, the Jimmy Iovine saw and recognized the talent and the ability of Dr. Dre. And it wasn't a posture of, let me reach back and down and pull this guy up. It was never that. What it was, was, wait a minute, I see and identify in Dr. Dre the same love and passion and raw talent and ability, even better than my own.

And I'm going to actually use my in to nurture and cultivate this guy. That whole relationship is powerful. We need more of that because here you had Jimmy Iovine, who was already on the end, who himself, you know, came from modest backgrounds, but then at the height of his power, recognizing someone else and saying, let me mentor, let me, and it wasn't, again, this back and down, it wasn't charity. He saw how he could make money with Dr. Dre, right? I mean, he saw that this guy was valuable, but this guy also needs a seat at the table and needs to be coached. But not in an exploitive way. Exactly.

That's what you're saying. Right. Not in a partnership way. And in a way that's loving, too, because not to, like like spoil whoever wants to watch it, but you saw in the narrative of Dr. Dre's life, many missteps that it's like, wow, he could have blown it up here. He could have blown it up here and here. He still had a guy who was like, look, I'm all in with you because I see the value. So extrapolating on that, the message that you're trying to convey, distill that down

to the point that relates to Malcolm X. So the point that, thank you for actually helping me bring it. The point is Malcolm X recognized the importance of white people in power, aligning themselves with black people and sharing the power and not doing it in a way that it's charity, not doing it in a way that it's what we're deeming as white guilt, but actually taking the time to recognize seeing the humanity of another person and recognizing in the backdrop of inequality, I'm going to ride with this person come hell or high water. Yeah, I got it. One of the differentiating factors between

what's happening now and the civil rights movement of the late 1960s is that there is no Malcolm X or Martin Luther King. We don't have a singular voice to galvanize the movement around there. But at the same time, there's a lot of interesting voices out there right now. They're just more dispersed. It's not as centralized as before. And I found myself I found myself wondering like, would it be better if there was one person that were kind of pivoting around? I mean, that's doesn't seem to be the reality right now, but maybe one of the things we can kind of wind this conversation down with is who are those interesting voices out there? If people want to broaden their, you know, information silo to expose themselves to interesting people of color.

I think of Ta-Nehisi Coates. Yeah, I just listened to him on Ezra Klein's podcast the other day. It was amazing. Yeah, I think he's a voice that has to be seriously considered and listened to. But I don't know if we'll ever really go back to that model. In our community, we say every time we have a leader, they kill him on some level.

I don't know why I'm – That's not funny. It's laughing to release the pain. It's sad, but true. But either physically kill them or their character, their reputation, they'll find a way. And then that kills the whole movement because we've put everything around this one central voice. That's a good point. And so when you have multiple voices, and I think it's important.

If you have multiple voices, you have someone who has an expertise in this area. They can bring that to the table. You have someone over here who has an expertise in this area and they can bring that to the table. I'm trying to think of, my whole library is just going through my head and everything's- If you can't think of anybody now, maybe you guys email me and I'll put it in the show notes. I can't think of anybody now, if you got, maybe you guys email me and I'll put it in the show notes. Willie Jennings is phenomenal.

He's a theologian. He's phenomenal. He has a book called The Christian Imagination. He has a controversial lecture. It's controversial if you just look at the title, it's called, Can White People Be Saved? And he's not talking about white people in terms of necessarily ethnicity, but he's talking about ideology where we talking about white people in terms of ethnicity,

but he's talking about ideology, where we talk about white supremacy and people who subscribe to that, even subconsciously. But he breaks down whiteness and its impact on the whole world, from colonialism to now, and he does it theologically. J. Cameron Carter is another theologian that's brilliant. He was at Duke. Now he's at Indiana University, I believe. So there are a number of voices, and many of them don't get as much airplay as they should. But these guys are brilliant. are brilliant. I think of, who did I, I think I shared a name, a female, a woman.

Well, Angela Rye. I love Angela Rye. She's brilliant as well. Very outspoken. I'll send you. Yeah. Okay. Byron, does anyone come to mind? Well, you know, actually, I actually agree with Phil when you're saying that I think the model has to be slightly different. There needs to be a hybrid model moving forward. I don't think there will be one person to galvanize and be that one voice. But, and this is my crazy creative side coming out, when I look at movements and organisms

and how you see systems operate autonomously but continue to thrive and exist. For example, you look at, let's say, again, this is crazy. See, pull me back in if I go too far. But you look at paleo, you look at the raw, you look at movements like plant strong, plant based. There isn't just one person who everyone is following and keeping those movements alive. No, it's a concept. It's an ideology, but it is a framework by which people by themselves can take ownership of and then create a lifestyle around it. And in doing that, they can augment that with resources from other voices.

So their education or their thirst for knowledge and mastery is what drives the movement with them. And then you have that happening collectively among thousands and millions of people. And that's what allows a movement to exist. I truly believe that is what's going to have to take place in this, is that at some point at the fundamental personal level, everyone's going to have to say, this is going to become a lifestyle for me. And then as I come up against blocks or roadblocks or confusion, that's when I'm going to reach out and I'm going to listen to voices that I think are credible. And then I'm going to take, like my old pastor used to say, he's just taking advice,

it's like eating chicken. He says, you eat the meat, throw the bones away. And that's kind of funny, but that's, I think, the mentality that we have to have. We have to say, I'm going to take personal ownership of it, and I'm going to live it out regardless of what other people think and say or do. And I'm going to purposely orient my life where I'm going to keep educating myself in this lifestyle, in this way of life, so that I'm better at it. And then ultimately, I'm blessing and impacting in a positive way, the lives around me. Beautifully put, man.

Beautifully put. Well, I think we should put a pin in it. I think we covered a lot of ground here. I do wanna point out that a good place for people to start, especially if you wanna learn more about Phil is to read your recent blog post, This Is America. I thought that was super powerful. Thank you.

And you basically, once again, not mincing words, like you just break down this whole situation in a way that I think is powerful, but also digestible for anybody to read. So any final thoughts before we end it today? Well, I love you, Rich. You're a brother from another mother. Just your heart and for allowing us on the podcast and just, again, having this kind of conversation and just seeing you and your heart and the steadfastness of the mission you're on

with the platform you've been given and that you're blessed to cultivate. Thank you. Thank you because I think that these are the sorts of things that need to happen consistently. I appreciate that. Yeah, thanks, man. I'm doing this as imperfectly as anybody and trying to learn as I go. I'm doing this for my own personal edification as much for anything else. And it's incumbent upon me, just like it is for everybody else to try to be as open-minded, to humble ourselves

and to broaden our aperture on all of this. So I really appreciate you guys coming here today and sharing openly and honestly and from the heart your experience and your perspective. And I hope you guys come back and talk to me a little bit more. I appreciate being here, man. This was good.

It was good for me. You say, what can white people do? I think you're doing it. You're sharing at the table. We're sitting at an actual table, but it feels like a partnership in this conversation. You know what I mean? And I think that's important. Yeah. Thanks. Appreciate that. All right. So if you're digging on these guys, the best way to track them down and find them, Phil Allen Jr. on Twitter and Facebook. And Instagram.

And philallenjr.com as well, right? Yeah. And Byron? Byron.cc. Yeah, Byron.cc. I like that. Thanks, you guys. I appreciate it.

And I hope that you continue your advocacy. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Peace. Bye. Peace. So that happened.

We did that. How'd it go down for you? How was it? How are you feeling? Maybe let it sink in, you guys. Let it steep, people. Please check out the show notes

on the episode page where I have enumerated a large catalog of resources, articles, books, films, and nonprofits related to today's discussion. Check out Phil's documentary, Open Wounds. It's on Vimeo On Demand and his spoken word poetry on YouTube. And let these gentlemen know how this conversation landed for you. You can do that on the socials. these gentlemen know how this conversation landed for you, you can do that on the socials. You can find Byron at ByronDavis1 on Instagram, and Phil is at PhilAllenJRIG on Instagram and at

PhilAllenJR on Twitter. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. Subscribe on YouTube, you guys. Share the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. Thanks to everybody who helped put on today's show. Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Blake Curtis for videoing today's show and creating all the clips we share on social media. Jessica Miranda for graphics.

Allie Rogers for portraits. Georgia Whaley for copywriting. DK for advertiser relationships and theme music by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Hari Mathis. By the way, Tyler is working on some new music. We might even have a new intro theme song. Oh my God. I know that makes people really scared, but I think it might be time to try something new.

Tyler's working on some cool stuff. So I hope to share that with you in the coming weeks. In the meantime, thank you for the love you guys. I appreciate you. I will see you back here in a couple of days. When is it? Actually next week. This is the only episode this week.

So I'll see you back here next week with another amazing episode. And until then, may the wisdom of today's conversation sink in and may we all step into becoming our best version of an all-season love warrior. Peace. Thank you.