Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss one of Martin Luther King Jr's more interesting observations about what has held America back and consider how it may explain things that go on in our country to this day.
Hello.
Welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keats, and joining me today is a man who knows dreams and nightmares are just part of life. Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde, Are you ready to show the people that you ain't finished?
Yeah, man.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: I woke up this morning and now you're making me think I might have had a nightmare. So let's see how it goes today.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: All right. All right. Well, we're gonna find out. So we're recording on September 30, 2025. And today we want to discuss a section from Dr. Martin Luther King's fourth book, Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community? Which was published back in the 1960s. 1967, I believe. And we're focusing on a specific chapter in the book entitled Racism and White Backlash, which, as you can imagine, you know, has some pretty pointed observations in it.
Well, so we're going to discuss this and also the extent to. To which this may still be like, something that applies, you know, or that maybe America's gotten over in light of things that have happened since the book was published. So to get us started, Tunde, what do you make of King's thought? And I'm going to quote here from the book. For the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country even today is freedom and equality, while racism is just an occasional departure from the norm by a few bigoted extremists.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: I think that sums up the American experience for a section of American citizens and people, people like you and I that have observed this for a long time. I mean, let's say this. You and I have observed America our whole lives.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: We've been alive since the 1970s.
So Dr. King was killed before we were born. And he was. He was making his observation on the America that he saw prior to 1967, like you said, prior to him writing this book and the history he knew. So I think we are, and I'll end on this for this just this answer is we are now finding ourselves at a point in 2025 when what. The quote you just made is so appropriate because instead of things like racial anxieties. Let me use that word by many in our country being something that is just temporary. In passing, I think that it's a reminder of the resurgence and the permission by some leaders in our country to allow some of the population to be open bigots like they were in Dr. King's time. A reminder that this isn't just something passing that comes and goes every so often.
There seems to be something fundamental in American culture that, that either desires this, and that's why it does rear its head more aggressively from time to time, even though it's still always a background noise in our lifetime.
And I think Dr. King's life was when it was definitely more aggressive. So I would say this, the quote to me is very appropriate today.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, to me, I think there's a couple of things in the quote that really stand out. One is that he's talking about it's necessary to refute this. So what he's saying basically is that amongst many people, the idea that democracy and freedom and all that stuff, equality is the dominant ideology of our country is the way they walk around looking at their country like that's what they think. So if he's saying that's necessary to refute that, then that's because he's saying that there's a lot of people with this in his mind. Misunderstanding, which I would say growing up, that's the thought I had.
You're almost taught in a way that, oh, okay, well, America, Declaration of Independence, Constitution, all these other things. And slavery was something that they had to work through and they eventually got rid of it. You know, Jim Crow was something we had to work through and then we got rid of it. And so you look at this, you're taught it almost in like an arc sense at least. You know, the places I was in was like this arc, like, hey, America's getting its stuff together over time and these battles have been fought and won. And then the people who believed in then in slavery or in white supremacy or in Jim Crow, those people just kind of went away. And what he's saying basically, which really was interesting to me because it refuted my own kind of perception that I had in my mind was that no, this isn't just some one way march along the path where America started out trying to do it. It wasn't able to do it all the way, but then it eventually was able to get over this hump and then that hump and so forth. But there's actually a tension, then there's a push and pull going on.
And there has been the whole time where some people want to pull America towards a more democratic, equality type of system and then other people may want to pull it in another direction. And those people aren't just, like, agreeing and saying, okay, yeah, you guys win. Slavery's over, we're done. But no, the slavery was over, and they did the Reconstruction, and then you had this huge backlash, the redeemers and so forth, post Reconstruction, which is one of the more darker periods and as far as racial justice in America. So to me, like, that he's talking about, you need to refute. It really makes you want to examine, okay, well, this what he's talking about, needing to refute. You look inside like, do I have that mindset?
[00:05:42] Speaker B: Yeah, man. And I think you bring up something interesting when you discuss the redeemers and then the reconstruction period, because then it reminds me of groups like the red shirts and the Ku Klux Klan.
And, you know, the issue we have in the United States, I really feel, is that we're not allowed to discuss these things.
And I think there's a misunderstanding by many that because guys like you and I specifically want to discuss this, that somehow we're either complaining or we're trying to point fingers and blame people, you know, maybe that are alive today for things that happened 100, 150 years ago. And that's not the case. The case is really that black and white Americans are married at the hip.
Both groups are deep, deep, you know, intertwined in the fabric of American culture and American life.
So in, like a marriage, in order to deal with certain things, sometimes you have to have uncomfortable discussions and have to be honest about the past and what you've been through up to this point.
And therefore, with that kind of transparency, one can be, again, maybe some healing. And I think, you know, living through.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: This current warning, you know, those type of things. Like, you know, that's happened in Germany, you know, after World War II. Like, there have been times in countries, history where they've tried to reconcile with a past event or a past situation in order to try to move past it. And that could be helpful, you know, to that type of thing. And I agree. I would echo your sentiment. And it's kind of like what that gets to kind of. The underlying point of that quote also is that if you walk around thinking, if you don't walk around understanding that there's this pull that has gone on and may still be going on, then you may have a false sense of kind of what ideas and what mentalities may be ascendant, how many people may hold them and so forth. And so another thing he said in this chapter that really stood out to me was he talked about how he calls them two contradictory strains on the American psyche. And one is to talks about, like, our democratic ideals. That's something, you know, that you as an American, a person as American can feel good about. And then this other one is kind of racism, white supremacy, just this myth of a superior people. And that one is also something that some Americans can feel good about being American about. And so, but those pull in opposite directions. Those. And that's kind of. You get to the heart of what holds. May maybe hold America back, is that you got this at the country's core, like any nation, any group of people, any collection of people in any sense, if it's a sports team, if it's a, you know, if it's a state or if it's a, you know, any kind of collection of people, an organization, usually there are some ideas that bind them together and make them feel good about being a part of what they're a part of and all pulling in the same direction and pointing out that in the United States, what we have and we have two big kind of ideological frameworks that people can really subscribe to and feel good about. But the problem with that is that those things are in conflict, conflict with one another. And so that's how you end up with a nation with a civil war or with things like that is because you have these two deeply held kind of identities that are contradictory, but are also about how people feel, what they feel their connection is to the nation, so to speak.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And I appreciate you bringing up Germany because I specifically wrote down a note that Germany. And then I put Nazis. Right. Because we all know the story there.
But the difference. And James, you're right. So here's the difference. And this is what happens when we're not allowed to discuss these things. First of all, the German people, the culture, the government, all have dealt with the Holocaust in a mature way. They know it. They don't deny that it happened.
They pay homage to the fact that they did this and they say this was bad and we're not going to forget it because we don't want this to happen in Germany again. And so you're right, part of that.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Is acknowledging that it's bad and then acknowledging that you don't want to do it again or you don't want. Wanted to go down that. That path again, which is a big part of that. But go ahead.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So the, the thing, though is that with the Germans, right. I'm pretty sure there's people in Germany now. There's a party called the AfD party, that they, they are more. That they would like to celebrate that history as, as something positive. And then there's the majority of Germans who don't. Right. So that though it's not like there's no one in Germany that thinks the Nazis weren't good people, there are people that think that, but they don't get to dominate the conversation because Germany is a country has matured its way into a position of being on this topic. And I would say the big difference, James, and this is where really you're getting at about the two competing ideologies. The difference with Germany and America is that Germany as a country, as a culture, as a nation of people was not founded by Nazis or on Nazi ideology. That's something that came later after the, you know, Germany was already a country.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: They had a long history, you know, Germanic people pride. Yeah, they had a long history before that. No, you're right.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: Yeah. The Germanic tribe, St. Nick, the whole thing about a Christmas tree coming from, you know, Germany, the pine tree. So they have their own history and pride in that. The difference with us is we are a nation that was founded, birthed out of colonies from the British that had people from Europe coming for several different reasons. And really to go 30,000ft with it. We had some for religious freedom, some for the merchant class stuff and all that. And you developed different cultures in America. So the southern plantation culture was more feudalist and the northern culture was more industrious. And so the issue with that is concepts like manifest destiny developed in the American culture as part of its founding. And that's different than the Germans because America was founded on an idea ideological culture, that there was no one here when, when Europeans got here, that the humans that were here were savages, the Native Americans, and that Africans, when this country was founded in 1789, were considered property.
And so that's again, James, something we've never dealt with as a country in a mature way like Germany has to say, well, let's go back and have this conversation about who is American.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Do James and Tunde deserve to, to. To. To. To eat on the American spoils or are we going to be second class citizens? And since we're not allowed to talk about this history and how the country was founded, that's why we always come back to this fits and starts of these issues.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: Well, you raise a good point though. It's more difficult conceivably in the United States because in fact, you go back to the country's founding and one of the points made by Dr. King in this book, in this section is that actually the legacy of racism and white supremacy predate the legacy of democracy and equality in the United States. That stuff came around in the 1700s, you know, late 1700s, 17, 1780s, you know, you got the Declaration of independence in the 1770s and then, you know, Constitution, 1780s, 90s and so forth. And even in those, you know, like they had to make accommodations for the fact that this institutional slavery and white supremacy as a, as kind of an ideological framework was already in place and was not going to be able to be dislodged at that moment, whether some of the people tried to do it or wanted to do it or not. And you had compromises, you know, three, fifth compromise, all these other types of things that are involved in that because of that tension. And you know, and I thought the book did a good job of kind of explaining the roots of where this came from, you know, in terms of how.
It was really interesting to me how he talked about how people have a difficult time, you know. Well, one, let me say this, that he talks about how the idea of slavery and servitude in that sense started as an economic justification. He talked about the indentured servants and all those types of things. And then that beginning forming the beginning of slavery, which would then became lifetime slavery and then became even your descendants of slaves and all that. But that was an economic system, but that later on people felt the need to create some kind of righteous justification for this. And so that's where the idea of white supremacy and racism came into being to justify this. So what about that part? You know, the observations that he had, also some of the quotes he had, you know, he's quoting other books and so forth. That what stood out to you in that part as far as how going to that evolution. Because then that brings us to the point you were talking about where at the time of the country's founding, these things are already well established. And so, yes, it's harder to have that conversation when you don't have a history that doesn't involve that stuff.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: That's an excellent point because I think that's something that is forgotten when we have this discussion because we'll often hear people rightly say that America is not a democracy, it's a constitutional republic, which it is. And so you're right that this idea of a shared like we, we hold the idea of a democracy, I think just not maybe the legal definition, but culturally we. We think of that as kumbaya. Everybody's good.
51% of the people want something. That's how it is. And everybody's kind of has the, like, equal ability to participate. And you're right, James. This country was founded.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: Not that way.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: It was founded, like you said, that there's a three fifths clause and there's an electoral college and there's a Senate, which is not Democratic, based on representation and all that. And that's fine. And so. And so this idea that the country was founded in a way that. That had certain levers that. That kept certain things separate, I think makes sense that then if this. If there was a certain ideology already in place culturally, that when the country was formed, it was formed in a way, number one, to keep some of those cultural norms going. So, like the three fifths compromise.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Well, you couldn't get everybody on board if you didn't incorporate some of that stuff in it. Like, that's a big part of getting everybody that was on board.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: And when you talk about the words or compromise I wrote down, I started thinking about things like the Missouri Compromise. Yeah, The. The compromise, let's say, after, when it was a full country in the 1930s, the compromise to not allow blacks to participate in Social Security or the GI Bill in order to get enough Southern senators on board so that they can give these things to other Americans.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: So you're right in the sense that since the founding of this country, part of the journey, not all of it, but part of the journey has been, what do you do with these black people? Right. Their property. And then in an agrarian age world where human beings were needed to. To. To. To. To get natural resources out of the earth and sell them back to Europe or whatever, that. That mattered.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: But by the 19, early, you know, 20th century, for example, you had machines doing this. So then it becomes, so what do we do with these people? I think that's kind of the. The. The. One of the things, again, that's not discussed in the American story when we have these discussions, is that things like the loss caused happened.
And it's like, okay, we're gonna just close the door on discussing what happened in this country post Civil War, up until the early 1920s. Because we don't want to talk about that stuff. Because what did our governor say in 2023 when they changed the curriculum of schools and that all of American Heritage. Yeah, he said. You mean certain people? Yes. Yeah, he said, we don't want to make certain kids feel bad by having this information out there. So again, it's a compromise where you And I are constantly being asked to diminish our own humanity. Because that's really what this comes down to is do people look at me and you as equal human beings or not?
And if they don't, let's have that conversation. And if they do, then why are we still having this conversation? And I think that's kind of the exhausting part of.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: But going back to that point or that that's raised by the quote that I started the show with. It's like, yeah, if you don't believe in that, then say it. Like, let's get out, let's get it out here. Let's not trick people into saying, oh, well, yeah, I agree with equality and everything like that. You know, we just got to deal with woke stuff or, you know, yada, yada. If you don't believe in equality, then just say it. And let's, like, let's debate, let's say, okay, are we going to be about this or are we not going to be about this? You know, but the problem that I think that he identifies, that you can still see, is that a lot of times people want to hide these thoughts and feelings and say, oh, and try to make it about something else and say, oh, well, actually it's just this or it's just that. And it's like, well, if you, if, if you're about this, then just say.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: It'S about states rights, James.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: That's what it is, state's rights. I mean, I think states rights was all great when the federal or was terrible when the federal government kind of enforced equal protection under the law. Now the state, states aren't doing that. Then it's like, oh, get rid of states rights. You know, we know we don't want.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: Let'S send the military on their ballot.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: But I mean, the part about this, to me that really stood out was he was actually quoting a book from Dr. George Kelsey and he talks about, and in that book, Dr. Kelsey talked about how he described racism as a faith and how this is something that it's durable and resilient because in the way that it's internalized by the people who kind of adhere to that and in this white supremacy type of ideology is that it's not something that's based on facts or objectiveness, it's based on something that they believe faith unseen, you know, like. And so it becomes an important part of their worldview. And so because of that, it's hard, it becomes impossible to separate that out and to have these kind of discussions about it because it's not like something where it can be like, oh, okay, well, you know, like, to me, I look at it, you know, in the sense of like the idea of white supremacy. If you go back 100 some years, it was like, okay, well, whites are better than blacks in athletics. And then, you know, and then part of that was they got to keep everybody separate.
So once whites and blacks can compete on the same level from an athletic standpoint, that part just kind of morphs out of the ideology now and that's just not part of it anymore. And that's kind of where it kind of resembles a faith. Like, well, God makes it rain until we have radar and stuff like that. That show us exactly where the rain is coming and then it's not. No, we don't have to sacrifice virgins in order to make it rain anymore. We can see when the rain is coming. And so that doesn't refute God.
That just refutes the idea that he makes it rain. And so we'll just, we'll slide that part out of what we were saying about, you know, kind of our faith and put it, you know, go to somewhere else, something else. And so that it, you know, that, that you have this kind of situation kind of underlying the foundation of people's identity and their belief in their country, I think is just, is something very significant. And it makes you wonder, you know, from King's construct, it's like, okay, well, what's going to happen? He's like, this is holding America back. And you could say that it doesn't. He says, he's careful to say, hey, just because I say this doesn't mean that he thinks that all white people are racist. And he expressly states that, hey, you know, many white people have been involved in the march for racial justice the whole time. He's not saying that the country hasn't made progress, you know, it's just, it's pointing out again, this, these things that are pulling in opposite directions, which makes every bit of kind of progress towards democracy and equality a fight one and then two, one that pulls a backlash back also. And so, and actually that's the next thought I wanted to get to you is like, we were like, if you go back, you know, 10, I'd like.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: To respond to something you said because that is a pretty good rant you just went on. Okay, the. No, because you talk about some important things, the idea of faith, right? And we see this in other areas of life. Faith versus fact based evidence.
And so whether it's.
And some we argue with and some we don't because depending on what our emotional state is about the topic. So it's a good point you make. That's why I want to stop on it.
Societies used to sacrifice people because they thought it would make, you know, the gods happy and it would rain. In today's world we've accepted enough scientific evidence based, you know, observations that the rain happens regardless of whether we sacrifice a human being or not. Right. Like, like you said that, that there's certain earth.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: Not to reiterate but it's like that we, that didn't mean that people didn't just stop believing that the guys do anything. They just slid that part out.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: But, but if we look at it right, we have Reconstruction was the fact based evidence that if you allow everybody to participate then these other people who weren't given a chance can end up, you know, coming up as well.
Let's say by the time you and I were born, post civil rights to.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: Now you're seeing that people and that was, that led to the redemption and the redeemers and so forth. Because that was offensive. The fact that during Reconstruction people started to pull themselves up, that was working. That was offensive. And it created an incredible backlash back to that again one of the dark spirits.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Well that's where I'm getting at is we're here again is kind of my point. Right.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: So yeah, I mean and that brings me to the next part that I wanted to ask you about and that is, you know, kind of like after Obama was elected, Barack Obama was elected 2008, took office 2009 and then reelected 2012 took, you know, goes to or re inaugurated 2013, goes all the way 2016. And you know, a lot of people said, and we heard a lot about that time that America was becoming a post racial society and that that was the proof. But you know, from that you would think, okay, well maybe these observations in this book are outdated at this point, you know, but you know, what do you think, you know, as far as what we've seen since then and just over the overall arc as far as, you know, kind of how America goes with these things because again King is not saying there hasn't been progress or that there was never progress, but just that there's a push and pull.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I think this is a great bookend to the beginning of the conversation because as he stated in the chapter is, you know, black progress, white backlash. So he wrote that in 1967 and here we are in 2025 and you just made the Statement, right. Bar Obama gets elected and it creates a certain emotional state for some Americans, maybe not, maybe not even a majority of Americans, but a loud vocal minority, right? And then you see that played upon by other actors. And that's why I think it's very important we mentioned this too, James, that these sentiments don't catch fire and begin to spread in the population without permission structures from other entities. So I could say the scaffolding that holds us up are things like cable news, like Fox News, the Internet sites that do it, the politicians and other cultural leaders that end up egging on these kind of sentiments of fear. And this is why when I was a kid, right, I never heard of something called the Great Replacement. And now I do. And the reason I do hear about it now is because enough people have been, you know, influenced on this through fear because of the backlash. So I think it's, that's why I said a book ends well with the beginning of the discussion. Because as we started the discussion, we talked about things like reconstruction and then you talked about the redeemers, Right. Every time in this country that like you said that we have the two competing ideologies, but the ideology of white supremacy feels insecure.
You have this backlash. And the backlash usually ends up being bad for everybody, including white people, because the backlash really is about divide and conquer. Because then who wins? Right? And this is what I'm saying, James. It doesn't escape me that we had the first Gilded age in the 1890s to the early 20th century.
And then when was the height of the Ku Klux Klan during that same time period? 1925. Yep. When was the height of, you know, the most strict and draconian immigration laws that didn't let that they wanted a white only immigrants? It was 1924. So it's amazing that as the bottom, the people at the bottom become more fractured.
Money just, you know, the guys at the top just keep making money and peeling money off of everybody, creating more scarcity, and then keep telling everyone at the bottom, hey, it's that other guy's fault. Don't look at me. So that's happening again today, right? I mean, is it, is it a trans person's fault that inflation is still going up after it was promised not to go up?
[00:26:06] Speaker A: Well, you talk about the idea, like you said that in many shows as far as, you know, how, you know, there are powers that like to, to play on that idea of transference. Did you want to touch on that again? Because that's, that's. Yeah, well, what you're talking about.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So I appreciate that, man. So the idea of transference just quickly was that, you know, people in a society can be very angry because they kind of feel that something's not right. I feel like I'm paying my taxes. I feel like I'm working, you know, 80 hours a week. I feel like all that, but I'm not getting anywhere. I'm treading water.
[00:26:38] Speaker A: And so the idea of transference, that might be a correct observation, by the way. Like that saying that that's wrong. Like that may be. They may be spot on with that kind of gut feeling.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And so the idea of transference is that then certain leaders. And this is, again, what George Washington warned. Right. The demagogue type of leader. We did the show on Joe McCarthy. These type of people will come into power, and they will then instead of looking at the root of the problem and saying, hey, maybe the reason why you don't have this or that is because of this or that imbalance in the system and this nuance, whatever, it's, hey, it's these people's fault. Because I know you're angry and you're angry. It's because of them. And I think we've just lived through that, James, you and I. Let me.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: Let me jump on that. Because the thing is, also, remember, the audience is very receptive to that as well, because it's much easier to attack someone who's below you, so to speak, to kick down.
If they say, hey, the reason you don't have any money is because the rich people are taking. Are just taking all the money and accumulating it all for themselves, and they're not allowing it to distribute in a more equitable way throughout society. If they said that, then it's like, oh, man, we got to take on the rich people, you know, and that's very hard, you know, like that, no matter how much you organize anything like that. Or it's like, hey, the reason we don't have anything is because of the poor people. It's like, oh, well, yeah. Or the marginalized people is the reason we don't have anything. It's like, oh, yeah, those are easy people to attack. You know, so there's a receptive audience to saying, no, you don't have to attack the stronger people. You can attack the weaker people. You know, so relatively, so to speak, like, marginalized is a better way to put that. But on this part, to me, I mean, I think that what we, as you've kind of pointed out, we have what we've seen has more so supported what Dr. King has talked about over the last 10, 15 years with the election of Obama. And like this was really.
I saw something, I don't know if you sent it to me or, you know, if I sent it to you or what, but I saw some, some comments from Megyn Kelly and it was after, you know, like you have a conservative kind of activists and really person who was thought very highly of, he gets shot, murdered and people are trying to make sense of this. The person who shot him wasn't the, they wanted it to be somebody who represented the avatar of all their fears and hates. And it wasn't. And so people were really confused. And Megyn Kelly goes up and says, literally she's saying, and I'm quoting here, we haven't felt like ourselves since Barack Obama, you know, and then she goes through, oh, he's a slick snake. And it's. That to me was just, it was really striking because it seemed like a moment of honesty, you know, like, and she goes as far as to connect and say that Donald Trump is their kind of reaction, what they needed after what happened with Obama. So now, so if you back that up to what some of the things that King talks about, you know, and, or the author that Dr. Kelsey that he cited, if you back that up and to talk about this as racism or white supremacy as a faith or how this is a ideology, so to speak, a competing strain for the American psyche. If you acknowledge that that may be true or if you accept that that may be true, how would the people who have been pulling away from equality and democracy, who may subscribe to the other ideology, how would they feel if somebody like Barack Obama is at the highest office in, in, in the lane that would be world shattering to them, you know, like that's, you know, that, that would be, you know, like, like their religion being completely, you know, stepped on, you know. So yeah, saying you haven't been yourself since then and that you need kind of somebody who's not very qualified and kind of uncouth and, and, and mean. You know, like you need somebody that, like that to kind of get this feeling out of you to work this out that kind of laid out like man. Dr.
With this, you know, in terms of how that backlash follows any hint of what he would consider, what I would consider progress.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: So man, this is good. Now you got me going. So.
Because I got so much going through my head. I apologize. James.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Well, you're going to have to organize.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: All over the place. Yeah, I Know, so what you just said, I feel like January 6th was big moment for me in realizing that because I was rationalizing it at first and thinking, well, first of all, just the event itself was like, wow, okay, people storming the Capitol, all this in the hallways and whatever, you know, and breaking glass and hurting cops. So you would think, like, all right, everybody. Everybody sees this and sees what it is. And I think it was the kind of months after that when all the retelling of the story, you know, again, Lost Cause 2.0, trying to retell history that opposite of what actually we saw. And I would wonder how come people, like, don't accept that this was an attack on the democracy and all that. And then I started realizing, processing what you just said. And I think Megyn Kelly, I thank her for her honesty on that. And I just wrote down what you said. We haven't felt like ourselves since Barack Obama was president because this is really an emotional response. And yet, if you really do hold true to the ideas of the Confederacy, which I think a lot of Americans don't realize they do.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: Or the idea of Jim Crow, you know, because maybe the Confederacy is a little further than. Than what they now. But that sentiment they're behind. But, you know, like, yeah, it's. It's.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: Then you can understand.
Yeah, then you can understand that, hey, if. If I believe that my group is the only one that's the real Americans. Right. And people like James and Tune down care of James can trace his family roots to 1680 and my family got here in the 1890s. I still feel I'm more American to him because how he looks then. Yeah, you are gonna storm your Capitol because the fact that Obama was president means the system already failed. So that's what I feel appreciate about Megyn Kelly's sentiment and sharing that with us because she did do really get a look. And that's such a strong statement. We haven't felt the same.
That's not politics. I mean, to be fair, politics.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: She tried to clean it up a little bit after, like, oh, related to this is Obamacare, and they can do this. Like, yo, that. That's not what you said at the beginning.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: I know, exactly.
Let me do this.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: And. But yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, like, you. If you see that and you juxtapose that with this. With this part of this book, then you can. It really illustrates what Dr. King is talking about. And so I think that from our standpoint, and this is why you go back kind of to the beginning where we started, you know, this quote from the book talking about how it's necessary for us to understand that the people, Us meaning people who believe in equality and democracy, those are the ideals of America. And we look at, we look at the documents, we're like, yo, all men created equal. You know, look at the Constitution, all this other stuff, and you know, even stuff that's been added, you know, equal protection under the law, we're looking at that stuff like, yeah, America's about equality, America's about democracy and all that other stuff we have, we have to shake from our minds that that's the only ideology and that everybody subscribes to that. You know, there are people who, that, that stuff is cool and all as long as this other stuff, this hierarchy is in place that makes sure that how that, that, that, that is controlling how the democracy and the equality is kind of implemented, you know, and so we have, we can't walk around thinking or we have to, you know, again, we have to refute the idea that everybody is pulling in the same direction and recognize that throughout history there has been a strain, a pull in both directions, and there has been progress. You know, there have been people, many people on the democracy inequality side from all races, all colors, all creeds that have pulled and done, you know, done an amazing job, you know, as far as bringing America to a better place. A better place. A better place. At least a better place for people who believe in democracy and equality, you know, but that, that, that's not the only pull that's happening here. And so I think that that's why I started there. And I mean, I want to end there too, because that's the thing from this chapter. You know, the whole book is good, but we want to focus on just this chapter and kind of look at how, how that informs recent events, you know, and how people can have these, like, very outsized reactions, you know, like if ideological leaders of kind of a white supremacy ideology, if, if they're fought, if a white supremacist thought leader, an ideological leader is killed, you're going to see a reaction that people who don't subscribe to that ideology might be like, what's going on here? You know, like, why would that happen? Like that. And you know, like, it makes more sense in this context, though, so I'm going to wrap us up, man. Any, any last thoughts?
[00:35:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I think your point is well taken. And I think that's the forever argument that we've had in this country, which is, what's the definition of a White supremacist. Right. Because. Because a lot of people I've talked to recently seem to have a different definition than I do, even though the rhetoric that comes out of certain people's mouth is. Is that. Is that of a kind of almost a eugenics style look at humans, that there are differences that are fundamental based on race and that we should have a caste system based on that. And so that's where I think there's just this frustration with, I think, American culture and many Americans with, what is it that really that they want and why can't they be honest about it? And that's, to me, the curious thing that you and I have to keep.
[00:36:03] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, and also for us, I know that it's always like, we have to remind ourselves, like, when someone has expressed white supremacists kind of views and kind of indicated that that's where they stand. You and I kind of view that as like, okay, yeah, that's not a person that I rock with in that sense. But we have to keep in mind that that's not always kind of. That that sentiment is not always shared by everyone. You know, there are some, like. And maybe that's part of being an American from different kind of environments is that you can't just walk or like, if somebody expresses some kind of. Right. White supremacist mindset, you can't just cut them off because then you wouldn't have any friends. I don't know. You know, but it's like, to me, that's a.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: And I'm kind of learning that right now, actually.
[00:36:44] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a cleaner break that I'm seeing than it is for some other people. And again, that's. Everybody has their own journey. So I'm not even. I'm just observing this, you know, like. But it's definitely interesting to me how they. The. The being someone who expresses white supremacist views is something that. It's like, okay, well, for many people, you can. They can rationalize that away and like, oh, well, but. But for other reasons, you know, I rock with this person, you know, so that's what we see sometimes, you know, and that is consistent with what Dr. King is talking about here, you know, or what he's citing, you know, like, from other. What the other thinkers have talked about. So. But I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call. Like, I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Till next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:37:28] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Walana.
[00:37:29] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk soon.
