[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome to call it like I see it presented by disruption. Now, I'm James Keyes, and in this episode of call it like I see it, we're going to discuss the ongoing fallout from the murder of George Floyd and the increasing unrest around the country that has been a result of the murder and how the justice system has been slow to look for accountability.
Joining me today is a man, a human male, whose life, despite what anyone may try to insinuate, does matter. Toonde. Ogonlana Toonde. Now that we got that part out of the way, do you think we can get into some more involved subjects?
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Yes, sir. I appreciate you saying that I matter. Thank you.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Man, I was starting to get a little worried here.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Hey, man, if you listen to the wrong people, man, you might think that you don't.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Well, being in quarantine with a bunch of kids for two months, sometimes as a parent, you don't think your life matters.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Well, in that context, your life means much less.
You're just a conduit.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Now, we're recording this on May 31, 2020, and unless you've been under a rock for the past week, you have already seen a lot about the murder of George Floyd and the demonstrations that have spread around the country protesting the murder and the sluggish response from the authorities. We at disruption now did a live show on Facebook and YouTube on Saturday, May 30, which is, you can find
[email protected] or Facebook. Disruptionnow. But since you weren't able to join that Tunday, tell me, give me your general thoughts on the tragedy and just what happened.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Well, just as you said, it's a tragedy.
Obviously, there's a lot of thoughts and emotions that go into something like this. And I'd say general, just sadness for our country in general, the fact that we're still here having these same kind of arguments. And I recently you made the point on the date. So anyone listening at any time in the future knows that this is the period that we've been kind of on this quarantine and lockdown due to Covid for the last couple of months. So I've been watching a lot of documentaries on Netflix and recently been watching several about just kind of the last, I would say, few decades in our history. And there's some really good ones about things like the Los Angeles riots in 92, other things that deal with these type of topics of, let's say, the black community police and the justice system and all that. And even going back to the Watts riots in 1965 in Los Angeles and it kind of drops my heart to just think that we're still here a couple of generations later, that we haven't kind of been able to get past this part of our nation's culture. And I think that that's sad for everybody, not just black people, but white people and just Americans in general, that we see somehow this issue of race, the issue of human dignity. Yeah, dignity. And also, I think, just this inability for just empathy by a large part of our country, I think, also is hurtful.
And it's one of the things that I feel. There was a joke by Groucho Marx from whenever those guys were around the three Stooges 100 years ago, and he says, who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? And I feel like that's what a lot of us feel like over just the last decade with the technology from growing up. I grew up in the Washington, DC area, and there's always been something going on between police and the black community, period. I saw stuff when I was young. I saw dogs, german shepherds being put on guys after they were already restrained. I remember being 1112 years old in the street, just walking around, and you'd see stuff like that. And I'm not going to sit here and say it happened every day. I saw it a few times. And that's real. And I would say this. I think it's a cultural thing in our country because it's also Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud, Aubrey. It's even when this kind of stuff happens, when it's not a police officer, but it's someone that's killing a black man because they're scared. Or like that lady recently in that Central park in New York who calls the police because a black man asked her to put a lease on her dog. And she didn't like that. I just feel like, well, she wasn't really scared, though.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: She was weaponizing the idea that people would believe she was scared.
[00:04:43] Speaker B: No, but I just don't know.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: I don't want to go away, though.
One thing I wanted to mention, which was new today, was the autopsy was released, and this is one of those, I'm glad you mentioned that. Will people believe their lying eyes or what they want to believe in some other context? And the reason I say that is because the autopsy is coming out and calling into question whether he died from asphyxiation.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Excuse me.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: And it's like we see on video the officer putting his weight through his knee into the man, in the man's neck for almost nine minutes, almost three minutes after he loses consciousness. And yet someone will try to reconstruct some scenario that, oh, it was actually the dead guy's fault, and there will be people that believe that. And so, yes, that's just jarring to me. And I mean, it really comes back to this extreme disregard for our fellow human life, for the officer to do that. That just seems so jarring to me. And we'll get into later.
I always try to sympathize with context. I understand police officer, being a police officer is a difficult job, and I think that more support should be given for them in general. But also along with that, they have great responsibility, they have great power and they have great responsibility. And so we shouldn't be ashamed to try to hold them to a high standard either, or just the standard of human decency. And that's really, I wanted to mention the autopsy piece, though, because anyone who's looking for a way to bail on this and say, oh, see, it was the dead guy's fault. It wasn't the officer's fault. You will be given opportunities. You were given exit ramps along the way, many times along the way, because there are enough people that want those exit ramps. And when people want them, they'll find a way to do them.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: And I just want to stop you on that point because I think this is the moment, let's put it this way. I don't know who's going to listen to this show, but anybody listening to it, that in their heart can see that from the corner and then allow that to justify their view. That kind of, there was nothing to see here, really. And I think they really got to ask themselves what they think of other people.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: Well, they won't. I'm saying that those people are just, that's just not the person that you would talk to because that person, I'll get into this actually, in the next topic or in the next subject because they've already bailed on the things we're trying to invoke as far as equity, fairness. They've bailed on that they're not interested in that. They're looking for a way to justify the imposition of deadly force on this guy.
They want to justify it regardless. Whatever they need, whatever you can give them to justify it in their own mind, that's what they're looking for. So I don't think you talk to them in that sense. You talk to the people who do want fairness and justice and things like that and who may be conflicted for other reasons or may trying to get the story straight and what exactly happened?
So looking at the protest, I want to talk about the protest because, you know, like the actual event occurred. And then, as with many things, you know, the reaction to the tragedy says oftentimes much more than the actual tragedy about yourself, about other people and so forth. You can glean so much more. One of the things that I've noticed in this instance was the multiracial nature of the peaceful protest, but also how the reaction is different.
This type of protest is viewed differently in the for profit corporate media, differently. It's viewed, it gets a different police response in terms of even the presence that's presented against them, what shows up to oppose them. In Michigan, when armed protesters storm the Capitol, they just cancel the legislative session. They just, okay, well, we'll close for today and do this tomorrow. Whereas if someone's marching on the street and they're opposed with riot gear, that's a much different response. And then the coverage is different in terms of are these people fighting for freedom, fighting for their rights and so forth, or are they dissidents, are they insurgents? Is this urban warfare? Things like that. So what was your thought on any of those? Take your pick.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: No, I mean, I think that you're right that there's a different level of treatment from society when some people are voicing their dissatisfaction with something in society versus others. Now, I do think there's a difference because clearly this last week, the protests obviously got out of hand in many of these cities where stuff started getting burnt down to the ground and all that. I think that there's a difference, too, in terms of numbers and like you said, even potential instigation.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: Well, I want to discuss that specifically as well.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: But I think, look, I watch certain media outlets that when the guys with the guns are protesting and all that in the state capitals because of a viral pandemic, that the governments, meaning federal government and state governments have said we should do this to stop the spread of a virus.
Yeah, some outlets will say they have a right to exercise their first amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and all that, and give them that deference, where when we see blacks protesting unfair killings by law enforcement, that same deference isn't given.
And I think where the frustration comes out is whenever people try and address this in a peaceful manner, they are belittled by the greater society. And I think that when this happens enough, and again, I'm not here to justify violence or the destruction of property.
I'm saddened when that happens. But at some point, it's just like LA and 92 or their watts rights. At some point these communities are going to explode. And that's what we saw last week. And then whenever people try and bring this up in a peaceful know, we're told to shut, you know, kind of like, remember, and I'll call her, you know, who works for a certain cable news show and also has her own talk radio. Again, when LeBron James tried to address this through dialogue, she told him to shut up and dribble. So again, it goes back to this dehumanizing. Like we're not allowed to have a say or a voice, but yet when other people have a say and a voice, somehow we're supposed to all listen to them. And I think that's hypocritical and we all see that. And I think a lot of people in this country don't see that. And that's why they don't understand when these emotions boil over. And again, I'm not here to condone any of this protesting or destruction of property.
So my point is, if we don't want to see this happen again, then I think there's a lot of people in this country that need to be able to come to the table and have an honest dialogue with people like us who are saying this is happening. And at some point you got to be part of this conversation, too, or else these reactions are going to continue to happen. And that's why I said at the beginning I was saddened because this reminded me of, like, I remember when I was so I'm 42, so in 1992 I was 14. And that LA stuff happened and the Rodney King beating and all that. And it's like, now I got a 21 year old son, 22. He'll be 22 in August. He's in Gainesville, Florida right now in university in central Florida. And it's like, as a dad, I'm like worried about my son because I'm like, man, what if he gets pulled over by the wrong guy?
Or what if one of these guys were to stand your ground thing just has a heart on one day and my son happened to go look in a construction site just because he's a young guy that's curious and somebody shoots my son. And then when I show up there and they try and get my lawyers and all that, the guy's going to get up because all he's going to say is, oh, I was scared. And there seems to be nothing in this system that is there to counter that I was scared. And it's like a lot of us do feel like. And I was going to say we do feel like it's open season on black men.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: We feel powerless. Powerless.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: Because what I'm saying is that sounds really dramatic, right? And I know a lot of people listening there, come on, man. They're not assassinated. People aren't just lining up black men and shooting. I get that. But like you said, we feel powerless. Because, again, that could be any of us. And in talking to, addressing this to my non black friends that always say, yeah, but, tunde, man, you're a good guy, and you got a family. Thing is, people that don't know me don't know that.
They just see a six foot, four inch black dude that's standing somewhere. And if they have a problem with that, I can suffer. And that's the scary part and the sad part that I'm an american citizen. I was born in this country. I pay taxes. I pay property taxes. I pay my sales tax. So I'm funding a system that is not representing me in the fair way that it's representing everyone else. And it's funny. Our country was founded on a revolution based on taxation without, you know, the feeling that King George was taxing the colonies. And they weren't getting the representation for all that going.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: They were literally not equal to the british citizens.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: They were treated. Correct.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Exactly. They were subordinate. They were second class to the british citizens, the colonists. So you're right. I mean, here, this is the perfect analogy to that. That now black americans in general feel the same way. And it's, again, I'm tired of all these excuses. And like you said, all these off ramps that get created for certain people not to have to look at this for real. And to have their confirmation bias continue to be fed.
That's where it gets frustrating. But I guess, let me tell you this.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: What stood out to me in this was actually the multiracial aspect of it, which I think is not the first time we've seen this. But it is something that this seems to be more multiracial than I'm used to seeing. And then if you really unpack that, there's been an ongoing battle. I've referenced this in a couple of shows. We did a whole show on the Martin Luther King book where they talked about this. The two competing ideologies of America. It's not liberal and conservative. It's not republican. And know many people. Most people have some views that are more liberal and some views that are more conservative, Republican and Democrat. Many people will, when they're voting, vote for some Republicans and some Democrats, it's called split ticket voting. That's been a thing. And then even more so, the parties have switched back and forth what they stand for over time, anyway. So that's not ideology battles. Those are just teams. But the ideological battle that's existed in America since before its founding is the battle between equality and white supremacy. And as I said, martin Luther King and his book that we did a podcast on, where do we go from here? Chaos or community? Discuss this in detail. And that's the only binary choice that we face here, is do we stand for equality or do we stand for supremacy? Are you an equalitist or an egalitarian movement? Or. That's the movement that's in the street right now. And honestly, that's always been a multiracial coalition. It's bound together not by how you look, but by the belief that all men should be treated equally under the law, or men, women, and so forth. And the white supremacy ideology preceded the founding of the country. So it's been here, and it's formed the basis of much of the economic system. Initially, the freedom one really solidified with the independence. But you go from the founding to the country once you really have this solidification of this freedom ideology. To even get the constitution ratified, there had to be a compromise between the white supremacy ideology and the equality ideology. It's called the three fifths compromise. Again, we discussed that in the show previously. It's just that slaves were counted as three fifths of a person for the purposes of representation in southern states, even though they couldn't vote.
That was to seal the deal in the Constitution a few, 20 years later, or I guess, 30, 40 years later, the Missouri compromise. That's another compromise between the equality ideology and the white supremacy ideology in terms of, you admit Maine as a free state, you admit Missouri as a slave state. The Dred Scott v. Sanford decision in the Supreme Court again dealt with the battle there. The civil war, obviously, the compromise of 1877, where you get Rutherford B. Hayes to the presidency in exchange for the Republicans pulling troops out of the south, ending the Reconstruction, and allowing the redeemers, the ones who were supposed to redeem the south, to put whites back in charge. Back in charge. The New Deal compromises that you've talked about, Toonde, and the civil rights movement, the Civil Rights act, and how the Civil Rights act basically put the white supremacy ideology, kicked them out of the democratic party, and then the southern strategy subsequently to welcome them into the republican party. All of this stuff is known history. This is the battle that's going on. And this is what we see right now in the streets. The people who are standing for equality are in the streets protesting. And it's a binary choice. People have to choose which side they're on in that. And it's unfortunate how this energy gets sidetracked sometimes as far as with the violence, with the looting and so forth. That's understandable to some degree, and we'll talk about it. But ultimately, that is what I see here. I see that multiracial coalition. I'm like, hey, that is the equality ideology, people. That's them.
It's interesting to me to see it like that and not to see just black folks out there, but to see how they're treated the same.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: A couple of things, because they had a lot of good points there to the multicultural aspect of the response. I think you're right, and I'm very kind of encouraged and happy to see it from the top down in a certain sense.
One is the amount of police chiefs around the country who have kind of broken that blue wall of silence. Obviously, the police is a very tight knit group.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: Understand?
[00:19:47] Speaker B: That's what I was going to say. I respect it because they go through a lot. I mean, they basically are walking around with PTSD every day from what they see on the street and what they go through. And they deal with some really tough situations and they deal with the worst.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: People in our society.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: A lot of it isn't what we might think. They see a lot of things like domestic violence, abuse of children. I mean, those are things that if I had to walk into apartment buildings every day and see kids that were beaten, eight, nine year old kids, I would have PTSD. So I respect law enforcement and what they have to go through.
So I understand also their solidarity and them feeling sometimes they're attacked and all that. So for me to see all these police chiefs around the country, I think my wife was telling me actually last night during the protest in Miami, a group of police officers all took a knee to kind of be in solidarity to show the protesters that we're not against you. So I can really appreciate that, actually. And even like we talked about this morning, seeing the attorney general's comments where he kind of deflected blame of the violence of the protest away from African Americans and focused on what he called kind of just far left groups and anarchists and others. So I don't think we didn't see that in the past.
That, to me, is fascinating. Now, going back to some of the stuff you were saying to me, this is why just history is so important. And for us to really know kind of just history in general. But obviously the history of our country, because a lot of this, to me, is cultural.
Human beings are human beings. So white people are people, black people are people. All that. And we're all kind of products of the long kind of cycles of culture that we're born into. So right now, we're still dealing with the legacy of european colonialism over the last, let's say, 500 years. And so you had this kind of culture that came up that whites were the dominant group and everybody else was subordinate. And as much change as we've had, thankfully, in this country over the last 100 years, there's still strains of that in our system, in our society. And I think when people hear the term systemic racism and all that, that's really what it is, is that there's certain legacies within the justice system, the prison, criminal justice system, that still speak to that, that still demonize people of color and are harsher on them because of this view that they somehow need to be tamed.
That's one thing that struck out to me. And then to your point, right? And this is where history is important because I've noticed, and it saddens me again, over the last ten years or so, this kind of rewriting of our own history. How many times have I had to read something or see a video on YouTube where someone's trying to convince me that the civil war was not about slavery? We had a war about this. That's how bad it got of people arguing, like you're saying, about equality versus white supremacy. Our country went to war. And to this day, 155 years later, it is still the costliest battle that America has ever been in in terms of the amount of troops lost and amount of american soldiers killed. It's sad to say that didn't happen. It wasn't World War II or Vietnam or one of these other conflicts overseas that actually was us killing each other as Americans.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Well, you know, that's why I mentioned the three fifths compromise, the Missouri compromise, Dred Scott, the compromise of 1877, and the Redeemers kicking the reconstructionists out. Because the civil war actually, if you look at the civil war in the abstract as just one thing, then it's easier to dismiss that as not part of an ongoing ideological battle. But when you put it in context with all those other things that are happening preceding it and after it, then you see that ideological battle and all the times that those two sides had to come together basically, and work out a deal in civil rights, civil war. Obviously, they weren't able to work out a deal. One of the things I wanted to.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: Mention, let me just touch on that, though, because you're mean. Look, and I've said this before, even back a couple of years ago in the Charlotesville stuff and all that stuff happened, we still haven't even solved the issue of a confederate flag. I mean, I thought about that. Like, what other country has an insurgent group that goes to war with the government of that country?
And 150 years later, they're still arguing whether that symbol of that group that attacked its own country should be put, like, on state grounds and state capitals with taxpayers funded money. My point, that's what I respect about Germany. After the whole Holocaust and the Nazis and all that, they just banned swastikas. They were like, look, we don't need this.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: Well, you know, it only became an issue in the civil rights movement, though. Like, I know, 100 years after the civil war, this wasn't an issue in the civil rights movement. That was kind of a backlash. Like, oh, we're just going to go back to when we really could call the shot.
[00:24:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I got one more thing, though, because where it comes to today and when you were commenting, it remind me, and I wrote it down here on my notepad just twelve years ago, when a party lost an election, the nominee for vice president of that party went around saying, let's take our country back. Remember that, Sarah Palin? And my point is that I was naive. I didn't realize there was this many people who were that uneasy with the demographic changes in this country. I really thought we were past a lot of this stuff. But I feel like that was like a call to action for a lot of people. And whether she meant that or intended.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: For that or not, no, that's the supremacy ideology.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: But that's my point.
[00:25:44] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: And exactly. And that really is, I think the point that we're making here, right. Is that if you see other people rising up and you are so uncomfortable that you feel like you got to take your country back, then it's like, what does that mean? Because that means what you're saying is.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Other citizens, I think, is an important thing because we're not talking about immigration. Citizens of the United States.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: Exactly.
What you're saying is, and I normally don't talk like this, but let's just call it what it is, you had the first black president and forget about Obama, whether you like him or not, whether you're a Democrat or a liberal or a conservative, none of that matters. But the idea of like when Bill Clinton won, I didn't see somebody up there saying let's take our country back. Like whoever, George Bush, what was it, Dan Coil, he lost the vice presidentcy right in that election. He wasn't sitting there saying let's take our country back. You know what I mean? After Gerald Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, they weren't saying take our country. But wow, when Barack Obama wins, there's a certain segment of this country that felt like their country was going away. And again, like you said, do they support equality? Because really what we're talking about is all the hard labor and work of the last hundred years and the civil rights movements and all that. What that means, the result of that means people like me and you actually get a chance to rise up through our own merit and hard work, which has happened. And that's, to me when it happens. Some people feel like now, this isn't my country anymore. And I think that's to your point, right? That means there's two competing ideologies in this country. Some people believe that everybody gets a fair shot. This is the America. People that come in here legally, right? Immigrants, which most of us are descendants of, get a chance to make it work hard and don't have these monarchies and legacy type of, or hierarchies that can't break through.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Or there's other people that say no. Again, manifest destiny types which say this is just a country for certain people and the rest of you are only visiting.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: The equality stuff only applies to me and who I say it applies to. It doesn't apply equally, which obviously is antithetical of equality. I wanted to actually comment on your, because it's something I've said for a long time. As far as the police, I think you're correct that in this discussion it's important that we do try to understand that it's a difficult job. And like you said, PTSD, one of the things I've advocated for a long time for is the ongoing support, like provide more support for them because it's a difficult job because they see things because of the type of element they're exposed to all the time. It would be very easy if you're exposed to a criminal element all the time to start generalizing because that's what our brains do, start making mental shortcuts. When I see x, I just see a criminal. Or when I see this, we need to help them with that because there are plenty of good police officers that can get caught up in that mentality. I say this. I see this with criminal defense lawyers.
Again, I'm an attorney, so, I mean, that informs a lot of what I see. But I see criminal defense lawyers that kind of get in that same mind, because every person they come across happened to be accused of a crime, and many of them actually did it. And so they'll like, oh, I don't believe anybody when they tell me that they didn't do it or whatever. It's easy to become jaded on anything when all you see when you're exposed to one side of it so much. So we need to keep that in mind with our police officers and the ones that want to do the right things. We need to give them more support. We need to give them more money. So it's a job that you don't want to lose, that you have more to lose and so forth. And the other thing I wanted to mention was something you mentioned to me. Off air was the Memphis sanitation strike in 1968. And I want to move on after this, but I will give you a chance to just respond to it. But the Memphis sanitation strike, that's where we saw the signs, like, I am a man, or a man identifying themselves as a man, which there's a throwback in the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, where the Supreme Court held that a black person, all the stuff in the constitution didn't apply to black people, which was eventually corrected with the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment. But up until that point, that's what the supreme Court said. And so Dred Scott saying, am I a man? Am I not a man? And Supreme Court is like, no, but either way.
So the Memphis sanitation strike, the fights that just recognize me as a man. That's what your sign says, I'm a man, or a man. And that's strikingly similar to Black Lives Matter, because it's the same ongoing attempt to just have the unalienable rights that are endowed upon you by your creator, their words, not mine, recognized by the legal system and respected by the economic system.
We're still at square one with the things that the Declaration of Independence, we're still trying to get that stuff from 1776 so that then we can move forward. So it's wild to me when you look at it in those contexts.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and that's where I think from the start, when you asked me what I thought and I just said I was sad, I think that describes my emotional state about this whole thing, right? That here we are, so many people have done so much hard work to try and move the ball forward. And let me say this. Obviously, the ball has moved way forward. I mean, I'm not saying that conditions for blacks and other minorities are the same as they were 50 years ago or 100 years ago.
I think Dr. King said the arc of justice does kind of move in the right direction over a long time. So let's acknowledge that. But you're right that it's just sad that I guess there's still enough people that aren't convinced that we're human beings too, right?
[00:31:27] Speaker A: No, but they won't be. That's why I was laying out the two ideologies they won't like.
There's only one binary choice, and that is equality or supremacy.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: And you're right. And I think what happens is when you have a full justice system, that we've seen unarmed black men not only being killed, but then you got the aftermath, too.
Every one of these cases we've seen over the last decade, that police officer has lied on his police report, always being attacked.
It's deeper than just a guy calling me, and it's the whole system. And that's where earlier when I said, I'm scared for my son or even myself, I feel like it would be so difficult if I showed up dead somewhere and a cop said, man, that guy attacked me and all that. Unless, say, my wife was trying to get a lawyer and really go after this. The whole system is set up to be a black box, to not let light shine in there to see what really happened. And it goes back to your point about the coroner's report saying he didn't die of asphyxiation. To give people an offering. I mean, that's like saying JFK didn't die from getting shot in the head. But we found out that he had prostate cancer when we did the autopsy. So you know what? That must have killed him, because not his head. Not his head getting blown up.
Two things could be true at once. A guy can have heart disease or problems, and also when the guy.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: But that wasn't about to kill him on the corner right there.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: That's what I mean. But when a guy puts his knee on his neck for nine minutes, whether he had the heart disease or diabetes or whatever he had, I'm going to assume that he might have gone home alive that day had he not had a neck, put on his knee, put on his neck with full weight for nine minutes. I don't think any of us could survive that, whether full strength or not.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: Yeah, man. But now I wanted to actually make sure we got a chance to discuss the looting and the violence also that have almost dominated the coverage in many ways relative to the protest. The peaceful part of the protests are almost not interesting enough for the news.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: Media to talk about that part, the sensationalism, right. That a lot of things don't get to the point.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Yeah, well, yeah, because that doesn't sell, apparently. That doesn't make. I get eyeballs like fire and claims of looting and so forth.
You see the frustration, and I don't think the looting and the violence is a constructive way to do it, but I don't feel powerless. So there's frustration that exists, and that frustration, that's a human thing. People vent frustration when people storm the Capitol in Michigan. That's frustration that they're venting. And our system accounts for that with the whole idea of freedom of assembly and so forth. But in any group, they are going to have people that go too far, and we want to rein them back in. Actually, that's why reasonable people want to have these discussions, because once the people who go too far get in, then it's hard to. Then you're dealing with a whole bunch of other stuff. But I just want to give context to this. It's not like this is a black phenomenon. Like when you look back to the 1921 Tulsa massacre, that's a riot where white folks in Tulsa go to the black part of town and torch the whole thing because they thought they had too much money.
But that's never considered in the same light that frustration happens in society when people feel wronged, whether they feel wronged legitimately or not.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: You make a great point because, I mean, really, that was the catalyst for Charlotesville.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:34:56] Speaker B: For whatever reason, these guys from these white groups that felt like their heritage, their thing, but at least taken down of the statues was somehow hurting their culture and themselves. So they forget about the next day violent stuff where that lady got killed, remember the night before? They're sitting there with tiki torches talking about blood and soil and all this stuff. And you know what? To a lot of people like us, that's intimidating, right?
[00:35:25] Speaker A: It's meant to be intimidating.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I mean. You're looking at basically crystal knocked guys walking around with torches on us soil.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Well, no, but we're aware of the history of the fact that a lot of times that preceded people dying, people getting the posse rounding up and just finding some black people to kill.
Those type of riots, though, is what I'm saying. We don't viscerally look at the same, or at least those aren't viewed the same for whatever reason, frustration.
[00:35:49] Speaker B: But that's where I'm getting at. Because if you look at what happened specifically in Charlotesville, you had the citizens of Charlotesville, people that live in that community, had a vote to remove those statues. Peaceful votes over, you know, again, things that I always hear from people know after that all happened, that supported the side of the guys who started it all and went into Charlotesville to cause this chaos, you always hear about, oh, let government at the local level, local and state, know, deal with stuff. So the local government had a vote. The citizens of Charlotesville decided to remove those statues. And these guys came in from outside Charlotesville primarily to go and voice their dissatisfaction with pulling down a statue of a confederate general, and it turned violent. And you're right, somehow they get shown as the victim in that. And you're right, the same type of stuff happens here. And those same media outlets that showed support for the guys who instigated the Charlotesville unrest are the ones now know, wagging the finger at these protesters, saying, oh, you guys are so bad. So again, I think, again, we can say it again, so no one can accuse us of supporting violence. We don't support any of it. It's just we're making the observation that, again, it's treated different and it's an.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Unfortunate consequence more than anything. And then when that unfortunate consequence happens, that's not viewed in context. But when we see these things in other scenarios, it is. The other thing I wanted to mention here that I'll jump back to you in a second, okay.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: Because I got one more on that. Okay.
[00:37:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the militarized approach to the protesters exacerbates this. Like when you show up in riot gear with tear gas and rubber pellets, that show of force will escalate things.
They didn't do that show of force with the armed protesters in Michigan or with Charlotesville, where they're showing up like that with the riot gear. Like militarized police. Police are to protect and serve. As far as I understood, that's not protecting and serving. That is intimidate. And I mean, that's enemy combatant stuff.
That's insurgency stuff that we do. These are citizens that we're sending a militarized police force after. And I'm saying that escalates the issues.
[00:38:18] Speaker B: Oh, you're right.
[00:38:19] Speaker A: Where the police are joining in. You don't see that same level of escalation. It's where they take an adversarial position.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: But to your point even more, and this is what makes it offensive for people like us, the police in Charlotesville were actually there to protect the white supremacist protesters, the guys that came in from outside of Charlotesville to have the torches and protested taken down of this statue, which was, again, a local government decision voted on by the citizens of Charlotesville. And you're it.
Suppose the police showed up with military vehicles and had just like, remember Ferguson? They had sniper rifles trained on the crowd. And if they had done that to these protesters at these state capitols, you know what might have happened is those guys might have started shooting at the cops because they might have been scared. And that's my point.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: Or they would have not stood for the idea of you trying to intimidate them with force.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: But that's what I mean, they might have started shooting back again. These are the things to anybody listening doesn't deal with the things that we deal with in terms of seeing it from this perspective. I think it's important to hear that. I mean, that's the way a lot of us in this country see it, that certain people behave a certain way, which is very antisocial and very disruptive. And they're called great Americans and they're exercising that their freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, and they're supported by the leadership of the country talking about rise up and go to the state capitol and all that. And then other people that voice their dissatisfaction and things when they don't look the same, they're treated as hostile forces within their own country.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: I don't even think it's looks, though. That's what I was saying. I think it's what you stand for that makes the difference. If you stand.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: I think it's a little bit of both.
[00:40:13] Speaker A: Well, it's a multiracial group out here now that's getting hit, much more so than the group that you saw before.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: But let me get to a point that I wanted to on this one, and then I know you want to move on.
One thing I thought of is this is the sad part, too, about the lack of response from the system. It's almost like this is like a sad dance between. It's like a domestic violence husband and wife that constantly are fighting, but yet they stay together.
Meaning had this cop been arrested immediately, maybe we wouldn't have these rights. And that's the sad part. It's almost like it takes this behavior to get the attention of the system. And that's why I'm saying I'm not justifying the behavior of rioting and damaging property. But again, there was enough in there. They could have just taken this cop into custody and just waited for him to be charged. That's normal.
You've got a video there of him basically killing a man that was already cuffed and subdued and with his life not at risk. I mean, he's sitting there with his hand in his pocket, rocking his knee back and forth on the guy's neck. And on video, we see the guy die. I mean, he pissed himself. You see the trail of piss. His body just gave out. So why, again, does it take this kind of reaction by the community for the DA and the governors and people to just go probably behind the scenes into the justice system and say, all right, guys, you guys got to go get this guy? And it's the same thing we saw again, not a police one, but with the kid in Georgia, without that video, those two guys will be walking around now after they hunted a guy down and shot him off the back of a truck like he was a hog in the everglades.
And that's what we see. We see a system that, unless they're really called out and embarrassed, is just fine looking the other way when someone that looks like me or you gets killed. Had this just been a few peaceful protesters demonstrating with signs and all that for a night or two after Monday, I don't know if this guy would be in jail by Friday. The cop that did it, that's what I was going to say about 92, right? Those riots are probably the reason why they brought those cops back for the civil trials on the federal level, just because.
And that's what I'm saying is the sad part. And to me, that's where everybody has responsibility, 100%. Obviously, we're a diverse country, a lot of people in this country. But this is where leadership is important because I don't like getting into politics and calling it out. But I will hear. I saw a tweet from the vice president a few days ago where he was saying he was standing in solidarity with the peaceful protesters and, of course, condemning the violence like we all do. And he was saying we should all be peacefully protesting. But I'm thinking you're the same guy that walked out of a football game when black men were peacefully protesting police injustice by taking a knee during the anthem. Now I get it. I get it. People don't like you taking a knee in front of the flag and all that. I get it. And should a bunch of guys in their mid 20s who are NFL players maybe find a more eloquent way to have their protest? Maybe. But the idea is that that's my point, is, like, when we bring these issues up peacefully, we're belittled and diminished. And like you said, people deflect the argument so that certain people in this country emotionally can have an off ramp so that they don't have to deal with the real issue. So what do they do? Oh, you're anti american. Oh, you're anti military. The reality is, none of that was about the kneeling. They specifically said it was about police injustice. And to the credit of Roger Goodell and some of the NFL owners, they were trying to support what the players were doing, and they got overrode. And you said this and not to again try and bring up too much into the politics. But then certain leaders in our country see that emotional angst by some people in the white community, and then they stoke that fire and they start using it to kind of drive a continued wedge.
They see the correct to my point here is maybe next time a guy kneels or something just peacefully tries to bring attention to this issue, what if our leaders actually paid attention to it? That's my point. Maybe we wouldn't. Maybe it wouldn't get this far where it takes people burning down buildings to get that attention.
[00:44:52] Speaker A: And I think it's an excellent point, man. And to sum it up, really what you're saying, what I gather you're saying, and it's really astute people ask, why do people need to loot? Why do people need to burn stuff down? Why do these things become violent? Why can't you just peacefully protest? And I think a lot of people ask that in good faith and really are just like, I don't understand why it becomes that. Even if they recognize, and they should recognize that that's still a small percentage of the people that are out there protesting or whether they're actually a part of the protest, is a whole question also. But you got to turn that question around.
Why does that need to happen for the justice system to get out of bed? Correct.
We legitimately wondered, well, why does that type of stuff seem to be necessary for people to even take this kind of thing seriously and not be so in a rush to sweep it under the rug, at least allow the system to appear like the wheels of justice are turning? And so why does it take that? I wish it didn't take that. I would imagine nobody or many other people who I would speak to, and reasonable people wouldn't wish it would or would wish it wouldn't take that. But why does it seem to need to take that? And that's where we have to focus the issue back for people to understand because it's like, I don't think any reasonable person wants it to come to that. Why does it seem like it needs to come to that?
When people come respectfully or when people come with peaceful demonstrations, why is that not taken seriously?
When they're coming from one place, but when they're coming from another place, when an armed protester shows up, they are taken seriously.
An armed protester protesting something different. And so that's really the question that has to be answered. And I don't think you're asking the right person when you're saying, well, why is that looting happening or why is that the violence happening? Ask the people that don't get out of bed until, unless and until that happens, because they're creating the positive association with that behavior.
[00:46:50] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying. That's a good terminology, positive association, which, correct.
I'm looking at it that way. It's sad, but yeah, maybe it took burning down. It's psychological stuff for this guy to show up in handcuffs on Friday because clearly he wasn't before then. It seemed like it was going to be the same old thing. We're just going to do an investigation. You guys shut up and we'll let you know what happens after we come from this closed, beyond these closed grand jury investigation.
[00:47:23] Speaker A: I want to wrap with this. What happens next? We see where we are. What happens next. Short arc, long arc, take your pick.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: I don't know, man. I mean, obviously we all got to wait and see. Unfortunately, there's a higher probability that we all just go back to normal than something actually really some systemic change.
And I think it just comes from not everybody sees this problem the same way. And that's why there's probably no consensus ever really formulated. And it goes back to your overarching theme, which is some people see equality as something serious that they should take their time to try and fight for, no matter what their color or race or religion they believe in. That.
[00:48:05] Speaker A: Itself means that it's no matter what your color, race, or it's not.
[00:48:11] Speaker B: Just one group of people trying to always fight this. I mean, there's a lot of people of all colors that want to see this stuff go away in all groups, but there seems to be still that overarching ideology, like I said, it's deep seated because it's permeated our society for hundreds of years, that this country really belongs to some and the rest are visiting and don't really have, and I don't want to say the same rights and all that because that's what people start off. It's really about the ability to voice yourself. And I think that's what we're identifying.
[00:48:41] Speaker A: When we're, that is the same.
[00:48:42] Speaker B: Hold on. But I'm just saying it in a different way. What I mean is, and that's exactly.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: What stakeholders, they're not stakeholders, I think is what you're trying to.
[00:48:51] Speaker B: Well, it's just the idea that like we're identifying with guys are going to state capitals with guns and are seen as they should have their voices heard and they're good Americans. And other people, when they protest peacefully taking a knee, are somehow anti american. And all this stuff, even though the argument of the first amendment is used to defend the guys going to state capitols with guns, but that is chosen to be overlooked for the other guys. And again, that's the whole point of our country, is I might not like something, look, I don't like those guys going to state capitols with guns. I don't like the Ku Klux Klan. I'm from Washington, DC. Up until 1985, the Klein used to march every year in front of the state capitol. And I remember when I was a little kid just hearing about it and my friends and their parents and all that, drawing the protest signs on the sharpies with the sharpies when I was at their friend's house and all that, and I'd be seven, eight, nine years old, and we wanted to go. And they tell us we're too young, we can't, you know, I remember all that. And the thing is, as much as to me that's horrible, the clan has a right to do that. Because if I believe in the United States and I believe in freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, I need to accept and be humbled that people that I don't agree with have this right, too. And the thing is that, again.
[00:50:11] Speaker A: We.
[00:50:11] Speaker B: Are not given that same right when it's something that we're not following the majority crowd with. And I think that's a feeling I've had for a long time, too, is some people get to dictate who's american and who's not. And that's the interesting thing here, that I think that's what we're identifying. Some people get the benefit of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, and others don't. When you're talking about things like the police response, some people get a militarized response and others get a kind of protectionary response. Correct?
And again, are you going to believe me or you're lying?
That's what I mean. When we were kids or even before we were born, there wasn't all this video technology and all that. And people could rationalize things in their heads a different way. I'm sorry. We're just seeing these things constantly happen on video. And it's like, if you're still denying this at this point, then you just need to have an honest conversation with yourself about who you are and what you think about the rest of the people that you live with.
[00:51:19] Speaker A: And then own it. And then own it. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
There are two ideologies. And the thing is, to your point, civilized by definition means that you can be civil with people even if you don't agree with them. And so if we're going to be a civilized country, if we're going to be able to have civil discussion, then we have to be able to disagree and yet still recognize people's rights and so forth.
That is missing a lot of times. But I think also, though, we just have to be honest with ourselves and we have to ask ourselves, what side are we on? And the answer is not Democrat or Republican. That's not it at all. Democrats and Republicans can deal with each other all the time. They can be the same family, same Thanksgiving table, all that their views can mix in together and sometimes this and sometimes that. Liberal conservative isn't the answer. Some people are financial conservatives and socially liberal or vice versa, or all types of stuff.
But either you are for equality, if you're for equality, you can't be for white supremacy or supremacy in general. You can't be for hierarchy. You have to be for equality. And otherwise, if you're not, then own that and just say, look, I just don't think that all men are created equal. I don't think that everybody should have the same rights under the law and to be able to do stuff. And then what I want people to understand, though, is that that's not going away. Like, that's been here longer than the whole freedom thing. The freedom thing is an experiment that most places in the world have never even tried. And that's actually american exceptionalism, if you ask me. The fact that we're trying to do something and in many instances getting close to pulling it off that most societies around the world have never tried and really don't have no interest in trying. But it's a higher way of governing ourselves if we can do it, if we can hold it together, but we can't sit around and try to make it so that everybody's going to buy in. Clearly, because the ideology of supremacy has been here and will be here, we outnumber them now. So we have to take that, use that leverage to beat them at the ballot box. But it's not going away. We have to hold people accountable, make sure that our laws, make sure that the laws as written and as enforced are in the spirit of equality and justice. And that's what the protests need to be about now. That's what the ones that I support are about.
But we can understand that there's going to be frustration. We're humans. We see how that happens. That shouldn't undermine the idea of the protest or what the five are doing, shouldn't undermine what the 95 are doing. We don't do that in any other scenario. So we can understand that some people will go too far and we try to rein them in and try to bring them back into the group saying, look, that's not it. But ultimately, at the end of the day, if we're going to be for equality, we have to be for equality all the time. That means showing up at the voting booth, at minimum. As long as you're doing that, that's at minimum doing your job as a citizen to support people who also are in that ideology. Because otherwise the people who are trying to roll back that stuff are, again, I say it all the time. They're not taking days off, they're working. They're trying to manipulate, they're trying to hide in, they hide in the parties.
They pretend like they're conservative or they pretend like they're liberal, they pretend like they're Democrat, they pretend like they're Republican. But they're not really for the ideology of freedom and equality and justice. So let's expose them, let's isolate them and let's outvote them, because that's what american exceptionalism can really be if we make it that way. So you got any final thoughts?
[00:54:57] Speaker B: Yeah, the one thing you said about raining in the fringes, and I'll just bring this and try and get through it really quickly. So that tells you, I mentioned earlier in the discussion that I had a real good conversation with a white friend of mine yesterday who called me and we were talking about this and he started with the whole thing. Why are people writing not why, but he was saying, man, it takes away from the message and all that. And like you're saying, I feel like a lot of times when these things happen, people kind of look at all the people like us and kind of look at us like we got to reign the crazies in on our side, that kind of attitude.
And it was a good, genuine conversation. I mean, he was definitely looking for the right kind of dialogue. And so one of the comments he made to me, he was like, yeah, tunde, man. It's amazing, man. Because guys like me, he's an attorney, just regular kind of upper middle class white dude, right? American guy. And he kind of was like, yeah, tunde, man. People like me, there's nothing we can really do about this. And that's to your point. When you said rain in the fringes, it reminded me, because my comeback to him was, I'm not going to say his name, but I was like, my friend, you're wrong. And I challenged him on that, and I said, you can do something about it. I said, because you're in rooms where people make comments that they would never make if I was in that room. And I said, and that's where we all have a responsibility. And I said, including me, just like, if I'm under a room with a bunch of black dudes and they start talking trash about whites or jews, I'll stick up and say, man, that ain't right. Or something like that.
[00:56:33] Speaker A: And I told him, I go, look.
[00:56:34] Speaker B: I'm not expecting you to fight everybody that says something. You got to be obviously strategic about getting through your day. But I think you're right.
Sometimes people look at minority communities and look at kind of the moderate people in those communities and say, you got to rein in your crazies. And I'm saying that that's kind of, I think, part of our message to the white community in America, which know you guys also have a responsibility. The moderate whites, the people that don't like seeing this, the good cops, you guys got to start speaking up, too, because this is hurting everybody. It is natural for all of us to feel a certain kinship with what we feel is our own group. Right? As much as we want to believe that everybody might think equal versus equality and all that, a lot of people still will fall back to tribalism. And that's what I'm saying, that we all need to strive to have the maturity that when we feel that little trigger in our brain that says, well, that's my group I want to defend it. Just take a pause and say, okay, am I just doing this because I feel like somebody's attacking my group, or did that person actually do something wrong? Because it's like we're saying, right? I'm not going to sit here and start defending protesters burning down buildings just because they're black. I can say, look, that's not the right way to handle it, even though I understand the frustrations of what led.
[00:57:55] Speaker A: To that and even though we wonder whether or not that's the only thing that people pay attention to, ultimately, as you said, as I said, the whole equality, the whole equal protection under the law, not having beefs that go back hundreds or thousands of years, that's not the norm in terms of the human experiment, excuse me, the human experience, the whole how humans govern themselves, freedom of speech, all that stuff. Those are exceptions. And so we're going to be exceptional because we try for those exceptions and try to build a better society in that way. And part of that is standing up for what you believe in, not necessarily what you look like, but what you believe in. So hopefully more and more of us can do that and hold each other to a higher standard no matter what room you're in. And if we can do that, then I think we can get to a better place. And hopefully these type of things, these are tragedies, but hopefully they can spur us to move to a better place.
Until next time, I'm James Keyes. I'm Tundale Gunlana, and thank you, everybody, for listening. Subscribe rate review talk to you next time.
[00:59:10] Speaker B: Me, I'm.
