Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello.
Welcome to the Call It Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to take a look at America's long history of using prisons and imprisoning people as an economic engine, albeit one whose costs are typically borne by the many in society and whose benefits may be given to a few. And how certain aspects of American culture have really allowed this suboptimal approach to society building continue on. And also how both in the long arc and recent events, it suggests that this may be changing.
And later on, we're going to react to reports of rising hormone use amongst Chinese children directed by their parents or allowed by their parents that's aimed at increasing their height. And consider whether as technology continues to advance, there should be any guardrails or, you know, there should just be a free for all in terms of, hey, you want to make your kid taller? We can do that type of thing.
Joining me today is a man who, when he gets going, can walk it, talk it, make it sound good. Tunde Ogonlana tune day. Are you ready to get the people some culture today?
[00:01:27] Speaker B: Yeah, but I just want to know if I can walk it like I talk it, but I can do that.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Then that'll be up to you, man.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Yeah. All right, we'll figure it out as the show.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll figure that out. Now we're recording this on November 14, 2022, and we saw last week that five states voted on the question of whether an exception to the general prohibition of slavery, the exception being as punishment for a crime, should remain in their respective state constitutions. Four of the five, Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont, voted to remove the exception. Remove to saying, hey, slavery is prohibited and there is no exception for as punishment for a crime, while the other state, Louisiana, voted to keep it in. Now, as many are aware, this exception actually comes from and it remains in the US Constitution. So Section 1 of the 13th Amendment states that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime, whereof a party shall have been duly convicted shall exist in the United States.
But as noted in many places, most notably the recent Netflix documentary 13th, this exception has been exploited a lot since slavery was abolished in the U.S. and that's over, obviously, 150, 160 years. But now we're seeing a trend where many states whose language mirrors the 13th Amendment of the Constitution are taking that exception language out. But even still, there's still over a dozen states where it remains in but Tuned in. What are your thoughts on the exception? Like having this exception to the prohibition of slavery? And what was your reaction to seeing four more states vote to end it? And. Or if you want to talk about it, one state choose to leave it in?
[00:03:16] Speaker B: No, it's good questions. I would start with the idea of the fact that these things are still in certain state laws, so that we're talking about them today in 2022 shows us how close, from a cultural standpoint, we still are to this part of our nation's history, as much as it doesn't feel like we are close from a time perspective, because no one today was alive during, let's say, the Civil War or right after when the 13th Amendment was drafted and put into law. So again, we've said this in several discussions recently, and it's interesting because I think the recent last two years, kind of pushback from some of this country on topics like this, that somehow if you bring up these discussions about American history, this isn't black history, but American history, somehow you're accused of being woke or that you're trying to embarrass some people or something.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Remember, the standard being if someone else would feel shame about it, feel ashamed about it, then you're crossing a line.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: By bringing it up, which in itself is still a lopsided way to look at it. Because what about the people who are descendants of slaves, slow slaves?
[00:04:36] Speaker A: That's putting it very politely.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: No, but think about what I'm saying. What about the people who are descendants of slaves who could say, well, I feel ashamed if you don't tell the actual history that the way it was and try and kind of quote unquote whitewash it. So the point is to get back to the specific point here is I find it just fascinating that we have all these dynamics and currents, kind of cross currents running at the same time, at the very same time that states are literally having votes in this midterm election of 2022 to remove provisions that were enacted right after the Civil War in the late 1860s as a backdoor way to use human labor, either at no cost or very cheap cost, to accomplish the needs of the capital side of things, especially in Southern states, that we find ourselves this far away from that moment in time, you know, almost 200 years later, that finally these things are getting addressed. And it's just interesting, right?
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: So and so. And it also just interesting to know that there's still sodomy laws on the books. I mean, there's a lot of. There's a lot of things on state laws that I think we'd all be a little bit surprised, some of them that they're still there.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of those things actually, that, you know, the way things unfolded after it happened, you would assume, okay, well, yeah, this was kind of done as a back doorway, but then all the states mirrored it in their constitutions and so forth. I don't necessarily go to a place of, well, everybody had this idea, and everybody's gonna use this in the way that it's been used in the most exploitative ways that it's been used. And even if you look at through American history, we'll talk about this. It wasn't every state that's exploited this to the same degree in terms of, hey, but hey, we're gonna lock people up and then we're gonna work them to the bone just like they're just new slaves, basically. Not every state has approached it like that, even if they had that language on the books. But the language itself, while it may seem innocuous if you look at it completely devoid of context, it still is interesting from the standpoint of it creates a economic incentive, or just an incentive in general to lock people up. You know, like, regardless if you look at it completely devoid of context, you know, context meaning, you know, at the time, America just got finished fighting a war over the ability to. To. To force people into slavery.
This wording says, you know, accept as punishment for a crime. That says, well, hey, it's a. We have the benefit of hindsight to see this incentive play out, but it's like, well, hey, let's lock up a bunch of people and then we can force them into slavery. And so human beings are animals. And so, you know, we have to understand at all times. I think sometimes we miss the big picture with a lot of when we set things up in a way that incentivizes certain types of behavior. Even if the person who may have set it up or people who are around when they set it up weren't necessarily thinking of the worst possible ways to implement it, somebody was. And the incentive is there for them to do dirt with it, basically. So you actually have handed the tool to someone who wants to be exploitative to another group or another person. You've handed them the tool to do it. And so to me, that's what really. Like, why in the world would any society want something on their books that encourages the system, so to speak, to take people out of productive society and just put them in prison?
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Well, I think, again, we need to understand the history of our nation.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: And that's why the point. Me saying the point of taking it out of context is kind of. It's too abstract.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: Well, I think. And deeper than history is also culture, because I think that that's something that I realized and as I was even preparing for today. Right.
Because of that, I think. And this is not anything sinister. I think it's just the way our minds work, all of us. And we can't have 10,000 million nuances for every topic we learn. Right. So we learn history just as kind of this linear thing. Like, okay, well, I guess America operated a certain way. And then, you know, like, say, with slavery being part of the way it operated. And then in 1865, after this thing called the Civil War, it was over. And then let's move on to the next phase of American history. And I think.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: And the way you learned it is very two dimensional because it's like clean. It's like at that point, nobody else was thinking about that anymore.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: Yeah, so, exactly. And that's what I'm saying is that the historical facts are one thing. Like, okay, yeah, in 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was read, and by 1865, you know, generally the slaves had been freed, you know, after the end of the war. Right. And so, but what we don't have in context when you're just learning this on the fly in history class is the culture.
The culture of slavery was a culture that was part of the American fabric since the founding of the country in the 1789 era and from the before that, when it was colonies and all that, you know, I mean, again, the 1619 project is aptly named so. Because that's when the first slaves were brought to the American continent.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: So to your point, the whole economic, you know, like, that was such an ingrained part of not just culture, but how business was accomplished and done.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Correct. And that's what I'm saying. Like, think about it. It got me thinking about, like the Civil Rights act of 1965. We're still having arguments today over the fallout of that. Just because it's a cultural thing. It's not about the law and what that law did, but the culture of things like integration, which things like affirmative action, fair housing act, redlining. All those things were things that were still playing out after 1965. And it just takes time for the culture to adjust. Because like MLK had said in the book, we did a show on a couple of years ago, in the end, you can legislate what's in people's heads.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: And so he also said there's always a backlash to any type of movement from that. When culture changes, the. There's a backlash to that.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know what that allowed. And here's the interesting thing, right? When you're talking about culture and you're talking about the end of something that has had was such a long cultural legacy in a nation, think about you had around 4 million slaves in the south at the end of the Civil War. I'm going to assume over 98%, 99% were illiterate because it was illegal to teach slaves how to read back then. And so. And also they were homeless when you think about it, because their home was a plantation. And once the master of the plantation is not allowed to legally own them, he's not gonna wanna have all these people just sitting on his property. So what you had was.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: And then also no, you know, like they didn't have a promised job, so to speak.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: There was no. Yeah, there was no, there was nothing in terms of, hey, let's maybe rehabilitate this group of people that were not really part of the rest of society and you know, teach them how to be, you know, part of this greater society. So what you had was a lot of people out there, millions of people in the south that were just kind of sitting there. And you also had, you know, in fairness to the south, the south was in tatters because they had just had a war. Right. They lost the Civil War without jobs.
[00:11:51] Speaker A: And a lot of work that needed to be done.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: And so, but, but you had a culture that was set up to not treat the people who needed the jobs. The culture, as to your point, wasn't set up to treat those people fairly. You know what I'm saying? The culture that had been evolved over the 300 years that preceded that 200 and something years that preceded that were. No, these people cannot be treated fairly no matter what the laws on the books say.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: Well, let me keep going because what you can see here is a progress of it. Right. Because you're right, I mean, to fairness to everybody in America after the Civil War was over, you're like the new territory. How do we, how do we go from here? So what happened is, you know, I'll quote from some of the historical stuff I cite. You know, clearly there's something that many people have heard of called the black codes.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: And these were the laws enacted in Southern states, basically the ex Confederate states after the Civil War to still Maintain some sort of control and try to deal with all these blacks that were just, you know, kind of there. And these were all laws that were enacted so that they could single out black men for prisons, and then the prisons would hire them out as chain gangs to private corporations in the state. So it was a backdoor way of getting people in.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: And that's what it has to be said specifically, like, what it was basically was, okay, well, if you cannot have slavery without someone being duly convicted of a crime, what the black codes were, was the creation of crimes that they could duly convict people of that weren't things that. It wasn't necessarily things at all. Somebody's doing something that's disruptive to society. It's like, hey, what are. What can we. What can we. What can we catch these people for doing, you know, lawyering, Standing around, like, oh, yeah, you're standing around, and, you know, hey, that's it. You're going to jail. And then you can then be forced into slavery again. And so they were specifically targeted basically to get into that exception, to get into that loophole. And like you said, they started in 1865, like, immediately thereafter they put them in. And so, like. And one of the things I noted just from. From our preparation was this was the time when, you know, up until that point, there had never been more black people incarcerated than white people in the country. But at that point, that's when that happened. And what. Like one of the. There's a documentary that. That really talks about the 13th Amendment in Great detail and in the arc of how it has interplay, how American culture has, you know, kind of evolved over that time. Like, you just started talking about convict leasing, which was, you know, going. Got really big right after the Civil War, where you convict somebody of a crime and then the state could lease them out. Like the state of Alabama was getting, you know, in 18, late 1800s, they were getting, like, almost three quarters of their budget from leasing out convicts, you know, to companies or whatever. Like, so. But that goes away in, you know, the early 1900s, around 1940s, I think, is when it gives. FDR completely outlaws it. And then you go to another, you know, form when people look at Jim Crow and things like that, where it's still doing that, and then you get to the 70s where it's the prison industrial complex. But how this has evolved, that documentary, 13th, really, I thought, laid out well in a way to how you can see how the. As you talked about just, you know, recently, the economic, excuse me, the cultural aspect of how this is really ingrained in our culture, the way that this exception has been exploited, but then also the economic aspect of it and how the economics of it, you know, there was this marriage of American culture and also the ability to generate wealth, even though that wealth may not have been the most efficient way or the most. The most effective way from a societal building standpoint, it's a way to generate wealth. And so it's been something that's been very persistent even as, you know, as we move from one thing. Okay, well, convict leasing doesn't work anymore. You get. Come up with something else and you come up with something else and so forth.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: So what did you. What was your, you know, I was. I wanted to ask you about the, you know, like that, that documentary 13th. Like what.
What stood out to you as far as. And we're not doing the whole show on that, but just in terms of. Was there anything that they touched on that you found to be really significant? Yeah.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: I mean, just like, as you said. Right. That it didn't end was. I'd focus a lot of my thinking of the hundred years between 1865 and 1965 when the Civil Rights act was passed in a way to help prevent certain things happening in certain parts of the country. But what the documentary did a great job of is showing that it didn't end in 1865. It basically continued, like you said, through the 1970s and the 80s and through the culture of fear. Right. And this is what started after the Civil War, which was this culture of fear about blacks and blacks being uncontrolled and moving around. Right. And so it became where. Well, if you let all these black guys run around, they're going to rape the women, they're going to steal, they're going to be all violent. So we need to control them by putting them over in this section of town or locking them up for this or that. And what happened was this same culture of fear was used in the 1968 kind of Southern strategy. And then, as you mentioned, the 1970s began this kind of prison industrial complex where it was.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: I'll touch on that when I get back in.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: But to get back real quick to what I alluded to a second ago, which was on the economics of it, if you really look at it, I mean, the Civil War, as much as it was about slavery, was also about a battle within the American fabric. So this was amongst really whites at the time, because blacks didn't have much ownership of things back then. And you had the Northern whites believed more in kind of industrial, kind of the old Protestant Victorian age ways that from the British brought over, which is, you know, work hard, the individual can, can come up on their own entrepreneurship.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: Well, no, things we would call like free enterprise capitalism. Exactly, things like that.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: And where the south was more of a feudalist system where you had, you know, large populations in states like South Carolina and Mississippi, but the wealth really concentrated in probably 1% or less because you had a large percentage of people that were slaves who had no rights of their own and had no agency for anything and didn't own any assets. And then you had all these poor whites who couldn't work because the plantation owners had their own labor force, which was the slaves.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Well, let me say something real quick on that because that's a very important point, one that perplexed Lincoln. Lincoln couldn't understand why the poor whites in the south didn't see this or didn't care about this, which other people have said that that's more of that. But, but having to compete, if you're a laborer, having to compete with a slave means you're always going to come out, you're always going to lose that battle. You know, like, you can't create an economic. If there's always going to be slaves there, that can undercut you. You're never going to work for less than the slaves. And so by allowing slavery, they created the situation where the poor whites could never be entrepreneurial, by and large cannot come up because they, oh, their, their work could always be undercut. There's always somebody that'll do it cheaper because that other person is owned. And so like, and again, there's been much debate about, like, whether they knew that. And you know, W.E.B. du Bois, for example, calls that, he called their, that deal they made, basically say, well, as long as I'm better, I can be better than the black guy, then I'll, I'm okay being poor. He called that the psychic wage. You know, where, okay, I don't need economic opportunity. Just put me in a caste system above the black people and I'm okay. And so, but like I said, Lincoln was perplexed by that. Many people have always observed that. Like, do you not, do these folks not see that the slaves, the existence of the slaves, they would be much better off if the slaves had to get paid. Cause then they could get paid more.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Well, I think that's why, I mean, the term psychic wage is excellent because it is about kind of an emotional need that many people have. Right. I think all humans have the need to feel that they are relevant. Right. Feel value, feel valued. And I think you make a great point, James, about the lack of employment opportunities for poor whites because people that aren't educated about slavery just think of field hands and people picking cotton. But there were a lot of slaves that were highly skilled in other areas. I mean, you had blacksmiths. You had people that were hired out because they were good at playing the fiddle or the violin for weddings. You know, those are all jobs that could have been had by a white person. But if you have a slave that can do those things, why pay somebody else to do it? And also the other.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: Well, let me just say this, because I think before we get too far away, I mean, I think that, like, you hit me with this offline, and I thought it was, as we were getting ready, just the comparison of that to a feudal system and how you really had what you have basically, is this divergence with where one part of the country is looking at things. And now, that's not to say, you know, the north, everything was all hunky dory, but it's just. It was a form of capitalism as we understand it. But in the south, it wasn't, you know, it was more of a feudal system and, you know, defined by whether you could serfs or slaves or whatever. But you had the landlords and you had everyone else, you know, and so I think that looking at it that way, that really, if. Then if you go from that to, okay, well, slavery's over now. Now what? It shows how the economy was kind of an arrested development economy. It wasn't set up to, okay, now you can do all this stuff. Well, who's gonna do all this stuff? And so therefore, there was the opportunity. People who saw it like, well, hold on. We need people that can do work. We need people that, you know, that are. That are ready to do work. And it became, okay, well, let's create crimes and lock all these people up, and then we got our workforce back.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: Yeah, And I agree, and I think that's why it's actually. It's simple and complex at the same time. Because the simple part is, like, you're saying, okay. And it goes back to what I was saying earlier, too. Like, the culture, right? Like, this was the culture of the South. And so just because there was a war for a few years and then it ended doesn't mean that all those human beings just all of a sudden changed. Like, you know what? Yeah. We shouldn't be using all these black people for labor. And da, da, Da. And also think about, unfortunately, the culture of the slave. They didn't know anything either, except to be kind of especially the field hands, just to be dominated and told to work. And so. And once you put in those black codes where you basically being black itself almost was just. That was a crime that one could be punished for, then it gave you.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: That's what it insinuates. Calling it a black code. That's what it's insinuating.
[00:22:36] Speaker B: And that's when some short stories I can share later on in the discussion that are true stories of things that we've read just to give the audience an example. But. But what you're gonna get is without the guardrails, which were tried, you know, the north did stay for about 10 years, you know, after the war, to try and invest in making sure that there was some kind of equality. And there was a Civil Rights act of 1866 which created something called the Freedmen's Bureau. And this is where, you know, freed people could take their grievances, apparently.
But remember, this wasn't today with phones and the Internet and all that. So if you're in the middle of cameras and, you know, and you're trying to get grievances from the federal government in Washington, D.C. it's going to take some time. And the intimidation from the local strongmen. Right. The Ku Klux Klan and the former slave owners and all that is probably going to be more.
Is probably going to have more influence on you. So.
But I'll kick it back here in a sec, but I just wanted to mention, because you made a good point is we're not trying to say that the, the south was evil and the north was a bunch of goody two shoes. There was, of course, racism in the north, but what happened in the north was the north didn't derive its labor from ex slaves. The north derived this labor from immigrants from Europe primarily, and then from the blacks who migrated north after Reconstruction to get away from the terrorism of the South.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: And so you're.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Big difference.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: That was exploitative, but it wasn't exploitative to the end of the road, basically. That was exploitative. And then there were opportunities, if you had the wherewithal that you could try to get out of that exploitative system and become entrepreneurial or something like that.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And that became the great American story that we all heard of from the Irish immigrants, the Italians, the Germans, like you just said, many of them were exploited. That first generation, they worked very difficult jobs. They had child labor back then, all that. But at least in the north, there was the opportunity for someone to own a business when they came to the country or when a black person came from the south as a former slave, they could open a business because it.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: Was cultural in large part. Like it was. It was understood that people would strike out on their own in some instances and try to do stuff. So, like. And so that's why I wanted to tie that back, because you had mentioned the culture earlier and the other thing or one of the other things in the documentary. And I know that, you know, like, we. We touched on. We spent a lot of time talking about the time immediately after slavery. The other thing, when you look at just how this exception to the prohibition of slavery has defined us is one of the things that was brought out is since the Civil Rights movement, you know, looking at. Starting at the 1970s era to the present, and they illustrate how in a different way now, not necessarily convict leasing, but just whether it be private prisons or other ways which. To monetize locking people up, like our prison population has become something. It's 5% of the world's population, 25% of the world's prison population.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: You have a prison population in 1972 of 300,000. That's at 2.3 million in 2014. Like in the reason that happens, that didn't just happen by happenstance. It happens because there's a concerted effort to lock people up again. And that's where you were talking about, you know, this culture of fear, you know, to build on this culture of fear. And it was really, you know, one of the things that the movie really illustrated is that this is an American culture thing because it was first exploited by Richard Nixon and Reagan built on that. But then Bill Clinton adopted it because he saw that as if you're going to get ahead, so to speak, at that time, that was the direction you had to go. He's on record of saying, yeah, some of the things we did then were not good, but that's the direction people had to run because it's an American culture thing of using this fear, you know, of. Of. Of black folks to then. And then building this, you know, this prison population to do things from a commercial standpoint. And that is not the convict laboring. Like that is something that is. Is completely separate than that. When you have this. This prison is called prison industrial complex.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: That's why, I mean, I think the conversation about culture is so important and interesting because it's. I mean, I'm thinking about it 100 years ago was the year 1922. I mean, there's still things that we're dealing with in today's world that are from back then, like the fact that, you know, the way that the world split up with the Middle east after the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. You know, countries like Syria, Iraq, Lebanon were all created then, and now look what's happening. They still haven't skirmishes because the lines were drawn over their own tribal territories, and they're still arguing about where the Kurds should be in Iraq or Turkey and all this kind of stuff. Right. So to say that we can't be affected by decisions made in our societies, you know, 50, 100 years ago is. Is. Is not to appreciate things like this, like. Like how strong cultures are and not just.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: Well, not just decisions made, but practices that were. Persisted for. For decades or a century or something like that. Yeah, of course, that stuff, that stuff is hard to break.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: And again, what I'm saying about culture is think about how many people alive today, our parents, age, grandparents that were alive in 1965 or prior.
So many Americans today live through this, but we only hear from the black Americans. We don't really hear from the white Americans that supported this. And that's why I think there's this silent group out there that doesn't want to talk about this stuff because they don't want to acknowledge that either when they were kids, they were showing up to lynchings and things or that their parents talked about things they were doing and the way that they kept other people down. And so, again, I didn't think to go into this when we were preparing, but it is kind of fascinating that from 1865, we still have these cultural hangovers today.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, and that's. That's really the thing, you know, when you're looking at something like the 13th amendment. And like I said as we touched on at the very beginning, it doesn't really matter what the intentions were when it was put in place, like on. On its face, the saying, the exception, the. Of a, you know, for punishment of a crime. No slavery, except punishment of a crime. On its face, that doesn't. That doesn't jump off the page, as, you know, hey, that's the back door for everyone to jump through. But because of the way the culture was at the time and because the culture of the country and because of the economic system that the south had relied on for its entire, you know, in terms of being a Western kind of culture for its entire existence, it almost inevitably became that and my thought. And you know, again, the thing that just jumps off to me is how the. It. Not only was it not neutral, even though it may appear neutral, it actually creates the incentive to go back down these roads and to. To lock up more people, make them less productive members of society, break up families, all these other things. It creates that incentive. And so that in the long arc, now we're seeing this unwind some, we're seeing these things be taken out. And in the short term, we've seen that trend pick up. Even if Louisiana didn't pass at this time, you know, I'm sure it'll be back on the, you know, next time they have the ballots. That is encouraging that we're seeing that. But these are the things, like, I think you said it very well, like the decisions that were made 50 years ago or 100 years ago and then the practices that have been in place since then and even before then, those things do play have a profound role on both how things are unfolding in our society and how we view the things that are unfolding our society. So the ability to continue evolve, basically, I would say, is something. It's something that is not unique, but a strength of the American system that we can evolve like this without, you know, bullets flying. But. But we got to keep the pressure on, basically, you know, like. Because we see how this incentivizes some of our worst impulses, you know, us. And I'm saying us, you know, as. As Americans in general, you know, because this definitely does, and it has, and it's been documented well. But I. The second topic we wanted to discuss today was just a kind of something that came across the screen, and it was interesting because, you know, it's something we see as technology advances. You know, people are able to exercise more control over, you know, themselves, so to speak, through science and technology, whether it be, you know, we've seen. We've gone through evolutions as far as, like, whether it be plastic surgery and, you know, whether that's something that, you know, who should. Kids get plastic surgery or anything like that. And now we saw in China there's big controversy going on because the use of growth hormone and growth hormones and other type of, you know, like just hormones in general that stimulate. They intended to stimulate growth of height, you know, to make people taller, kids taller is exploded there. And medical professionals don't know what to do or, you know, they're trying to regulatory. They're trying to figure out what to do if they should regulate it and all that. And then no matter how you regulate it, if it's something that people are going to do, then you got a black market and everything. So how did. How did that strike you, that, you know, you're a tall guy, you know, you come from a line of tall. Of tall people. You know, everybody's trying to be like you, man.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Nah, let's not go there. And the world will be screwed up if everybody want to be like me.
No, it just. It's interesting. So again, we talked about culture on the first part. This is a different cultural meme in a sense, right? Like that in certain parts of the world, you know, being taller is seen as somehow better. And maybe they think their kids will have a better opportunity in life if they're taller. And you're right, you're talking to a guy who was 6:1 by the time he was 13.
And then I stopped growing at 15, at 6 foot 4. So I got it in early, and then I was done as of. I think Dennis Rodman grew like 7 inches when he was 19 to 20. He got it in later, but I got mine in early. But so, unfortunately, I don't know have the experience of not being tall since I was probably a toddler. But.
But I find it interesting because again, like we talked about the desire for parents to want to do something for their kids in the perception that is going to be better for the child's experience.
I think every parent can sympathize to some extent with that now, where all of us as parents maybe draw the line into what we inject in our kids or not, that could be part of the conversation. Right? But I think that it also is interesting because in the article they cited how. Because I remember when I grew up, one of my friends in elementary school was much shorter than the rest of us. You're talking like third, fourth grade. And I remember over here and his parents talk to my mom about the fact that they taken him to the doctor and they were considering doing something like this. And so the article did talk about that doctors have prescribed growth hormones for medical reasons. Kids whose growth plates have not fused properly, for example, or who have been found to have growth hormone deficiencies from whatever natural causes, that this would be like a supplement to bring it maybe back to normalcy and see if their body would then grow more.
And I think what you're talking about is beyond that. It's almost like cosmetic. It's like we just wanna have a kid.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: We have a physical condition that is. That we need to remedy. This is like we just we wanna talk.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: My kid might be six feet, my son, but I just want him to be six foot six. I just think that would be better.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: For him because yeah, that'd be great.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: So yeah, so I think, yeah, that comes up to like. And you may have said something very interesting that I never thought of because as soon as you said plastic surgery for kids, I honestly thought of, yeah, would I let like a 13 year old girl get a boob job or if my 15 year old son didn't like how his nose looked, just say, yeah man, go get a nose job now. Hell no, I wouldn't. Right? I'd be like, no, you gotta do that when you're grown up, when your body's done growing and you know you're not. And also you're an adult and you, and you sure you want to do this? Because what if this is a phase that you think you're ugly and then you're going to regret it when you're 25 and your nose looks a certain way when it could have looked a different, you know, maybe natural, you would have thought it looked better. So I think that I appreciate you saying that because I would have never thought of it in that light. So I look at this in similar to that as well.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: But I mean it's, and to me it's similar because like plastic surgery for a child who like you have a car accident or something like that and you have something wrong and it's like.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: Oh, that's what I thought of.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: Yeah, like that's a different thing than hey, you know what? I just want to, to change. And I think with all of these things, the important thing is you have to distinguish between adults and children and whatever you want to you guys, that's going to be 18 or whatever it is. But there has to be something. Now you're looking at height, There has to be something. Let me finish the thought. There has to be something where it's like, okay, when are you of consenting age? When are you. And in the United States, our society, we've generally put that at 18, you're, you're at 18, you can do kind of what you want to do. And so when you're. Before that, I think you got to be careful with the type of things that we do. We allow kids to decide and make decisions on. But see, the height thing was very interesting to me because that's one of those things that there have been documented kind of studies where it's like, okay, a taller person is seen as, whether it be More honorable or more this or more that. There are certain biases at play when someone is taller. You know, like, and I say that I'm not a short person, I'm not an overly tall person. I'm six feet tall. And so I'm kind of, you know, just kind of right there. And so I don't come at this and saying, oh, you know, short people, tall people. I'm just looking at it like from just, just what the studies kind of say. And it's so. It's interesting to me that height is something that they've jumped on and say, hey, you know what? This person will be taken more seriously when they walk in a room. Or this person will, you know, whatever the things that are. But with all of these things, like you said, when you're correcting a deficiency, a problem, then the risk reward analysis is different when you have an otherwise healthy person and you're putting hormones in them. Because none of this stuff, we really know what's going to happen in 40 years or 30 years or whatever. And so that, to me, that you skip over that basically, and it's like, well, we're just going to go all in and try to do this height thing for our kid. And again, I'm sure it's for reasons that they are thinking, hey, I'm going to make their life better. But it's still a kid, you know, it's still a child. And so, I mean, I think that raises more concern because generally speaking, I'm a person that says adults should. If you're not hurting someone else, you know, you should be able to, you know, do. If you want to do that kind of stuff. Knock yourself out.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: Yeah. No, and I think that's where it becomes interesting because.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: Well, tell me this. I want to ask you a question. I was going to say, as science and technology advances, you know, like, conceivably we're going to be able to make easily, more easily make changes like this or other types of changes and so forth. Do you think there should be any kind of guardrails? You know, either like, ethically, legally, you know, or even cultural and societal like. Or should it just be, like, particularly looking at it for minors, but just in general, like, what do you see as far as, as science and technology advances, what decisions as a society or, you know, whatever are we going to have to be making?
[00:37:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think. Look, do I think there should be guardrails and all that? I mean, yeah, obviously. Do I have those answers? No, I don't. I think that's gonna be part of this journey for the next generation or two.
[00:37:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:44] Speaker B: Just like we talked about the journey did in the first one post slavery. Like, what do you do now? I'm sure people had a bunch of ideas in 1865.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: But it took. We're still seeing them play out now, you know, based on the conversation we just had. So that's a good. Yeah. And so because our culture, just to.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: Tie that even more. But because our culture, to this point at least a lot of cultures are to maximize. Your advantages are to maximize certain things. So if you can or if you want things a certain way, you do it type of thing. And so if we have that kind of culture. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: But you make a good point because the perception is I'm doing this to maximize something. But you're right, I'm thinking about the growth hormone in kids. If you're just doing it and the kid doesn't have a deficiency or something else, your unintentionally could be creating something else down the road. Like you said, we don't have decades of studies of injecting growth hormone into people. I mean, normally the pharmaceutical industry will spend, you know, years injecting stuff on animals first to make sure that there's some studying and documentation. I'm not sure that that's even been done with the growth hormone. Like, let's go stick it in the chimpanzees for 20 years and then figure out if there's a side effect.
[00:38:48] Speaker A: And the thing is, the market will never wait for that.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: And even in the pharmaceutical industry messes up. We've seen plenty of things in our lifetime where things get recalled and it's like, oh, yeah, we were giving people this and now it gave everybody a heart attack. And so, yeah, just because it's offered from the medical industry doesn't mean it's all good.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: But what got me thinking, because it's interesting, like, because you're talking about the future and some of the ability. I'm thinking of like literally a bionic person. Right. And we're getting there in a certain ways. Cause I'm thinking about. I've shared on the show various discussions when we get into these kind of things that I have. One of my kids has type 1 diabetes, which means basically it's an autoimmune issue. At 5 years old, his body just stopped producing insulin. And it basically had an autoimmune issue where his body attacked itself. But whatever caused it, caused it to shut off his own pancreas from producing insulin. So what happens now is to not have to prick a little kid constantly on his finger to check his blood sugar with a needle and to inject him with a syringe to give him insulin. They now have devices from companies like Dexcom and Omnicom and Omnipod and sends and all that is. And what they do, they're devices.
One of them he wears, it's an insulin pump that has to be changed every three days, but it actually has a little hair like thing that goes into his body that actually pumps insulin into him whenever he needs it. The other one has to be changed every 10 days. And it's a device that also has a little hair thing that goes under his skin to read his blood sugar. And the technology so good is every five minutes it sends a blood sugar to his phone and my mom, his mom and my, and my phones. So we know at any given time how his blood sugar is doing. And then there's alerts if it goes too high or low. So we know now there's a company out there already that's working on a device that can go under the skin. It's the size of a grain of rice. To read the blood sugar that only has to be changed once every six months. And it'll do all that, sending the signals to the phone, to the microchips and all that. And to your point, like, I'm thinking, okay, this is awesome because I know people in their 70s now who are retired medical doctors that have told me when they were in med school in the late 60s, early 70s, that they had to, that they, that they studied juvenile diabetes. For a kid at 5, the life expectancy was 16 years old. And then normally they died. Now my son can live to 100 if he takes care of it.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:17] Speaker B: So, but it goes back to like you're saying about, back to this other stuff that's a medical condition that this is a solution for. But that's different than if I just said, let's hook this kid up to a bunch of new equipment and just test it to see if it works. Just because I want him to run higher or jump faster.
[00:41:36] Speaker A: Well, that's what I was going to say actually, from that example. Like, for example, insulin inside is a hormone that allows you to, you know, allow feed your muscles, so to speak. So conceivably, like someone could take a similar system and say, okay, well, I'm just gonna be, I'm gonna work out every day. I'm gonna get stronger and stronger and stronger and include something like this. And they could, you know, take themselves down a path of being much stronger than anybody else could be. But I think that when you're looking at how, you know, like, as science and technology advance, I think you put it very well in saying how. These are the questions that future generations are gonna have to det. It's one. This is a question that's one. When you're talking about taking hormones, altering your body from the inside, remember, when you think about hormones, what you have to remember, hormones are like telecommunications inside your body, basically. Like, it's how your different organs communicate with each other. Say, what's going on here, going on there? You know, your liver releases this hormone to tell, you know, this other organ, hey, this is what's happening here. Or it's time to wake up for this. Or, you know, whatever, you know, like, the hormones are. These are communications. It's saying, hey, this is what's going on. This is what needs to happen. And so ultimately, these. They have more effects. The hormones that, you know, that are released in our bodies and everything like that have more effects than we are aware of at this point. So there are. When you're doing this stuff, and I don't want to say just for cosmetic, because it's that word. I'd say voluntary, maybe. And when you're doing it just for voluntary purposes, it's not needed. The question from the standpoint of whether it's ethical, I think is one that it's a different answer. And again, looking specifically at kids, an adult, then, yeah, have at it. You know, do anything you want from a cosmetic standpoint.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And so that leads us down to a different discussion here in terms of culture, because we're. You know, that was a good kind of find you had in this issue in China about giving kids growth hormones. And it reminded me actually, of the conversations we're having in this country culturally about transgender.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: And the idea of, I think, you know, whether people agree or disagree with transgender, I think most people, if they're not on the fringe of. Of some kind of way of thought, kind of think, like you mentioned, right? Like, okay, if somebody's 30 years old or 40 and they decide they want to make this kind of change to themselves, you know, whether I like it or not, in America, you know, they have a right to do that. And, you know, if I support it, then I support it. Great. If I don't support it, then, hey, just don't breathe all over me with it. But I'm not gonna stop you. Right. That's why I said unless someone's on the fringe of the dislike part, probably not gonna be much further than thinking like that.
But I think where it's been interesting in our country is the idea of the kids. And what do you do when a parent is allowing or supporting a 14, 15 year old kid to block their natural hormones as they're going through puberty because the kid is saying, I don't feel like the sex I was born at, I want to be a different sex?
[00:44:45] Speaker A: Yeah, it's called gender affirming care. You know, for minors. It's a hot issue. Florida just recently their medical board just put in regulations that make it so, like outban it, so to speak. You know, where it's like for minors, they don't want that happening. And so it's a debate, it's an active debate. And I agree with you from the standpoint of at minimum, unless you're on the fringe, this is something that is worth taking a look at and saying, well, hold on, what is and should be acceptable for minors?
[00:45:14] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and I think, because as you mentioned Florida, I just reading here in that article that the people who oppose this decision are calling the Desantis regime Nazi regime. They're calling these people, these doctors purposely hateful. And I'm just thinking like, well, who says that they're hateful or anything? They're actually practicing medicine and saying, we don't think you should do this to people that don't show a need. Right. If someone is deficient in a hormone, maybe you do give a child a hormone.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: That actually to me is what stands out to me if you look at these two side by side actually is the idea of questions are being raised in China amongst whether what are the ethics or what, what, what, what, what should be the guardrails amongst giving hormones to kids in order if the kid or the, the parent wants the kid to be taller. And in this case what, when you look at the United States though, it almost, there's this almost this knee jerk reaction that if anybody asks a question and saying, well hold on, what about the fact that they're minors? You know, like should we be doing this for minors? Because from what I've seen like the Florida regulation even, and I'm no fan of what, what's happening in Florida all the time, but it doesn't seem to apply to adults, it seems to only be applying to, to, to minors. And so I think that I would like to hear more about the conversation. I'm not, I'm not saying that it should Be one way or the other. But I would like, I don't think that conversation on whether minors should be allowed to do this stuff should be shut down and be made one of anti trans. Like, well, how if you're anti trans but you say it's okay for adults to do it, that doesn't really line up. And so I want to hear more in the conversation. And that's where you, you say, hey, and it's for the next generations and it's for all generations right now really to try to figure out where we should land on this. Because I just, I hear, I'm here for the conversation. I want to hear the reasons why minors should be able to make a decision like that. I want to hear the reasons why minors shouldn't be able to make a decision like that. And then let's decide. It doesn't have to be about hate, you know, because I don't think it really should be on the table of whether adults should do it. Of course adults should be able to do it. You know, like that shouldn't be part of the discussion at all. But the question is with minors in the same. Again, it's the same, the same point being raised about in China where people are raising questions, should we be given minors hormones to make them grow taller if they're not having some issue with their height? You know, and so if you're saying, hey, we need to, you know, you have two X chromosomes, but you want to do something else with, you know, from a, from a medication standpoint to block what would normally happen with that to be, you know, like a X chromosome female, then. Okay, well, you should. We have the discussion of what age you should be allowed to do that. It seems like with almost everything we map the discussion on what age somebody should be allowed to do something at.
[00:48:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know, look, this is the people who are calling Desantis, you know, the Nazi regime or saying that the doctors are, you know, such bad people that are bringing up these concerns.
I would say they're just as much on the fringe on this topic as someone that's saying that, you know, if you trying to, you know, ban bump stocks from firearms or trying to do any type of, you know, trying to clean up that stuff that you're just taking away the second amendment.
[00:48:38] Speaker A: I mean, meaning from the standpoint of you're taking a position that your position is beyond questioning.
[00:48:43] Speaker B: Correct? Yeah, like, just. And so. And to me, that's those. Anyone in any side of any debate that behaves like that to Me is on the fringe. I mean, they're showing that they can't be negotiated with at all and they're not even willing to look at their own.
[00:48:57] Speaker A: That's the keys. It's not that they won't negotiate, it's that they won't even have anybody ask them any questions.
[00:49:01] Speaker B: Yeah, they're not for us. And see if there's any reasons to question anything that's on their kind of quote, unquote side of the discussion. And so I think that's just an example here with the transgender and especially with the gender affirming care. And that's what I'm saying is that, you know, it got me thinking, as you're talking, a great example on this, because we've already been through this and we, I think collectively as a society, we've kind of come to an agreement that this may not have worked that well and meaning this ongoing experiment. And one of them is something that started in around 30, 25, 30 years ago, which was trying to deal with hyperactive kids, which a lot of times were just called boys. Right. In prior generations. And in the 90s is when he started hearing about the drug called Ritalin for kids that had adhd. And then that transition today it's Adderall and it's, yeah, Xanax sometimes, and it's whatever, right. And no one stopped to ask these questions at the time of. Is this gonna have a side effect on the brain chemistry of a human being? When you're giving a 10 year old some pill that is gonna change their brain chemistry and what?
[00:50:13] Speaker A: Change their brain chemistry?
[00:50:14] Speaker B: That's what I was gonna say. What have we found out 20, 30 years later? I've got a friend right now who's around 30 years old, younger than me, who he tells me that he used to beg his parents not to give him Ritalin and they would sneak it into a cereal. And he believes that today he has serious anxiety problems because of it. And he's just like, tunde. I know my brain doesn't handle things well because I had too much of that stuff when I was a kid. And so. And so remember that was seen as a remedy. How to deal with a kid that might be a little bit too rambunctious. Oh, let's just do this. And not thinking about the side effects. And I'm thinking, you know, no one should be offended if we're asking questions about, hey, if you're gonna put something that's gonna change the brain chemistry of a child, shouldn't we maybe Take a, you know, take a deeper look into this.
[00:50:59] Speaker A: Particularly, I think, where you look at it and particularly when it's only about the, you know, what, what's appropriate for children. Now if somebody's coming in and saying, oh, we shouldn't let anybody do this or you know, yada, yada, yada, that's, you know, then I'm witchy, like at that point it's like, okay, well, yeah, hold on. You know, like adults should not be subject to the same guardrails, so to speak, as children, you know, but when it's about children for real and it's about doing things that will alter the way that their body is functioning from a biological standpoint, then we have to, like, it's worth asking questions in the same way that, you know, I want to wrap up from here, man, but in the same way that in China the questions are being asked now and I don't know what, know what answers they're going to come up with, but questions are being asked by the medical community. Is this what you should be doing here? You know, parents? In the same way that as you pointed out, more questions should have been asked when we were given mind altering drugs to minors and we, you know, give mind altering drugs, you know, for the last 30 years.
Questions need to be asked when we're doing these things with minors and you know, the, the standard on what is acceptable to do with minors should be higher. You know, it should be higher and you know, where you come down. I don't know. You know, I don't, I don't have the answer. But one thing, I want to look at it from the standpoint of a minor.
[00:52:16] Speaker B: I just want to say one more thing because you brought up something very important which a lot of people don't understand and it's not discussed a lot. The actual function of hormones. I mean, that's very important. Like you said that the different parts of our bodies, like your liver might send a signal somewhere. Your pancreas, your, your, your, your, you know, the glands in your brain, like.
[00:52:35] Speaker A: The hippocampus, pituitary and all these, they all, they're communicating with each other.
[00:52:39] Speaker B: But think about what we're talking. Just like we said with the kids with Ritalin and stuff for adhd, their brain is still forming. So when you put a chemical in there while the brain is still trying to figure out and grow itself, that's when you can have permanent, lasting issues versus like you're saying a person 35 years old's brain is already, is already formed so maybe them taking some sort of drug that can help them focus or something like that is not going to have us maybe the negative side effect 10 years later. And I think, I mean, but honestly.
[00:53:08] Speaker A: For me, like, I look at it like, I think you should be allowed to mess yourself up. If so be it.
[00:53:13] Speaker B: Well, let me, Let me just say this because I'm talking about now going back to the kids. It's a great explanation you gave, because I'm just saying this for people that might be questioning, you know, our motives and how we're talking about this. Think about a pubescent child that's 13, 14, 15. Like you said, their hormones are sending signals out while the body is actually growing. And if we don't know what the side effect is by kind of tinkering with all that chemistry within the body before it's finished, like you're saying before, they're at an age where their hormones have stopped trying to figure out the male, female thing at that level, you know, and I think that's where I don't. I mean, like you said about the Chinese thing, that's where it becomes an issue with kids is man.
[00:53:57] Speaker A: I think, actually, I don't think the rate. The rationale of, oh, you could be messing yourself up if, you know, is there is a good. I think it's a principled issue. Like, at a certain. We either as a society, we think that children should be able to make certain decisions or not, you know, like. Or parents on behalf of their children, certain decisions. Like, I just, I think that there, there is a cutoff to where, like, at 18, it's not like your brain is fully developed, you know, but you're allowed to do certain things at that point. You're allowed to buy tobacco. You're like, at a certain point, we just say, okay, you know, your decisions, you live with them for your life, and that's what it is. But my point is, is that if we're before that, then that's when there needs to be a heightened alert, you know, not, you can make it about, oh, we're trying to stop you from doing permanent damage. I'm not big on paternalism, though. To me, if you want to do permanent damage to yourself, our world allows you to do that, you know, but there should be an age, in my view, and this is how our society operates, and there should be a certain age when you're allowed to make certain decisions for yourself and a age below which you're not. And that's all my point is, you know, honestly, like I, I, I'm not trying to go further than that.
[00:55:01] Speaker B: So from there, man, I'm going to take that little snippet in this show and I'm going to save it where you said I'm not into paternalism and I'm giving your two kids my phone number. So next time you ground them.
Next time you ground them standpoint. No, next time you ground them or something like that, I'm just going to play that one. I am.
[00:55:21] Speaker A: For my children. Of course, I'm saying for everybody else, you know, but, but no, that, that's you. Fair enough, fair enough. But I think we can wrap from there, man. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it. Review us, tell us what you think. Share with a friend. Till next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:55:38] Speaker B: I'm tag on.
[00:55:39] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you.
It.
