Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it, presented by Disruption Now, I'm James Keys. And in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to discuss the Tulsa race massacre at the. As we sit here just after the 100th year anniversary of the tragedy, we'll also take a look at notable events that occurred in the lead up to the massacre and consider why it remains so hidden for so long.
We'll also discuss towards the end, some parallels that we see in our current social climate.
Joining me today is a man who believes that change is going to come. Tunde Ogonlana Tunde it's been a long, long time coming.
So how do you remain steadfast in your belief?
[00:01:00] Speaker B: It depends on what belief we're talking about here. And then. Yeah. And then how steadfast I am in that specific belief because I'm kind of, you know, I'm sort of really hard on some and not so hard on the others. So I'll say you threw me off, sir. I'm looking forward to a great show.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: All right. Now we're recording this on June 7, 2021. And this past week, we just had the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre, which is a pretty significant event in American history, but also one that was most likely not in your history book or my history book.
Briefly. In 1921, the Greenwood community in segregated Tulsa, Oklahoma, had developed into quite a prosperous and affluent place in America, and not just by black standards, but by American standards, so much so that this place was called Black Wall street.
So on May 30, you have an unsubstantiated allegation of a black teen assaulting, sexually assaulting a white teen, a white female teen, a black male teen and a white female teen.
And then you have an arrest the next day of the black male. And following threats that there was going to be a lynching after his arrest and a mob gathering outside of a courthouse of the courthouse where he was being held, there was then a confrontation because some black folks from the black community came down to try to prevent a lynching.
Now, following this confrontation, all hell breaks loose. And over May 31 and June, from May 31 into June 1, the white mob descended into the black area of Tulsa in the Greenwood community and attacked. And the resulting hours of violence ultimately ended up with 35 square blocks of the community raised in the Greenwood area. And around that, and with upwards of 300 reported being killed, 800 being injured, and thousands left homeless. So it's quite a significant Event. This is, you know, community type stuff. This isn't like the military going in, but it almost ends up looking like that at the end.
So, Tunde, I mean, it's difficult obviously to talk about, but, you know, sometimes that's what history is and we have to kind of wade through it. So I want to get to your thoughts as far as, you know, what happened before and what happened after. But did you want to have any. Just. Did you have any thoughts, comments on just the massacre itself?
[00:03:22] Speaker B: I would say I don't have anything to add on the massacre itself. I mean, obviously it's a tragedy. But I'll say what, you know, what stands out to me, to your point about the history books, it made me realize as we prepared for this. I didn't learn about this until my early 30s.
So this isn't something I learned in my normal kind of interaction with American history and the school system.
So that kind of stuck out to me. The second was in reading and preparing all the facts that you just mentioned and the ones I know we'll get into. And I know that there's a lot of public information available for those that already know about it or curious. Get curious after listening to us today. But I found it fascinating. One of the things I read in the. In the Tulsa's commission report that they did, they did it over four years, from 1997 to 2001.
The state of Oklahoma, actually the legislature, decided to form a commission to really study what happened here. And what they said was, this is actually the first city in the United States to be bombed by an airplane.
I didn't know that. Like, you know, you just realize, like, wow, you know, that level of carnage.
Because obviously in 1921, we hadn't yet had a war with a country that could bomb us yet. I mean, we had World War I, but that was in Europe, so they
[00:04:39] Speaker A: couldn't send planes over here.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Correct? Yeah. So. So my point is just that that's the level of carnage that you actually had private citizens with planes that were dropping bombs from the sky on this community. And I think, you know, for us not to learn this, you know, and for me to learn that this is the first time an American city was bombed and it was by Americans on other Americans was interesting.
And then also the. And we'll talk about this, I know, in depth, but I didn't realize that the systemic nature of the event, you know, when you really look at who was behind it, it wasn't. Again, it's like we've talked about in the past, about things like the Holocaust. This isn't some fringe element in a community that is able to muster the resources to do these kind of things. You know, think about what I just said in 1921. To have a plane as a private citizen.
You know, you weren't some popper on the street.
So it was a systemic nature. You know, I learned that the National Guard was called in.
And the hypocrisy, to me of, you know, and I hate to talk like this, but. Right. The event was that a group of white men went basically to a black community and burned it to the ground and killed a bunch of people.
And somehow the National Guard is called
[00:05:50] Speaker A: in and arrests all the black people
[00:05:52] Speaker B: and arrests all the black people and puts them in internment camps. And that's what I mean by the systemic nature, which is, you know, and then you learn about the city itself, the amount of police and others that were actually giving weapons to the mob.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: That's what I thought you were going to say, actually in systemic nature. Is that what I mean? They were going around deputizing people to say, hey, yeah, you're going to go shoot some people. Here, let me give you. Let me give you a gun.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: Deputize you.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: So, you know, and that's what I mean. Like. Like, you realize this. This isn't just a bunch of yokels. I mean, I'll say this with a smile, you know, I think poor white trash, if I can say that, gets a bad rap in this country.
You know, they take the brunt, honestly, of a lot of bad actions that a lot of Americans have done.
Because these weren't poor people. These weren't people with no means. These weren't uneducated. This was the cream of the crop of Tulsa society. A lot of them. I'm not going to say all of them, but, you know. So that, to me, was what stood out the most.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Now, that's interesting, man. I was gonna say. Yeah, the thing that stood out to me about it was the level of violence and that this went on for a period of time.
Like, this wasn't something that happened in an hour or two. Like this went into the next day before the National Guard was coming, came in and tried to restore some level of order and to see that be enacted. As you said, this is American on American. This is like, this is akin to. To an attack by a military force on a civilian force. But in fact, it was civilian on civilian. And that something like this can happen.
And while the scale might be very, you know, we look back, and it's a large scale, a scale that is significant.
This wasn't like something completely out of the ordinary for the times as well. And so like it. This has elements that make it exceptional in the fact that the neighborhood was so affluent and that the violence was such a large scale and so many, so much death and stuff. They still are looking for unmarked mass graves in Tulsa to this day.
And there's controversy over that. People saying, hey, we don't really want to find any more bodies. And it's like, well, come on now. So that is. I mean, like I said, I look at that almost in context of almost a military campaign. And this was done from citizenry and law enforcement onto the citizens of the Greenman community and segregated Tulsa. And so, yeah, to me, that's what stands out about it is just that on one hand it's exceptional and on the other hand it's not. It's kind of ordinary and just certain circumstances that make it to where we can learn about this one. But I'm sure there's many more and I've learned about different things.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: I know you're gonna give it to some.
[00:08:37] Speaker A: There's other things that happen. Like this. This wasn't like, oh, my God, how could this ever happen in America? Like, no, no, no, this kind of thing happened, you know, especially in that timeframe, you know, that post World War I timeframe. That was kind of the nadir. That was the worst time for this. And the other thing about it, actually, that, like, I always hear, you know, like when you. You watch either in Hollywood or you read certain things about, like, the people that track the activity of right wing militias and stuff like that, and they're always talking about that there's going to be some race war, things like that. And like, when I look at something like this, like, I just wonder if this is what they're talking about. Like, this is the type of thing, like, it's not as far fetched, I guess, if you look back at history and say, oh, yeah, there have been serious, real legit attacks and under the guise of race, like, hey, race is the basis of this. And so I always looked at that stuff as, like, oh, people are alarmists, people are, you know, like, you know, just sit around, you know, with too much time on their hands or whatever. But, you know, it's like, well, man, you know, like this. This stuff is in, you know, in us, you know, as Americans, so to speak. And so it's something we should. Obviously we shouldn't sit around and Be worried about it all the time, but we have to take it seriously.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and I think you're right. Look, I think this is what we've seen. I mean, there's. There are a group of people in our country and that and that and the size maybe, and the zeal of that group might ebb and flow in terms of its size over the generations.
But. And I would say this.
Well, let me finish my thought I was gonna finish and just say that there is a group and you know, there are a percentage of people in this country that do look at things like that as a race war, a race riot, whatever, and they would like to see those things happen again, I
[00:10:21] Speaker A: guess now think they're inevitable or whatever. Like. Yeah, Yep.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Well, now look, here's what I'm gonna say because I could see two people hearing guys like us talking and say, oh, you know, it's kind of a one sided thing, but here's the difference. So let's get back to 30,000ft of human beings.
I'm definitely not here saying that white people or white Americans are more susceptible to go rogue and start hurting other people than any other group in the world.
There's black people in America that if given the opportunity and the support of the system, would probably be barbaric towards other groups. I don't doubt that. And I think that's what all this stuff, in terms of just what I read and what we'll be talking about here really showed me is that.
And it goes back to conversations we've had on other shows about things like the Constitution. The idea that if we want to live in what we call a society of equality, then there has to be some guardrails to protect people's interest in a legal capacity. And I think going back to what you said as you open the show, there was about to be a lynching.
What is a lynching? It is the killing of someone without due process.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: Extrajudicial killing.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: Correct. So that was already happening en masse in the United States to blacks primarily, not only, but they were the majority taking the brunt.
So what happens is this was already set in motion. What happened in Tulsa because of the tensions that the inability to hold certain actors accountable in our country caused in the greater society the inability or unwillingness.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: Well, yeah, there though.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: Well, let me just finish this. This one point though, is that. And then what we talked about, which is the systemic nature of support that those, you know, vigilantes, barbarians, whatever you want to call them, had when they decided that they were Going to carry this out. You know, like we talked about that the city all the way to the state apparatus, help them carry it out instead of doing what we would hope they do, which is say, whoa, whoa, guys, you know, you're not going to do this. We're going to take this guy to court. If somebody says he raped somebody, then, hey, let's take him to court, let's put him in jail, let's do it that way. But when you have the ability for the sadistic side of society and personalities to get a chance and thirst for blood, they're going to take it. So that's why I say, I think that there's people today that would do that.
Fortunately for guys like you and I, we've grown up in a country that didn't allow that by the time we showed up.
I think that's the only difference. Dude.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: Yeah, well, tell me this. You had talked about, you know, I wanted to get into the lead up of it and just different things at that time frame that were going on that, you know, this is, as you just noted now, like for something like this to happen, it doesn't happen in a vacuum. And you know, just the conditions in society, things that were going on almost create an environment where it can happen or where this type of personality or this type of mindset is empowered as opposed to locked up. Like the people who would seek extrajudicial justice, the people who do that should be in jail.
That's kind of the way the law works. That's not something that's set up by the law. And so what stood out to you in the time period leading up to this that do you think is notable and just kind of understanding the context of this?
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Yeah, no, a lot of things stuck out, man. I mean, like, like, you know, it's. Again, that's why it's good. That's why I love history, man, because it's, it's good to really get in the weeds with this stuff because then you understand that none of this happens in a vacuum.
And it also helps us understand what's happening today. So what was it?
[00:14:12] Speaker A: I would add to that because it lets you see the human element in this. Like this stuff happens in a way because the way certain things interact with our humanity or some people's humanity and so forth, so those same things can interact with humanity at different timeframes. It's not that it can only happen here or only happen there or only happen then or whatever, but go ahead.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: And so without getting into the today parallels, right now the other thing that really stuck out to me was the rampant theft of black farmland and black business assets prior to this point. So there's a great, well documented case for those that want to research it is in Forsyth, Georgia, Forsyth county, in 1912, they basically ran the blacks out of town, like literally. And the blacks were probably about 15 to 20% of the population of the county.
And what happened is, what, what happened is that reconstruction had somewhat worked.
You know, blacks from, you know, let's call it the late 1800s were beginning to farm, beginning to become entrepreneurs. So by the early 1900s you had a good amount of black communities within the south and Midwest that were actually thriving and self sustained thriving because there was still segregation. And so what happens is a lot of unfortunately the whites in the area didn't like that. They didn't like seeing blacks become prosperous and they were able to collude again using the system to steal. And so Forsyth was one where it was a bit of a Tulsa, meaning it wasn't as dramatic of a massacre. You know, people weren't bombing people with planes and all that, but they basically went to the black section of town and destroyed it and basically went to every black resident that remained and gave them an ultimatum, either you get out or you know, you wait around to see what happens. So again, these are things that were hidden from us historically in terms of our own education as Americans. Because, and this is what I said about sometimes history being unbelievable and you know, I'll pass the baton back to you, but what, what, what as I finish it, I'll say that's what really stands out to me about the pre.
Is that I also learned so much that, you know, kind of like what happened to the Native Americans.
There was land taken from African Americans that have worked hard for it post slavery and Reconstruction. And it seems like that was the early 20th century. So by the time you and I came around when we were young kids growing up and you have the kind of stereotype of black people generally are poor in the inner city and urban areas and all that.
You know, people start asking that why, why can't black people get it together? Why, why this, why that? And then you look and you say, wow, like a whole generations of wealth and prosperity was just basically stolen and basically taken from one group and just given to another. Is it reminded me a lot of what the Nazis did to the Jews in the 30s when you see the train cars and then, and then, and then you've got like, you know, in Auschwitz you got one room Full of shoes, another room full of hair, another room full of gold teeth fillings, another room full of wallets. And then all the art that was stolen. And it's just like, you know, you just taking capital from one group and just stealing it. No wonder why the other group is able to prosper. So it's like, no wonder why the Germans were booming in the 30s, you know, and no wonder why I would say, certain parts of America began to boom as they took from others. So, I mean, it's just fascinating.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Yeah, it's for sure. I mean, the media piece is the piece that. That really stood out to me in the sense that it's almost like there's a puppet master and not a single puppet master, but, like, the media just knows how to play certain tunes to get certain people fired up.
And so there, you know, obviously there's this ongoing thing of the stereotype plays and things like that, but the media played a role in the actual events in Tulsa, you know, in terms of how they sensationalize coverage. Yellow journalism and things like that, where everything is about emotion. Nothing is about fact. Nothing is about, you know, trying to understand what actually happened. It's all about getting an emotional reaction. And that emotional reaction is all about trying to.
Trying to make money and trying to get readership, essentially. It's like this is the way you don't get people to buy your paper by just talking about, oh, yeah, the weather and this and that and this and that. If it's some shocking headline about something that's getting their blood boiling, then everybody has to know and everybody has to see it, and everybody wants to be the first. And so the media does this game where they're a puppet master and they tell certain elements of society things they want to hear or things that confirm their beliefs and get them all fired up. And then the rest of society has to deal with this once those people are all fired up. And if we didn't have that media element, you don't know necessarily how things go.
I wonder from that, if you didn't have this sensationalized coverage from that. Obviously, there's still something, because I want to speak on that as well, briefly. But it just seems like it escalates the tensions, you know, just. It just takes everything and it boils over. The other piece, which, you know, it's interesting as you brought it up, with respect to kind of how things were taken. This is kind of like one of those situations where you see a similar thing happen over and over again, but it's not really, it's not like the people in Georgia were colluding with the people in Oklahoma, per se, you know, in terms of how they're going to get this money and this land up out of people.
Get this stuff, take this stuff from people, and then they get it for themselves or whatever. But there was kind of a uniform approach in terms of when black folks got too much stuff. Well, we need. We can get it out and, you know, get it away from them. And there's kind of like a playbook that, you know, like, it's just kind of implemented and how that. How that is so similar and consistent without it seemingly at least. I mean, this is, you know, at a time period. It's not like there's the Internet and everybody's on chat rooms. Like, yeah, this is how we did it here, is how we did it there. Like, that everybody kind of comes to the same conclusion is also just, you know, it's just interesting to me in terms of how something like that can happen organically.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: Well, that's why it's so important that, you know, people toe the line, and that's why they are so meaning people that want to do these things. Right. That kind of rabid racist who doesn't believe that guys like you and I should. Should basically have anything right, or that we deserve or we're qualified or smart enough.
What happens is, you know, these. These people are aggressive and violent.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: Right?
[00:20:58] Speaker B: And that's my point. Like, if the system. That's what I said earlier. Like, by the time you and I were born, the system had righted itself to hold people like that accountable enough. That's why.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: That's why nothing's ever perfect. But enough.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: Exactly. I mean, that's why you go from an average of three black men lynched in a week in the 60s to basically zero by the 80s. I mean, it's just, you know, it's not like racism stopped. It's just that, you know, the certain people that would do those things started making calculation when they started going to jail. Like, all right, you know, it's not worth me hanging a guy from a tree if I'm going to go to jail for the rest of my life.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: Well, to your point, even more, the rest of society was like, look, no, like, we're not going to cover for you. Yeah, if you do that, you know, it's like, no, you're going to have to face the consequences if you do that.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: And that's where, you know, and that's where I just think it's. It's it's. You know, that's where. Getting back to. I know we'll go to the aftermath,
[00:21:52] Speaker A: but that's why I want to go there.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Pre. Yeah. And that's what I'm saying. But the stuff that stuck out to me of the pre. Tulsa riot, those kind of. That decade pre.
Was very eerily similar to some of the stuff we're seeing today. And I don't want to get on the theft and all that. I'm just talking about the ginning up of certain passions in the media and by politicians that otherwise, you know, some of these issues could be dealt with in a more civil way, rhetorically, let me just put it that way. And then what we've seen in the modern day, which I know we'll talk about later on, is that people will take their passions and do violence with it, even today. So, you know, it's. It's, you know, people haven't changed in thousands of years. So I don't.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: Yeah, people are people.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't think that people 100 years ago getting manipulated by media influences to prey on their fears are gonna react different. You know, people today are gonna react the same that they did a hundred years ago. We're the same humans.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Yeah. The media is just as good at doing it or better.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: You know, so it's gonna. They're gonna get the reaction.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: And, you know, like the other thing, just to mention. And I'm sorry, just to just. Cause there's a note here that I didn't want to forget. And it's something that's very important. I think, again, I would say that I didn't know much about this at all until I was older, in my 30s, and then I really actually got well educated on preparing for this show. And that's this red summer, the red summer of 1919, which saw dozens of race riots around the country.
And one thing I learned, which is interesting because it goes back to human beings, that's why when we add race in, for some reason in the United States, we have, you know, this issue with race.
So when we add race and it makes the argument messy and people get emotional and people start backing up on their heels and all that and defending their.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: Their.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: Their kind of quote unquote interest or perceived interest.
But what really happened was you had, for the first time in American history, black Americans went overseas and saw the rest of the world. You know, that. That's why authoritarian regimes like China, North Korea, Russia don't want their people seeing what other countries are doing because they actually might get an idea that, wow, things are, could be pretty good if I actually fought.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: And plus also remember they were going to fight against authoritarianism and going to fight for freedom and stuff like that.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: So what happens Is you had 400,000 black American soldiers that went to Europe, mainly France, correct? World War I. Now the Americans were so racist that they didn't let the blacks fight. They thought they were too stupid. So they were just doing the menial jobs like the, you know, cooks and cleaning the trucks and all that kind of stuff. But the French, because the French had dealt with blacks a lot because they're colonies in Africa.
And so there was a more of a kind of understanding that look, you know, we can use these guys. And you know, maybe the French at the time too was, was, had racism. So I'm not saying they were going to elevate these guys to the top status of society, but what they did was they went to the Americans and said, look, we're here in the trenches, we need help. Like we need to use these guys. You can't just have them cooking food and on trucks. They're all able bodied men. So America actually let. America was so racist. Think about this. They wouldn't let blacks fight on the front lines with white American soldiers, but they let blacks go fight with the French. So again, something else I learned about the valiant role that blacks played on the French front line. So much so that there's Germans quoted, the German opposition quoted saying how fiercely the blacks fought and that they were proud of them. I mean, that's really where you say, wow, this is history I'd never heard of. And so what happens is a lot of those soldiers came home and to your point, they're saying, hold on, I just went over there to beat somebody who you said was authoritarian and bad. And I'm coming here and I can't ride the train in the same place I can't go to the bathroom. I got to drive 100 miles before I find a bathroom that someone will let me in. I can't vote properly. You know, they say I can, but then they put all these guardrails up when I get there. And then, you know, they just said, my cousin raped a white girl when he didn't. And then they hung him by a tree.
So that was an interesting thing to learn, that kind of the World War I aspect. Because the other thing again, migratory patterns, all these soldiers came back from the war and there was a lack of jobs and prices had raised. So you had the economic shocks and Then you had the migration of 500,000 blacks from the south around that time as well. So you put all that into a stew of recipes, into a stew upheaval. And, and you've got, yeah, you've got the conditions right for 2021 to be this Tulsa, you know, event.
Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: I mean, along with the other factors that play in, you know, so, yeah, it's. I mean, we could spend, you know,
[00:26:41] Speaker B: a lot of time talking about the
[00:26:42] Speaker A: lead up because, I mean, we're really only touching on. Really trying to touch on just kind of the. The biggest things about it. Like there's actually several documentaries out right now that they really go in to. The Tulsa Massacre and some of the things about society, you know, before and after at that time. And so, I mean, like, there's a lot of. For. For the first time actually in history, you know, there's a lot of information out there right now about this.
And so, but yeah, like, please, you know, like anything you're hearing, hearing here, you know, there's much more, much, much, much more on it than we could get to, you know, just in a podcast of this length.
But Tunde, as far as the aftermath, I mean, to me, when you look at what happened afterwards, there you have the immediate aftermath, you know, like you have all this property destruction. And one of the things that was just mind blowing to me is like, okay, all this property destruction and then people have insurance, you know, but like, they can't. The insurance claims are all denied and so forth. So how the kind of part of the objective seemed to be to knock people down a peg. And that was. Or a few pegs, and that was successful in terms of how Tulsa was rebuilt eventually, you know, like that part of Tulsa was rebuilt not to the same scale, not to the same level of prosperity, but it was. But it wasn't rebuilt like, with the way it should have been in terms of. With insurance and stuff like that. People had to do it on their own, you know, and that, yeah, to me, the resiliency stood out as far as to. For people to keep pushing even after something like that and even after all the plans that you make and the preparations that you make in order to be able to. If something crazy happens, to be able to deal with it. None of that's through the system. None of that stuff comes through. And then obviously the second piece about the aftermath is the COVID up. You know, like, it's just. It's hard to square that. Like, we learn about so many different things and like you said, like, the first bombing from an airplane in America, you know, is this.
And I mean, obviously that doesn't make, that won't make everybody feel good, but the, we can touch on the feel good part, you know, separately or, you know, I'm gonna let you, I'm gonna let you get in. But the fact that there had to have been a concerted effort to not talk about this, to not make sure, to make sure it doesn't get really recorded and published in a way that's going to let people to, to really understand it and reflect on it, that we don't even know the real numbers, like the actual numbers, as far as number of people killed, you know, all that stuff. We, these are like what people are trying to put together after the fact.
It's just jarring, you know, like this is 100 years ago.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: We don't know the numbers of really how many people were killed this way. I mean, I thought about in all
[00:29:21] Speaker A: of America, but in the event as well.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: No, I know, and I thought about, you know, just to jump to today and I know we'll talk about the aftermath, but someone like Ahmaud Arbery, who was killed last year in Georgia and you know, well documented case on video, if not for that video coming out two months after he died, we would not know that that kid was basically lynched. I mean, that basically what it was without him being hung from a tree. Two guys decided that they were upset at him because he walked on a property that wasn't even theirs.
And you know, as he's jogging home, you know, whenever doing his run, they run him off the road and basically start an altercation and shoot him dead. So, you know, again, until we have enough Americans that say that, you know, that's not right. I'm not saying that, you know, if the kid, you feel that he trespassed, call the cops and let him go to court.
But when you have people, and that's my point, like it's still there, this systemic nature.
Some cop showed up with two white guys with shotguns and a dead black kid who was unarmed.
And somehow that cop, just to make
[00:30:28] Speaker A: your point, that cop represents the system. When you say systemic, that means that the mechanisms of the legal system or the economic system, that the people that are empowered to act on behalf of the state or whatever have decided to be complicit in the COVID up or in the crime. Correct.
That's what systemic means.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: Look, James, if you and I, if the cops showed up and you and I had two shotguns and a dead Guy there. I don't know, if they just let us go home, they'd probably bring us in to make sure they question us properly about what happened. So that's that. But on the aftermath of the event, the things that really stuck out to me were several fold.
And when I say event, the Tulsa massacre in 1921, one was the fact that no insurance claim claims were, were, were paid for any of the black victims.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: There were up to $4 million of insurance claims.
You know, like claims people claimed damage. Now these are people that have paid premiums on their policies.
The only two.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: I knew that, I mentioned that, but I knew the wealth manager was going to be up in arms about that.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: No, and that's why, because you know, again, and we've used this term, you know that sometimes, sometimes when you look at this history, it's almost unbelievable.
[00:31:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: And you wonder, you know, and again, this is where I feel like the COVID up had to take place in order to maintain the lie. And what is the lie? That blacks are inferior, Blacks are stupid and lazy.
[00:32:02] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: Because again, what do we say? By the time you and I came up and went to school, you know, we were in the 80s in elementary school and the 90s in high school. No one taught us this.
So and I, and I say this for, you know, this country, both the lie had to be perpetuated for both black and white future generations because blacks needed to feel that they were lesser and that they couldn't achieve anything.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: If you're of a certain ideology.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: Well, it's just that.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: For people who wanted blacks to feel like that. Correct. I'm not saying everybody does, but. So thank you for that. But meaning, because if you don't have any knowledge of self or historic pride that you can accomplish anything, then you're not going to believe you can. Right. So that seems to have been a psychological warfare tool that unfortunately has somewhat worked in American society. The second thing was the white children in the future could not be educated about this because then they would know the truth as well, is that blacks did have agency and blacks did have the ability to have their own means, but it was just taken from them. Because that's what I started thinking. James, if you don't teach people that these things happen, I mean, that's where I started thinking too, what a great job the Jewish community has done, necessarily someone documenting what happened in the Holocaust. Now I get it. Because if you don't make sure that this stuff is really remembered, people will look the other way willingly.
And that's exactly what happens. So I'll get up my eye worse.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: No, I mean, I think that that is like, the concep that you want to keep people from learning this because you want to. Like you said, it can be for an ideological reason, or it can be you think you're protecting them from feeling a certain way about it. But, I mean, I think that that's 100% a backwards way to look at things. Like, almost.
If you look at it and you're always taught that if you're taught that your country or your culture has no flaw and everything it's done has been all great and it's just been some constant upward swing, and there's never been anything regrettable about it, then, you know, it actually makes sense why you would be hostile to anyone who ever talks about changing it or trying to change it, make it better, or we got to do this better, we got to do that better. Because you're coming from a place where all you've ever learned is the rosy picture, is that everything was all good. And so it's like, well, what do you mean? We need to improve. We need to be better, we need to do better. We need to live up to our ideals. We already do live up to our ideals. Everything I've ever learned is that America was always on the right side. And so there's an insidious nature, and it actually prevents progress when you stop people from learning about things that what they belong to, whether it be culture, whether it be country, things that have been done wrong or things that have been regrettable or things that could have been done better. Like, I'm an American. I'm proud to be an American. But I have. No, no. Like, I'm not looking at America as that. It's always been right by no means. And in fact, that's part of the reason. The fact that I have love for my country and I know that it has done wrong is part of the reason why I want to try to make it better. But again, coming from the opposite perspective, if you have the affection for your country and you've never learned of it doing anything wrong and so you think that it never does anything wrong, then you're going to be very resistant to someone like me saying, hey, we got to do better. We have to do better. We have to live up to our ideals better. And so to me, how that really feeds a culture of entitlement and complacency, you know, like, that we're just. Everything has already been given to us or everything's already been done for us. And all we, we just sit back, we don't have to earn freedom anymore, we don't have to earn liberty anymore. It's just all here.
It really, you can see how basically that kind of approach, while you may think you're protecting some fragile person from learning things that might make them sad, you're really undermining the ability of our country to grow and to improve on things that undoubtedly happen in the past. But I want to get to the parallels, you know, because I want to get I'm going to wrap up here pretty soon. So were there any parallels or even if you want to go differences, things that, you know, how this played out, how you don't think it would play out and beyond what we've already said or parallels that you see in today's, you know, just our culture today.
[00:36:22] Speaker B: Yeah, a couple quotes.
And there's a quote I want to read from the French political historian Alexis de Tocqueville from the actual Tulsa Massacre Commission report, which we will have linked
[00:36:38] Speaker A: to in the in the show notes. They have that it's a PDF on Oklahoma history website.org so we'll have that link.
[00:36:46] Speaker B: So the quote goes, once the majority has irrevocably decided a question, it is no longer discussed. This is because the majority is a power that does not respond well to criticism. And that's I was like, wow, that's pretty profound because it's true. Like that's what happened with Tulsa. The majority decided we're not discussing this anymore. And that's what's happened with a lot of things in the United States history. Right.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's what I. Yeah, that's a good point. We've gotten to a point basically we've seen this at times in history where the majority or a large number of people just decided they're not willing to talk about these things anymore. They just went their way.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, and so and you know what I saw? Again, it's an allusion to other incidences in world history.
My mom grew up in Eastern Europe and she used to tell me when she was she was born in 44, so let's say she was 10 in 1954. She told me in elementary school that a lot of the kids were taught by their parents that the Holocaust wasn't real, it was paper mache bodies and all that. She told me that. So it's the same thing. Meaning that people who perpetuate ill on others, I guess if they're not able to wipe the Other side, off the map, clean. They're going to deny that their kind of side, quote unquote, was involved with anything negative. And that's why I say it's not only American thing, this is a human thing.
[00:38:04] Speaker A: So that was the American piece, though. Let me jump in on that, because the American piece is very interesting to me. And this is something I've always observed that I don't have a real good explanation for it or at least one that will satisfy you at the end. But Americans actually have a choice on what side, so to speak, of any historical issue that they want to be on, what side they want to identify with. Like, that's, you know, like you say, for a average white American or whatever, they can identify with the equality side. Looking back at, they could identify with the Union, they could identify with John Brown. He was a. He was a badass. You know, you can identify, you can choose to identify with that side, or you could choose to identify with the Confederacy or, or the, the Redeemers or Jim Crow. And so more so the question would be like, if you're German in 1954, then you are like that, that's the German, like 10 years ago that was. Or, you know, 20 years ago, that was. There. There weren't. There wasn't a vocal and large and ultimately victorious other side that was battling against the Nazis in Germany. And that's what in America there is. In America there is. There was, you know, there was the Union that against the Confederacy. But so many people choose. It's a choice. They choose to identify with the Confederacy or with the Redeemers or with the Jim Crow South. And saying that when you try to say that they did wrong, you're going after me. And it's like, but why are you choosing that to be you and not choosing the Abe Lincoln to be you?
[00:39:33] Speaker B: No, but that's where, I mean, I can't answer that, obviously, and I don't think those people can.
And I think it's because, let's be honest, their worldview is not Abe Lincoln. Their worldview was Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: That would be the insinuation. But I mean, I just literally, like, I wonder that because some people, I don't know if they even consciously make the choice. Like some people, I think, I don't think so. They may just, you know, like, that's when they look back and they look at the two sides. They have more sympathy for one side than the other. And that's just where they go with. And so. But it's Also because of the choice involved. That's what I just wanted to say. Because of the choice involved. It's more interesting than in certain instances where, you know, based on your. Where you were born or what you look like, you only have one side, really, that you can sympathize with.
[00:40:18] Speaker B: Well, remember, too, I mean, part of it is the own internal propaganda within the United States. I mean, we did the documentary on Reconstruction and talked about the Daughters of the Confederacy and how they went to the school boards and had illusions, negative allusions to slavery removed. And we see that again, let's talk about parallels to today. So with that quote, the reason why it stuck out to me is, I'll read the last sentence of the quote. This is because the majority is a power that does not respond well to criticism. You know, and I've seen that even post insurrection.
I mean, it's pretty obvious who's who. Like the people that were at the capitol in Washington, D.C. on January 6, who they supported. Now, I'm not going to blanket all the supporters of that party or that person or whatever that ideology that they all did that, but the fact is, the people that did it are people that say they support, you know, a certain side of the political equation today. And again, this is because the majority is a power that does not respond well to criticism. You know, I've been watching now for six months.
I've got people in my life that will tell me that wasn't, you know, so and so supporters, that was, you know, Democrats, that was someone else. And I'm like, wow, okay. Like, okay. Like, I can't even argue with that. It's like, okay, let's just change the subject. So my point is, is that that's why all this stuff stands out to me. The other thing that is, you know, stands out to me about today, there's a quote by the former president that was said this year in 2021, and it was about the election. And, you know, he feels that the election wasn't done right.
So his quote was, and I quote here from Donald Trump, former President of the United States. Our country is being destroyed by people who have no right to destroy it. And I love this about Trump because it's such a great Freudian slip.
It's like the country's being destroyed by skewering.
[00:42:14] Speaker A: He's not obscure.
[00:42:16] Speaker B: He's just so honest.
And that's my point. Forget about him. He has every right to say that. I've got no issue with him saying that.
You just said something very important.
People have a choice, what they want to follow and what they want to believe.
And so that's really who I'm looking at is this percentage of Americans who continue to want this kind of rhetoric. And that's more interesting to me than him. Because he's just one guy.
[00:42:46] Speaker A: Well, yeah. I mean, when you look at that, though, in the context of what we're talking about here and like that implicit in that statement is that certain people have the right to destroy the country and other people don't.
[00:42:57] Speaker B: Dude, you know what that alludes to? And I'm sorry to cut you off because it just hit my head. And we talked about this on another show. Remember Ron Johnson, the senator from Wisconsin, was quoted as saying a couple months after that, I wasn't worried. If it was BLM or Antifa, I'd be worried, but because it was our people, I wasn't worried. You're right. That's exactly kind of what he's saying is, well, because it was my people destroying the Capitol, and I'm upset too, with the results of the election and just my side's not in power, it's okay.
[00:43:26] Speaker A: And you know, it's saying certain people have the right to destroy the country and other people don't. And that's just like. Well, why are you saying anybody has the right to destroy the country? That's right.
[00:43:36] Speaker B: That's a great quote. Our country is being destroyed by people who have no right to destroy it. That implies that someone does have a right to destroy it.
[00:43:44] Speaker A: That's what I'm saying. Like, so you don't need that part, is what I'm saying. Like that out the language you don't need by people who don't have a right to destroy it. You say our country is destroyed by bad people. You could just say that. But the fact that you're specifying that these people don't have the right to do it implies that you're saying that some, or that you believe that some people do have the right to do whatever they want to do, basically. And these aren't the people that have a right to do whatever they want to do. And that's what the problem is.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: But it's an example too, of the hundred years ago of that kind of like we talked about the media, and in this case I'll put the president as part of the media, whether it's him or any president. Right, Meaning the rhetoric from the top.
And we already know about, you know, the ecosystems of people that want to believe certain things when it comes to this Specific topic today about the insurrection and about their country being taken and all that kind of stuff. We know those outlets and we know the talk radio people and all that. So to me, learning about the hundred years ago and what was going on in the 1910s and the Red Summer of 1919 and all the stuff leading up to Tulsa and all that, it was just a very big parallel. I was like, wow, you have all these. And I don't know if it's. It's like the chicken or the egg like we've talked about or even I thought about your joke that I love, which is you know, the participation trophies of media.
[00:45:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:00] Speaker B: You know, I don't know which it is. Is it that people are being fed this stuff and so they get turned or are they gonna always look for something that feeds whatever they want to hear, no matter what? Because they obviously like meaning 100 years ago they couldn't believe that black people might actually just be able to start businesses and do things on themselves. And they can remember that the, the female journalist who was well documented, she went and documented a bunch of lynchings over several years. And she found that most of the accusations of black on white rape, like black men raping white women, were actually consensual relationships that somebody in the community used as an excuse to take property from a black man.
And so I just feel like, wow, what a bunch of parallels to today where people are uneasy about the changes they're seeing in the country.
There's also a lot of people that are seeing people that don't look like them rise up the ranks of net worth wealth society which was culminated, I
[00:46:02] Speaker A: mean Barack Obama in the White House.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: That's what I was going to say, culminated by the first non white guy to be a president.
And I think honestly a lot of people just got disturbed emotionally from that. And so I think that's what's happening. My comparison today is that we're seeing a lot of the similarities from the media and all that ginning up a certain segment of the country and then I'm gonna pass it to you.
[00:46:23] Speaker A: That's a similarity that I wanted to really like.
[00:46:25] Speaker B: Yeah, go ahead. Because I'm gonna talk about the differences too. But go ahead with.
[00:46:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to wrap up this up shortly. But I think that it's the. I go right back to the same term I used earlier is puppet master. Like the media is just good at this. And I don't know actually, I mean I've come. Come around to start think that I think you're Onto something as far as how the. What's going on in society. I used to think it was all economic, like wealth distribution.
The better wealth was or the more equal wealth was distributed, the less receptive people were to this type of sensationalistic media.
And that's still. I'm sure, I'm sure that still plays a role. But also, I've come around to what you're saying as far as large societal changes, you know, or even apparent changes, even if they aren't huge changes, but just the appearance of large changes driving uneasiness. But those type of things that make people uncomfortable and then make people more susceptible to certain types of messages in media, those emotional plays that really get them fired up. And then once the media gets them fired up, they'll do anything. They'll, you know, bomb a neighboring community or they'll rush in and take over the seat of power in the government for an afternoon. You know, like, that's extreme stuff, you know, and like. But it's driven by.
There's a susceptibility or an openness to it from the media. But then that the media is. They're just good at it, like certain. They know how to push people's buttons and to get reactions out of them. And, you know, that's part of their business model. I guess they used to call it yellow journalism, but it's part of just journalism. It's part of just not journalism, but it's part of the media now is just, we need attention. How do we get attention? You know, and then the lowest common denominator wins out oftentimes.
[00:48:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it's kind of like a, like a, like a kid throwing a tantrum. Right? Like you're going to get attention either positive or negative. And unfortunately, they're choosing to want to focus on negative attention. And it's sad because I guess, you know, that really speaks to how we're wired as human beings. And this is what triggers us to respond and click so that they can sell ads. So that's a whole different conversation. But, you know, the other thing that, as you're saying it reminds me that, you know, again, going back to one of the similarities was, and you said, also strikes me, and I've learned that I used to think that this was the kind of lower class of the society that perpetrated this on the other part of society. And I think, just like we talked about where it was actually the upper class of society which helped do this in 1921. Think about the parallel to the insurrection today.
How many Stories have we seen of people taking private jets to go storm the Capitol a lot. Then we've got the idea of how many military, law enforcement executives, sales executives, CEOs of businesses were already been arrested for this thing. So these aren't people that are the poor people in our community. These are middle and upper class and wealthy people.
And so again, it is about this ideology. And so one of the differences though, let's talk about that. And I want to say this with pride, man, like reading these stories, you know, I'll say this straight up. You know, I'm the son of two immigrants to the United States.
So even though I would say I caucus and consider myself as, you know, black American, African American, I don't share the history of slavery and kind of the Jim Crow fights and all that. But when I read history like this, man, I say, wow, what a great and beautiful story of, of overcoming adversity and struggle, let's just say over the last hundred years for specifically black Americans. I mean, when you talk about a group that had no agency in a country, and also to this day we're still 13% of the United States, I'm talking a pretty big minority.
All those fights, let's say 40 years after this, you know, by 1961, we got the attention of people like the President United States through Martin Luther King. And then a few years after that you get the civil rights movement. So this country again shows us the great experiment works where through the courts and other systems, we didn't have to have a second civil war to bring equality. And you know, and I think that's what people are worried about is in jeopardy now that things like the courts and our political system, if they begin to fray and our voting and our electoral system, then you're going to give room for the kind of barbarians to rise again. And that's where I see some of the differences too, which is because the actual long term arc of progress worked and equality began to work, especially second half of the 20th century, I don't think this toothpaste can get put back in the tube. And that's my concern is you've got a certain group of Americans being led to believe that they could maybe bring back these glory days.
You got too many people like me and you out there, man, and much more higher net worth people that look like us that won't take this. And then you've got a large percentage of white Americans that don't want this either.
So this is a very small minority which is extremely vocal and assisted by a political party, only for that. The leaders in that party's interest to stay in power. I don't think they really care about all this stuff that some of these people care about. And, you know, I think, unfortunately, because of that, it'll get worse before it gets better. And that's kind of my.
[00:51:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the difference. The concern is whether or not to bring back that quote.
The people who. That the person who gave that quote, believe have the right to destroy this thing will pull that lever, basically, because they no longer get to control it by themselves.
[00:52:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:02] Speaker A: And so, you know, like. Yeah, I think that's. That. That's basically what we saw.
Yeah, that is what the insurrection was. Was that. Look, if we can't call all the shots, we're going to blow this up.
[00:52:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:12] Speaker A: So, yeah, that's the concern. And that was, you know, like, that's, again, that's the parallel, I would say, to Tulsa. But, you know, your point is. Well, taken as far as the differences, though, is just it's a different world and there is more resistance now than there ever has been. And, like, the arc of. Arc of progress has bent that way. And so, you know, we'll see how things play out. We'll continue to see how things play out. But the kind of mindsets, as we've pointed out at the beginning, is these are human things. These are not, like, unique to this particular time or this particular look or anything like that. And so these. These battles, disputes, you know, arguments will keep coming back up because they're tugging on different aspects of our humanity, and then our different aspects of our humanity are subject to certain types of manipulation and so forth.
[00:52:58] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's a good point. As the older I get, the more I really believe that term, that those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat. Repeat it.
[00:53:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:06] Speaker B: I think that's why it was so important for this history to get erased, or at least try to be.
[00:53:11] Speaker A: Well, yeah. And from our perspective, it's for it to get learned. And then for people who wouldn't mind see this happening again to. You don't want to get it erased.
[00:53:17] Speaker B: No, exactly. So that's why it's just. It's fascinating. Like you're saying it's all the same patterns, so.
[00:53:22] Speaker A: Yeah, man. But I think we can call it from there, man. You know, it's not as, you know, like, as a show there where we're laughing and joking, but it's an important topic and it's one, you know, for somebody.
[00:53:32] Speaker B: I gotta stop talking I was on the. Whoa, bro, come on.
[00:53:35] Speaker A: You only made it to page two of your notes.
[00:53:37] Speaker B: I know.
All that reading I was doing.
[00:53:40] Speaker A: Hold on.
[00:53:41] Speaker B: For the audience. Is a 200 page commission report. Yeah, there's a lot in there. That's what I'm saying that, you know, it's. The stuff that is learned is amazing. So.
[00:53:49] Speaker A: Yeah, and there's like five, six, seven documentaries that have come out in the last few years or last few months, I believe. So, yeah, it's a lot of information out there. And I mean, it's something that it was forgotten, but now it's back. And so, you know, it's something to learn for from it, from everyone. And again, that learning from these things is how you gain the appreciation for what. For where you live and what the country you have. And then how you can make it better. And it doesn't have to be that your country's never made a mistake in order for you to have affection for it. That's just that those two shouldn't have to go together. And if they do, then, you know, you probably don't really love it because you're. You only love things that are perfect and that there's nothing perfect. So. But yeah, we call it from there, man. As always, we appreciate everybody for joining us. And so until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:54:34] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Lana.
[00:54:35] Speaker A: All right, subscribe rate review and we'll talk to you next time.
