Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we take a look at Albert Einstein's the Negro Question essay and discuss how he saw race affecting American society. And later on, we discuss a piece from the Christian Century magazine about both long standing and recent connections between Judaism and Africa and how that may refute many people's modern conceptions of the Jewish religion.
Hello, welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast.
I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man whose takes are as foundational as the Genesis.
Are you ready to show us why it ain't hard to tell that the world is yours?
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Yeah, man, but damn, that's a pretty big, you know, I got some big shoes to fill. You're talking about I'm, you know, like Genesis. I'm not sure I'm that grand. Not sure I'm that grandiose. Come on.
And I want to apologize also for our watching audience on YouTube that I'm wearing a hat because I'm in my late 40s and I'm middle aged, so I shouldn't be wearing a hat on a show with a collared shirt. But I'm having a bad hair day, which means I didn't have time to shave my head so you could see my sunroof. So no one else is going to see it.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: So I guess the audio audience could just picture it, huh?
[00:01:31] Speaker B: It'll be a bad visual, but yes.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe and like the show on YouTube or your podcast app, doing so really helps the show out. We're recording this on March 31, 2026. And Tunde, we recently came across Albert Einstein's 1946 essay the Negro Question, which provides an interesting look at and how he viewed the way Americans handled race in comparison to its stated equality and democratic ideals. Particularly from the perspective of someone who came to the country as an adult and had only been in the country for 10 years, around 10 years at the time. So, Tunde, what did you think of the Negro Question and him analogizing white Americans mistreatment of blacks to a tradition and the feeling of superiority that comes along with that as a fatal misconception?
[00:02:25] Speaker B: It's very interesting. I did find his allusion to the American culture around this race stuff as to a tradition, I found that interesting. I never thought of it, but it actually makes a lot of sense and it helps me actually as a human being that's lived through this, again, American, and would be considered a member of the quote unquote, Negro race.
It helps me actually appreciate that he's onto something. That this is more of a tradition than anything else. And I think when you look at that, it helps me unpack it in a different way. So I can appreciate his sentiment there.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: That's why I put it into the intro, though, because it's like. That's a very interesting way to look at it.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly, like profound and so. But then the funny thing is, I was gonna laugh and say, man, in the climate we have today, man, we gotta hide this essay. Cause they're gonna say that Einstein's too woke and he want a dei. So they're not going to remove him from, like, the National Academy of Sciences. And, you know, they're going to take his name off anything with the government, you know, expose, you know, the state of Florida. Now you can't learn about him anymore, you know, with this. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, they might ban teaching about Albert Einstein in public school here in Florida if we let this essay get out, you know, if we let the wrong people, or I should say the leadership in our state find out about it. You know, I don't even say the wrong people. The people that are in charge.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: So.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: So, yeah, so that's. That's. Listen, I say that as a joke, right? But I say it as a joke with some meaning in a serious way, which is he wrote this in 1946 here, literally 80 years ago.
And here we are, and I'm joking about we have a government that would be hostile to this. Albert Einstein's essay about race in America. So this is something that is a tradition in America. And that's why I appreciate the way he said it. This is part of our culture.
And I guess maybe the exhausting part, if I can use that term, is that.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Well, if you're on the easiest end of it, for sure.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's what I mean. It's not going to go away because people like you and I aren't going to stop telling the truth about American history. And the truth of American history is very beautiful if you include everyone, and it's beautiful regardless. But I'm just saying that it doesn't make it any worse by including the stories of how a lot of people and a lot of groups contributed to the beauty of this country.
And so that's where I appreciate his essay. I also think it doesn't surprise me that in 1946, a German Jew who'd been living in America for a decade might have an opinion about how he's seeing a group of people in the country he's living in, being treated right after the Holocaust and the Second World War, when he saw how the members of his community, the Jewish community, were being treated in Europe and why he left Germany because of the treatment of Jews. So I'm not surprised that someone like Albert Einstein would speak up and speak so eloquently in 1946 on this topic.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, I think. And he says in the essay, part of him doing this is because he. He's bothered by this and he doesn't want to stand by and do nothing, you know. And so that's interesting to me. The. The perspective that he brings as an outsider is it leads to interesting insights and interesting choice of words, like the tradition piece, you know, like, if you. If you look at this as a tradition of oppression, of feeling, of superiority, then it makes a lot of sense why people would have such an emotional connection to it as well. You know, like, oh, this is. This is the. What I learned to feel good about, you know, this is what I. This is what makes me feel at home. This is what makes me feel comfortable. That's what. Those are the kind of things traditions do, you know. And so it's like, okay, yeah, if it's a tradition to try to step on a large segment of the society, then, you know, like, people would defend that in ways that may seem, you know, it may seem. May seem very irrational because by definition, a lot of times, traditional would be Iraq. Traditional tradition holds onto things. That is irrational. But the perspective as an outsider, I think, is one that we should value because he doesn't. And he knows this. He doesn't come in with all the baggage.
But I note that at the beginning of the essay, and we'll have this in the show notes, but at the beginning of the essay, he kind of starts out the essay almost defending his right to have an opinion.
Now, this is someone who you can comfortably say was the smartest person, at least that was doing stuff in the 20th century. And so he starts out, he's going to wade in, you know, this guy, you know, he's, you know, coming up with theory of relativity and all this other stuff. This guy, when he's about to wade into the racial discussion in America, he spends the first couple of paragraphs saying, hey, you know, here's why I should be able to have a say.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: So he knows, you know, like, oh, yeah, people are going to get read. The people are going to be really taken aback by this. The people who. Who. This is their tradition, you know. So starting off saying, hey, Even though I'm someone who didn't grow up in this, that actually makes me well suited to be able to see it and see a different perspective and different perspectives can be helpful and all that. So, to me, the hearing about it was interesting, but then actually reading it and really breaking down a couple of pieces of it was like, oh, wow, this is rich. Really, really, really, you know, kind of poignant in the sense of. And then to your point, how looking at this today and things are different than they were in 1946, today, you know, but, yeah, and how it still would have. There's still a segment of people that would have a very negative reaction to it. And there's plenty of people that be like, yeah, we've. We've made progress along these lines and we feel good about that. You know, so it's. Yeah, it is the eternal question of the American experience because of that. And, you know, he comes in and, you know, feels like he needs to weigh on it. And, you know, that, that, that kind of makes sense. Like, he, he was a smart guy.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: Yeah, Well, I think, you know, it's. This is one thing that I think is hard for us as Americans to appreciate, that someone can come in from the outside, a foreigner basically can immigrate here, look at us without the emotional baggage, and make certain judgments that could be accurate. Right?
[00:08:37] Speaker A: That's not right, because they don't understand. People just have too much hubris. We feel like we can do that to all the conflicts else around the world, all the other conflicts.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: I don't disagree, James.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Look at the Shia and Sunny. Like, we can tell you guys what to do.
[00:08:51] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I guess we're doing that with Iran right now.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: So. But the thing is, is that I think the word you use correctly is hubris, which is why we can't seem to see it. Right. We're in our own way, that way. But I'll say this because into the essay, he begins to.
He begins to give an example. And he says, you know, when he talks to certain Americans at the time about this, and he says that they explain their attitudes towards the Negroes, and I'll read the last sentence. It says, quote, they are not equals in intelligence, sense of responsibility, or reliability.
That's what he said people would tell him when he asked them about, why do you guys treat the Negroes this way? And he says, so I'm going to quote Albert Einstein, quote, I am firmly convinced that whoever believes this suffers from a fatal misconception.
Your ancestors dragged these black people from their Homes by force. And in the white man's quest for wealth and an easy life, they have been ruthlessly suppressed and exploited, degraded into slavery. The modern prejudice against Negroes is the result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition.
I thought that was pretty profound, because what he's speaking to is a couple things. The quest for wealth. So what he's getting in is the whole colonial thing, right, that the Europeans going around the world and basically colonizing all these other people and exploiting them for wealth. And then at the end, he says the modern prejudice, meaning in the 40s now against Negroes, is the result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition. So I wouldn't say that Obviously in the 46, we didn't have slavery, but it was the unworthy condition of that hierarchy. And the word we used from the beginning that he pointed out, traditional. And I think that's what makes this very difficult. Because as I thought about the word tradition, James, I thought about the response I've seen some people in our culture have to things like the Confederate flag during my life where they'll say, it's about heritage, not hate.
And now you and I could intellectually sit there, well, maybe it's about the heritage of hate, about states rights, about owning people and all that, but the way that Albert Einstein used tradition, like for the first time, I appreciated that the word heritage to some people means tradition. And this is how the topic that, to you and I is important, like this and all that can get muddied for certain Americans where when you talk about, hey, you know, maybe we shouldn't revere the Confederacy because they were traitors and attacked the United States, what we're doing is the people have been convinced that that's their tradition, whether it is or not. And so that's why I think some of these arguments are difficult.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the tradition of bigotry, so to speak. You know, tradition of the hierarchy.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: You know, I didn't go there, but,
[00:11:37] Speaker A: hey, well, but the, the. I thought that.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: I'm not opposed to you going there.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: I focused on that paragraph as well. But I, And I actually called it, called it in the, in the beginning when I talked about, like the quote, unquote, fatal misconception, like, he thought this was serious, you know, like one as an outsider who had been here, you know, not too long, felt the need to write about it. You know, like, this is a physicist, a theoretical physicist, and he's looking around like, yo, this somebody needs to say something. Where people are saying about it I need to say something about this, you know, and then he's talking about using this isn't the guy who's flippant with his words. He calls it a fatal misconception. And you tie that together, that first sentence, you know, that, that bigotry mindset being a fatal misconception with that last sentence that you cited, which to me that really connected to the psychic wage, you know, like the, the idea that it's the modern prejudice against the Negroes as a result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition. And, you know, the unworthy condition is about the quest for wealth. So you got to, you know, exploit, degrade and do slavery and so forth.
That is basically the connection of, okay, this, the rich people can get wealthy off of this exploitation, turning the poor whites against the poor blacks so that the poor whites never look up and say, hey, we can get a fair shake in society, we can live longer, we can have a better life if we just get with the other working class people, which are the black people.
It really connects a lot of things. If you look at American history and what other observers have talked about, like, hey, that this is the biggest double cross because the people that are egging you on to this, you know, if you're the, the, the working class whites, the people that are egging you on are the people that are the ones keeping you poor by egging you on against the other poor people. You know, so it, he touches on a lot of things in here, man, and, and it's stuff. Again, he, he's not the first person to, to bring that up. And he didn't use the term psychic wage, but connecting, as you pointed out, connecting the financial piece of this and how that plays in. And then again, using. That's a pretty, you know, calling it a fatal misconception is a pretty. That's not a, that's not saying, oh, yeah, you guys could, you know, you may be able to do better if you do so if you let go of that, it's like, yo, this is a pretty serious thing he's looking at.
[00:13:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Now, man. And I wanted to ask you your thoughts because, you know, specifically on a couple things. One is, you know, Albert Einstein, obviously being alive at the time, he was. And like I said earlier about, you know, 1946, you had just finished the World War, you know, World War II, you just had the Holocaust. You know, you had him having experienced true discrimination. You know, as someone like that, do you think that gave him a different lens of which to see the American Culture in this light, or do you think that he would have seen it anyway? I just want to get your thoughts on that. And then, and then how do you think that plays out today, basically with today's youth and all that?
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Well, I think that. I don't think that he saw it differently because of his experience. What I do think is that he felt compelled to speak about it because of his experience, because there's many people who've come to America and saw this and be like, yo, this is crazy. You know what I'm saying? And so, but maybe that person would. Or, you know, this person coming from a. Different. Coming from a privileged environment or coming from a place where they couldn't relate or couldn't see how crazy it could get, would just say that at dinner parties, you know, like, oh, I just can't believe that they really do. But this guy is like, hey, at the risk of angering a lot of people and, you know, these are people that do extreme things. I'm going to put this out there because I don't feel comfortable in myself not putting it out there. So I think the impetus to share is probably what you can really tie to his life experience. Like, I cannot just be quiet about this. This is what I see.
And so to me, like, when I'm looking at that, the experiences that. Where we see how a society itself can be turned against the minority, oftentimes to the benefit of some other group, whether it be the resourced people or whatever, it's a story that is in human cultures all over. You know, it's something that's been effective ever since you get these hierarchical societies. You know, like when we read the book Sapiens Guy talked about, like, hey, this has been going back since agriculture. Once you had agriculture, which meant everybody didn't have to make their own food and do their own food, you had specialization then you had people who then would try to grab a. Take a hierarchy, try to grab the top of it and then explain to everybody else why they should be at the bottom and they should be at the top. And dividing people based on things that you can see or things that are out there, whether it be religion, race has been one of the oldest and most reliable tricks. So again, the insight itself or the observation itself isn't really the crazy part. It's how he chooses to describe it and that he felt compelled to share it, which really stands out.
[00:16:20] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's interesting, man. And I'll just wrap up with this.
In reading this and thinking about 1946 and I think you said it well. I mean, we got to acknowledge that there's a lot of progress in America on this topic since 1946.
So I'm not here to say that the world looks like it did back then for black Americans. But what kind of saddened me when you talk about this word tradition. And I think that's why it stood out to me. What do we do a lot of times, culturally, all of us, we pass our traditions down to our kids, Right?
[00:16:53] Speaker A: Yeah. That's a big part of this.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And that could be the Christmas tree.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: And that could be the menorah, whatever it is. And he discusses that about the influence. It says, quote, opinions and emotions which we unconsciously absorb as children from our environment.
And that got me thinking also, James, about what we've seen recently. In the last year or so with young people from one of the two major parties. There have been some leaked text chats. And last year there was one, the Young Republicans group, which I could think is people aged between 20 and 40.
That's, you know, where they were making very anti Semitic comments in there. They were calling black people n words and watermelon people and all that kind of dumb stuff that you get. And then more recently in the last month, this affected me a little bit more. Not affecting me, but I paid attention a bit more because it happened here in Florida with two universities. One of them, which happens to be my alma mater, which is Florida International University in Miami, and the second was University of Florida in Gainesville.
Both schools I've had group text leaked from the Young College Republicans that are really bad in terms of their racial hatred.
And the Young College Republicans in the University of Florida have sued the university because they want to do z kiles in public and they want it to be part of freedom of speech. So my point is that that's the sad part to me that I realized as I'm reading this that those traditions are continued to be passed down to the next generation. So that me and you, our kids are going to have to deal with those kids.
And so. And so that, to me, I just want to say that.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: And the point being is that they didn't grow up in a society where that stuff was outwardly acceptable in public. And so they're home pulling that in.
They're receiving that and the desire to do that from some other means. And that's your point about it being a tradition. This is something they pick up in the home or in their intimate social circles that, hey, this is something I want to make this like this again. You know, I want to make this country like that again. You know, like where my traditions, the things that I think about, you know, that my parents talked about or whatever, are things we can do in public again. So, you know, it connects to that, you know, from a traditional standpoint, like you said, that's that ties the emotional piece. And also why it doesn't just go away once. Once it goes out of sight, it doesn't just go away.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: So, yeah, I think we can wrap this here. We'll have a second, second part of this second part of a discussion today, so please join us for that and subscribe to the podcast. Rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Until next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: I'm Tunde with Lana.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk soon.
All right, Tunde, for the second part of our discussion today, you sent me an interesting piece in the last week or so talking about. And it really talked about the connections in Judaism or connections in Africa to Judaism and various connections that have been there and so forth. And it's entitled Judaism's Deep Roots and New Offshoots in Africa.
So tell me what stood out to you in this piece? What made you bring it to me? And I know we've talked offline, but I want you to hit me with it because I thought you had very insightful thoughts on this.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I thought it was a great piece and it stood out for me for many reasons. And I think part of it is, as you know, and I've talked about it on the show, I was in Israel last year, got stuck in that first war with the 12 day war with Iran, which we did a show about. So I'm not here to discuss that, but the experience of being in Israel, being in the old city of Jerusalem, was really profound for me. And I'm not religious. It was profound from a cultural standpoint because, I mean, this is going to maybe sound a little bit dumb, right? Because we kind of know this stuff intellectually, that, you know, Israel and Jerusalem is in the Middle east. And, you know, all these, you know, religions, the three Abrahamic religions that dominate the world right now, Islam, Christianity and Judaism are all founded in that region and that area of the Middle east and that I'm looking at signs in Jerusalem that say, Bethlehem is 5 kilometers this way, Nazareth's 25 kilometers that way. So it was interesting. But then I'm reminded of myself, all this stuff started here and then was exported, whether through Conquest or through just people wanting to convert to the rest of the world, all these other continents in the world. And so if you look at the history of Judaism in Africa, it appears that it has many different entry points, some being as old as 3,000 years old, that have been documented now through DNA evidence. And that's the Lemba people of Zimbabwe and Southern Africa who have been identified genetically to be descended from the Kohinim in Yemen.
Around 3000 years ago to 1500 years ago, there was migrations.
And the Kohenim are, if you know a Jewish person with the last name Kohen, that's a direct descendant, then they were considered the high priests of Judaism of thousands of years ago. So there's a direct lineage right there to sub Saharan Africa. But then you have a lot of other lineages, like the Berbers in North Africa, the influence of the Jews who are kicked out of Iberian Spain during the Inquisition after the Moors were defeated in Spain. So you got a lot of these different entry points of the religion into the African continent. And I think it's something that, especially in America where we are culturally just most Jews are descendants of Europeans.
For us to think of a Jew as a non white person in America is something foreign to us. So again, that's, to me, what was very interesting about this.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Yeah, that lens is interesting as well, because the idea in the United States, we do tend to view everything through the prism of race and not. And so even religions, you know, especially in a modern time now, if you go back into the 60s, the idea of a Catholic versus a Protestant had more meaning to people and into this day, to some degree. But, you know, so in the United States, a lot of the assumptions that people have is that Jewish and white in the context of the United States, which again, that doesn't track 100% once you leave the United States anyway. So one of the things that was interesting to me when you talk about it, even your experience last year, is that you'd be. When you were in Israel, you'd see Jewish people of lots of different shapes, you know, and it's like, oh, yeah, it's the Middle East. That's, you know, the Middle east and what's right there is Africa. And it's like, okay, yeah, that's. That the Middle east actually is a significant. One of the reasons it's a significant part of the world and has been for so long is that it's the meeting of three continents. You know, you got Europe coming right there, you got Asia right there, and you got Africa Right there. And so, you know, it's land to all three.
So to me, what was really interesting about that was that if you saw an article saying that, oh yeah, there's roots of Christianity, you know, they go back a long time in Africa, you wouldn't really think like, it wouldn't be like, huh, it wouldn't catch you in a way because Christianity is seen as a broader religion. And part of that is that Christianity has made, has evangelized around the world. It's a religion that goes and spreads itself. Whereas Judaism has been thought of and has traditionally been a religion of chosen people, so to speak. So it's not going out and telling everybody, hey, you got to be like us, so to speak. But nonetheless to say, hey, thousands of years, which this stuff spans thousands of years. We found this pocket of people and they do stuff that looks very Jewish to us. Or these people trace, like you said, trace their lineage. You know, these people in this part of Africa trace their lineage to, to the Middle east and to, to, to Judea from 2000 years ago. It sounds far fetched. Then you think about human migration. It's like, oh, we're actually not that. It would actually be more weird if it wasn't that there were pockets of. Oh yeah, there's.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: Can I jump in real quick?
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: Just on the point you did, because this is just on the point you made. I think it shows some of our just inherent cultural biases. Because think about what you just said.
I'm supposed to believe that a religion that's founded literally in the Middle east, like we're saying in where Israel lies today, where people are brown skin, who are, you know, the Semites, the original people up there, right?
That somehow these ideas, the culture, their traditions migrated to Europe over thousands of years and recent centuries. But those same ideas and traditions couldn't have migrated south into Africa or even east, maybe further into the east like Persia and India and those areas.
And that's what I mean, that's where we have these cultural biases, right? Because it's about as unplausible to believe that someone with blonde hair and blue eyes from England is Jewish. If you're gonna think of it that way as it is to believe that someone from Nigeria is Jewish.
But we don't not believe that the person from England is Jewish. And we do question the person from Nigeria or Mali that might say they're Jewish. So that's, to me, where we have some of this cultural baggage of today on top of the realities. Like you're saying of humanity and migrations and all that.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Now, some of that, though, see, here's the thing, is that we are saying a what here, you know, in terms of how things may look a little differently than our perceptions. We're not saying a why because the why is more complicated, you know, like, in terms of. Okay, well, maybe there is an effort by some to try to make, you know, especially for an American audience to present people of Jewish faith in one way, you know, like. And there may. There may be something that's going on with that. But I was actually primed for this to. In a way, probably that's. That's, you know, I was a little more ready for this because recently I say, within the last year, I read a book, the History of the Ancient World.
It's by Susan Wise Bauer. And this talks about, you know, like, it goes from earliest accounts to the following.
And the part about the, like, the beginning, which makes sense. It's thousands of years. The beginning of the book talks about all these different tribes, and all they're doing is going from here to there and there to here, all these different places. And it's like, I'm trying to keep track of all this. Like, man. All right, so these guys were here, and then they went down into Egypt, and then they jumped up back up into the Middle East. And it's all tribes. You know, many of the tribes we've heard of when we were. But then there's also a lot more. But yes, like the Semites, you know, the Semites jumped down into Africa for a while, and then sometimes they'll move because of other things. Like, I think we have to keep in mind that people have been people for a long time, and people move around. There's stuff going on. There's a war here, so we got to get out of here. Or, you know, this.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: This famine.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: This famine. Or, you know, like, this group came down, you know, from the north and decided to start wrecking shops. So we're going to go to the east and. And so, like, the idea that the remnants of that would still be there, I think is something. Like I said, I was ready for that. The other piece, though, that I would mention, though, is that there has been. There also are events that concentrate things. And you talked about this a little bit where countries will expel, like, because of a religion, they'll say, hey, all the people that have this religion, you got to go. You know, that's happened with Jewish people a lot. So we oftentimes will have our experience, will be Shaped by things that we learn about and things we see. And so a lot of times what we see will be a one picture of it. If a person or like when you went to Israel and you saw something different and expanded your horizons and it made you be like, okay, yeah, there's something more going on here. But if you don't see it, it's really hard to conceive it because we are oftentimes limited by our experience of what we see. And that's the human. That's the human. So I mean, some of this is inevitable. Some of this may be something we're sold for various reasons, but nonetheless it's good to broaden your horizons and remember sometimes, like, okay, yeah, yeah, this is something that's been going on a long time. And I mean, you mentioned to me in jest, like, well, talking about something real, you were like, yeah, I saw this video and this guy's saying that, yeah, you know, Christianity is a white man religion. It's like, I don't think that person understands where this stuff comes from.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: As I was saying, like, no, it's funny, that's what I mean. Like when I'm in Jerusalem, I went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and I'm just saying to myself, like, this is all Middle Eastern.
Like you're saying to see a white American guy saying, oh, this is a white man's religion.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: I'm like, yeah, really?
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Have you been to the holy sites of Christianity? So, you know, and this is something, I'll say this because I can appreciate to some people what we're saying probably sounds crazy, so.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: Well, it's supposed to though. By the way, the whole point of this is how perspectives, if you gather more information perspectives can be, can be broadened, so to speak. You know, like, so you, you, you, you, you have one conception based on the things that have been around you. But in life there is more information than just what you have around you. And so when you see.
[00:29:52] Speaker B: So I'll give you an example of just me broadening it out would be Islam, because I'm not Muslim. But, but I assume you know that every person as Muslim or generally right, or is kind of Arab or from the Middle east, until I learned just probably in the last decade that the largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia with 180 million population and with 90% of them being Muslim. And so when I look at pictures there, I see women with an Asian face with a hijab on.
[00:30:21] Speaker A: And that's to me, it's like, we talked about this offline maybe a little bit ago, talking about how the, quote, unquote, ethnic cleansing that was happening in the 90s around Sarajevo and all that stuff, dealt with people trying to kill white Muslims in that part of Europe, you know, like, so it was white,
[00:30:39] Speaker B: let me tell you.
I'm glad you brought that up. That brought me back a memory. So my freshman year in Iowa at a small school, I played basketball. And remember, this is 95 or 96. So it was in the height of all that Balkan stuff. And we had these two kids on my team.
One was named Vedran, and the other one was named Amer. I won't name their last names because obviously they haven't given me permission to talk about them. But the guy, Amer, blonde hair, blue eyes, bro, he was Bosnian. I'm talking about the bluest eyes you ever saw. And he was Muslim. He would get on his prayer rug in his dorm room and all that. I never seen a white person with a skull cap and praying on a prayer rug like a Muslim. And he was educated. He told me, man, nah. He's like, this is what this is about. They're trying to kill us off and all that. So to your point, and I think this helps me be my explanation earlier, because, again, in today's culture, we're used to Jewish people looking white and that they, you know, somehow they're European descent, but we're not used to Muslim people looking white. But here was an example of, like you said, Islam also migrated into Europe over the last thousand years, just like the other religions, like Christianity and Judaism. But like you said, during our lifetime, me and you, there was an effort made in Yugoslavia, the Balkans, all that, to exterminate the remaining remnants of Muslim faith. And it didn't work. Because when I was on a different trip and I went to Turkey and the Greek Islands and all that, I looked up, I was curious.
Eastern Europe, like Bulgaria, Romania, still have, like, 50% of the population is Muslim. So I was surprised. I was like, oh, okay. I didn't realize there was that much still Muslim kind of influence in Europe, in Eastern Europe. So, again, and if you look at history, it makes sense. The Ottoman Empire stretched all the way to Hungary.
[00:32:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:27] Speaker B: So it makes sense that there were Muslims even after the Ottoman Empire fell, that people stayed there. Right. People lived there that were Muslims. So I think, you know, that's why, to me, they did. Just to round it out, I know we got to wrap up. The history of Jews in Africa was an interesting topic to discuss. Because it's not something people normally think about in today's world. But just like I didn't think about Muslim people in Indonesia who are Asian. And I think that's where we come to the question, are things like Judaism, are they a religion where anybody can be a part of it, or is it what the Nazis said, that is, are these things a race?
And I tend to think they're religions. I don't think that people are racist in terms of ideas are races and religious ideas, but other people don't. And that's where they get hostile. If you try and include people that don't, quote, unquote, look like how you think they're supposed to look into a
[00:33:17] Speaker A: conversation, which should be noted, is separate than the hostility. Because there's other people that have a problem with other religions, like, hey, I don't like your God, so I'm gonna, you know, do something bad to you. So there's that. And then there's also this expectation of what my religion or this other religion is supposed to look like, which gets into your conversation as far as the. That goes. And so, I mean, and to me, I always, like, I recognize a lot of these things from the standpoint of, okay, I get it, you know, from a human standpoint, and that these disputes have been going on a really long time. But the part about it. And then we can end. I mean, I know we wanted to get out of this conversation, but the part about it that blows my mind, though, is the level of overlap between the Abrahamic religions and the fact that so much, though, is made.
It's almost like these religions, while they have. There are things about them that really do good things for people in many respects.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: There.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: There are. They're in. There are a lot of times there, it seems like they're in place only to give people things to argue about. And again, that setting aside that the good. It does a lot of good for a lot of people, but it's like, well, we need something to argue about, you know, so it's like, okay, we'll argue. What can we argue about? Okay, well, you know, like, I know that, you know, our religions all originate in the same place, but we'll argue about this piece and we'll argue about that piece. And we see this in the actual religions too, when in Christianity, in Islam, you got the different sects, and it's
[00:34:43] Speaker B: like, think about the Catholics versus Protestants versus Europeans. There's a bunch of different Protestants in England.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: No, seriously, it's like it almost becomes. And then race Becomes one of these things. Once kind of the race idea was invented, you know, more towards, you know, and more, you know, last 500 years or so, where it's like, okay, yeah, we need more stuff to argue about, more stuff. More things to say, hey, that guy's different, so let me take his stuff. Or, you know, anything like that. And so sometimes I just wonder where the cart and where the horse horses. You know, like, religion predates that, so to speak. But it seems like right after there was a faith, then probably the next day somebody was like, hey, we can use this.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: I agree with you.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: To make people argue with each other and then while they're arguing, take their stuff, you know, so it's funny, James,
[00:35:29] Speaker B: because it's funny you say. Because I'm thinking in my lifetime, right, I'm old enough. I'm 48. I'm not that old, but I'm old enough to remember the Irish Republican army in the 1980s, still bombing places in England because the Catholics and the Protestants, this kind of holdover of these fights. And then we got, like you said earlier, Shia and Sunni Islam. How many people have died from that, Those fights? And this is just a disagreement about who was the descendant of Muhammad, whether it was.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: See. But no, this is my point.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: Son Ali or his nephew or something like that.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: This is my point, though. My point is that if it wasn't that, it'd be something. Something else. Like. That's just.
[00:36:06] Speaker B: That's my point. Yeah, exactly.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: But it seems like people are just looking for stuff to just disagreeable people, at least.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: Oh, you're right.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: You know, I think so.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Now we got.
[00:36:15] Speaker A: Now we got these.
We got. That are generally. There are just people out there that are just generally disagreeable. There are people who can cooperate and there's people who can't cooperate and have to impose their will, you know, and that's just. And the cooperatives have to work together to get around those other people, because otherwise those other people.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: Arguing and fighting all the time.
[00:36:32] Speaker B: I'm just. My last joke will be. And now we got the Internet it.
So it's going to be a lot more complicated.
[00:36:38] Speaker A: The. The people their way on. Other people have the upper hand right now for sure.
So. But I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call. Like, I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Till next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:36:54] Speaker B: I'm Tunde.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk.
