Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we take a look at the 2016 documentary entitled I am not your Negro, which features commentary and work from one of America's intellectual giants, James Baldwin. And it also features Baldwin quite prominently as well in terms of archival footage.
And in part two, we're going to consider the paradoxical way that american society approaches the idea of stay at home parenting.
Hello.
Welcome to the call like I see it podcast. I'm James Keyes, and riding shotgun with me today is a man who's at his best when he podcasts at a very deliberate pace. Tunde Ogun, Lana Tunde. You ready to take this nice and slow?
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Only when it's deliberate.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: All right. All right.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: If it's accidental, it's going to be fast and slow.
That's for another show, I guess.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Right now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, we'd ask that you ask that you please hit subscribe on your podcast platform on YouTube. Like it. And, you know, that really helps us get in front of more people.
Now, we're recording this on February 13, 2024. And Tunday, although James Baldwin passed away in 1987, Raoul pecks documentary, I am not your negro, did a great job of bringing some of Baldwin's writing and commentary to us in a way that really showed how relevant this stuff still was today in american culture. So we're not going to cover the entire video, but the first thing from the video I wanted to hit today were Baldwin's thoughts on America's heroes. And, you know, how America's he, who America's heroes were and how they approached things and how he saw himself either fit into that or more prominently fit out of that. So what were your thoughts? What stood out to you in that, in terms of his thoughts on, on America's heroes and what America really holds on a pedestal.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Let me just say this. That documentary was profound.
And to your point, it was made in 2016. It's absolutely relevant today. And it appears to me to be relevant throughout this story of american history.
And I would say this with a smile. Let's hope it's less relevant in the future, you know, in decades to come, for future generations.
So just, but to answer specifically on the part where he discusses America's heroes, that was interesting. It was profound for me because it was the first time that I looked at my own experience as a child in our country and our culture. And the way James Baldwin, especially for the listeners who may not be and viewers who may not be as familiar, he's extremely eloquent. So the way he speaks sometimes just allows your mind to actually visualize certain things.
What he said when he was, what he realized as a child when he was watching the Lone Ranger. And I'm thinking about movies like John Wayne and the old westerns, and this is what I related to, is when I was a little boy, five, six, seven years old, I thought all that not only was cool, but I thought that I was also on the side of the good guys. Meaning the cowboy or the Lone Ranger type.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: Yeah, the hero.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: And the hero, as we know now as adults, in accordance with the culture of things like manifest destiny, in the way that some Americans view their right or their ability to go ahead and dominate others on this land. Let's say what he spoke to is at some point realizing that they were actually coming after the people like him and meaning the Lone ranger or the cowboys. Right. It was. And I think that's something that he said for. And I hate to talk like this. Right. But it's true. Like, for all non white american kids growing up here, at some point you realize that the story about the heroes in american history generally do not include people that look like you. And that's a narrative that I realized that I'm preparing for the date. I was reminded when I thought about John Wayne, about when we did the show about black cowboys, and that in the late 18 hundreds, about 25% of all cowboys were black. And then the facts that have come out that the Lone Ranger character was based on a black lawman from 1848 named Bass Reeves. So, again, it kind of reminds me of this constant influx of mixed emotions and confusions that we have as Americans, where you and I were born and grew up in a time where the american culture had been indoctrinated to erase people like us out of the story historically. But when you look at the story of american history, actually, we're included in there. And so this is the battle we're fighting today with all the textbooks in school and the talks about CRT and all that is who's going to control the narrative of this country's history. And I think that's what Baldwin, I think, eloquently pointed out when he talked about America's heroes.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Well, yeah, he talked about how it's a shock to the system in terms of where you now, you know. And again, I thought you did a good job of kind of laying the groundwork for that, like, where you fit in. Do you have a place in this society? And I was really interested in the way he described the behaviors. And so, you know, he looked at. And he said this specifically, he didn't look at someone like Uncle Tom as a hero, you know, from the stories of Uncle Tom's cabinets before, but just Uncle Tom, he didn't look at that, at that person as a hero because that person didn't take vengeance in his own hands. What he admired about the heroes, America's heroes, was that they took vengeance in their own hands and that they behaved as if vengeance was theirs to take. And what he realized is that that kind of mindset and behavior, though, in american culture, wasn't acceptable by it, by people that looked like him. You know, James Baldwin being a black man like that, when if a black person says, give me liberty or give me death, that's seen as a threat. He's seen as a criminal in terms of the overall larger society. And so I thought that was really insightful in terms of this and in putting it into showing the contrast from when he viewed it as a child versus what he realized as he got older, he shows how this creates this discomfort within a person. You know, it's saying, okay, well, you grew up thinking one way, and if it is presented to you in one way, and then you later on realize, like, well, hold on, this actually isn't really talking about me or this isn't really something that if I try to, if I emulate this, you know, become heroic, then I'm not going to be treated as a hero. I'm going to be treated as a villain or as someone who needs to be put down and so forth. So I thought that it was just very insightful in kind of the insidious way the, that the culture that we're in can kind of creep in and change how you or affect how you view yourself. And, you know, and so that's looking at it, you know, from James Baldwin, a black man looking at himself as a black man. And, you know, he even talked about how, you know, when, and this is, you know, a point that's been made, but just, you know, you're born, you see certain faces and so forth. And, like, in this culture, exactly where do you see where you fit in? And when you do see that, do you see yourself fit in as part of the, the positive aspects of the culture or part of the negative aspects, that the persecuted aspects of the culture?
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think it's interesting we landed on something similar as we were preparing without talking about it, because I actually wrote down that quote that he mentioned about vengeance. He says, quote, theirs was vengeance to take. And I understood that my countrymen were my enemy, and I found that pretty profound, especially back then. I mean, I want to be very clear for anyone watching and listening now.
I'm not, and I'm going to speak for you here, not advocating that white Americans are our enemy or anything like.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: That, but neither was Baldwin, actually.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: You know.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I think it's worth saying. It's worth saying definitely what you're saying, but it's also worth saying that he wasn't saying this in a position like he was talking about, again, like, an introspective aspect, like, the process you go to. Like, he specifically said that he's not a. He didn't want to go with the black Panthers because he didn't think white people were devils. You know, like, he.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: No, I know. But I think it's important to. To point out just the historical time and the difference. Meaning he was born during the height of Jim Crow segregation in 1924. I mean, this is when the country really went backwards from the whole reconstruction. I mean, that's a generation after, you know, that period of time. Right. And here's a man who was the grandson of a slave. So, again, this is. James Baldwin will be 100 years old today, or if he was alive this year. And so it tells us how close we are still to this history, that technically, someone else who's 100 years old today, which there are people alive that are that old in our society, may have been the sons or, sorry, grandsons or granddaughters of slaves or slave owners. And this is.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: But more particularly to his perspective on this, he came of age in a time during where the civil rights movement was picking up, you know, and so coming of age during that time, he's literally seeing people say, hey, give me voting rights or give me the opportunity to go to the legitimate schools. And them being targeted, them being targeted for murder or brutality or arrested and everything like that. And so, in his perspective, he saw people standing up saying, give me liberty, not even trying to take vengeance, but just saying, hey, you know, recognize me, and them being treated as a criminal. And so, like. So from his perspective, that that was what he saw. And.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Well, go ahead. Sorry.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: No, I was gonna say, so you can understand where he's coming from without saying, okay, well, that's exactly where we are now. You can see the echoes of that. But it's not necessarily to say that this perspective is the only perspective, but it's an insightful perspective. And that's why, you know, I wanted to make sure we touched on this. I do want to keep it moving. You had one more thing.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. No, because I think on your point about the kind of, you said this before many different times in different ways, you know, people seem to judge the actors and not the actions. And it's so, that's why I say it's so apropos to our culture today and our inability to deal with just ourselves as Americans together. Right? This racial history, this cultural history. So what I'm getting at is you say it right. If black Americans say give me liberty or give me death, that's seen as a direct threat by many white Americans. And that's a shame, you know, because we're all in this together. So that's why I say if you fast forward from his era to 2020, it was a good contrast where in the summer of 2020 we had the BLM marches and that kind of energy, and half the country responded hostility to that and was very fearful and scared. Then six months later, on January 6, we have then energy from kind of the other side of the culture, right?
Anxiety of the white American because of how the country's change and being led by leaders who are telling them how bad that is and pushing things like the great replacement theory and fears like that. And so that's why I say, like, we're in the height of this right now. And what, Baldwin and what the, what the, this part of the documentary in this conversation, I mean, really brought it out in a way that, again, I only feel that one can deny this if they really just don't want to see it. And because this is part of who we are as Americans. It's undeniable.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's been a part of who we are as Americans. I mean, that's part of the american culture. And. Baldwin one of his defining kind of thoughts is that how Americans deal with these issues ultimately and over the course of time will determine America's ultimate trajectory and where America ends up because there's this dissonance that's involved in a lot of the principles that we hold dear and in terms of how we want to behave, how we see ourselves versus how we actually behave. And so until that can be resolved in a way, it can't be resolved perpetually based on delusion. And so, but again, to keep us moving, I don't want to get too bogged down in that because, again, I mean, the documentary is something we definitely recommend. You see, it's really, this is more just commenting on aspects of it that really stood out and how that may connect to either historical United States or America. You know, United States in today's era.
One thing that Baldwin also discussed and kind of along the same lines of how these cultural aspects are going to define in many respects America's ultimate trajectory was how hate and the documentary did a great job of showing a lot of images of, you know, real images from the time period of how hate was such a big part of America when you're talking about school segregation and people saying, you know, demonstrating, putting it on the line to, to maintain segregation, you know, and so forth. But how hate affects the hater. And, you know, I want to know kind of just your reaction to that in terms of the way Baldwin articulated or just more generally on, you know, how that affects american culture, because american culture does have elements of it that are defined in many respects by hate for other Americans.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, this is where it really gets fascinating in terms of the irrationality of all of it and what makes it so human.
Obviously, as Americans, we're not unique to having, you know, culture wars and, you know, racism and xenophobia and sexism or whatever you want to isms and the way people will divide themselves. Right. We've seen this in world history time and again.
But I think America is special. I don't know about unique because I don't know every other country's founding stuff, but we're special in the sense that we have these two competing kind of realities. Right? We have this idea of the Bill of rights, all men are created equal, we the people, that kind of stuff.
And then we do have a history of white supremacy. And I don't say that as an attack on anyone. I say that with legitimate, legitimate historical reference. Right. We've talked about all this stuff. Look at Alexander Stevens speech. Yeah.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: To be honest, if someone receives that as an attack, I think that says more about them than anything because, I mean, that's, yeah.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: As you, as you, unfortunately, we have a lot of fellow Americans that I'm sure would be, if they saw this, would be very offended by this conversation.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: Well, but that's actually a part of where we're going with this, though, is that. Go ahead.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: But, so that's what I'm saying is that the one side is the beauty of the founding father's ideas, their words, the Constitution, the idea that we all are in a society that was an experiment from those escaping persecution in Europe, from monarchs and authoritarians and an authoritarian religious state, which was the Vatican and the Catholic Church, which suppressed religious refugees that came here, so on and so forth. So we have like that one side of our history, which is beautiful and awesome, right? This was a land of people that wanted to do something for themselves and have a better life and have freedom of religion and freedom of thought. But we can't forget that they did that on the back of clearing out the indigenous people that were here. And then, as I use the term, harvesting Africans from Africa to come here and work as slaves. And Baldwins documentary did a good job of alluding to the fact that there were a lot of white slaves too, at the beginning of the colonization. Because, remember, before Australia, England actually sent a lot of its undesirables here to the United States, and they were either slaves or indents in service. So again, we don't get that history a lot. So the idea is that somewhere along the history, there was this fragmentation, where there's a group of Americans that believed that their ancestors were given this land, and the rest of us weren't really invited in. We were brought in for certain services and to do things, but we're not really part of the actual fabric of this country.
And then there's again, the other part of our culture, which is the bill of rights and saying that, no, all men are created equal. And all that brings in all these other conversations, including like, are you and I considered men, you know, as part of that discussion? So again, until we really sit down as adults and have this conversation as Americans and get past it, then, you know, I see this happening every generation or two, that these things flare up.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Well, and I think the issue is that a lot of everyone's not like in past times. I think people were more open in terms of where they stood on this. Like right now, people, everyone for the most part, seems to hold up something like the constitution or the bill of rights and say, yeah, we're all in on this. It was past. In the past, it was easier to see the people who said, no, no, no, this is only for certain people because they would say it out loud, they would say what they mean when they're in politics or wherever they were. But beyond that, the thing that I think the Baldwin's most insightful piece on this was how the effort it takes to deny the humanity, in this case to blacks for portions of the american public, the effort it takes for them to deny the humanity of blacks turns them. They have to, it doesn't turn them, they have to turn themselves into what ultimately is a moral monster. You extrapolate that out from that and that it becomes hard then within your, if you're going to turn off and say, okay, it's okay to take this person, you know, in my land of law, you know, rule of law and all that stuff. I'm going to take this person, go up to their house and kill them, or I'm going to go take them and I'm going to get a crowd together and we're going to hang them from a tree to the, to the ability to turn off a sense of morality towards that.
It becomes difficult to toggle that back on and off, you know, in other areas of your life. And so basically what you have, like the hater, the person who is going to build out their world, their, their reality, on the idea that we're going to segment it. Okay, well, here is where we're going to have compassion. Here's where we're going to employ brutality, you know, without any force, that those are hard barriers to keep in one's own mind and kind of just in their own system. And so what you end up seeing is that in other aspects of american culture, sometimes we have become very like, we become closed off to the suffering of others, you know, to the suffering of others that are in close proximity to us. And one of the ways this stands out to me is that in many countries around the world, that wealthy countries around the world, they're able to deal with issues that they have, collective issues that they have, whether it be healthcare, whether it be all these other types of things, they're able to discuss them and deal with them in ways that aren't just, let's just let everybody go and people die on the street then fine type of thing. And in America, we're very well able to turn a blind eye to the hurt and suffering of others. Even if, like, even in situations where it wouldn't cost us more money to try to address the harm and suffering that other people are going through, even if it's not costing us more money, we're still, we can ideologically say, no, no, we're just not going to do that, even if it costs us less than what we're paying now. And so to me, that is really, it's a really interesting thing to wear. Like, okay, if you're, if part of my defining kind of approach, defining ideology is about denying humanity to some others, that doesn't just stay siloed in that one piece, it starts to pull out in other areas. And so to me, I was just blown away by that as an observation.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: Yeah, well, now you sounding like some squishy dude trying to remind everybody that it's their fault for someone else's suffering. And, you know, you're not gonna be welcome to the dinner party. Come on.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: I'm looking at this in the abstract more than anything, because, like, that is, you know, something that you ask yourself, like, well, how are other. Why does America spend more on healthcare than anyone else and get middling results compared to everyone else? Like, that doesn't seem right. That's like, hey, we spend more. If we spend more on something, you would think we get better results. But with the way we spend, it isn't designed really to give the good results because we're able to kind of turn off our minds and say, okay, yeah, we're fine. We'll spend, you know, we're fine with the money being spent, but we don't actually want to address the problem. And that is mind boggling to me.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: Well, I mean, I think, you know, there's a lot going on there, right? Because I think one of the great unfortunate things that's come out of this, and again, we see it kind of creep up from time to time, is the way that, you know, I would say the divide and conquer by some in this country. And this is where, you know, I'm not a conspiracy guy, but I do believe that power and money find each other over time. And money helps to maintain power. And power wants to always stay in power. Right? Those who are powerful don't want to, don't want to give it up.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: So you're not wrong, but what I'm saying is that that is the weakness that then this money and power exploit.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Oh, that's where I'm going with it.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: Because it's illogical.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Is that you would ever want to spend more on something and get less results, but, well, you have this ability.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: To understand how to manipulate a certain base of Americans into feeling insecure that their station or their perceived position in this country is at risk. And I'm saying that very carefully.
Where I'm getting at is. So, for example, we would, like you said about healthcare, right?
I think if we took a time machine to 30 years ago, let's say 1994, and you were to ask Americans, hey, you know, in 30 years, there's gonna be, you know, 6700 deaths from mass shootings every year in this country, do you think, like, the government would do anything or people would care about it? I'm sure most Americans, 90%, will say, yeah, I can't, you know, there's no way that would be allowed to happen, and we don't do anything. And now here we are. And every time it's discussed, it's like pulling teeth. And so there's been documented studies on this where, for example, there's some people that just believe that they need their weapons to protect them from the other savages in their society, right? There's people that have been asked and studied that they feel like if they accept something like universal health care, and I'm not advocating that that's a great idea or not. I'm just saying that a lot of people don't understand why the United States, compared to other first world nations, has such a difficult time getting some of these things done. And a lot of time is because our culture and our mentality has developed around the zero sum game. Well, if I give you this, somehow I'm going to, it's taken away from me and my, my perch on this.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: Society, not just that, man. So it's not just that. Remember, remember, this is the mentality that would lead people in primarily the south, but in other areas of the country as well. Once they were no longer allowed to keep pools segregated, they would rather fill in the pool. There's no zero sum aspect of that. That's just, look, that, that is you becoming a moral, a person becoming a more monster. Look, I would rather my kids not be able to swim then just to swim in a place where it is integrated or other kids be, even if my goal, I don't want it available to anyone if it's not going to be something that's segregated. So I think that's just that those are the knots kind of you have to tie yourself into if you're going to say, okay, I'm going to see these human beings. You know, again, it's not like it's almost these human beings. And I'm going to make it my point, though, to deny them humanity. It's, it affects you in other ways beyond just the direct line of hate that you have there. And so I think that that really is, to me, the biggest aspect of that.
I do, you know, I want, I do want to keep moving. The last piece we wanted to discuss and, you know, it was, it dealt with Baldwin. The documentary starts. Baldwin is, is talking about, he's in Paris at the time and, you know, in which, you know, he had lived at various points in Europe and talking about how he needs to come back and, you know, come back to America because, you know, what's going on in civil rights movement and so forth. But the way Baldwin viewed his own role and, you know, this was something that he struggled it appeared that he struggled with a little bit is that he wasn't an actor in the civil rights movement, but as a witness. So his job was to be there, see what was happening, and actually then present that information out either, you know, through argument or through, you know, he wasn't a newscaster, but, you know, like, explaining why this stuff matters or why this stuff is going on. And I found it to be a really interesting. Well, you and I, you know, when we talked about this, we found it to be a really interesting kind of mindset because part of the documentary talked about his friendship with. With figures like Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King and how those guys were actors, those guys were activists. And. But Baldwin, while he could be right there with them, that wasn't his role, but one as a witness, you know. And so what did you make of Baldwin? You know, kind of recognizing his role in the civil rights movement as not one of a demonstrator or, you know, an actor, so to speak, but more of a witness. And, you know, I guess the tie into that is that we're talking about a documentary now that, you know, is based on his writings that, you know, gets into the civil rights movement and the struggles America has with this issue.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's good reminder of that period of time and just, and again, how vast our country is, right. When it shows him going down to Mississippi. I mean, it's like a whole different world than the world he knows in Harlem. Right. Two dynamically different worlds. However, it speaks to, like I mentioned earlier in discussion, again, a lot of history that we don't speak in America, right? Like most black Americans, originate from the south somewhere. So James Baldwin was no different. He's born in Harlem, but his father migrated from the deep south in 1919 during the great migration to escape the terrorism from, you know, the pushback against the successes of reconstruction in the prior generation. So, again, you can't really get into american history without understanding these periods of time that led to such change and, you know, and get us where we are today. I had a fun little joke that I realized while I was prepping, because he, during the civil rights era, the three main figures that are followed that he also. That James Baldwin also had some sort of personal connection with was Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. And I realized they all start with m. So that's my conspiracy theory.
There's a company in the Dow Jones called three M. Think about that. Three m. And then I wanted to see. And check this out.
The letter Q is nine letters away from Z, and my wife's name starts with a z, and three times three is nine. Man, I'm. You don't think that's a different show?
[00:28:00] Speaker A: I'm with you, man. Hey, this is probably great for the algorithm, right?
[00:28:06] Speaker B: I didn't think of that one, but, yeah, I just gotta say QQQ enough and the algorithm will get it.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: Oh, hold on. I just said QQQ is the famous NAsdaq 100 index, so, I mean. All right, we're about to go in a whole nother direction. So anyway. But.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I think. Crazy. Like a fox.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: No, that was just crazy. There was no fox in there.
That was just a stupid joke that went a little too far. But on a serious note. So the documentary did focus on some interesting things. I mean, one was that, again, like you said earlier, about if a black man says, give me liberty or give me death, whether literally or figuratively, James Baldwin is seen today. There are those that can credibly argue that he might have been the greatest intellectual laureate and literary kind of guy in the second half of the 20th century in the United States, and compare him to Hemingway and people like that, but because he was sympathetic to the civil rights movement, had friends like Malcolm X and Mega Evers and Martin Luther King, and was an eloquent writer that traveled around Europe advocating for civil rights and equality in the United States. He was seen as a threat by our deep state. Right. The real one, the J. Edgar Hoover FBI. And I remember I wrote down something that the. The FBI had a file on him, and they considered him a dangerous individual, and his name was added to the security index. And what was interesting, and one of the reasons why they considered him dangerous was because he was a writer, so he was eloquent. And the fact that he had frequented Europe, and again, it goes back to the mindset of an. Any authoritarian that once there's somebody in that, they feel that should be under their control, that might have escaped the barn, so to speak, and has seen something else that becomes a huge threat. Because the fact that Baldwin had been to Paris and Switzerland and all these countries, what they understood is he's being exposed to the way that the world could be over here, that there's no. Those countries aren't segregated like we are in this and that.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: And the world didn't end, you know, and people are just exactly.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: And so. And so they actually use the power of the state. I mean, this is why, again, some of these arguments today are so, you know, just offensive. To be honest with you, when you hear them about how the state is being weaponized because some company is asking someone not to be a bigot and people cry about freedom of speech. This is an example of a man, along with the other three M's, we mentioned, Martin, Medgar, Malcolm, who were targeted by their government and by the intelligence apparatus.
And at the end of the day, it's unfortunate because three out of those four men were assassinated in that decade.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: All before they progressed the age of.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: 40, you know, which progress was still not stopped. And so that's why it's sad that we have this energy that continues to creep up in our country that, in my opinion, holds us back from getting over this, that there's people that want.
[00:31:22] Speaker A: To get over this. It wants to re litigate. This is what it seems like. And I mean, just real quick to comment, because you mentioned the deep state, and I think this gets confused a lot. That really was a deep state because what J. Edgar Hoover and what the FBI was doing was not that what they were. What people call out as the deep state today is actually what they're calling out there is people who have loyalty to the constitution above any man or party, which is actually what we want. We want our government officials. They take an oath. We want them to be loyal to the constitution, not to a man or to a political party. So that's actually, if that is what people are calling a de state, which, again, that's how it's being used right now. That's actually a positive. We don't want them putting their loyalties to men above the loyalty to the constitution. But what we're talking about here, when you're talking about a real deep state in the 1960s and what J. Edgar Hoover was doing, he wasn't serving the constitution then. He was going well beyond the law to do things what he thought was necessary in order to preserve the existing status quo, the existing hierarchical order. And so that's a deep state because, as you point out, he's using the power of the government not because someone is in violation of the Constitution. The Constitution says you have the right to vote in the 15th amendment, but in order to, because they're trying to fight for that constitutional right, he then uses the power of the government to try to put them down. So that's a deep state. And from a negative connotation, a deep state is. From a negative connotation is not, oh, I'm loyal to the Constitution again, that's how all of our government officials should be. That's the oath they take. But getting to Baldwin, I think it's important to recognize, like, I think it's important that he recognized his role as an intellectual and someone who like his job while he was. And he talked about how the line between a witness and an actor is a thin one in many respects when he's riding around in the cars with, you know, whether it be, you know, with medgar evers through the south or with, you know, when he's, you know, at whatever, you know, event and, you know. But his job is to observe, not necessarily to be on the front line, but his job was then to experience that stuff, to see it, to contemplate on it, to then write about it, you know, again, this documentary is based on his writings, but also even in contemporary times. And there's footage in the, in the film going, him going on talk shows and actually articulating what's happening because we talk about, you know, all this stuff we talk about. It's not all of white America that's on one side and then all of black America on the other side. There are many Americans who are, who support or at least aren't opposed to the idea of equality. But what needs to happen a lot of times is that those Americans who either support or aren't opposed to equality, oftentimes it's hard to get them off the couch. They're just, they'll sit on the sidelines. Because the Americans that are really for segregation or for really for a hierarchical order, those people are motivated. They stay motivated all the time. They're out with their signs saying, you know, no race mixing, and they're out. They're out. You know, they're not just sitting on the couch. So part of the job of the witness, of the intellectual is in this. The news media played a role in this in the sixties, once they start putting video cameras on to what was happening and is to show all of the Americans who are okay with equality but sitting on the couch that aren't, you know, up, up, up in arms, trying to make the reality happen, to show them what's happening so that public sentiment can be changed towards, like, well, hold on. You know, why, why do, are we turning fire hoses on kids or sicking dogs on these people who are trying to vote? You know? And so I think that him recognizing his role in that was very important and something that we bear fruit from today, because, again, we're now able to look back at history and say, okay, well, here's what was going on and here's what an intellectuals point of view, was in something like this, and some of the insightful things that he brought to us. And further, then we can further that and say, okay, well, here's our thoughts on this, or other people can the next generation and the generation after that can digest it and continue the kind of the intellectual approach and then also the demonstrative approach to bring the country towards what it says in its founding documents, at least, that it wants to be.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and it's interesting because, as a witness, they pointed out in the documentary that he was not a member of the NAACP, he wasn't a member of SNCC, he wasn't a member of the Nation of Islam, he wasn't a member of the Black Panthers.
So he was really a literary commentator of his time. So the fact he didn't commit himself, let's just say it that way, it's interesting. It's kind of like in the 48 laws, you know, the last law is formlessness, and try to not, you know, just try and be formless and move through all these different maybe, you know, parts of our reality and our culture. And I think he did a good job of behaving that way, and I think that helped him maintain that kind of witness status, that he could really observe all these different goings on. Because you make a good point that obviously, white Americans aren't all a monolith. Black Americans aren't. So even the groups I named, look at how different the NAACP was to the Nation of Islam, to the Black Panther party. Just different makeup of people and how they thought that whatever ideas they thought were that they wanted to support in dealing with the civil rights in that era.
But then there's another that comes out as. And we've had this conversation. I want to throw it back to you for your thoughts, which, in terms of being the witness, the importance of technology, because.
And the importance of images, I think, for all of us as humans, I mean, just like we've done conversations where, you know, the border is in crisis right now as we speak in early 2024.
But there's been images of people crossing the border, even when the numbers were much less ten years ago, that had many Americans on edge. And so images are important. And so one of the great things I feel the documentary did was give us images from the civil rights era, the protests, the marches. Then fast forward that to, like, what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, back in the last decade, and images from the way the police appeared, the way the crowd appeared. And you really can see that, obviously, a lot has changed, but there's a lot that hasn't changed as well since in those decades in between. And so that's what I wanted to have, like, throw it back to you to speak on is what do you think the influence of things like the television in the 1960s did to not only allow Baldwin to be a bigger witness, because I know he did go down to Mississippi and he was involved, but also for the rest of the country to be a witness to what's going on down there.
[00:37:56] Speaker A: It corroborated it. And then, as you said, visually is more powerful. So he could go on to all the talk shows in the world, world and say, hey, here's what's happening. Here's what, you know, here's the problem, yada, yada, yada. But without a visual component to that, it's just going to be limited in terms of people's imaginations. It's going to be hard for them to believe, if they live a good life and they don't see this stuff happening, that it actually is. And that change may be needed in terms of how we're approaching things. So I think the television was very important about corroborating this, but it's also still helpful for us to this day. Like when I watch the documentary, the images affect me. When I see, for example, the school kids that are being led by federal troops to go to school and all of the people, the mob outside that's spitting on them and trying to intimidate these little kids and stop them from going to school, it's like, oh, yeah, there is an element here that, and this element still exists that is, that will violently oppose the, the present, the move of the country in a direction that they don't want. You know, and we, like you pointed out January 6, like we've seen, there is an element that will, let's say, hey, violence is the answer for this. And so seeing those images on one hand, it's like, okay, well, you know, this is that this is the country. This is part of the country. And when you have a open society, so to speak, you can't say, okay, well, these elements will just be gone. But it also does remind me that at that time, it was, it was the power of the federal government that was saying, no, no, this is what's going to happen. And these places went into these, these troops and they were ordered into places in the south to actually push this stuff through. And so on one hand, it can be shocking to be like, man, this is, this is crazy that people had to live through this and had to go through this. But on the other hand, it's like, okay, well, but there is someone there that is pushing this along, you know, someone that the establishment, so to speak, at that time, is pushing that along. So the images and then the way media was able to capture live video starting at that time helps inform, helped inform the time for the people at that time. But it also helps inform us to this day.
[00:40:04] Speaker B: This is also, the documentary does a great job if you watch it closely for this, explaining without intentionally doing it. Even the cultural wars we see today, this is when a lot of Americans in the south especially began to have hostility more so to the federal government because they looked at the federal government as an outsider coming in, telling them how to live their life and run their way, that they, their culture. And again, I appreciate everyone's culture is important and all that, but they are upset because they were forced to stop oppressing people. And I think that's different than when you look at, you know, let's say, the energy of those who feel that they've been oppressed. And like you said, saying, give me liberty or give me death, you know, and I just think that that's something, again, we haven't recognized in this country. These people don't like the federal government because the federal government tried to enforce the constitution. And like you said, the 15th Amendment, they allow all Americans to vote. And that's intimidating for some people. Just like a pop star today in 2024 intimidates enough people that it becomes a political thing because she told people to go vote. So it's, it's, you know, I think.
[00:41:17] Speaker A: That just, I think that's an excellent point. There's one other thing I wanted to mention tying back into earlier in the conversation, and that is just the, we, it's, we've kicked it around or it's come up, mentioned kind of in passing a couple times in terms of the effort that we see right now to kind of prevent the teaching of the past, of parts of the past that people may consider that they don't, that they don't want to, whatever they consider, and they don't want their kids learning about it, they, it's going to make their kids feel ashamed and so forth. And in the context of the idea of denying humanity makes turn someone into a moral monster that makes a little bit more sense if you think about it from that standpoint, because if you learn that your ancestors were moral monsters, then that may make you feel a certain way. Now, that's not necessarily a reason to not learn that, because there. America is a country of different perspectives, and so you can't limit the perspective. Limiting perspective usually is harmful. You know, in any respects. You limit your perspective when you're driving. You only can look at three angles instead of four. That's unsafe driving. Limiting perspective is. Is not necessarily a good way to go through your life. And the. The idea that I don't want kids learning or, you know, different kids learning about the way previous generations denied humanity because of the way that'll make them feel has precedent in american society. I mean, this is the daughters of Confederacy all over. This is why there are people running around questioning why the Civil War. The Civil War wasn't about slavery, not the daughters of the Confederacy spent 50 years, 100 years after the Civil War trying to rewrite the history of the south and this history of the. To try to erase. You know, the idea that, as you pointed out, Alexander Stevens and Jefferson Davis were out there. Very explicit that.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: Who were too many people actually bragging.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: Yeah, they were very explicit about what the Civil War was about and why they were doing it, and it was about slavery.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: They seemed to be pretty proud of it. It just didn't work out.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: If you can find their writings today, they were very explicit that this is about slavery. This is about subjugating black people and elevating white people above them. Like, they were very explicit about that. That's what the civil war. Or that. Yeah, the civil war was about.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: That's why they left fascinated how people are offended by that today. Like, that's history.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: But, again, if that should be able to talk about it, but if that is evidence of that person as a moral monster, it makes more sense, is what I'm saying. But that. That in alone is not a reason to hide the history, because that only harms us all, because it limits our perspective. And people talk about, you know, your people who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it. Well, that's what you set yourself up for, because you would like to avoid some temporary discomfort, because part of growth, remember, is discomfort. And so you have to actually go through the discomfort piece in order to grow on the other side. And so, actually, the people who are trying to deny people the opportunity to learn things that might make them uncomfortable, actually, what they're doing is denying them the ability to grow.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: So we're screwed.
[00:44:13] Speaker A: And that's. That's gonna. That we all are affected by that.
[00:44:17] Speaker B: Between the Internet, ubereats, doordash, you know, everything else, we've got a lot of comfort.
[00:44:23] Speaker A: Yeah, we build it all out.
[00:44:26] Speaker B: Yeah, but I do. The idea of discomfort is becoming less and less palatable to most people.
[00:44:32] Speaker A: No, no. So, I mean, but I think we can wrap from there. We'll pick up part two of our discussion here after this.
Okay, coming back now. Our, part two of our discussion today. Tunde, you sent me a article that I found very fascinating and that you had pointed out, hey, this is something that we should do a talk on. And that was about how it's paradoxical in the way that America sees itself, its culture as one, where kids, it's great for kids to be, have a at home parent when, you know, they're young and so forth. But how all of our systems and all of our, none of our, none of the stuff that we do from a societal standpoint structurally is set up to support the idea of having a one parent at home. You know, assuming a two parent household, obviously, if you're talking one parent household, it's a completely different conversation. But just assuming a two parent household, which they still exist, there's very little support, structural support in terms of the ability to do that. And the piece goes into the many different ways that we're talking about because that could just be like, if you decide to become a stay at home parent, you know, either, you know, a father or a mother, then you actually, or no, you're not getting any benefit from a Social Security standpoint, from a disability standpoint, things that just, if you have any job, you, you're a part of. So just, you know, what, what stood out to you in this piece, you know, as far as the, the paradoxical way America does that. And just, we'll get into looking forward as well in terms of whether there are any types of solutions that were either were presented in the article or that you have as far as this. But just, you know, your general reaction.
[00:45:59] Speaker B: No, I mean, one of the reactions actions was actually learning that in 1934 when I guess the economists and the government were putting together the formulas to calculate what metrics would go into our statistics for GDP, gross domestic product, which is the output annually, economically of the United States, that they purposely left out homemaker responsibilities.
That I'm neutral on that.
It's interesting to learn that there was a conscious decision to say, hey, somebody who's performing labor at home is not going to be counted in terms of output in our statistics of economics or economic output. And just realizing through reading that, yeah, that has affected policy over the last, call it 90 years, literally, what doesn't.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: Get measured doesn't get.
[00:46:57] Speaker B: That's what I said. What doesn't get measured doesn't get attention. So the. The so. So that kind of was interesting to me, because the reason why this article was interesting to me is, you know, I'm married. You're married. Right. You got two kids? I got three kids. And I remember saying this to myself when I think my wife was out of town for, like, two or three days. And this is when I think my youngest was, like, I remember he was still in a car seat, so maybe he was two or 18 months. Hey, I was trying to run the business.
I'm sitting there driving around with his baby in the back, and, man, it was like, I was just thinking, every husband should be forced to spend a week without the wife in the house, and we'll all just appreciate, seriously, how much work it takes to just deal with little kids.
And I remember, luckily, during the pandemic, you know, our youngest kid was by then older. I mean, our older kids are already older, but I just felt for people, you know, I got friends that had, like, three and four year old kids trying to work remotely, and it was, like, impossible. Children need attention, and then houses need attention, you know, laundry, cleaning up, you know, around. You know, there's a lot of stuff. So I thought of it in reading the article that, you know, we have cleaning ladies that come to our house on a consistent basis, and I don't know what I spend. I mean, I would probably spend, you know, $3,000, $4,000 a year on them. And I just realized, yeah, there's a value, obviously, to making sure my house is clean. And so. And so, yeah, that's what I found interesting, is that the idea that our culture developed to not see homemaking and being an at home parent as actually being a part of, like, a responsible part of our. Of our. Of our economic activity.
[00:48:46] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, well, and it's. We have the categories, you know? And I don't want it. I don't say these in any type of detrimental way. Like, we know what it costs if you have whatever space there is. We know what it costs to deal with janitorial, you know, or to deal with. We know, with food kind of production and all that kind of stuff, like, all of the things that need to happen, like, just to maintain a house. And then, like you said, you add in the kids piece, it becomes now that childcare, you know, like, we know that that stuff has a legitimate market in the world, so to speak, so that it is left out. I mean, in large part, it looked to be that it was something that it was left out intentionally, you know, like from a misogynistic or just kind of a male hierarchy standpoint. Like, no, no, we don't want to assign a value to that because the people that are doing that, we don't want to assign per, necessarily value to those people. I think right now we can look at it with a little bit more of an open mind. Like that was the 1930s.
[00:49:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:42] Speaker A: To me, the disconnect between people who say it's very important, which I'm a person that agrees that raising kids is very important, and I want to look at it from that standpoint.
[00:49:52] Speaker B: You think so?
[00:49:55] Speaker A: That it's very important, but that we give no support to it. That to me is very curious. It seems like another delusion that we live with. And I'll talk just briefly about the James Baldwin documentary we just talked about, because I thought that was, there was a quote in there that was very interesting that can be applied to a lot of context. And that was just talking about, like, how delusion seems to be like, people can only deal with so much reality. And so there is a certain delusion that we're all comfortable with in terms of our day to day lives and what's going on around us. This seems to be another one of those where just there's this delusion that we're comfortable with in terms of, okay, we need to address childcare, but then we also need, in many respects, two earners in the house. And so therefore we need the, we need to outsource the childcare, so to speak. But then as a society, that's not something we're going to work on. Everybody's just on their own. And to me, that's just, if something's a priority, we think it's a priority that people can move goods and services around. So what do we do? We build a network of ropes. You know, they're everywhere. So if you think something's a priority, generally speaking, you want to devote resources to try to make it work in a more efficient and effective manner. This is an area we just don't do it, which is just, like I said, I don't know. I don't know why it's still to this day, that case. But I have some suggestions, but I want to kick it back to you.
[00:51:14] Speaker B: Well, I think we covered it a bit in the first half of this discussion, because to discuss that means you've got to discuss things like giving people some sort of handout, quote, unquote right. To help them with re ring their kids, which means you got to give it to everybody, which means that some Americans will say, well, I don't want my tax dollars going to those people. And so I think there is some basic stuff like that. I think other is cultural. There are some things that I found very interesting to learn, actually. One was, and when you think about it, it makes sense. Having one parent that stays at home at all times to take care of the kids or the house is actually pretty unusual by historical standards. They write, even in the United states in the 19th and early 20th centuries, they called it corporate families. Not that they were all corporation, but the idea, of course, when you're on a farm, which most Americans were prior to the 20th century, everybody was working.
[00:52:12] Speaker A: Yeah. In agrarian society, this is not a relevant consideration. But also in an agrarian society, by and large, there's not school and there's a whole bunch of things that we do present.
[00:52:22] Speaker B: I know, but if you think about it, too, from even in Europe and the immigrants in the early 20th century, I mean, you know, the whole idea of Ellis island and, you know, people moving to New York and they've got a little deli shop at the bottom and they live upstairs, and the kids would be working right like this. That's not abnormal. Now, the interesting thing is that it seems that the peak of one parent working household was in the year 1940, and it never exceeded 57% in the history of the United States of all households. So that tells us that we never got to even two thirds of all households having ever at least one parent staying at home. So I think there is, like you said about delusion. There is some delusion we have about our own nostalgia. Like, oh, somehow the fifties and sixties were so marvelous when you had this one parent, you know, staying at home, and it seems like that wasn't the case for the majority. And then, you know what I thought about this would be a loaded conversation in certain political corners.
The peak was in 1940. What else was going on in 1940?
[00:53:26] Speaker A: World War two.
[00:53:27] Speaker B: Yep. World War two was well underway.
We had a lot of government subsidies. You know, I mean, I know we say, I know we entered the war in 1941, after Pearl harbor, but we already had, like you're saying, probably about six, seven years of New Deal stuff. So you had. And then you had, going into the war, which, you know, the number was still elevated, you had things like rations and all that. So again, maybe it wasn't a direct subsidy from the government to help moms stay at home, to raise their kids and all that, but the idea of government subsidies and assistance and again, not advocating socialism, communism here, but just the facts that it's not, it doesn't seem to not correlate that within just years after the new Deal and making sure that Americans could get out of the depression that one of the benefits of that was more parents. You know, at least in this case, mostly mothers, I'm going to assume especially back then were able to stay home and care for their children. And, you know, it's a very pro life way to look at things if you think about it. I mean, these are values that I agree with. I think a mother should be at home and you shouldn't be putting, forced to put your kid in daycare when the kid's two months old. It's probably better for us to have at least one year guaranteed maternity leave for every mother. But again, most developed nations in the world have these kind of guardrails to protect families and the culture of raising a family and we don't. Yeah.
[00:55:00] Speaker A: And we shouldn't overlook, and the last point I'll make on this is just the nature of like one thing that two earners has had is it has, it's a, it's a boost to the economy. It's a boost to GDP. If, if in parent homemaking, so to speak, or one parent homemaking or one parent homemaking isn't going to be counted in GDP, then having two parents in the workforce is definitely going to boost economic output. You know, your, your, your economics are going to be seen as stronger and so forth. And then also you're going to consume more as well because you're then creating demand for more services. If both parents work, you're creating a demand for childcare. So there are certain incentives amongst the government actually that pushed the other way is like, actually, yeah, let's make both parents work. This will, you know, boost our economic numbers and so forth. And this will also boost economic activity, at least the kind that we're measuring. But is that necessarily giving us the best outcome? Not necessarily, because remember, the crazy thing about GDP is a hurricane coming through and knocking out, you know, half of the houses is going to boost GDP because they got to rebuild all that stuff. So that, but that doesn't leave you in a better place. That's you just spending money to get back to where you already were before. And a lot of times I think this issue with not having a society that at least gives people a legitimate pathway to do so without undermining themselves to do the one parent household, one parent in the household thing, without undermining themselves, is that we end up creating more economic activity. You know, but we don't necessarily. It doesn't move us ahead. We're creating more economic activity just to kind of bring us to the same point that we already were in. And that's the concern from my standpoint. These are higher, you know, higher minded.
[00:56:38] Speaker B: That's a great point because that's. I mean, we can finish on that. Basically, it's a, it's a even more robust way to go where I was at before because, you know, I've lived overseas and I've experienced this. I mean, it's interesting we, because you're so right, and I say this with all neutrality, like, we make choices here. We have chosen as a nation to put our GDP and our economic activity kind of on a higher mantle than the human activity and the human being's well being.
I just was in Italy and Greece, you know, a few months ago. I lived in Australia. I've been lot of places they have in those countries. They do like, give a year maternity leave, and by law, the employer has to keep the job open. Now, I don't know the details as to if the woman gets paid the whole year and all that, but at least it gives women a choice, right? And families a choice. There's better support, as we talked about in other discussions about healthcare options and all that. And the point I'm making is then, yeah, they pay like 50% taxes when they hit, you know, 200,000 in income. We don't. So that's what I mean by this is, I'm saying is very neutral. It's not a right or wrong. United States seems to be better. If you can figure out how to make money here and more money than you can pay for certain services yourself, United States is probably a more comfortable place to be because you can keep.
[00:58:00] Speaker A: More of it for yourself.
[00:58:00] Speaker B: You can keep more money. You can play the tax game. It's a great, we're in it together.
[00:58:04] Speaker A: Less we're in it than a lot of other places.
[00:58:07] Speaker B: America is a great place for the entrepreneur, the corporation, which is why the world's capital also trusts America for that. But if I'm, you know, a regular Joe earning the equivalent of $75,000 or less somewhere, it's probably better to be in the european environment or the canadian or the australian or something like that. Because most of those services that are needed during regular life, like healthcare, like education from k through university, like childcare, generally are either free or extremely subsidized. And they're very cheap.
[00:58:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:58:39] Speaker B: So again, one's better than the other. Well, but it's about being neutral. This, this is what it is.
[00:58:46] Speaker A: And the choices you can observe without necessarily like, and that's kind of the point of this conversation isn't actually to say what's better. Well, we can talk about what is. And, you know, like, interesting thing about that is that those are the societies now that have higher social mobility. And it would be, you would think because of factors like what you just talked about is that if you are in kind of in a middle class environment, you have access to reasonable access to a lot more things and a lot more ways to kind of build yourself up to maintain one, but also to build yourself up than you would in a country like this, where if you're in the middle, a lot of times you're going to be falling behind. And to me, yeah, I think that if we, I would like us to just be a little more honest with ourselves. Let's just stop talking about that. We care about the people in the middle and say, hey, we're a bank, a boomer bust society. You know, we, we're cool with, we want to set it up that if you make, if you, if you hit, you can hit higher here than anywhere else, our jackpots are bigger than everybody else. But, you know, if you're, if you're in the middle or if you're, you're kind of on the lower end, you know, like you're not, it's going to be a rough go for you. Let's just say that if that's what we're going to, if that's how we're going to approach it, you know, like the, the mythology that we build for ourselves, this delusion that we kind of build in for ourselves, I think is only harmful to us because we a lot of times will spend $3 to do something a certain way, that we could spend $1 doing it a different way. But we don't even recognize that. Like, that may be a decision we want to make, but let's at least consciously make that decision. If, you know, we're voting on it, we're doing all this other stuff, let's make that decision conscious, let's bring that into the open instead of having all this stuff under the surface and people just thinking that whatever way we do it is the only way that it could ever be done. So.
[01:00:27] Speaker B: Yeah, or we can just continue the way we are and I'll pay a lot less taxes, so I'll be selfish. There you go. There you go.
[01:00:38] Speaker A: So. But I do want to wrap from here. We do appreciate it, right. For joining us on this episode of call like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review us, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Until next time, I'm James Keys.
[01:00:48] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Oban. Lana.
[01:00:49] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
Un.
