Let’s Connect History, Truth and the Black Narrative with Dr. Marc Lamont Hill and Todd Brewster

Senator Turner, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill and Todd Brewster take a deep scenic dive into how history, the media and white supremacy has played a role in the intentional attempt to dehumanize Black people.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Turning, Turning Somebody. Welcome to Hello Somebody, a production of

(00:28):
The Black Effect Podcast Network and I Heart Media. Where
we rage against the machine, where we raise our voices
against injustice and stand up for justice. Where we embrace
hope and joy with an optimism for a bright or
more justus future. Each week I'll be dropping knowledge, whether

(00:48):
it's a solo episode from me or a hearty discussion
with esteem guests doing great things in spaces and places
of politics, entertainment, social justice, and beyond. We get real, baby,
I mean really real. We get honest, We get up
close and personal for you, yes, you, because everybody is Somebody.

(01:15):
Before we begin, I want to give a special shout
out to my team, Thank you, Sam, Tiffany, Sam and
the team over at Good Jujuic Studios, Erica England, Pepper Chambers,
the Hot One, and my social media team. Hello Somebody,
Welcome back. If you are tuning in for the first time,

(01:39):
welcome to the family. And if you are a longstanding
listener of Hello Somebody, I'm so glad you are back
here with me yet again. Now you know I get
excited every single week, and every single week I say
I got the best, the best the best, the best,
and this week is absolutely no exception. You know how
we roll. I'm kind of walk you through this before

(02:00):
or introduced my phenomenal guest, yes plural. I've got two
people rolling with me today, which we don't usually do,
but I'm glad we're doing it today. You're not gonna
wanna miss this. So I need you to call some
friends and some friend of mees and tell them to
go head on and tune in to Hello somebody. So
the power of social media, and I know many of
us use social media, maybe sometimes to our chagrin, but

(02:20):
that's another show the power of social media. Cell phones
and TV have played and will continue to play a
significant role in exposing truth. Sometimes have truths and miss truths,
but we're gonna just stick with truth right now. Like
the brutal and unjust treatment of black and brown communities
have suffered historically, we really are blessed in the twenty

(02:40):
one century to have more opportunities through technology to really
show what is happening in the world. And even with
all the technology, with our smartphones, we still do not
see nor do we know it all, but we know
that black and brown communities have suffered historically at the
hands of some law enforcement and we're talking about the
stomach failure intentional systems of oppression. But it's also given

(03:04):
us a sense of connection to what is happening in
our country and in our communities, sometimes in real time,
sometimes it's delayed, but thank God for this technology so
we can find out the camera does not lie and
basically giving us a new kind of voice. But one
swipe up on your smartphone, we can now fight for

(03:24):
each other, advocate for change around the world and in
our communities, and we can see any injustices. We also
see justice from time to time. Unbiased journalism, smartphones and
going live has put an indictment on the public and
those who lead this country. Everybody is on notice and
here to enlighten us about how media has shaped and

(03:47):
continues to shape the narrative on racial justice is the
one and only Dr. Mark Lamont Hill and the war
winning journalist Todd Brewster, the authors of the new really
released book Seen and Unseen and let me quote something
here quote. Hill and Brewster incisively explore how the present

(04:09):
moment connects to the history of race in America, as
well as what makes today different from previous civil rights moments.
Seen and Unseen provides the necessary tools to learn from
our current moment and push the social justice movement further.
In quote, Oh my god, doctor and Mr Brewster, It's

(04:32):
so wonderful to have you here to talk about this book.
I'm glad that I am among the first to interview
you about your wonderful book. Y'all gotta get it, get it,
get it hot off the presses. You must get it, baby,
Seen and Unseen. And so for listeners who might not
necessarily know you both kind of your your record and reputation,

(04:53):
Doc you have been rocking and speaking a certain type
of truth to power for a very long time. And
you host and some shows and have hosted many shows.
You've been on many a national TV. Uh in in
the classroom. You own a bookstore, which I did not
know that was new information for me. Come on, Uncle

(05:16):
Bobby's Uncle Bobby. So when I get to Philly, I
need to stop by Uncle Bobby's coffee and books. I
must absolutely do that. And then we have Mr Todd Brewster,
who is a veteran journalist and historians. I love me
a historian who has worked as an editor for Time
in Life and as a senior producer for ABC News.

(05:39):
Oh my god, you've done so much in your life
and you still got many more miles to go. But
you don't on the bookstore me either. When I grow up,
I want to be like Dr Leman Hill. The first
question I want to ask is how did you to
connect and why this topic? So you know, it's funny.
I've known Tied for out now about eight years, and

(06:03):
we first connected right after everything went down in Ferguson.
I was trying to figure out what was going on
in Ferguson, trying to make sense of it for a
book I was writing, and my current agent said, I
know a guy, represented guy who's brilliant. You two should
meet and just talk, and so tired and I sat
down and we had a great conversation and he gave

(06:26):
me some perspective on how to think about history. And
he ended up writing the foreword to Nobody, which was
a beautiful, beautiful forward, And I said, you know, I
love the way this guy writes, but I also loved
the way he thinks, and so I said, at some
point we gotta do something together, and you know, Nobody
came out sixteen. I did some other projects. He did

(06:46):
some other projects. He had a wonderful book called Lincoln's Gamble,
which again it's just tied as a way of writing
history that makes it accessible, understandable, but compelling like literature,
you know, you feel like you read the novel. And
so I was like, I need to learn how to
do that. I can't do what he does, but I
got my own thing, and maybe we could work it
out together. And so when the pandemic hit, it was like,
now it might be an interesting time for us to

(07:09):
think about something together. And after the death of George Floyd,
the murder of George Floyd, we said, how can we
use our tools together? You know, I spent a lot
of time on the ground in Ferguson. I's been a
decent amount of time studying the pandemic, and I wrote
a book. We're still here getting that the pandemic and
some of the protests stuff. I had a view going
this way left the right. People ain't watching, and I said,

(07:31):
but Tod has a deep sense of history. He can
help me understand this this way right. And so the
idea of technology in media and how the media plays
a role in shaping how we talk about and fight
for racial justice or something I want to talk about
in every way possible. And so me and Todd put
our heads together and said, I think this is the
book and this is the time. It's funny because Mark

(07:53):
Mark saying all that, if you go back to Ferguston,
it seemed to say, if that was the landmark moment,
and then we had so many more when Mark moment
since then, meeting up to what was just a crowning
landmark moment, and and and then you think to yourself,
well why, And that of course that's actually actually ends
up being the first word of our book is why, right,
I mean why was? Why did the death of George

(08:14):
Floyd change people more than all these successive deaths that
have been recorded up to that moment. We felt it
had something to do with the time, It had something
to do with the technology, It had something to do
with the steps getting there. I think that's what we
explore in here. You know, the scene and unseen references.
You can see a video over and over again, but

(08:36):
when does it have that kind of climactic effect upon you?
You know, when does that one? Does that one changed?
Where one? Is it video that has seen worldwide? Yes,
and stimulate like a motion that is so overpowering that
people pour into the streets as they did all over
the world. Actually, so let's let's get one and start
with the why. I mean, can't we just take a

(08:56):
few minutes and break down the why? I mean, sometimes
as we forget why something happened, because we often focus
more on I mean, we're very much as a species,
I think, what is happening in the moment, and then
we kind of go on to the next And social
media probably has a lot to do with why we
don't continue to go deeper. But there was a strong

(09:19):
why to the murder of George Floyd. So you know,
in seeing an Unseen as you laid outside, you all
talk very deeply about the why, some historical roots that
play a major part and how we got here. So
how do we think about the why? There's a few reasons,
and I think we go into them and in considerable
depths in the book. One of them is that it

(09:40):
was a kind of crucifixion, really, that the killing of
George Floyd. It was we say in the book, you know,
a shooting as an instant, but a a lynching as
a performance. It happens in time, there's something excruciating about
the suffering of someone. He cries out for his mother,
and the biblical connection is that Rice cried out for father.

(10:01):
You know, there was this sense that that we're watching
someone die right before our eyes. And I don't know
how people actually watched the full nine minutes, but they
watched enough of it to understand that there was an
excruciating death happening right in front of them, and that
there was no denying this. The other killings didn't have
that evidence. And and and if you go back through

(10:22):
history to look at some of the still photographs, in particular,
in some of the videos that have lasted for us
and lasted in the sort of collective memory, they're ones
where there's just something that extra to it. There's something,
some symbolic quality to it that makes it retain its power.
Even though it was a video. It had the quality
of a still image. Something so primitive about a man's

(10:43):
knee in the neck of another man that is symbolic
of so much in the racial dynamic in this country
that there's no denying it. And it was. It was
starkly there. It's like the Pieta. I mean, it's like
something that you know, you look at it, you go
why it and submit something that he's almost wordless, right, yeah,
and and uh doctor here, I was thinking about, you know,

(11:07):
in my teachings of African American history, when we get
to the lynching parts and students minds being blown away
to see that groups of people with pose the whole community,
they were bringing their children. I mean, this was a
family affair in a community affair when lynching was happening.
Of the magnitude that it has happened to African American
people over time, especially after reconstruction. To see that law

(11:32):
enforcement former law enforcement officer, but law enforcement officer. He
looked up into the eyes to me of all the
people that were filming with an indifference saying I double
dog day, I'm not moving, you know. And that kind
of took transported me back to lynchings that happened in
the nineteen and in the twentieth century as well. So, Dot,

(11:52):
can you kind of take us through that vibe. It's
not a good vibe either. It's not a good vibe.
But that's the point of the lynching. It's I said,
as a performance, it's it's it's a spectacle as well,
the lynching wasn't just about killing somebody. You could kill
somebody in private. The lynching was about the spectacle. It
was about saying that we're not beholden even to the

(12:15):
pretense of criminal justice and criminal procedure. We'll break this
person out of the jail if we have to, and
we will hang them from this tree. It was about
reinforcing and closing ranks around white power, white supremacy, and
anti black racism. It was about the spectacle of a
statistic kind of investment in killing and destroying the black body.

(12:35):
Like like you said, it was a pastime. People are
taking pictures next to the body, people taking body parts
of souvenirs. So when this is happening, this is all
part of the spectacle. But it's also a message to
black folk about what it means to confront or being
a front to state power, to be in an affront,
or to confront the power of everyday white citizens. It's

(12:58):
about the power of white folk to determine where the
black folk liver dies. A reminder of all of those things.
It's about the reminder of the relative valuelessness of the
black body and the black life in that moment, particularly
post slavery, right, because when black people are owned and
black people are property, you don't destroy your own property.
You don't take your rate, cop, you don''t take what

(13:19):
you used to water crops. You don't destroy that because
it's yours. But once black folk are intensively free, unowned down,
this stuff matters differently. But the spectacle is there, and
media and technology also was used to distribute the spectacle. Right,
think about the postcard that's shared of the lynching, and
this ties directly what's happening now, because the lynching of

(13:42):
my brown as he laid on campfield for four and
a half hours, right, the public spectacle of watching George
Floyd over nine minutes of video footage as he's being
put to death. These videos are not just for Daniella Frasier.
They're not just for the people yelling at the cop
calling them exploit this. It's not just for the store

(14:02):
owner of the next door. But through social media, now,
we all witnessed that spectacle. We all witnessed the violence,
we all witnessed the pain, the trauma. And part of
the why I think that we get at the tid
alluded to and that you asked about, is that Suddenly
all of America was forced to witness this, and they

(14:23):
couldn't look away. And even if they didn't look at it,
they knew that it existed. You couldn't live in America
and not not that it was a nine minute video
of George Floyd being killed. You could not know. And
and and and Todd said this, and it really resonated
with me when we were talking about the book. He
said it had the power of a still photo in
a way, because Derek Schaffen's knee is on his neck

(14:46):
for all that time. So America just sits there and
watch that, and it was almost like a still photable
was still real in video, and it was elongated. All
of that is happening at the same time. And so
in the same way that we looked at and Itt
tills thebody in August fifty five, I want to look
at the cover of Jet magazine. Now, all of America
had to witness this, and that, I think is why

(15:08):
this has become the newest turning point in our fight
for racial justice. You made me think about Eric Gardner too,
as you both were talking, when he was choked out
right there on the sidewalk in New York for loose
cigarettes and it's the same phenomena. Do you think that
people are becoming desensitized to the kind of violence that

(15:29):
is playing in black bodies because we see it so often? Yeah,
that's that's of course an ironic danger because one of
the messages is that this is not unique, it's common. Right.
It may not take the sights into the form, and
it took in many appolts, but that's similar. Interaction is
happening across the country regularly. So when you think, well

(15:51):
desensitized to the fact that it happened so often, what
wants we happened so often is to think we should
be sensitized too, right, And I think that one of
the things that's important to recognize about the videos is
that it's more important that the videos exists than that
we watch them. If we watched them, yes, they can
be we can become desensitized to it, or they can

(16:14):
be triggering. As as we've talked about before, they can
have consequences that I think are not the most constructive.
The constructive fact is that they happened, and they are
evidence of what happened. I never watched all the nine
minutes of the George floyd video. I watched enough that
I knew what was going on. But it's the message
that's conveyed by when we talk about the spectacle that

(16:37):
Mark alluded to before about lynching. Lynching is a spectacle
because it carries a message, and the message is the
dehumanizing of the black race. So the message that we
are able to take from George Floyd's video is directly
opposite of the one that the lynching spectacles intended. And

(17:00):
that's what I'd say is a sign of progress, or
it's a sign of activism put to great purpose, although
I would say even that happened a hundred years ago,
because when i'd be Wells goes and writes about the
truth about menching and publishing those photographs, she's publishing the
photographs that are on the postcards. And whereas on the

(17:23):
postcards they're being taken as souvenirs of something they're exalting,
when i'd be Wells publishes them, they are meant to
be a sign of something shameful and something that is
so horrific that the society needs to face exactly what
it's done. That activism put to great purpose is a

(17:45):
strong statement, and thank God that we've had many activists
with great purpose over the ages, because certainly, i'd be wells.
Barnett was ahead of her time. She was trailblazing. Her
life was literally on the line for exposing um the
type of bigotry and anti blackness that manifests itself through

(18:08):
physical brutality and death to the black community, and certainly
ought to be wells understood. Two of her friends were
murdered because they were quote unquote uppity, and it's because
they owned business. They owned the store and they were
lynched because of that. And she took that pain and

(18:29):
turned it into something just beautiful in terms of making
force in America at her time, see its brutality and
its crimes against black body. So just talking to you
both just makes me think the more things change, the
more they stay the same. She was a firm believer
that every black person needed a Smith and Western in
their life. And uh, it wasn't just to play games.

(18:49):
It was for protection. You know, it was real and
we know a lot of black people, I mean our
dear brother Michael render a k a killer Mike is
another proponent of that. Just because of that, not for
people to be gun owners and not responsible. But the
argument is, because of the threat against black bodies at
all times, you cannot not have weapons to protect yourself

(19:13):
if and when God forbid something of the magnitude of
what black people had to endure. I mean it's even now,
but you know, centuries ago in a more concentrated way
with that kind of mob violence. God forbid if something
like that happened again, that black people not own weapons,
not acknowledge the Second Amendment to the Constitution. As we

(19:40):
talked about the why, I kind of was thinking about
what if, and Doc this is for you, what if
our previous generations of black people had the type of
technology that we have today when lynching was full frontal
by mobs and then the other what if what if
we didn't have this type of technology today, they would

(20:02):
have said that George Floyd did something to them, he
resisted arrest. He you know. And it's the things that
they do now, even when we got camera sometimes they
forget they got the body cam on when they lie
about certain arrest. Think about that, What if we had
the type of technology that we have the day to
catch this Because the camera is a fair arbiter, it
can be it can be right now better than not

(20:25):
having it at all. But what if in the early
part of the twentieth century, in the nineteenth century, this
kind of technology existed, and then the what if for
this moment, what if we didn't have it? That's a
fascinating question. I'll start with the last part first, right,
I think without this technology, what happens to George Floyd
is what happens to most people who get killed by police,

(20:48):
who don't have cameras around, who don't who aren't lucky
enough to have an observer, They get ignored. You know.
Black testimony is often irrelevant in court. Black witness as
an idea is often insubstantial in the broader conversation around
criminal legal systems. And so every day we see people,
every single day, I mean this is without exaggeration, We

(21:09):
see people complaining about police brutality. Every single day. We
see people who talking about excessive force, and the police
always say they didn't do it, and the police didn't
go through investigation. They're investigated by who by the police
internal availably and the police say, guess what, after throwing
investigation of ourselves, we found out that we didn't do it.
And so the video is often the best tool that

(21:31):
we have at our disposal to at least make a
different case. Now, what we also know is that even
with the video, that gets you in the game. But
that's it, It just gets you in the game. Walter
Scott was shot in his back running away. That wasn't
no slam. Don't think about the first case, Jordan Davis
thinking about the first trial, right, Treyvard Martin didn't matter

(21:52):
what we heard of thought although that wasn't a video,
but to mirror Rice, let me throw that ror right
in my city. Clear, that's a perfect example, right, because
part of what goes into the video it's and this
is tomes point about the postcard. At least I'm one
extend tomes point because I think it was it was
in there, and that is that, you know, the way
I'd be Wells is using the photograph is very different

(22:15):
than the way the white supremacist were the same photograph.
But the text, the context makes the text different. J
Jackson wants said to the text with our context is pretext.
Come on, So the context shapes this stuff, and so
part of the individual's context bringing into a situations what
they think about black people. Right. The study shows black
children look less innocent and older than they are. Right,

(22:37):
So if you look at too me and Rice and
think he's twenty as you know what I mean, and
you think that he's committing a crime, then even when
you watch the video, you're gonna say, well, yeah, if
I saw him there, I would have did that. The
officer who killed Mike Brown with Darren Wilson. When when
you listen Dan wilson grand jury testimony, he's talking about
Mike walking through bullets, and it may be clear. I
think he's telling the truth. I think he really saw

(22:58):
it that way. So part of it is like the
video won't save us. It can damn show help us,
but it won't save us. I'm gonna take the second
part of the question to time and put it to
top because there's nothing that that frustrates. History is more
usually in giving them counterfactuals. So I have my own theory.
But what do you think about that? This idea that

(23:19):
if if in previous errors, they had the tools and
technology to catch people in the act, that's a tough one.
I want before we get to that, I want to
point out one other thing because Nina's question about you
know what would happen if we didn't have it. Now
can be perfectly illustrated by the story of a mad
o are very because in the early stages after a

(23:42):
modbury are By is killed, we don't have a video,
and in the period when we don't have a video,
the killers are exonerated in the mind of the prosecutor.
The prosecutor refuses to pursue it, refuses to pursue it
only when the video appears, and when there is a
campaign by those who care for justice. Those two things

(24:05):
that McMichael's father and son are brought to justice without
the video, without social media, that doesn't happen. So it's
like a perfect illustration there. And then what we can
why there was a video, which is another peculiar aspect
because the video was shot by one of the killers.
Really top but it's the same thing, and I hope
you don't lose your thought. It's the same thing. It's

(24:26):
the same parallel of folks snapping the community with a
baby's and all white community outposing would a lynched black body.
It's the same concept. And of course that's the terrifying
thing of our own time, is how much progress have
we made? Now back to the question of whether we've

(24:47):
had the tools back then. You know, I don't think
the tools are work in isolation, and I think that
we fortunately live in a society that maybe is prepared
to learn some of the truths of these things in
a way that they were not prepared to learn them
in the late nineteenth century around Reconstruction. The desire of
the white supremacist community in the late nineteenth century around

(25:08):
Reconstruction was to dehumanize the black population to make it
possible for people to trust them with power. It really
came down to that. And so it wasn't enough just
to prosecute someone for a criminal act. You had to
actually tear apart their humanity. You had to dismember their body.

(25:29):
You had to make them into an animal, because if
you didn't, they could still be considered as a worthy
contender for power. And this was happening, as you alluded
to before, Nina, with respect to the thriving black business
community in Memphis. When I to b Welles was there,
So what was the point destroy the thriving community because
it actually was a competitor to the white to white power.

(25:50):
Black Wall Street the same thing, Black Wall Street, the
same thing. So I think I don't know what Mark
will say about this. I suspect you may agree, but
the I don't. I think we have a common asia
to factors here. As Mark always says, the truth is
always messy a little bit, and one of them is
I think we have fortunately a society that may be
ready to receive some of these truths. I think that's it.
I think the problem before now we catch people in

(26:12):
the act because people at least pretend to not be
invested in these things, in violence and black death and
murder and such, right, so the police don't say, well,
we would never kill an innocent person. In the eighteenth century,
or rather the nineteenth century, you know, the issue wasn't
catching people in the act. People are taking photos of
themselves lynching people. There was just no accountability for it.
So I think there would be a value in narrating

(26:35):
this stuff for our own experience and for the people
catching hell to be able to tell these stories. But
I don't think the dominant argument was the Todd's point.
I don't think the dominant argument was this isn't happening.
The question was do black people deserve anything else? If
we ain't human, then killing us doesn't matter. So I
think the context definitely matters a lot in this. Yeah,

(26:55):
but that dehumanization of black bodies hints black lives matter
of two t o oh, because that's really the vibe
of the movement that so many people choose to misunderstand.
Black lives matter. T o oh, Not that other lives
don't matter, but from the beginning that this country has
not been willing to admit on a deep level, and

(27:16):
then comport itself as if black lives matter too. Both
of you making me go to critical race theory. I
wasn't trying to go there, but it's the same. You know,
on one hand, we think we're ready to deal with
some of the harsh realities of the founding of this country,
but in other ways, you got twentieth century folks saying,
wait a minute, don't talk about anything that causes white

(27:39):
people paying. Don't talk about the truth of the history
of this country. And you can't get at it. You
cannot get at the solutions if you're not really willing.
And I'm talking about us as a society. And then
those people we put into leadership to deal with the
truth and this stuff is not made up and ain't conflated.
It's real. But you got visionist history, which we had

(28:01):
in the nineteenth century and the twentieth century too, and
now you've got elected officials making it law Florida looking
at you, Ohio, so many other states where they don't
even want to talk about. And it's not about critical
race theory. This is about not critically looking at the
history of this country in a way that puts right

(28:22):
in our face the white supremacy that caused most of
the conundrum that black people face, that poor people face
in this country right now. So what say you on
the notion because I see seeing an unseen I'm seeing
some intersection now between that and the period we're in
where there's a powerful denial of what we know to

(28:45):
be absolutely, irrefutably true. Yeah, I think that the biggest
connection to the book for me might be that there
are moments in history where technology and media have been
used to advance for particular narrative, a particular truth, you know.
And I'm skeptical of any capital T truths. I'm gonna

(29:06):
use truth and quotes, but in any truth claim, any
assertion of something to be fact is out there. And
then there are people who are going to push back
against it. When Birth of a Nation comes out. It's
asserting a truth claim. It's a piece of art, it
is a masterpiece of technology. It advanced this the genre.

(29:27):
They ain't no doubt about that. But it's also advancing
a narrative about black humanity to making a truth claim
about who black people are, what our capacity is. And
so if you understand us as im moral, lazy, sexual
predators who are obsessed with violating the purity of white women,
and that somehow we are, I'm shaking my head, y'all
not just incapable but incompatible. Right, the black people were

(29:50):
incompatible with democrats. A lot of this was about denying
black people access to power and legitimizing this denial. Right.
So this technology is it's it's a it's a public claim.
And so what media technology also allowed us to do,
as black folk and white folks who were allies, was
make a counterclaim to speak back to that right, sometimes

(30:13):
using the same technology that we don't have access to
film in the same way, but sometimes through our criticism
of the film, our newspaper articles, our ads, our books,
are speeches going around the country. All of this stuff,
our representations w was Hattie McDaniels going to do in
response to this, Was she gonna say, right, we're talked
about you get into this in the book. So all
of this is part of the conversation. So for me,
there's always competing truth claims about race in this country,

(30:37):
and media technology becomes one of the primary ways where
those battles get wags. The classroom is another one, but
it isn't central, and in this case, interestingly enough, with
critical race theory, because critical race theory is not actually
being taught in school. The media is the place where
we're actually having the debate about what's happening in classrooms,
and so much of the stakes of critical race theory
and about sixteen nineteen project and about this history and

(31:01):
all this race talk. It's not actually happening in the classroom.
It's happening in school boards who are responding to what
Fox News tells them what's happening and voting booths because
they're voting on rep ferenda that are animated by what
they saw on Twitter, on some meme that tells them
that white kids are being tortured in first grade, or
that they're people being you know what I mean, or
that there's some math class in Florida that's asking people

(31:22):
to count slaves, which also wasn't true. That's actually a
false mean. So this is my long winded way of
saying the critical race theory debate isn't really about critical
race theory. It's about our willingness to have public, open conversations,
whether it's in media, whether it's in school wherever, about
race and whether we're gonna be honest about naming an
identifying race. And that's something that this country still isn't

(31:46):
willing to do. But because we have Twitter and TikTok
and Instagram and social media, sometimes those who are catching
hell there goes that those at the bottom of the
well are forcing America to come to terms with it
even when it doesn't think it's ready. And that, for me,
is critical. And I just want to remind hello, somebody,

(32:10):
we are here. We are here talking about the wonderful
book Seeing and Unseen. Baby, you got to pick up
your copy. I have the two authors here, Dr Mark
Lamont Hill and Mr Todd Brewster. We are going deep, deep, deep,
deep deep into this. So get ready, baby, get ready,
Call your friends, call your friend of me. They need
to tune in. And most of all, you need to

(32:30):
go pick up a copy of this book. Don't walk.
I need you to run and get a copy of
this book. You know, just man, I mean, this is
this is this is really deep. I just wanted to
make a point time before you jump in dr here
when you brought up Birth of a Nation, President Wood
Drew Wilson actually had the first viewing ever in the

(32:53):
White House, I believe of that film. Now, wrap your
minds around that, any movie of any movie. Wrap your
minds around that. Now, y'all, the president of the United
States of America did a white house viewing, first movie
ever to be viewed in the White House. That's some
deep stuff right there. Mr Brucester would go ahead and

(33:15):
add your fire to this part. So you know, we
take our title from uh in part as an inspiration
from James Baldwin essays. And I'm reminded as Mark was
speaking of Baldwin's point of view about so much of
what he lived through, and his point of view was
that he wanted white America to just be honest, just

(33:37):
to admit what had happened. And when I think about
critical race theory, when I think about the sixteen nineteen project.
When I think about what's going on in our school boards,
and by the way, it's not just southern rural school boards,
it's a it's in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and it's it's everything, Ohio.
I'm sure what we're seeing is people who don't seem
to be comfortable with the possibility of admitting mistakes and

(34:00):
admitting that they that the society has done wrong. And
you know, if there's something central to me to the
American idea, it should be that we are reformable people.
You know that it is a nation that has progressive
is m built into its very structure, and for some
reason we've strayed from that, or maybe we've never quite

(34:21):
embraced it, maybe we've quite understood it. But the whole
notion of the First Amendment, for instance, is to encourage
the kind of conversation that will make this society today
better tomorrow. And so not to admit your mistakes, not
to admit that they're embedded in our institutions and that
we need to reconsider it from a different perspective. The

(34:42):
very things that have caused the kinds of pain and suffering.
Is not to understand the very progressive centrality of the
American idea. There it is when you think back to
also the birth of a nation. What was the birth
of a nation? It was attempt to rewrite the story
of the Civil War. The Civil War more than anything else,

(35:03):
was the commanding battle over the fundamental flaw to American
to the americanly conception of the American idea. And what
the Birth of a Nation attempted to do as the
myth of the lost Cause we do out there early
part of the twentieth century, right up to our present moment, frankly,
is to reverse the outcome of that and to say no,
it was not true. We were not fought, We did

(35:26):
not have this as central to work or originalism. And
that's the battle we're in today, just as the battle
when we were in a hundred years ago, when when
the Birth of a nation first appeared. And the fact
that we have tools now to be able to speak
back to these distortions of history and these distortions of
the common good is a remarkable thing. I mean market

(35:49):
loud before. When the Birth of the Nation is produced,
both the boys and Monroe Trotter, and we've uh Marcus
Garvey were interested in finding ways to creas a film
that would counter the presentation, but they didn't have the
access to capital and make it happen. Yeah. What better
illustration there is there about the role of media centered

(36:10):
in white power under gating black voices than that, And
it is still happening in the twenty one century. If
you look at the people who owned the large media
incomerance in this country right now, Hey, for the most part,
they are not black and brown. And we just saw
what happened with Twitter, um social media with forty four

(36:34):
billion dollars in the hands of We got oligarchs in
this country. We always have. We need to admit it.
So you know, there is a few pages in and
I wanna because this hits a point I think, ty
did you just raised? And I think it depends on
the version people are reading which page it falls on.
But I'm quoting from the book. It was white people
who owned the cameras, and white people who made the movies,

(36:58):
white people who ran the publishing companies, edited the newspapers
and funded the research, and white people who wove tails
that sentimentalized the Confederacy adjusted the lessons of the Civil
War to be more favorable to the South and argue

(37:18):
that Reconstruction failed because of black people inferior by their
very nature, had nonetheless been entrusted with equality and authority
at the expense of the interests and feelings of the
defeated white majority. In quote I swear to I mean

(37:42):
more things changed, more they stay the same. I've had
it your your words from your book. That was the
hammer in the nail right there for me. Doc, you
want to jump in here on that, Okay, all right, well,
I'd like to think our words speak for themselves there.
I think it's um. When the Supreme Court was joined
by the first woman in the nineteen eighties, I guess

(38:05):
it was a center day O'Connor day. The perspective that
was achieved by the inclusion of a representative of more
than half of the human race was remarkable. Right. Law
is something that we like to think is color blind
and gender blind, but it's not. Human experience informs whatever
we do and say and think. The fact that there's

(38:27):
that there's was a woman on the Court made all
the difference in the world. The fact that the power
is still centered in the hands of a white majority,
that we have not achieved the level of diversity in
terms of capital that we seek to achieve in our society,
That that we have not achieved it, even as its
representative and in our society means that we have not

(38:49):
created a system that serves the diverse population. And this
example of Twitter is compelling. Mark, and I asked about
it yesterday. I haven't fully digested all that I think
about it, but I'm we're both I think very concerned
about what that means. Yeah, I mean I I believe
that we all should be concerned about what that means. Doc,

(39:11):
you want to jump in here. Do you believe that
black people can better control our images and our narrative
compared to the twentieth century? For example? Are we better
position though we might not be where we want to be? Yeah?
I think that you what you just say is exactly
the answer, and we certainly can do more. Black people
have always attempted to rest control of their narrative from

(39:34):
those who were dominating and oppressing us. When Fredery Douglas writes,
you know, his biography, one of multiple that he would write,
Or when Phyllis Wheatley writes poems and various subjects religious
and moral, or a lot of Ciano Rights narrative the
life of stuff is fosster, A lot of kind of
stuff is foss written by himself. All of these narratives

(39:55):
were attempts to say, here's our actual story, and not
only gonna tell the truth about our actual journeys and stories,
but we're also going to tell the truth about our
capacity to tell our own truth and journeys. That's why
they had to say written by himself, written by herself,
because people thought black folk didn't never ask to me,
think about the trials and Phyllis Wheatley for example. So

(40:15):
so when this is all happening, we're always trying to
find a way to tell our story. Fredery Dougald's trying
to invent and reinvent and redefine and to find himself
constantly through his writing, but also through the photograph, again
another piece of technology that he was able to use
to tell a story. Right, what happens when the Pettis
Bridge isn't just a political tactic, although it's one of
the most brilliant political tactics of the twentieth century. It's

(40:38):
also an attempt to assert a narrative about black humanity, right,
that we are people that we're human beings who are
being treated like dogs. Absolutely, and so for me, it's
not new for black folk to use the media, to
use the technology to tell our story. Ebony and Jet Magazine,
the Johnson Family Publishing, Black Enterprise, these work media space

(41:00):
is that we used to assert and expand the understanding
of who what we were. And so when we enter
this moment, we don't just have Cliff Huxtable or noticing
a Cliff Huxtable, not the not the real man, but
the character PLI. We don't just have Cliff Hugstable to
help America understand what's possible for black life and black family. More,
we don't just have the magazines. We don't just have

(41:23):
the representations. We also are now expanding that through film,
We're expanding that through social media. We're expanding our ability
to tell our own story, to articulate our own truths,
to represent our own selves. All of it is growing.
So I'm encouraged. I'm optimist. I'm not optimist, but I'm
I'm hopeful that we will get somewhere. But to the
last part of what you said, you still got a

(41:45):
long way to go. America is freer because of black
Twitter there are police officers who are no longer killing
us because of black Twitter. There are stories of black
girls like Brianna Taylor and Sandra Bland and Meal Hall
and We're a Ship McBride that are being told because
of black Twitter. R Kelly might be off the street
because of black Twitter. So black Twitter goes a long way.

(42:10):
But black Twitter is also not owned by black people.
Everybody on Twitter is susceptible to the forces of these
oligarchic forces that you're talking about, and I did that.
We could live in a world where somebody will say
this quasi public fear, I don't like it, so I'm
gonna buy it and then make it the way I want.
It's very, very dangerous to me, but it's particularly dangerous
to black folk, right, the same black folk that make

(42:30):
TikTok pop, right, people making money off of it, but
it's black dancers that's making that's animating the money from it.
So we're in these spaces and our voices are in
these spaces, and we are telling our own stories, but
we're still susceptible to the whims of power until we
own it ourselves. And I'm not suggesting black capitalism. I'm
not suggesting a black folk that we develop a black

(42:51):
Elon Musk. God forbid. I want to live in a
world with the bezos Is and the Elon Musk don't.
Don't have this kind of power, regardless of what color
they But what I do want is to see media
that is owned by the people who are being represented
by it. That's what I'd love to see. I'd love
to see the century version of Jet or Black Digest

(43:14):
or Black Enterprise, but in this new media sphere to
go along with the other stuff. And it makes me
think about the black news channels are just just just
another example. And while we're talking about who, you know,
who owns the media is not just Elon Musk, even
though his purchase for forty four billion dollars have us
all paying attention to this. But Jeff Bezos, he owns

(43:37):
the Washington Post. You got John Henry, and he owns
the Boston Globe, Sheldon Addison, we know the Las Vegas
Review Journal, Lorraine pile Jobs the Atlantic, Mark bent Off,
Time Magazine, and I can go on and on even
the media. So I'm talking about print right now, but
even the TV media is owned by very narrow few

(44:00):
who control and own all of these outlets that we
depend upon. It's just like even the production of food.
You know who owns the production of food. And we
would be asked out, as my grandmother used to say,
quote and Grandma here if something were to happen, and
these people automatically decided who's worthy and who is not.

(44:23):
In many ways they do decide who's worthy and who
is not. One of the reasons why we don't have
universal healthcare, or that we pay more for our prescription
drugs than any other industrialized nation, does in fact have
a lot to do with the oligarchic forces that control
the political sphere by which we operate. And so to me,

(44:43):
the whole notion of seen and unseen. There is so
much intersectionality between your book, the book that you both
have written, and all of the things that we're talking
about that are happening in our time. But what does
give me great hope and hope is an action word
and encourage man, is that just because that is the
reality today, some of the things that we're talking about

(45:04):
injustice does not have to be the reality tomorrow if
we are willing to act. So I I thank you
both for writing your book seen and unseen. Listen to me.
Hello somebody, folks, y'all need to go out and get
this book. Go ahead and gifted to somebody to if
you want to you go ahead and do that. I'm
sure they wouldn't be mad about it if you are
a professor in a classroom going to use this book

(45:25):
to supplement the course. Hello, I'm talking from experience. I
want you to as we kind of wrap this thing up,
to give me your thoughts, weigh in on this quote
that I am about to speak into the universe. Our
show is driven by a lot of quotes, so the
hello somebody family knows that we don't end the show
without at least getting the quota to in. But this

(45:46):
comes from David Foster Wallace and the quote is the
truth will set you free, but not until it is
finished with you in quote. Mm hmm. That's a powerful
cool that we're gonna get free. And I talked about

(46:07):
this with the ball and piece of You know, we
got to confront this stuff to be released from it.
We got to be committed to confronting it. But it's
not enough to just confront it. It's not enough to
just acknowledge it. Rather, you got to wrestle with it.
You gotta do with the truth. Ain't gonna be finished
with us. If you talk about racial justice in America,
truthin gonna be done with us. It's not just say, yo,

(46:27):
you know what racism exists. White people have privilege or
or the black folks are systemically denied access to stuff.
That's that's that's almost the easy party. You know, the
truth won't be done with us until we fight for
something different. That's the work that's in front of it.
There it is, you know, it's interesting. David Foster wall
is an interesting writer. I mean, a very creative brain

(46:47):
at work there. Um, I'm not sure that it is
a part of the human condition to constantly rest with
what the truth is. As we're talking before one, I
just want to go back to Frederick doug Us for
a moment, because I think one of the more compelling
scenes for me in the book is the idea of
Frederick Douglas is having his picture taken so many times,
and part of the reason was to reinforce to audiences

(47:10):
that he was a human being. Yeah, and wherever he
would go and he would stand and he would speak
with the power of the most articulate advocates for abolition
with Garrison, others had nothing on Frederick Douglas, a man
who had was born into slavery, who learned the language

(47:32):
by eavesdropping on the white master's children's lessons. Now when
he appears before audiences, these are sympathetic audiences. What do
they want to know? They don't want to know his
ideas about abolition. They want to know what it was
like to be a slave. They want to know the
dehumanizing part rather than the humanizing part. Now, both were truths.

(47:58):
He was being dehumanized in the active slavery right. But
the truth that he wanted people to see was that
he was a human being with dignity, and that seems
to me to be the truth we have. We have
choices of truths throughout our life. I mean this in
this sense. Our modern media has brought this very clearly
to our attention. What we see is in part what

(48:20):
we choose to see, and sometimes that means we ignore
things that are important, and sometimes that means that we
reinforce things that are in front of us. And I
think it's important that we wrestle with it the way
that I think David Foster Wallace was alluding to in
a way that it is constructive productive, the way that

(48:41):
that preserves the dignity of all human beings. Oh we hello? Somebody?
Can't we get some hello? Somebodies on that. I have
been edified today. I don't know about y'all, but I've
been edified. I want to thank you Mr Todd Brewster
and Dr Mark Lamont Hill. Thank you both for joining
hell Low somebody. Where can folks find the both of you?

(49:05):
And where or where can they pick up a copy
of this fantastic, illustrative truth talking in your Face book.
Y'all can find me on social media, marklemont Hill on
all platforms. The book you can get anywhere when you
buy your books. But of course I always like them.
People buy from independent bookstores, and I love the people

(49:27):
buy from my own book story Uncle Bobby's Coffee and Books,
which you're online. Uncle Bobby's dot com is Uncle b
O b B I E S. But honestly, I want
you to support any store that's doing good work, and
I want you all to support the books. I don't
care waar y'all get it from launs. Y'all get it.
And I also believe in you know, the book is
a thing that's a it's a beautiful thing. It's an object,

(49:48):
this piece of art. It's something to hold, something to caress,
something to put on your shelf and be proud of,
you know. So I also support support the independed bookstores
and and and encourage you to to. I mean playing
bookstores are not only bookstores. There their fixtures and communities.
They really make a big, big contribution. And uh, there
their centers for dialogue, for constructive conversation, and for enjoying

(50:10):
the great world of art that comes with literature. So um,
I encourage you to to purchase your book there. But
as Mark says, any way you find it, we hope
you will find that there's pieces of wisdom in it
and that you will feel rewarded by your reading. Hey, man,
gifted to somebody. Mother's Day is coming up. Mama's don't
hurt me now by by mama the flowers and the candy,
and he's going to give mama the book. Seeing you

(50:31):
what I'm seeing to, why not just do it all
or whatever you're gonna get it, but just tuck that
book in there too. So man, this has been absolutely exhilarating.
I just want to thank you both. You our gift
to the world, and thank you both for using your
gifts to edify, to lift, and to speak a certain
type of truth that will make us all better if
we are ready, willing and able to absorb this thing

(50:52):
you have been listening to. Hello somebody, We know that
everybody is somebody. Cannot wait for you to be back
with us next week, to turn at Lord, every story,
everything's somebody. It makes a time. I believe it. Somebody turning.

(51:16):
Universe has given us somebody a time. Sweet, Yeah, change
is coming. The pain is nothing. Trying to shoot for
the stars. If you're gonna, ain't for something. Embrace the
love for your brother and sister. You need these the
mission brush, We need the puzzle. This pictures painted up,

(51:36):
Frame it up for the world to see. Ain't to
hate you it up. Enough is enough, It's enough making
changes enough in turn of a voice of the truth
to wise word. Despire the youth to keep their eyes
on the roof. It's the end. Never give up, keep
conquering goals to the eye. Intelligent silver, wisdom is gold.
Back to the end. Now it's your time. Stay firm,
don't fold to the a or you need is the

(51:58):
three bones. That's what Randy said. Now I'm gonna make
sure these words from Frankie spray for all the here
to give it your in. She can take you to
the Promised Land. I swear world pieces what they fear,
from Queen's to Cleveland, Ohiyo were here, famous fans turning
any quality and somebody you need to turn of spanning

(52:22):
Somebody ship in turn of Somebody need to turn more
times world point Charles Charing. One of those great more
is on our hands. Well Hello Somebody is a production

(52:48):
of I Heart Radio and the Black Effect Network. For
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