December 14, 2022 • 56 mins
In this episode Jill, Laiya, and Aja talk to Linguist, professor of Gullah culture and language, and content creator Sunn M’Chauex. They dive into all things language, the internet, and having pride in your culture. Check out more of Sunn’s work at the links below.
Website: https://www.sunnmcheaux.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/sunnmcheaux
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sunnmcheaux/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sunnmcheaux
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sunnmcheaux
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Ja Dot M, a production of I Heart Radio.
What's up Everybody? How y'all doing? Welcome to Jay Dot
Elda Packheash. It is a pleasure to be here to
day with my sister friends AGR great and dance love.
That's me. That's right in my home. Girl. Lie, Yes,
(00:24):
ain't clear what you said? You see? I say that
it's giving North. It's giving North. It's slightly like country
to you know what I'm saying. It's like Philly and
country mixed together, because that's where I'm living at likes
(00:46):
I get home. As I get home, you know, it's
where y'all going at you every where you go, everywhere.
It's no secret we we we beautiful brown people. We
gotta we got a whole dialect going on where an
(01:11):
entire way right on DC all day, all day. Yeah.
I used to have a cousin, a cousin who dated
a guy from Cali, and he was like, why people
from d c sing everything they say and We're like, no,
we don't. He was like, yes, y'all do. He said,
how y'all doing? What where's it going? What's going? And
(01:36):
I just want to give a shout out to my girlfriend,
a shocky coleman, the whole. She's a doctorate and she's
she's a whole principal at a at a at a school.
And when I first heard her speak, she's from d C.
And she was like, I remember why y'all always going
over the air. And I was like, see the funny
(02:00):
things that what d C people will do is not
drop their accent for real feeling a long time. Don't
get it twisted as soon as I crossed the city limits.
It's a rap. It's an absolute rap to our pleasure,
to our pleasure. Oh look, we're gonna get it to
a little perfection right now. My mother says perfect. Oh
(02:23):
that's just perfect. Yeah. My stubmother used to say crown
for crayon, crown crown, and my mother says stomach. We
love it. And my my friend Scott Parker, his mom
(02:43):
says thumbach too. I figured it might be from the
same place my grandmama said, if it's too old, it's
at no matter what it's always so, it's a root,
it's it's it's what death, what it is? It a book?
Rut is the only one that does that. I don't
(03:04):
think there are any other words. I don't know if
it's any other words. With that, I'm gonna follow these
rules as we are absolutely fascinating when it comes to
how we speak, in the ways that we speak. And
it's true, there's there's music pretty much in everything. Um,
(03:25):
no matter where you come from, there's a song and
how we speak. Yeah yeah, yes, yes, yeah yeah yeah
age great dance. So we have somebody really special here,
would you be kind enough to entro dudes, I most
certainly would like to introduce this person, this lovely being. Um,
(03:47):
y'all know, I'll be on the internet, this is this
is if you'll right, it's okay, and one day I'm
on the social media's and this lovely person uh these
son Michew uh pops up on my on my fee
talking this good talk. Okay. So before we get talking
(04:08):
to him, I just I'm gonna read a little bit
about him, so y'all understand. So when y'all do, you're
good googling, because this is what we do on this show,
we do a good receipt exactly. So here we go.
I'm gonna read this. I'm gonna let you know I'm
reading because I'm not this good. I'm I'm reading to
make sure y'all get the info right, all right. Son
Michel has cultivated a strong following online, which is true.
(04:28):
I'm one of his followers via social media, with frequent
viral content ranging from pop culture commentary, allegorical anecdotes, and
entertainment to serious discussions, advocacy and philanthropy via crowdfunding. He
uses this count content to promote intellect, ethics, enlightenment, and education,
(04:49):
the ladder of which led him in two thousand seventeen
to becoming the first and only Gala language instructor at
Harvard University. And this role, he teaches a curriculum based
on extensive search and his own personal GALAGICI knowledge and experience.
So I'm gonna stop there because y'all need to understand.
I know some of y'all need this, you know, high
(05:10):
high level receipts Harvard until recently that this man taught
it Harvard. All I know is that he speaks to
absolute taruse, and so I would love to introduce the
Jay dai Il family who is listening to Mr Son Michelle.
Come on, I'm very glad to be here. I appreciate
(05:34):
the energy of the Bible. I'm really happy that, Um,
you know you you found me through through through the work. Um,
any time I get love from all line is great
because everybody everybody don't love you all love, so how
can we not what we do? Know? You get a
little bit of pushback from the wrights, Oh yeah, oh yeah,
(05:55):
but I'm gonna I'm gonna be really honest about that.
I expected and and just some degree thrive on it.
Like they haven't figured out how to deal with the
creators who don't mind um as the the old saying
the smell of napalm in the morning, like I'm here
for and so um, what they want you to do
is is to like back off and block them, And
(06:16):
but that's not how the internet works. That's not how
social media works. Engagement is engagement. So the algorithm doesn't
know that you're you're calling me out my name or
whatever your problem is. All the algorithm knows that you
keep coming to my videos, watching them and commenting, and
so they've ironically been boosting the very content that they're
trying to stop me from making. But it's not working
out that way. Would anybody want to stop your content?
(06:41):
Am I missing? You know what it is? And I
just did UM. I just did electric on campus last
night actually talking a little bit about this um. One
of the first things that colonialists do, the first thing
that imperialist will do when they take over place a
conqueror people is get rid of the link. Like you
would have to ask yourself, like what would be what's
(07:03):
so important about getting rid of the language? Like if
you go to a voe, you can get rid of
their native language. Everywhere you go, you try to strict
the people of their language because there's power and language.
There's power in and there's lineage and language that's heritage
and language you can tell so much like you were
just saying before we started recording, that you can tell
from certain words. I can tell where you're from, what
part of Taling you're from. If you say hello, maybe
(07:24):
you're from Oakland. If you say not, I mean or
depending on it the word is born, like maybe from Northeast.
You know, I can kind of tell basically where you are.
And when you take away those things and replace it
with the language of the oppressor, you will never ever
be able to articulate your humanity to its fullest extent
in the language of your oppressor. And they know that,
(07:45):
and so when someone pops up who's saying, hey, there's
not only nothing wrong with the way that we speak
and getting into our dialects and our creoles, but there's
everything right about it, and making ourselves more adjacent to
the truth of who we are as opposed to what
we were forced to be. Don't like it, but they've
got to deal with it because to some degree, h,
(08:05):
I know, maybe it's a little massacrest in me. I
don't mind them being upset at all. It doesn't bother
me at all. Yeah, you always seem to giggle a
little right before you do like a clap back. You
always seem, you know, like at the beginning of the
clap back from where I think it's Jada kiss and
he's like, I don't want to sound mad, I feel wonderful,
(08:26):
Like you're like that at the beginning of your clap back.
It's like, I want to make sure y'all realize I'm
not pissed. In fact, absolutely, they will think about it.
Somebody who's teaching language, like language and why is a
person who's teaching language and die like getting death threats?
What is that about? Like? Why why are you in
(08:46):
comments and in the comments, um, the one in the
video that I just did because I got a hundred
and fifty thousand, past hundred thousand followers on YouTube, which,
thanks in part to them, you helped to drive Eachi
a hundred in the followers on YouTube. So congratulations, congratulate
yourself and played yourself. But they at the same time
(09:07):
will say I'm hunting you, and when I find you,
I'm gonna finish. First of all, do you really want
to find me? So if I'm anti racism, anti misogyny,
pro children, protecting children, building community, philanthropy, um, knowledge yourself
in regards as language and culture, like, it's like, stop
me when you get to the part when I get
(09:29):
to the part that warrants you want to kill But
here we are, here, we are more real talk after
the break. It's truly sounds like that corny saying knowledge
(09:54):
is power, and if if it sounds like people can
see that to be true and you're deeply powerful and
the things that just saying the people and empowering people,
that's powerful. But let me let you in on something though.
Do you know what some of the the most volatile
okay they're there are three most volatile topics that I'm
guaranteed to get hate from and from surprising sources. Okay um.
(10:20):
One of the ones that I did recently, I never
turned off the comments in my posts. Never do. I
let them let the engagement rack up and they can
just do whatever they want to in the comments, like
have at it. One of the ones that I did
turn the comments off was a post. The literal title
of the post is Lizzo is beautiful. That's the title
(10:41):
of the post, is Lizzo is beautiful. There were people
who was stumbling over themselves to get into that post
to say some of the most violent and ugly things
about big, beautiful black equipment. And they weren't all wait.
In fact, I would give it a fifty split between
(11:02):
the racists and black men who came in there to
say it wasn't enough. They were singling out Lizzo. They
then started attacking people in the comments and see, I
can't have that, Like you can said that you want
to about me, I'm here for But when it gets
to the point where someone responds and says, you know, hey,
I really appreciate this this perspective because I've been on
(11:24):
the other side of you know, these types of critiques
from black men. So it's just really reassuring to hear
something positive or a change, you know, coming from a brother.
You think that that would be you know, pretty straightforward exchange.
There's nothing there, there's nothing controversial, and the argument and
then here swoops in some buzzes they got something to
say about it and criticizes her. I want to know,
(11:47):
what do you think about that? Like, where do you
think that derives from? You know, that self hatred and
or what I'm gonna there's well put it to you
this way. The reason that I cut straight to that,
I'll be honest about why I cut straight to that,
because because I, I uh, the responsibility in regard to
black men and how we treat treat black women. Um
(12:08):
and and I was not born of a virgin Mary. Okay,
so people will always well, you know, maybe maybe I'm
from a different type of background. I'm you know, some reason,
some angle as to why I might think this way
and and and it's just unrealistic. Note that's not the
way it was. Okay. I started leaving home when I
was a kid who was considered one point in atwards,
(12:30):
you know, kid left home again when I was a teenager,
did all the things that teenagers do to to survive
and and get through all of the mistakes at all
that I did all of it. Been there, done that,
and at the end of the day, I'm sitting here
today planning my return trip home to a family that's
one member shut because her boyfriend shot and killed her
(12:55):
and himself and left a seven month old child on
a road that I grew up on. Dirt, brother, I
grew up on and walk past every day. My blood.
But that's not it. When I tell a friend of
mine about it, he's his men, you're not. I don't
believe this. My boy was just telling me about his
(13:17):
niece with a dude who shot her and left five
kids behind. So imagine imagine that I'm telling my friend
about something that grim and he's like, right back, catch it, bro,
My niece, my friend's niece too. They're not alone. Ze
dudes think it's cute to say these little things online, um,
(13:40):
these little end cells or whatever they whether they you know,
I don't. I don't do the whole where you're not
getting women, So you just because getting women ain't the
standard of whether or not you can be a good person.
So I don't even bother with that clap back. Whether
you live in your mama's basement or not or whatever.
I'm not getting into the to the classes part about
how much money you've got. That doesn't bother. Okay, it's
just about finding your center and me walking around. Oh
(14:04):
we long going about the business of You're just doing
what I have to do and trying to figure out
how to formulate the words to give condolence for something
like that face to face. And but they think it's
is they think it's cute, You think it is funny
to make these little degrading remarks. And I'm not even
(14:25):
really sure what you what you have, what you think
you have to prove. But I've been there, so you're
not gonna tell me. Will Black women did me this way? Bro?
Black women in my lifetime on Earth have many times
when I ever since I was a little boy to
a grown man, many times you know, on the receiving
end of negative energy and abusive behavior with black women
(14:48):
given end receiving since I was a little boy. So
you're not gonna tell me that that gives you license
to be a terrible human being. So so now I
do not have sympathy for these people when they come
to me to spill in my lap, to to externalize
(15:08):
that venom, you know, in my face, to make themselves
feel better, because there's another way. I know there's another way.
And so when I'm trying to show you another way
and the only way, only way that you can find
to feel better about yourself to make someone else feel less,
stand We'll see we can't have that, we can have it,
and so I take those lessons. I have gotten threats from,
(15:29):
you know, brothers. I've gotten threats from racists. I've been
called um names because I advocate for children and whenever
corporate punishment comes up, everybody lose them. But I've heard
it all that. You know what, It's a beautiful, beautiful
task to take on and I and I love it.
And I hope that's in a minority of the feedback
(15:50):
that you receive. I'm hoping. I know sometimes those voices
can be the loudest. Even to the video about this.
I hate the reference to my own work, but I
even did the video. But the good cop, there are
too many good cops who you didn't hit the person
in the head with the baton. Maybe you didn't pull
the trigger. But you didn't do anything when the other
person was doing it. And even if you disagreed, you
(16:10):
told the lie, you kept your mouth shot, kept up
the blue wall aside it. There's lots of ways that
people who are not directly complicit contribute to the thing
being perpetuated, and they feel like they are off the
hook because they didn't do it, you see what I'm saying.
And so there was recently a situation where um, I
(16:32):
was in the parking like coming out of the grocery
shore with a place where I normally shop, and someone
who works there was in the parking lot just just
eating her lunch and on a break, and a guy
comes and taps on the window. He's like, you know,
pretty girl, like you shouldn't be eating alone, you know.
And she's just like, oh my god, like I just
want to eat my lunch and you know, not be bothered.
(16:52):
She she waves them off, not interested, taps again and
like come on now, you're trying to have some lunch
and to be friendly from the conversation or whatever. You know,
when I say, take you have a real lunchen, and
she's like not interested. And so I rolled down my
window over across from my road down and said, hey,
I'll take the lunch. I like lunch. I take the lunch.
(17:13):
And he was like no, no, no, Bro, like no, no, no, no, no, no,
like almost like no, I don't roll like that, Like no.
If I said, she's having from the conversation, I like,
from the conversation and lunch, let's do it. Na, Bro
not interested And in that moment he walks away. But
but she was not interested too. But you felt like
it was all good. But it's just from the conversation.
(17:34):
How can begin the conversation. We haven't feeling I like lunch.
I do like lunch. And if he had said, yeah,
we'd have gone to lunch, I mean Dutch at the
very least, but we're going to lunch. I love the
fact that you bring up this point that you know,
when you're bringing up and calling out anti blackness and
at the same time giving people tools and telling people, hey,
(17:54):
I'm legitimizing all the black experience here from the way
that we speak to the way that we do things,
and specifically and particularly around protecting black women. And we
all know that whole protect black women thing has been
going pretty rampant throughout the internet in the last you know,
a few years, and that you're actually doing this what
it looks like to actually protect black women. But that
(18:15):
the pushback that you tend to get or can get
at times, and I won't speak to what tends to
happen more or less, but that to see that you're
getting certain kind of pushback and that's coming from black
men is an important kind of thing to to make
note of and and and when as you talk about
something like corporal punishment, where I'm sure plenty black mothers
jumped into those comments too and had lots to say
(18:38):
about that as well. So I think it's it's a
cool thing for us to legitimize ourselves, but to also
pay attention to the ways in which we can kind
of be our own. Um, I don't want to say
any me but adversary, you know what I'm saying. So
that's powerful. That also applies to language, because I know
very many people my normal I've seen something like this
(18:59):
when I talk m that's the way that my normal
ax when I talking to my family them, that's what
that's where it's sound like. No, there's a whole bunch
of people back home will say, oh, how you. Why
are you? How are you going Jill podcast or Sound
Beach you like that, man, you're gonna be too bads. Yeah, yeah.
(19:22):
We don't come out here speaking ghetto. Don't go out
there talking ghetto or whatever. Jill starts out the whole
podcast speaking in a way then looks down upon in
a lot of ways when we when we in a
in a business meeting, You're not gonna come into business
meet like hey, hi, YAsO am you know. And and
the truth of the matter is that if she wanted to,
(19:43):
she should be able to. And that in that moment,
that that is a that is a legitimate pushback. That's
a legitimate revolutionary act to own to to use your
chosen language, no more than it would be she walked
into a room and decided to speak Spanish. It's a freedom.
(20:05):
And see, that's that's the thing. When you when you've
gone through um, all of it ties together, all of
it ties together in regards of linguistic you know, truthfulness,
and there's you know, there's evening linguisticism, which is, you know,
essentially racism manifested by way of language. So people will
profile your tone and profile your accident, profile you know
(20:26):
the way that you used. But my point to to
all of it was what we end up with is
where you um, you know, uh encapsulated it just now
is what we end up when we're dealing with anti
whiteness and white supremacy and we start talking in terms
of pro ourselves, like I approach it from a pro
pro self perspective as opposed to just defining myself by
(20:47):
being against some other thing. But what you end up
with is the more you circle back around and deal
with your stuff internally, you start to root out some
of the internalized anti anti blackness. You start to root
many of the things that people who had accents or
have accents who've lost them because they were literally beaten
at home to not use them because their families saw
(21:09):
it as a liability, not an asset. And so some
of them were literally, you know, disciplined in order to
clean up their addiction at home. And now when we
sat around and we talked to them and everybody started
talking like this, they feel like they have imposter syndrome
because they've lost their acts. And it's it's a sad
thing to see someone, do you know. It's just as
Gulla gtuse you but they feetle fake when they use
(21:31):
the accident we grew abusing. We're gonna take a quick
break and then we'll be right back. Before we even
get into this because on some let's act on like
(21:53):
on some real dummy stuff. Not calling people dummies, but
like a lot of people don't even understand the importance
or what gachy and gula means to language into culture.
So um, can you kind of break that down in
a way that folks understand. Probably the most easier form
of making it makes sense is if people think in
(22:13):
terms of languages and dialects, like, say, for example, English
itself is a language that is originally a Germanic language. Okay,
but the English vocabulary is like one third French. There's
there's in Latin, and there are other languages. What's left
of the Germanic languages are like maybe of the original
(22:36):
vocabulary from the Germanic language and so, but yet it's
still able to maintain its status as a as a
Germanic language because of the basic grammar and its structure
things like that. That's that's why it's able to maintain
its identity as a Germanic language. Now, African Americans did
not choose to forfeit our native languages that obviously it
(22:59):
wasn't a w And we did not learn English in
a classroom, No no, and none our answers have Rosetta Stone,
No no instructors or anything. That we learned English by
adopting the language, the culture, that everything that was needed
to survive. Okay, So in doing that, we were picking
(23:22):
up language from people who were not themselves, you know, scholars,
we're talking about the lower wrung European Scots Irish and
so and remember that detail, the lower wrung sort of
indentured Scot's Irish people, Okay, because that's gonna be very
important about in about two minutes. And so we're taking
(23:43):
in the consideration the circumstances of how we're learning the
language and why we're learning the language, and also that
all of us didn't speak the same original languages. So
we're learning not only how to speak with the other, uh,
the oppressors, we're also learning to speak to one another.
(24:04):
And that's something that we that's almost never talked about,
is that we are learning not only to speak to
the oppressive, but we also have to learn to speak
to one another in a language that is neither one
of us, and so to be able to for our
ancestors to be able to do that, to be able
to learn a new language, under Durest, learn a language
(24:25):
to speak with one another under Durest, maintain enough of
our africanness. And I'll use that as a broad term
um African nous in loanwords and structure in the language
to today still maintain many of the more African basic
structure and how we modify verbs, verb, tense um in
(24:46):
a sentence um like say, for example, we've all heard
somebody say, well, I'm gonna tell you what, or I'm
gonna go to the store, or I'm gonna beat in
a minute. And the before the verb is very consistent
because at denotes the present. It takes the place of
the suffix I n g that denotes that there's a
present action or near future action that is in progress.
(25:08):
I am going to the store. I'm gonna go to
the store. You're doing that right now now. If I'm
going to the store much later, I would probably say
I could go to the store. I could go to
it now that gut is your future. I could go
to the store is idea as and I frequently go.
That's your continuous Okay, I go to the store is
add as in pass that God never had to change
(25:31):
in any of those sentences, because the verse days in
this base infinitive form that is consistent. Those are rules
that happened consistently throughout the language. And so when you
start looking at where else do these these rules and
these things happen, and you look into our mother tongues,
then you start to find them. You start to find
words like hunnah it's also pronounced as uno in different
(25:55):
parts of the diaspora. That same word una exists for
father exists in different parts of the diaspora. You know,
these these consistencies happened throughout a diasport. And yet even
though we're maintaining very much of the African sort of
fundamentals of the language, we're still relegated to it being
(26:16):
a dialect of English and stripped of the African identity
and made it seem as though it's just basically a
broken version of an English thing. Meanwhile, meanwhile, these same
people are picking up language from us, They're picking up
words from us. Gouba is the Galaguchi word for peanut.
(26:37):
Georgia is the goober state g o o b e r,
but ours is g u b a. We do not
use the hard e r in more words than one.
We don't use the hardy are because because because our
language is non rhotic, and non rhodic is essentially when
you dropped the hard are for more of an a
(26:58):
like sound. So google but and goober are the same
thing word for peanut. Georgia is a peanut state. Georgia
is also a a state that is in m bordering
the Gulaguchi Cultural Heritage Corridor. So to make it seem
like it's a coincidence that the language seems to follow
us wherever we are and these people end up speaking
our language and using phrases that we use, it's only
(27:22):
ever credited in one direction. They literally believe that we
learn language from one another. But it was only Africans
learning language from English and not English learning any language
from African But how does that stand to reason? You
see what I'm saying, It's still everything else, but the language.
I doubt it getting to the Scott's Irish like. There
(27:42):
are things now, like the word acts that is known
as something that people look down on for black people.
If we say and let me ask you a question,
you know, and acts? Okay, well, there's a couple of
things about that. You also will find acts in Europe,
you'll find acts in Ireland. You still find acts in
different parts of Scotland. Do you'll find acts in Chaucer
(28:03):
and Shakespeare. And going back to the Greek word oxyen
and oskian, those two words oscan and oxyen are literally
the same thing, from same words, and it means essentially
to request, and that is abbreviated from oxyen to acts.
And so when people correct ox with ask, not only
(28:25):
is that to certain degree incorrect, but it also is
ironic in a sense that word is not even the
original word that you were trying to say. Them word
that you're trying to say isn't even the original word
for that, and so we but I'll tell you how
it happened. How it happened is the word asked was
more widely publicized in print, particularly in the Bible, and
(28:49):
at the time only people of status could either read
or own books. And therefore the word that was more
widely spread out or widely distributed was in books. And
so people who did read, the people who did have status,
and people who did have education, they read a s K.
And so when they repeated that word, they said a
s K. The people who did not have those things
(29:12):
were still saying a K S. And so then they're like, hmmm,
I happened to notice broke people saying the ks. And
and so the social correlation between lack of money, lack
of education, lack of status, and also associating those things
with black people turned into who was at the lowest
(29:34):
rung of society, who was the brokers, who was the
least educated, Who was the one that you know that
were the poorest in all of those aspects that lacks
status black people? And so we basically got acts pinned
on us, even though we got it from Europeans and
who still use it today. Do you see him saying,
(29:54):
I'm side Wait a minute, this is the point this
I gotta stop you because this is the point where
we all get up in run around the room. This
is the part where we get up and we run,
we yeah into a corner and we shout for a
few minutes. Run I gets said a little bit Jill too, though,
because you know what those sons I get sad. I
was just saying the age of Jill, I was like
(30:15):
a class like yours. Knowledge like this should be fundamental
in every school that has a lack of every school,
not even black or brown, because I feel like the
immigrants and everybody else who comes here don't understand this,
don't get like you need to get all of this,
like this is the country that this is the country
that you live in. And I'm just sad because I'm like, man,
if people had this information, that empowerment, that you would
(30:36):
feel like the you wouldn't question yourself. So more. Let's
also talk about how we wield the grammar police, how
the grammar police wield this power on that. Yeah, we
do this to one another, you and I, but but
but there's something about it, even not knowing the details
(30:59):
that feel wrong, there's something about it because even if
we can even pull up respectability of all types like
you will see on the socials, don't you remember a
time when we used to do this and we used
to do that, And these were times when it was
acceptable to jack up little black kids and make them
wear certain clothes and make them say certain words, and
(31:20):
make them act a certain way when they are in
the presence of white folks. But we didn't. They don't
know that, they don't know, they don't know. There was
training for that, you know, there was training for artists.
You had to go through media training to learn how
to speak you know, um, there was a certain etiquette
(31:43):
that you had to carry, you know, thinking back to
like the Supremes, what we're seeing today is is far
different from what you know they were portraying now in
the house, they were a whole of the people. And
I don't you know, I can't say, you know, like
(32:04):
when we think of artists like Whitney Houston, you know,
holding yourself in you know, for so long, and the
bawd tends to break you feel me, Yeah, for sure. Yeah,
we're looking we're looking at a lot of evidence of
what happens when you have to consistently suppress the self
in language and behavior, in and and everything. When you
(32:29):
talked about how there's a borrowing from us that happens,
and then it immediately becomes like American culture when you know,
you know, we don't get credit, like we just don't
get credit. Said once the singer Time said how he
was talking about how if he sang um saying if
(32:53):
he's saying the same song will be considered gospel and
relegated to a specific type of on or a time
of day. It would just be seen differently. And but
if a non black singer, a white singer sings and
then it's spiritual, it's a different kind of vibe, Like
they get to experiment with it in a way that
sometimes and I don't know if this is true, and
you certainly would be in a more um informed perspective
(33:16):
to speak on it, but sometimes it seems like with
black artists, black intellectuals, black public figures, we have to
manage our blackness. Like it's not even just like walk
out the door and just be black. You have to
figure out how black and each situation do we really
want to be. And I'm just wondering, like I just
(33:39):
don't see that being an issue for our white counterparts.
I don't see it being something that they have to say,
like how white can I be? Right now? Unless you're racist?
And that's a whole different conversation, but you know, they
are doing the whole how black can I be? You know,
what's it called black fishing or something like that. There's
always quite a lot of that, but they're is um
(34:00):
like Nat King Cole. You know, he was considered quite eloquent.
Maya Angelou was considered quite eloquent. Um Felicia Rashod is
considered quite eloquent. There was something for me about uh, specifically,
I loved the the addiction. Addiction was exciting to me.
(34:23):
I wanted that for myself. When I read James Baldwin,
he was very eloquent and very awful, but also exceptionally
black asks, you know, which was was incredible. But then
you have Zorneil Hurston, and you've got Tony Morrison and
Jay California Cooper, who could who could sit themselves in
(34:44):
the belly of a community and sound like the people,
and when you read it, you heard, you heard, and
you could smell and taste you know, um, the community.
Is there something wrong with with people who enjoyed action?
You know, it's funny you should ask that because two
things tied together, something that you just said, and also
(35:06):
a minute ago we were talking about the wise and
the course in more schools. Ironically, my Angelo, along with
Jesse Jackson, a few of the community leaders, when there
was an initiative in the nineteen eighties to have what
they then but they then called ebonics, but having black
(35:27):
speech and Black English integrated into the curriculum in order
to help black children better understand other subjects but mostly English,
like using it as a bridge. And it was the
community who not only shut it down but demonized it
to the point where people became embarrassed and ashamed of
just the term. You know, when they needed better pr Son,
(35:49):
the pr on a bonics was it was. It was.
It wasn't like, it wasn't like your linguists. It wasn't
like this is the history. That's likely because and this
is just the facts, and in certain certain spaces, the
fact that Son is a teacher as an instructor at Harvard,
the fact that he's associated with a p w Y
(36:11):
and this is something he's teaching in that space, will
legitimize it in ways that it wouldn't have been legitimized before.
Saying that, you don't think people like that were involved
in any bonics. Many of the issues with the Bonic's
controversy was most of the criticism wasn't coming linguists. It
was more activists, people who yeah, it wasn't it wasn't
(36:33):
There wasn't a thing they're cohesive, you know, coming together,
people sitting down. But again Jessie jactly called the trash.
He said that the black speeches trash. He literally used
the term trash for the way to speak. And these
are the people who were seen as mostly of the
articulate people. They absolutely associated black speech with, um, you know,
(36:54):
being with the negativity. There was a Sesame Street character
that they tried to integrate Sentame Street and integrate some
of the black speech, and and again we got it
shut down. And this has happened multiple times where the
respectable folk in our community shut down efforts to incorporate
our manner of speech as an outreach for children in schools.
(37:18):
And so people would ask me sometimes not so you know,
uh as in a gotcha type of way. There was
so why are you at Harvard and not insert black
university here Harvard Coble Right. I'm just gonna say I
had the privilege of of teaching one class at Harvard,
and I felt like I was at the hardwarts of education.
(37:40):
You supposed to, That's what they pay for, they were.
You would feel like that it's bound into nice. Well,
I mean, and the thing is, I rolled out the invitation.
I said that while I am teaching at Harvard. I
would be more than happy to workshops are late to
you know if at of school and some people took
(38:01):
me and taking me up on it. I mean, if
if you want me to give you any kind of
insights on teaching the language, any anything, Holt so have
no wait no no no wait no no no sign. Nobody,
no school or institution has reached out to you. Right now,
We're gonna call it out more North Carolina A and
(38:22):
T Florida A and M and school y'all at and
not just college colleges with school systems. I'm like the
school system. And well what Harvard whatever that at? Oh no, no, no, no,
here's here's the surprisingly. Harvard is a program called Project Teach.
In that program, there's an outreach for Cambridge area schools.
(38:43):
And so what I would end up teaching, say seventh
seventh graders UM in Cambridge area schools, and that would
be UM school for students who speak English is a
second language UM students from public schools. So I do
that in Cambridge, in Cambridge and so speaking, collaborating with
other programs. I have worked with other schools Princeton, Listen,
(39:10):
come on, I'm going to get mad. I'm getting mad.
More conversation after the break. Can I ask a question?
(39:32):
Here's I have a question? I have a question? Alright,
So one on the good people's social media's. You know,
a lot of times we have situations where and I've
seen this on Twitter with black folks getting upset sometimes
with us explaining how to interpret certain black expressions or
(39:54):
or or ways of saying things. Feeling as if we're
giving away these trade secrets, this moment where we where
we can kind of secretly talk to each other. So
how do you feel about the gate keeping of our language?
I want to imagine this, okay, um, one of the
most common influences that people point to as an exceptional
(40:17):
sort of thing that can help you improve as the singers,
like having a church background. That's what we in our
community is always having a church background. Okay, Jill. When
you're doing your concerts, do you count how many white
people are in the audience, possibly learning the runs that
you're singing. Yeah, when when you're singing your vocals, Yeah,
they're they're listening to you sing your vocals. They're listening
(40:40):
to the bass players played bass. They're listening to the
drummers play the drums, they're listening to the teacher's teach,
they're they're they're in their omnipresent. We live in a
white power structure and they're just going to be white
people everywhere and watching and observing. And you have to
figure out how do I give my gift or share
(41:02):
this gift with my community to the broadest in the
broadest manner possible and not expose it to anyone else
When the most expansive way for me to do that
is in person in public. On the internet, there's just
no way to get around that. And and as of now,
if you look at who's going viral in these social
(41:24):
media posts, when you just know when the drum major
Okay goes viral for doing doing the dance that all black,
every black drum drum agent their mama know how to do,
they're white. You know, when somebody covers there will be
people who will cover a black artist's song and the
cover does better than the original because a white person
(41:48):
covered it. There are more. It used to be unique
to be like the blue eyed soul singer like that
used to be like a thing um you know that
people thought was unique. But now how many people can
you count now or not black, whether be they Korean
or white or some who can do these runs? Who
can who hold these notes because they're watching us perform
(42:10):
our craft. They're watching and learning, playing and replay play, replay, play,
replay and practicing in the mirror being us when they
grow up. And so there's no way that we can
really circumvent them completely from the process. But what I
do try to add is you can't really fake culture
(42:30):
like you can't really you need cultural context for a
thing to make sense. And I'll give you an example
right now. A term that is a trendy sort of
so called internet um slang term is cat. If somebody
said that's cap, no cap is cap okay. The term
cap has been first of all, being used since the
turn of last century in the black community as high hat.
(42:55):
So if somebody has if you're wearing a top hat
or a high hat and you tip your high hat,
that's for sophisticated people. That's what the people who are,
you know, well healed. So if someone who wasn't from
that background thought that you were being pretentious or thought
that you were, you know, friend high had, there's a
little high had negrow here like you know, you know,
being trying to high and so from high hat it
(43:18):
became high cap, and from high cap it was abbreviated
to cat. And so these these people are now saying
that something is a general term and in general internet
speaks like it belongs to everyone that's actually been in
our family since mama's. Mama was saying, and the same
thing if I say, um, like if we if we
(43:40):
saw something that looked good or we wanted to compliment something, Um,
if I see your your sneakers, and sometimes man im
sneak is hard, bro sneak is hard. They were saying
that back in cab Calawais days, like even in cab
Calawas book Isms in his dictionary, hard is used in
cab calaways Days the same manner, not the these are
are grandmother's great grandmother's times using words that have been
(44:04):
in our community. We've been saying key, we've been saying that,
We've been saying hit, we've been saying dig, we've been
using cat. Oh God, they've whiting the hell out of bro.
I was like, bro, it's not our words have been
so h immersed into popular language that it ain't in
(44:25):
the slang them like. People don't even look at it.
It's sla it's so normalized. So it puts us in
a precarious, you know, situation because they're gonna hear this
conversation right now when this gets published. We're trying to
figure it out. But you're so right. There's no safe space.
Every every everyone, everybody going here right. I have just
(44:48):
one of my videos has eleven million views, and you
have to ask yourself, Wait a minute, if just one
video gets eleven millions, and that doesn't include like all
the other videos, what would you do if you could
tell a eleven million people something like if if there
was a thing that you could say and eleven million
people were guaranteed to hear, and what would it be?
But people don't know what's gonna go viral in advance.
So to me, I try to if if you if
(45:09):
you stay ready, you gotta get ready. I try to
make sure that when I opened my mouth and say
something in front of that camera and put it out
into the world, that I'm okay with whatever it is
going viral or whatever it is going where everything to go.
I'm comfortable pressing play in any room anywhere that thing
is is found because you never know where it's gonna land.
And I just can't. I can't be the one women do?
(45:33):
Women do? I've felt similar ways. Had to ask you
because I think we always find ourselves in these moments
were like, oh gosh, they will steal, they will twist, turn,
dilute and in all of the above, and there's always
(45:54):
an inner conversation that's just not just how black am
I going to be because of my full of internalized
anti blackness? But how black am I gonna be? Am
I going to allow you to have access to me?
The one thing I feel like I can keep, Well,
if you think about it this way, and in a
sense you will. You you carry yourself in a way
(46:17):
that if somebody did copy you or they try to,
you know, do what you do, it will be obviously
that's what they're doing, yea. And so you look silly
trying to do me like everybody self may you're doing.
You're just trying to do so on so you're righten
off this person that person like you. They know what
you're doing when you're doing it. And to me, like
we set the bar of excellence at a place where um,
(46:40):
it's one of those you can get with this, if
you can get with that, you know, type of situations,
and there's something something you can't do anything about, Like
you can't do anything about them having the raw numbers.
They just simply make up so much of the population
that they decide to buy something mediocre. That's not an
indictment of your product. Your product is excellent. But you
know what they didn't They wasn't here for the spice.
(47:00):
Every everybody can't do spipe for some people salting pepper
and spicy, and they're not They're not here for what
you're doing. And that's okay because Frankie Beverly and May's
are legends and our community. That's right. Her brothers are
legends to us. So there's plenty of people who are
royalty to us that ain't got a cross suit as far.
(47:22):
And and so I go line. Now when I when
I see you know, like Beyonce, you know, cover like
one of you know, Frankie Beverly Mays like song, I
was like, oh man, please don't let them. Don't let
them they're let them fight out of them. Don't let
him find out about babies, Like, oh man, they're they're
going into the catalog. Now a lot of grand children.
Let them get fed. I get the feeling. But but
(47:43):
the thing is, I think that at some point in
time we pretty much have to like gatekeeping is not
meant to keep us out, like when it gets to
the point where we're cutting off our nose despite their face,
taking the wrong team. And so don't come in to
a black educators post and be like, nah, brother, you're
(48:03):
giving away that secret. Don't say that. Let don't do that.
Don't do that, because they already made Uncle Rebus, they
already put out Disney already had Tom and Jerry already
has Thomas. You we get brought, you know, they already
got the stereotypical black maid. They already have the stereotypical
black slave. Speak there. That cat, that horse has to
(48:23):
go on a long time ago. So we're not stopping
them from hearing us speak when they're part of the
reason we speak this way. Mm hmm. So think about that.
Like Creoles, especially particularly Creoles such as as Jamaican paths
you know him and Creole English in a Beijian Creole Gola.
(48:43):
These are languages that came about by way of that
were born of colonialists, that were born of struggle and
were merged with languages of the oppressor and holding onto
the identity of our ancestors, and so they're not secrets
their languages. That came about because we had to be
able to communicate with the oppressor, but we also stratified
(49:05):
the languages to keep a little something for ourselves. And
so I'll teach up to a limit and the rest
of it is reserved for what's in the room. If
we're having this exact same conversation in the same room offline,
it might be a little bit more cold. Okay, this
(49:25):
is you know, to hear it, Yeah, to make sure
to normalize it, but still honor. We need the information.
Something has to be sacred, am Yeah, you know your yeah. Yeah,
We're going to stop being ourselves because we don't want
(49:46):
anybody to copy us. Right. Well, there's a thing that's
naturally I don't I don't know very many people who
are wanted to present the same in every single situation.
So like, naturally speaking, I might say so even even
with my siblings, I might say something to one siblom
that I wouldn't really say to another. Like we've got
different styles of conversations personality type and so sometimes um,
(50:10):
somebody asked me the other day you said, well, well,
if this is where you actually normally saw it, how
come you, um colt switch? You know why white you?
The way that there was phrase was essentially like you
count down to the white man. But what you know,
but what they haven't taken into consideration is to me,
my my language is into like it's it's a it's
(50:31):
a personal thing. It's an intimate thing. But I am
and I was. I remember I was being. I was
in in l A And there was a group of
brothers that we're all talking and somebody let one of
the words slip, and I were you from none of us? Moment?
You gotta be from Charles you even you from Charleston,
(50:53):
the low country. You gotta be from somebody easy And
you know I had a life for West. Actually West
actually is right next to um in Charleston County, Anther. Yeah,
like brown from touchdown. He said, you tucked down. So
we started talking. Then as soon as we start talking,
this brother turned out to be Nigerian. This one here
turned out to be all of us. We're standing, we're
using our I don't know, business accent and and we
(51:15):
all just got into our dialect, got into our languages.
Once it was it was clear what was up. But
I've even even had that happen in situations where there
are people that I know we're from the same background,
and it's just different comfort levels, whether you're angry, whether
you're you're in a good mood. Like differently, we speak
differently at different times. It's not selling out to use
(51:37):
all of who you are, speak with all the people are.
If you want to reach with an audience, um, there's
a there's sometimes when you might sing like like there's
a national anthem. Everybody got the own version of the
Messian animal. Maybe you just want to sing straight straight
through and and not do you know for Sunday. Yeah,
I mean, maybe you don't want to a revival like
(51:59):
maybe that, maybe that ain't the mursion you're going for.
You just want to think it streak down the line,
and you should be able to do that. And so
that's what I want to do. Is my goal isn't
to get you to be blacker. My goal is to
help you be as comfortable as possible being your authentic self.
Whatever you feel that is, whatever however you want to
(52:20):
express yourself because you were you. At the end of
the day, I'm not as married to the to the
concept of race as an identity as many people would
think I am, because white supremacist created and so to
here's the cruel irony is that in to some extent,
(52:44):
even pride in the concept of blackness as an identity
to some degree as affirming to the people who created
race as an identity in the first place for purpose
of putting us on the bottom run of a fake
socio economic assist And so to some ex in because
you stripped our identity, our original I didn't need away
from us and left us with this thing. In return,
(53:07):
we've had to get through all sorts of struggles and
and and work our way scratch away from the bottom.
And that was with us all along. That was a
part of the thing that was with us all along.
And so we're trauma bonding with an identity, but that
was never meant to be our own, you see what
I'm saying. And so now that that separation is very,
very very difficult to do, because then we have to
(53:30):
ask ourselves with what am I if not that? And
in school, right, I don't know that Wait a minute,
I need to do some care on my edges. Thank
you very much. Let me go and get some full back.
I have some I need to have ointments. And it
(53:53):
has been a pleasure to hear you're you're thinking out loud.
It is a pleasure, thank you, to carry yourself in
an extremely powerful way. And we commend you absolutely for
for sharing what you know, for caring about what you know,
and um lifting others as you go. It's a beautiful thing.
(54:15):
Thank you so much for being here with us at
Jay dot Ill and UM. We'd love to talk to
you again. Fascinating. Absolutely love to return anytime. You're fascinating, sir,
Thank you, thank you. This has been Jay dot Ill
the podcast such a pleasure, always, such a pleasuredice to
have conversations that spark conversation. The gumbo is good, my friends,
(54:40):
The gumbo is good. How do you eat an elephant?
One by it? Kind? Hey, listeners, it's Amber the producer here.
How amazing it's son. I could literally listen to him
all day and I'm pretty sure we're going to have
(55:00):
him on for many, many more conversations in the meantime.
Check out all of his incredible content on social media. YouTube,
and his website. I link all those elements down below.
There is so much power and language, and if you
take anything from this conversation, I hope that you remember
not to let anyone invalidate your culture or the way
(55:24):
that you and yours communicate with each other. Hi, if
you have comments on something he said in this episode
called eight six six, Hey Jill, if you want to
(55:47):
add to this conversation, that's eight six six four nine
five four five five. Don't forget to tell us your
name and the episode you're referring to. You might just
hear your message on a future episode. Thank you for
listening to Jill Scott Presents Jay dot Ill. The podcast
(56:08):
j dot Ill is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Ja Dot M, a production of I Heart Radio.
What's up Everybody? How y'all doing? Welcome to Jay Dot
Elda Packheash. It is a pleasure to be here to
day with my sister friends AGR great and dance love.
That's me. That's right in my home. Girl. Lie, Yes,
(00:24):
ain't clear what you said? You see? I say that
it's giving North. It's giving North. It's slightly like country
to you know what I'm saying. It's like Philly and
country mixed together, because that's where I'm living at likes
(00:46):
I get home. As I get home, you know, it's
where y'all going at you every where you go, everywhere.
It's no secret we we we beautiful brown people. We
gotta we got a whole dialect going on where an
(01:11):
entire way right on DC all day, all day. Yeah.
I used to have a cousin, a cousin who dated
a guy from Cali, and he was like, why people
from d c sing everything they say and We're like, no,
we don't. He was like, yes, y'all do. He said,
how y'all doing? What where's it going? What's going? And
(01:36):
I just want to give a shout out to my girlfriend,
a shocky coleman, the whole. She's a doctorate and she's
she's a whole principal at a at a at a school.
And when I first heard her speak, she's from d C.
And she was like, I remember why y'all always going
over the air. And I was like, see the funny
(02:00):
things that what d C people will do is not
drop their accent for real feeling a long time. Don't
get it twisted as soon as I crossed the city limits.
It's a rap. It's an absolute rap to our pleasure,
to our pleasure. Oh look, we're gonna get it to
a little perfection right now. My mother says perfect. Oh
(02:23):
that's just perfect. Yeah. My stubmother used to say crown
for crayon, crown crown, and my mother says stomach. We
love it. And my my friend Scott Parker, his mom
(02:43):
says thumbach too. I figured it might be from the
same place my grandmama said, if it's too old, it's
at no matter what it's always so, it's a root,
it's it's it's what death, what it is? It a book?
Rut is the only one that does that. I don't
(03:04):
think there are any other words. I don't know if
it's any other words. With that, I'm gonna follow these
rules as we are absolutely fascinating when it comes to
how we speak, in the ways that we speak. And
it's true, there's there's music pretty much in everything. Um,
(03:25):
no matter where you come from, there's a song and
how we speak. Yeah yeah, yes, yes, yeah yeah yeah
age great dance. So we have somebody really special here,
would you be kind enough to entro dudes, I most
certainly would like to introduce this person, this lovely being. Um,
(03:47):
y'all know, I'll be on the internet, this is this
is if you'll right, it's okay, and one day I'm
on the social media's and this lovely person uh these
son Michew uh pops up on my on my fee
talking this good talk. Okay. So before we get talking
(04:08):
to him, I just I'm gonna read a little bit
about him, so y'all understand. So when y'all do, you're
good googling, because this is what we do on this show,
we do a good receipt exactly. So here we go.
I'm gonna read this. I'm gonna let you know I'm
reading because I'm not this good. I'm I'm reading to
make sure y'all get the info right, all right. Son
Michel has cultivated a strong following online, which is true.
(04:28):
I'm one of his followers via social media, with frequent
viral content ranging from pop culture commentary, allegorical anecdotes, and
entertainment to serious discussions, advocacy and philanthropy via crowdfunding. He
uses this count content to promote intellect, ethics, enlightenment, and education,
(04:49):
the ladder of which led him in two thousand seventeen
to becoming the first and only Gala language instructor at
Harvard University. And this role, he teaches a curriculum based
on extensive search and his own personal GALAGICI knowledge and experience.
So I'm gonna stop there because y'all need to understand.
I know some of y'all need this, you know, high
(05:10):
high level receipts Harvard until recently that this man taught
it Harvard. All I know is that he speaks to
absolute taruse, and so I would love to introduce the
Jay dai Il family who is listening to Mr Son Michelle.
Come on, I'm very glad to be here. I appreciate
(05:34):
the energy of the Bible. I'm really happy that, Um,
you know you you found me through through through the work. Um,
any time I get love from all line is great
because everybody everybody don't love you all love, so how
can we not what we do? Know? You get a
little bit of pushback from the wrights, Oh yeah, oh yeah,
(05:55):
but I'm gonna I'm gonna be really honest about that.
I expected and and just some degree thrive on it.
Like they haven't figured out how to deal with the
creators who don't mind um as the the old saying
the smell of napalm in the morning, like I'm here
for and so um, what they want you to do
is is to like back off and block them, And
(06:16):
but that's not how the internet works. That's not how
social media works. Engagement is engagement. So the algorithm doesn't
know that you're you're calling me out my name or
whatever your problem is. All the algorithm knows that you
keep coming to my videos, watching them and commenting, and
so they've ironically been boosting the very content that they're
trying to stop me from making. But it's not working
out that way. Would anybody want to stop your content?
(06:41):
Am I missing? You know what it is? And I
just did UM. I just did electric on campus last
night actually talking a little bit about this um. One
of the first things that colonialists do, the first thing
that imperialist will do when they take over place a
conqueror people is get rid of the link. Like you
would have to ask yourself, like what would be what's
(07:03):
so important about getting rid of the language? Like if
you go to a voe, you can get rid of
their native language. Everywhere you go, you try to strict
the people of their language because there's power and language.
There's power in and there's lineage and language that's heritage
and language you can tell so much like you were
just saying before we started recording, that you can tell
from certain words. I can tell where you're from, what
part of Taling you're from. If you say hello, maybe
(07:24):
you're from Oakland. If you say not, I mean or
depending on it the word is born, like maybe from Northeast.
You know, I can kind of tell basically where you are.
And when you take away those things and replace it
with the language of the oppressor, you will never ever
be able to articulate your humanity to its fullest extent
in the language of your oppressor. And they know that,
(07:45):
and so when someone pops up who's saying, hey, there's
not only nothing wrong with the way that we speak
and getting into our dialects and our creoles, but there's
everything right about it, and making ourselves more adjacent to
the truth of who we are as opposed to what
we were forced to be. Don't like it, but they've
got to deal with it because to some degree, h,
(08:05):
I know, maybe it's a little massacrest in me. I
don't mind them being upset at all. It doesn't bother
me at all. Yeah, you always seem to giggle a
little right before you do like a clap back. You
always seem, you know, like at the beginning of the
clap back from where I think it's Jada kiss and
he's like, I don't want to sound mad, I feel wonderful,
(08:26):
Like you're like that at the beginning of your clap back.
It's like, I want to make sure y'all realize I'm
not pissed. In fact, absolutely, they will think about it.
Somebody who's teaching language, like language and why is a
person who's teaching language and die like getting death threats?
What is that about? Like? Why why are you in
(08:46):
comments and in the comments, um, the one in the
video that I just did because I got a hundred
and fifty thousand, past hundred thousand followers on YouTube, which,
thanks in part to them, you helped to drive Eachi
a hundred in the followers on YouTube. So congratulations, congratulate
yourself and played yourself. But they at the same time
(09:07):
will say I'm hunting you, and when I find you,
I'm gonna finish. First of all, do you really want
to find me? So if I'm anti racism, anti misogyny,
pro children, protecting children, building community, philanthropy, um, knowledge yourself
in regards as language and culture, like, it's like, stop
me when you get to the part when I get
(09:29):
to the part that warrants you want to kill But
here we are, here, we are more real talk after
the break. It's truly sounds like that corny saying knowledge
(09:54):
is power, and if if it sounds like people can
see that to be true and you're deeply powerful and
the things that just saying the people and empowering people,
that's powerful. But let me let you in on something though.
Do you know what some of the the most volatile
okay they're there are three most volatile topics that I'm
guaranteed to get hate from and from surprising sources. Okay um.
(10:20):
One of the ones that I did recently, I never
turned off the comments in my posts. Never do. I
let them let the engagement rack up and they can
just do whatever they want to in the comments, like
have at it. One of the ones that I did
turn the comments off was a post. The literal title
of the post is Lizzo is beautiful. That's the title
(10:41):
of the post, is Lizzo is beautiful. There were people
who was stumbling over themselves to get into that post
to say some of the most violent and ugly things
about big, beautiful black equipment. And they weren't all wait.
In fact, I would give it a fifty split between
(11:02):
the racists and black men who came in there to
say it wasn't enough. They were singling out Lizzo. They
then started attacking people in the comments and see, I
can't have that, Like you can said that you want
to about me, I'm here for But when it gets
to the point where someone responds and says, you know, hey,
I really appreciate this this perspective because I've been on
(11:24):
the other side of you know, these types of critiques
from black men. So it's just really reassuring to hear
something positive or a change, you know, coming from a brother.
You think that that would be you know, pretty straightforward exchange.
There's nothing there, there's nothing controversial, and the argument and
then here swoops in some buzzes they got something to
say about it and criticizes her. I want to know,
(11:47):
what do you think about that? Like, where do you
think that derives from? You know, that self hatred and
or what I'm gonna there's well put it to you
this way. The reason that I cut straight to that,
I'll be honest about why I cut straight to that,
because because I, I uh, the responsibility in regard to
black men and how we treat treat black women. Um
(12:08):
and and I was not born of a virgin Mary. Okay,
so people will always well, you know, maybe maybe I'm
from a different type of background. I'm you know, some reason,
some angle as to why I might think this way
and and and it's just unrealistic. Note that's not the
way it was. Okay. I started leaving home when I
was a kid who was considered one point in atwards,
(12:30):
you know, kid left home again when I was a teenager,
did all the things that teenagers do to to survive
and and get through all of the mistakes at all
that I did all of it. Been there, done that,
and at the end of the day, I'm sitting here
today planning my return trip home to a family that's
one member shut because her boyfriend shot and killed her
(12:55):
and himself and left a seven month old child on
a road that I grew up on. Dirt, brother, I
grew up on and walk past every day. My blood.
But that's not it. When I tell a friend of
mine about it, he's his men, you're not. I don't
believe this. My boy was just telling me about his
(13:17):
niece with a dude who shot her and left five
kids behind. So imagine imagine that I'm telling my friend
about something that grim and he's like, right back, catch it, bro,
My niece, my friend's niece too. They're not alone. Ze
dudes think it's cute to say these little things online, um,
(13:40):
these little end cells or whatever they whether they you know,
I don't. I don't do the whole where you're not
getting women, So you just because getting women ain't the
standard of whether or not you can be a good person.
So I don't even bother with that clap back. Whether
you live in your mama's basement or not or whatever.
I'm not getting into the to the classes part about
how much money you've got. That doesn't bother. Okay, it's
just about finding your center and me walking around. Oh
(14:04):
we long going about the business of You're just doing
what I have to do and trying to figure out
how to formulate the words to give condolence for something
like that face to face. And but they think it's
is they think it's cute, You think it is funny
to make these little degrading remarks. And I'm not even
(14:25):
really sure what you what you have, what you think
you have to prove. But I've been there, so you're
not gonna tell me. Will Black women did me this way? Bro?
Black women in my lifetime on Earth have many times
when I ever since I was a little boy to
a grown man, many times you know, on the receiving
end of negative energy and abusive behavior with black women
(14:48):
given end receiving since I was a little boy. So
you're not gonna tell me that that gives you license
to be a terrible human being. So so now I
do not have sympathy for these people when they come
to me to spill in my lap, to to externalize
(15:08):
that venom, you know, in my face, to make themselves
feel better, because there's another way. I know there's another way.
And so when I'm trying to show you another way
and the only way, only way that you can find
to feel better about yourself to make someone else feel less,
stand We'll see we can't have that, we can have it,
and so I take those lessons. I have gotten threats from,
(15:29):
you know, brothers. I've gotten threats from racists. I've been
called um names because I advocate for children and whenever
corporate punishment comes up, everybody lose them. But I've heard
it all that. You know what, It's a beautiful, beautiful
task to take on and I and I love it.
And I hope that's in a minority of the feedback
(15:50):
that you receive. I'm hoping. I know sometimes those voices
can be the loudest. Even to the video about this.
I hate the reference to my own work, but I
even did the video. But the good cop, there are
too many good cops who you didn't hit the person
in the head with the baton. Maybe you didn't pull
the trigger. But you didn't do anything when the other
person was doing it. And even if you disagreed, you
(16:10):
told the lie, you kept your mouth shot, kept up
the blue wall aside it. There's lots of ways that
people who are not directly complicit contribute to the thing
being perpetuated, and they feel like they are off the
hook because they didn't do it, you see what I'm saying.
And so there was recently a situation where um, I
(16:32):
was in the parking like coming out of the grocery
shore with a place where I normally shop, and someone
who works there was in the parking lot just just
eating her lunch and on a break, and a guy
comes and taps on the window. He's like, you know,
pretty girl, like you shouldn't be eating alone, you know.
And she's just like, oh my god, like I just
want to eat my lunch and you know, not be bothered.
(16:52):
She she waves them off, not interested, taps again and
like come on now, you're trying to have some lunch
and to be friendly from the conversation or whatever. You know,
when I say, take you have a real lunchen, and
she's like not interested. And so I rolled down my
window over across from my road down and said, hey,
I'll take the lunch. I like lunch. I take the lunch.
(17:13):
And he was like no, no, no, Bro, like no, no, no, no, no, no,
like almost like no, I don't roll like that, Like no.
If I said, she's having from the conversation, I like,
from the conversation and lunch, let's do it. Na, Bro
not interested And in that moment he walks away. But
but she was not interested too. But you felt like
it was all good. But it's just from the conversation.
(17:34):
How can begin the conversation. We haven't feeling I like lunch.
I do like lunch. And if he had said, yeah,
we'd have gone to lunch, I mean Dutch at the
very least, but we're going to lunch. I love the
fact that you bring up this point that you know,
when you're bringing up and calling out anti blackness and
at the same time giving people tools and telling people, hey,
(17:54):
I'm legitimizing all the black experience here from the way
that we speak to the way that we do things,
and specifically and particularly around protecting black women. And we
all know that whole protect black women thing has been
going pretty rampant throughout the internet in the last you know,
a few years, and that you're actually doing this what
it looks like to actually protect black women. But that
(18:15):
the pushback that you tend to get or can get
at times, and I won't speak to what tends to
happen more or less, but that to see that you're
getting certain kind of pushback and that's coming from black
men is an important kind of thing to to make
note of and and and when as you talk about
something like corporal punishment, where I'm sure plenty black mothers
jumped into those comments too and had lots to say
(18:38):
about that as well. So I think it's it's a
cool thing for us to legitimize ourselves, but to also
pay attention to the ways in which we can kind
of be our own. Um, I don't want to say
any me but adversary, you know what I'm saying. So
that's powerful. That also applies to language, because I know
very many people my normal I've seen something like this
(18:59):
when I talk m that's the way that my normal
ax when I talking to my family them, that's what
that's where it's sound like. No, there's a whole bunch
of people back home will say, oh, how you. Why
are you? How are you going Jill podcast or Sound
Beach you like that, man, you're gonna be too bads. Yeah, yeah.
(19:22):
We don't come out here speaking ghetto. Don't go out
there talking ghetto or whatever. Jill starts out the whole
podcast speaking in a way then looks down upon in
a lot of ways when we when we in a
in a business meeting, You're not gonna come into business
meet like hey, hi, YAsO am you know. And and
the truth of the matter is that if she wanted to,
(19:43):
she should be able to. And that in that moment,
that that is a that is a legitimate pushback. That's
a legitimate revolutionary act to own to to use your
chosen language, no more than it would be she walked
into a room and decided to speak Spanish. It's a freedom.
(20:05):
And see, that's that's the thing. When you when you've
gone through um, all of it ties together, all of
it ties together in regards of linguistic you know, truthfulness,
and there's you know, there's evening linguisticism, which is, you know,
essentially racism manifested by way of language. So people will
profile your tone and profile your accident, profile you know
(20:26):
the way that you used. But my point to to
all of it was what we end up with is
where you um, you know, uh encapsulated it just now
is what we end up when we're dealing with anti
whiteness and white supremacy and we start talking in terms
of pro ourselves, like I approach it from a pro
pro self perspective as opposed to just defining myself by
(20:47):
being against some other thing. But what you end up
with is the more you circle back around and deal
with your stuff internally, you start to root out some
of the internalized anti anti blackness. You start to root
many of the things that people who had accents or
have accents who've lost them because they were literally beaten
at home to not use them because their families saw
(21:09):
it as a liability, not an asset. And so some
of them were literally, you know, disciplined in order to
clean up their addiction at home. And now when we
sat around and we talked to them and everybody started
talking like this, they feel like they have imposter syndrome
because they've lost their acts. And it's it's a sad
thing to see someone, do you know. It's just as
Gulla gtuse you but they feetle fake when they use
(21:31):
the accident we grew abusing. We're gonna take a quick
break and then we'll be right back. Before we even
get into this because on some let's act on like
(21:53):
on some real dummy stuff. Not calling people dummies, but
like a lot of people don't even understand the importance
or what gachy and gula means to language into culture.
So um, can you kind of break that down in
a way that folks understand. Probably the most easier form
of making it makes sense is if people think in
(22:13):
terms of languages and dialects, like, say, for example, English
itself is a language that is originally a Germanic language. Okay,
but the English vocabulary is like one third French. There's
there's in Latin, and there are other languages. What's left
of the Germanic languages are like maybe of the original
(22:36):
vocabulary from the Germanic language and so, but yet it's
still able to maintain its status as a as a
Germanic language because of the basic grammar and its structure
things like that. That's that's why it's able to maintain
its identity as a Germanic language. Now, African Americans did
not choose to forfeit our native languages that obviously it
(22:59):
wasn't a w And we did not learn English in
a classroom, No no, and none our answers have Rosetta Stone,
No no instructors or anything. That we learned English by
adopting the language, the culture, that everything that was needed
to survive. Okay, So in doing that, we were picking
(23:22):
up language from people who were not themselves, you know, scholars,
we're talking about the lower wrung European Scots Irish and
so and remember that detail, the lower wrung sort of
indentured Scot's Irish people, Okay, because that's gonna be very
important about in about two minutes. And so we're taking
(23:43):
in the consideration the circumstances of how we're learning the
language and why we're learning the language, and also that
all of us didn't speak the same original languages. So
we're learning not only how to speak with the other, uh,
the oppressors, we're also learning to speak to one another.
(24:04):
And that's something that we that's almost never talked about,
is that we are learning not only to speak to
the oppressive, but we also have to learn to speak
to one another in a language that is neither one
of us, and so to be able to for our
ancestors to be able to do that, to be able
to learn a new language, under Durest, learn a language
(24:25):
to speak with one another under Durest, maintain enough of
our africanness. And I'll use that as a broad term
um African nous in loanwords and structure in the language
to today still maintain many of the more African basic
structure and how we modify verbs, verb, tense um in
(24:46):
a sentence um like say, for example, we've all heard
somebody say, well, I'm gonna tell you what, or I'm
gonna go to the store, or I'm gonna beat in
a minute. And the before the verb is very consistent
because at denotes the present. It takes the place of
the suffix I n g that denotes that there's a
present action or near future action that is in progress.
(25:08):
I am going to the store. I'm gonna go to
the store. You're doing that right now now. If I'm
going to the store much later, I would probably say
I could go to the store. I could go to
it now that gut is your future. I could go
to the store is idea as and I frequently go.
That's your continuous Okay, I go to the store is
add as in pass that God never had to change
(25:31):
in any of those sentences, because the verse days in
this base infinitive form that is consistent. Those are rules
that happened consistently throughout the language. And so when you
start looking at where else do these these rules and
these things happen, and you look into our mother tongues,
then you start to find them. You start to find
words like hunnah it's also pronounced as uno in different
(25:55):
parts of the diaspora. That same word una exists for
father exists in different parts of the diaspora. You know,
these these consistencies happened throughout a diasport. And yet even
though we're maintaining very much of the African sort of
fundamentals of the language, we're still relegated to it being
(26:16):
a dialect of English and stripped of the African identity
and made it seem as though it's just basically a
broken version of an English thing. Meanwhile, meanwhile, these same
people are picking up language from us, They're picking up
words from us. Gouba is the Galaguchi word for peanut.
(26:37):
Georgia is the goober state g o o b e r,
but ours is g u b a. We do not
use the hard e r in more words than one.
We don't use the hardy are because because because our
language is non rhotic, and non rhodic is essentially when
you dropped the hard are for more of an a
(26:58):
like sound. So google but and goober are the same
thing word for peanut. Georgia is a peanut state. Georgia
is also a a state that is in m bordering
the Gulaguchi Cultural Heritage Corridor. So to make it seem
like it's a coincidence that the language seems to follow
us wherever we are and these people end up speaking
our language and using phrases that we use, it's only
(27:22):
ever credited in one direction. They literally believe that we
learn language from one another. But it was only Africans
learning language from English and not English learning any language
from African But how does that stand to reason? You
see what I'm saying, It's still everything else, but the language.
I doubt it getting to the Scott's Irish like. There
(27:42):
are things now, like the word acts that is known
as something that people look down on for black people.
If we say and let me ask you a question,
you know, and acts? Okay, well, there's a couple of
things about that. You also will find acts in Europe,
you'll find acts in Ireland. You still find acts in
different parts of Scotland. Do you'll find acts in Chaucer
(28:03):
and Shakespeare. And going back to the Greek word oxyen
and oskian, those two words oscan and oxyen are literally
the same thing, from same words, and it means essentially
to request, and that is abbreviated from oxyen to acts.
And so when people correct ox with ask, not only
(28:25):
is that to certain degree incorrect, but it also is
ironic in a sense that word is not even the
original word that you were trying to say. Them word
that you're trying to say isn't even the original word
for that, and so we but I'll tell you how
it happened. How it happened is the word asked was
more widely publicized in print, particularly in the Bible, and
(28:49):
at the time only people of status could either read
or own books. And therefore the word that was more
widely spread out or widely distributed was in books. And
so people who did read, the people who did have status,
and people who did have education, they read a s K.
And so when they repeated that word, they said a
s K. The people who did not have those things
(29:12):
were still saying a K S. And so then they're like, hmmm,
I happened to notice broke people saying the ks. And
and so the social correlation between lack of money, lack
of education, lack of status, and also associating those things
with black people turned into who was at the lowest
(29:34):
rung of society, who was the brokers, who was the
least educated, Who was the one that you know that
were the poorest in all of those aspects that lacks
status black people? And so we basically got acts pinned
on us, even though we got it from Europeans and
who still use it today. Do you see him saying,
(29:54):
I'm side Wait a minute, this is the point this
I gotta stop you because this is the point where
we all get up in run around the room. This
is the part where we get up and we run,
we yeah into a corner and we shout for a
few minutes. Run I gets said a little bit Jill too, though,
because you know what those sons I get sad. I
was just saying the age of Jill, I was like
(30:15):
a class like yours. Knowledge like this should be fundamental
in every school that has a lack of every school,
not even black or brown, because I feel like the
immigrants and everybody else who comes here don't understand this,
don't get like you need to get all of this,
like this is the country that this is the country
that you live in. And I'm just sad because I'm like, man,
if people had this information, that empowerment, that you would
(30:36):
feel like the you wouldn't question yourself. So more. Let's
also talk about how we wield the grammar police, how
the grammar police wield this power on that. Yeah, we
do this to one another, you and I, but but
but there's something about it, even not knowing the details
(30:59):
that feel wrong, there's something about it because even if
we can even pull up respectability of all types like
you will see on the socials, don't you remember a
time when we used to do this and we used
to do that, And these were times when it was
acceptable to jack up little black kids and make them
wear certain clothes and make them say certain words, and
(31:20):
make them act a certain way when they are in
the presence of white folks. But we didn't. They don't
know that, they don't know, they don't know. There was
training for that, you know, there was training for artists.
You had to go through media training to learn how
to speak you know, um, there was a certain etiquette
(31:43):
that you had to carry, you know, thinking back to
like the Supremes, what we're seeing today is is far
different from what you know they were portraying now in
the house, they were a whole of the people. And
I don't you know, I can't say, you know, like
(32:04):
when we think of artists like Whitney Houston, you know,
holding yourself in you know, for so long, and the
bawd tends to break you feel me, Yeah, for sure. Yeah,
we're looking we're looking at a lot of evidence of
what happens when you have to consistently suppress the self
in language and behavior, in and and everything. When you
(32:29):
talked about how there's a borrowing from us that happens,
and then it immediately becomes like American culture when you know,
you know, we don't get credit, like we just don't
get credit. Said once the singer Time said how he
was talking about how if he sang um saying if
(32:53):
he's saying the same song will be considered gospel and
relegated to a specific type of on or a time
of day. It would just be seen differently. And but
if a non black singer, a white singer sings and
then it's spiritual, it's a different kind of vibe, Like
they get to experiment with it in a way that
sometimes and I don't know if this is true, and
you certainly would be in a more um informed perspective
(33:16):
to speak on it, but sometimes it seems like with
black artists, black intellectuals, black public figures, we have to
manage our blackness. Like it's not even just like walk
out the door and just be black. You have to
figure out how black and each situation do we really
want to be. And I'm just wondering, like I just
(33:39):
don't see that being an issue for our white counterparts.
I don't see it being something that they have to say,
like how white can I be? Right now? Unless you're racist?
And that's a whole different conversation, but you know, they
are doing the whole how black can I be? You know,
what's it called black fishing or something like that. There's
always quite a lot of that, but they're is um
(34:00):
like Nat King Cole. You know, he was considered quite eloquent.
Maya Angelou was considered quite eloquent. Um Felicia Rashod is
considered quite eloquent. There was something for me about uh, specifically,
I loved the the addiction. Addiction was exciting to me.
(34:23):
I wanted that for myself. When I read James Baldwin,
he was very eloquent and very awful, but also exceptionally
black asks, you know, which was was incredible. But then
you have Zorneil Hurston, and you've got Tony Morrison and
Jay California Cooper, who could who could sit themselves in
(34:44):
the belly of a community and sound like the people,
and when you read it, you heard, you heard, and
you could smell and taste you know, um, the community.
Is there something wrong with with people who enjoyed action?
You know, it's funny you should ask that because two
things tied together, something that you just said, and also
(35:06):
a minute ago we were talking about the wise and
the course in more schools. Ironically, my Angelo, along with
Jesse Jackson, a few of the community leaders, when there
was an initiative in the nineteen eighties to have what
they then but they then called ebonics, but having black
(35:27):
speech and Black English integrated into the curriculum in order
to help black children better understand other subjects but mostly English,
like using it as a bridge. And it was the
community who not only shut it down but demonized it
to the point where people became embarrassed and ashamed of
just the term. You know, when they needed better pr Son,
(35:49):
the pr on a bonics was it was. It was.
It wasn't like, it wasn't like your linguists. It wasn't
like this is the history. That's likely because and this
is just the facts, and in certain certain spaces, the
fact that Son is a teacher as an instructor at Harvard,
the fact that he's associated with a p w Y
(36:11):
and this is something he's teaching in that space, will
legitimize it in ways that it wouldn't have been legitimized before.
Saying that, you don't think people like that were involved
in any bonics. Many of the issues with the Bonic's
controversy was most of the criticism wasn't coming linguists. It
was more activists, people who yeah, it wasn't it wasn't
(36:33):
There wasn't a thing they're cohesive, you know, coming together,
people sitting down. But again Jessie jactly called the trash.
He said that the black speeches trash. He literally used
the term trash for the way to speak. And these
are the people who were seen as mostly of the
articulate people. They absolutely associated black speech with, um, you know,
(36:54):
being with the negativity. There was a Sesame Street character
that they tried to integrate Sentame Street and integrate some
of the black speech, and and again we got it
shut down. And this has happened multiple times where the
respectable folk in our community shut down efforts to incorporate
our manner of speech as an outreach for children in schools.
(37:18):
And so people would ask me sometimes not so you know,
uh as in a gotcha type of way. There was
so why are you at Harvard and not insert black
university here Harvard Coble Right. I'm just gonna say I
had the privilege of of teaching one class at Harvard,
and I felt like I was at the hardwarts of education.
(37:40):
You supposed to, That's what they pay for, they were.
You would feel like that it's bound into nice. Well,
I mean, and the thing is, I rolled out the invitation.
I said that while I am teaching at Harvard. I
would be more than happy to workshops are late to
you know if at of school and some people took
(38:01):
me and taking me up on it. I mean, if
if you want me to give you any kind of
insights on teaching the language, any anything, Holt so have
no wait no no no wait no no no sign. Nobody,
no school or institution has reached out to you. Right now,
We're gonna call it out more North Carolina A and
(38:22):
T Florida A and M and school y'all at and
not just college colleges with school systems. I'm like the
school system. And well what Harvard whatever that at? Oh no, no, no, no,
here's here's the surprisingly. Harvard is a program called Project Teach.
In that program, there's an outreach for Cambridge area schools.
(38:43):
And so what I would end up teaching, say seventh
seventh graders UM in Cambridge area schools, and that would
be UM school for students who speak English is a
second language UM students from public schools. So I do
that in Cambridge, in Cambridge and so speaking, collaborating with
other programs. I have worked with other schools Princeton, Listen,
(39:10):
come on, I'm going to get mad. I'm getting mad.
More conversation after the break. Can I ask a question?
(39:32):
Here's I have a question? I have a question? Alright,
So one on the good people's social media's. You know,
a lot of times we have situations where and I've
seen this on Twitter with black folks getting upset sometimes
with us explaining how to interpret certain black expressions or
(39:54):
or or ways of saying things. Feeling as if we're
giving away these trade secrets, this moment where we where
we can kind of secretly talk to each other. So
how do you feel about the gate keeping of our language?
I want to imagine this, okay, um, one of the
most common influences that people point to as an exceptional
(40:17):
sort of thing that can help you improve as the singers,
like having a church background. That's what we in our
community is always having a church background. Okay, Jill. When
you're doing your concerts, do you count how many white
people are in the audience, possibly learning the runs that
you're singing. Yeah, when when you're singing your vocals, Yeah,
they're they're listening to you sing your vocals. They're listening
(40:40):
to the bass players played bass. They're listening to the
drummers play the drums, they're listening to the teacher's teach,
they're they're they're in their omnipresent. We live in a
white power structure and they're just going to be white
people everywhere and watching and observing. And you have to
figure out how do I give my gift or share
(41:02):
this gift with my community to the broadest in the
broadest manner possible and not expose it to anyone else
When the most expansive way for me to do that
is in person in public. On the internet, there's just
no way to get around that. And and as of now,
if you look at who's going viral in these social
(41:24):
media posts, when you just know when the drum major
Okay goes viral for doing doing the dance that all black,
every black drum drum agent their mama know how to do,
they're white. You know, when somebody covers there will be
people who will cover a black artist's song and the
cover does better than the original because a white person
(41:48):
covered it. There are more. It used to be unique
to be like the blue eyed soul singer like that
used to be like a thing um you know that
people thought was unique. But now how many people can
you count now or not black, whether be they Korean
or white or some who can do these runs? Who
can who hold these notes because they're watching us perform
(42:10):
our craft. They're watching and learning, playing and replay play, replay, play,
replay and practicing in the mirror being us when they
grow up. And so there's no way that we can
really circumvent them completely from the process. But what I
do try to add is you can't really fake culture
(42:30):
like you can't really you need cultural context for a
thing to make sense. And I'll give you an example
right now. A term that is a trendy sort of
so called internet um slang term is cat. If somebody
said that's cap, no cap is cap okay. The term
cap has been first of all, being used since the
turn of last century in the black community as high hat.
(42:55):
So if somebody has if you're wearing a top hat
or a high hat and you tip your high hat,
that's for sophisticated people. That's what the people who are,
you know, well healed. So if someone who wasn't from
that background thought that you were being pretentious or thought
that you were, you know, friend high had, there's a
little high had negrow here like you know, you know,
being trying to high and so from high hat it
(43:18):
became high cap, and from high cap it was abbreviated
to cat. And so these these people are now saying
that something is a general term and in general internet
speaks like it belongs to everyone that's actually been in
our family since mama's. Mama was saying, and the same
thing if I say, um, like if we if we
(43:40):
saw something that looked good or we wanted to compliment something, Um,
if I see your your sneakers, and sometimes man im
sneak is hard, bro sneak is hard. They were saying
that back in cab Calawais days, like even in cab
Calawas book Isms in his dictionary, hard is used in
cab calaways Days the same manner, not the these are
are grandmother's great grandmother's times using words that have been
(44:04):
in our community. We've been saying key, we've been saying that,
We've been saying hit, we've been saying dig, we've been
using cat. Oh God, they've whiting the hell out of bro.
I was like, bro, it's not our words have been
so h immersed into popular language that it ain't in
(44:25):
the slang them like. People don't even look at it.
It's sla it's so normalized. So it puts us in
a precarious, you know, situation because they're gonna hear this
conversation right now when this gets published. We're trying to
figure it out. But you're so right. There's no safe space.
Every every everyone, everybody going here right. I have just
(44:48):
one of my videos has eleven million views, and you
have to ask yourself, Wait a minute, if just one
video gets eleven millions, and that doesn't include like all
the other videos, what would you do if you could
tell a eleven million people something like if if there
was a thing that you could say and eleven million
people were guaranteed to hear, and what would it be?
But people don't know what's gonna go viral in advance.
So to me, I try to if if you if
(45:09):
you stay ready, you gotta get ready. I try to
make sure that when I opened my mouth and say
something in front of that camera and put it out
into the world, that I'm okay with whatever it is
going viral or whatever it is going where everything to go.
I'm comfortable pressing play in any room anywhere that thing
is is found because you never know where it's gonna land.
And I just can't. I can't be the one women do?
(45:33):
Women do? I've felt similar ways. Had to ask you
because I think we always find ourselves in these moments
were like, oh gosh, they will steal, they will twist, turn,
dilute and in all of the above, and there's always
(45:54):
an inner conversation that's just not just how black am
I going to be because of my full of internalized
anti blackness? But how black am I gonna be? Am
I going to allow you to have access to me?
The one thing I feel like I can keep, Well,
if you think about it this way, and in a
sense you will. You you carry yourself in a way
(46:17):
that if somebody did copy you or they try to,
you know, do what you do, it will be obviously
that's what they're doing, yea. And so you look silly
trying to do me like everybody self may you're doing.
You're just trying to do so on so you're righten
off this person that person like you. They know what
you're doing when you're doing it. And to me, like
we set the bar of excellence at a place where um,
(46:40):
it's one of those you can get with this, if
you can get with that, you know, type of situations,
and there's something something you can't do anything about, Like
you can't do anything about them having the raw numbers.
They just simply make up so much of the population
that they decide to buy something mediocre. That's not an
indictment of your product. Your product is excellent. But you
know what they didn't They wasn't here for the spice.
(47:00):
Every everybody can't do spipe for some people salting pepper
and spicy, and they're not They're not here for what
you're doing. And that's okay because Frankie Beverly and May's
are legends and our community. That's right. Her brothers are
legends to us. So there's plenty of people who are
royalty to us that ain't got a cross suit as far.
(47:22):
And and so I go line. Now when I when
I see you know, like Beyonce, you know, cover like
one of you know, Frankie Beverly Mays like song, I
was like, oh man, please don't let them. Don't let
them they're let them fight out of them. Don't let
him find out about babies, Like, oh man, they're they're
going into the catalog. Now a lot of grand children.
Let them get fed. I get the feeling. But but
(47:43):
the thing is, I think that at some point in
time we pretty much have to like gatekeeping is not
meant to keep us out, like when it gets to
the point where we're cutting off our nose despite their face,
taking the wrong team. And so don't come in to
a black educators post and be like, nah, brother, you're
(48:03):
giving away that secret. Don't say that. Let don't do that.
Don't do that, because they already made Uncle Rebus, they
already put out Disney already had Tom and Jerry already
has Thomas. You we get brought, you know, they already
got the stereotypical black maid. They already have the stereotypical
black slave. Speak there. That cat, that horse has to
(48:23):
go on a long time ago. So we're not stopping
them from hearing us speak when they're part of the
reason we speak this way. Mm hmm. So think about that.
Like Creoles, especially particularly Creoles such as as Jamaican paths
you know him and Creole English in a Beijian Creole Gola.
(48:43):
These are languages that came about by way of that
were born of colonialists, that were born of struggle and
were merged with languages of the oppressor and holding onto
the identity of our ancestors, and so they're not secrets
their languages. That came about because we had to be
able to communicate with the oppressor, but we also stratified
(49:05):
the languages to keep a little something for ourselves. And
so I'll teach up to a limit and the rest
of it is reserved for what's in the room. If
we're having this exact same conversation in the same room offline,
it might be a little bit more cold. Okay, this
(49:25):
is you know, to hear it, Yeah, to make sure
to normalize it, but still honor. We need the information.
Something has to be sacred, am Yeah, you know your yeah. Yeah,
We're going to stop being ourselves because we don't want
(49:46):
anybody to copy us. Right. Well, there's a thing that's
naturally I don't I don't know very many people who
are wanted to present the same in every single situation.
So like, naturally speaking, I might say so even even
with my siblings, I might say something to one siblom
that I wouldn't really say to another. Like we've got
different styles of conversations personality type and so sometimes um,
(50:10):
somebody asked me the other day you said, well, well,
if this is where you actually normally saw it, how
come you, um colt switch? You know why white you?
The way that there was phrase was essentially like you
count down to the white man. But what you know,
but what they haven't taken into consideration is to me,
my my language is into like it's it's a it's
(50:31):
a personal thing. It's an intimate thing. But I am
and I was. I remember I was being. I was
in in l A And there was a group of
brothers that we're all talking and somebody let one of
the words slip, and I were you from none of us? Moment?
You gotta be from Charles you even you from Charleston,
(50:53):
the low country. You gotta be from somebody easy And
you know I had a life for West. Actually West
actually is right next to um in Charleston County, Anther. Yeah,
like brown from touchdown. He said, you tucked down. So
we started talking. Then as soon as we start talking,
this brother turned out to be Nigerian. This one here
turned out to be all of us. We're standing, we're
using our I don't know, business accent and and we
(51:15):
all just got into our dialect, got into our languages.
Once it was it was clear what was up. But
I've even even had that happen in situations where there
are people that I know we're from the same background,
and it's just different comfort levels, whether you're angry, whether
you're you're in a good mood. Like differently, we speak
differently at different times. It's not selling out to use
(51:37):
all of who you are, speak with all the people are.
If you want to reach with an audience, um, there's
a there's sometimes when you might sing like like there's
a national anthem. Everybody got the own version of the
Messian animal. Maybe you just want to sing straight straight
through and and not do you know for Sunday. Yeah,
I mean, maybe you don't want to a revival like
(51:59):
maybe that, maybe that ain't the mursion you're going for.
You just want to think it streak down the line,
and you should be able to do that. And so
that's what I want to do. Is my goal isn't
to get you to be blacker. My goal is to
help you be as comfortable as possible being your authentic self.
Whatever you feel that is, whatever however you want to
(52:20):
express yourself because you were you. At the end of
the day, I'm not as married to the to the
concept of race as an identity as many people would
think I am, because white supremacist created and so to
here's the cruel irony is that in to some extent,
(52:44):
even pride in the concept of blackness as an identity
to some degree as affirming to the people who created
race as an identity in the first place for purpose
of putting us on the bottom run of a fake
socio economic assist And so to some ex in because
you stripped our identity, our original I didn't need away
from us and left us with this thing. In return,
(53:07):
we've had to get through all sorts of struggles and
and and work our way scratch away from the bottom.
And that was with us all along. That was a
part of the thing that was with us all along.
And so we're trauma bonding with an identity, but that
was never meant to be our own, you see what
I'm saying. And so now that that separation is very,
very very difficult to do, because then we have to
(53:30):
ask ourselves with what am I if not that? And
in school, right, I don't know that Wait a minute,
I need to do some care on my edges. Thank
you very much. Let me go and get some full back.
I have some I need to have ointments. And it
(53:53):
has been a pleasure to hear you're you're thinking out loud.
It is a pleasure, thank you, to carry yourself in
an extremely powerful way. And we commend you absolutely for
for sharing what you know, for caring about what you know,
and um lifting others as you go. It's a beautiful thing.
(54:15):
Thank you so much for being here with us at
Jay dot Ill and UM. We'd love to talk to
you again. Fascinating. Absolutely love to return anytime. You're fascinating, sir,
Thank you, thank you. This has been Jay dot Ill
the podcast such a pleasure, always, such a pleasuredice to
have conversations that spark conversation. The gumbo is good, my friends,
(54:40):
The gumbo is good. How do you eat an elephant?
One by it? Kind? Hey, listeners, it's Amber the producer here.
How amazing it's son. I could literally listen to him
all day and I'm pretty sure we're going to have
(55:00):
him on for many, many more conversations in the meantime.
Check out all of his incredible content on social media. YouTube,
and his website. I link all those elements down below.
There is so much power and language, and if you
take anything from this conversation, I hope that you remember
not to let anyone invalidate your culture or the way
(55:24):
that you and yours communicate with each other. Hi, if
you have comments on something he said in this episode
called eight six six, Hey Jill, if you want to
(55:47):
add to this conversation, that's eight six six four nine
five four five five. Don't forget to tell us your
name and the episode you're referring to. You might just
hear your message on a future episode. Thank you for
listening to Jill Scott Presents Jay dot Ill. The podcast
(56:08):
j dot Ill is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
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