3 Tribes, 1 Future

In this episode, John discusses the the root of where we all came from and the direction we should all be going in!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome the Money and Wealth with John O'Briant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey, hey,
this is John Hope Brian and this is Money and Wealth.
I've always wanted to do this episode in general, but

(00:24):
recently a straight Talk Live video that I did well,
actually it was an interview that I did, a podcast
interview I did for the Texas Black Expo. When I
was speaking, there was part of what was taken out
in a clip and the clip went viral and it
has millions of views just on Instagram about one topic

(00:48):
in particular. This topic are blacks and black Africans and
black Caribbeans the same are different? And my answer, I like,
you know, I just I'm straightforward. My answer is, yes,
they're different. We are different, We're the same. We all

(01:08):
come from Africa. Africa the source of everybody. By the way,
all human life originated from the African continent. We're all Africans. Okay,
the sun was more direct. I love to joke about this,
just to cut the racial tensions so we can stop

(01:33):
arguing about stupid stuff. But in Africa, the sun is
some Saharan African direct and for thousands and thousands, tens
of thousands of years, and so black Africans are beautiful,
this beautiful hue, this pigmentation of their skin resists intense

(01:55):
heat absorbs it, and we don't know Black Africans get
skin cancer pigment. Their hair is kinky, so it absorbs uh,
it absorbs the heat rays before it goes in the
softest part of your body, which is over your brain,
and dissipates, and the nose is wide to cool the
air as a natural air condition. Before that, before that heat,

(02:17):
that heated air goes in your lungs and so on
and so forth, and so Blacks thrive and survive and
have modified. They're not modified, have adjusted to some Saharan Africa.
And as you get farther up on the African continent,
the sun is less direct.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
And as you get into.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
What they call North Africa, you have basically olive skin blacks.
And and you go you cross the snow puddle of
of of water the Mediterranean, and you get in the
southern Europe, whether you have Italians and Spanish and Spanish

(02:59):
and and and the French Mediterranean, and they are olive
skin with curl with loose curls that's the sun over
thousands and tens of thousand years is less direct the
literally the hair is unfurling right, adjusting to the environment
in the Central Europe and people are what you might

(03:20):
call Caucasian white, if you want to call it that.
But if you go to Nordic country, the Nordic countries,
they make people in Central Europe look dark. Now let's
go back to Africa. I've mentioned our nose is wider.
I mentioned that we have kinky hair and the purpose
of all that. And I didn't mention why we have

(03:43):
big lips. I don't know, but everybody wants them, Okay.
I just wanted to say that because it was funny.
And so as you go up an end to the
Nordic countries, you get to that this area and it's
very cold. I went to go visit my friend, the
Crown Prince of Norway a few years ago, and it
was December, and the lady who picked me up when
it was security personnel, Oh, it's so sorry with the

(04:04):
lay going through passport control so on and so forth.
Would you like to go to fishing with us tomorrow?
So we're swimming with us tomorrow. It is December now,
the heck, no, it's freezing out of here. I got
on three park as a sweater, a beanie. This lady
got on a T shirt and short pants, talking about
isn't it nice out? So she has long hair to
cover her ears, her ears doesn't get cold, her skin

(04:26):
absorbs cold weather. Her nose is narrow to heat the
air before it goes into her lungs. God has adjusted
her to that environment. By the way, if you remove
the water between the North American and South American continent
and Africa and Europe, and you look at that land mask,
click click right, it was once one. So this whole
racial thing is we're just arguing over stupid stuff. That's

(04:48):
not what this podcast is about. But it let me
just sort of neutralize that as an issue and happy
to go into that separately. If you want to obsess
about our uninteresting different some more. Let's now talk at
minute five here in this podcast about what went viral
and why it's relevant to your economy and our economic future,

(05:12):
and why I think you should it should matter to
you and the opportunity for you because rainbows only follow storms.
You cannot have a rainbow without a storm first. So
I have said something pretty.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Bold.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
I don't think it is. Are Black Africans, Black Caribbeans
and African Americans different, Yes, even though I just told
you we come from the same place.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Black.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
These are generalizations, but they tend to stick. African Americans have,
relatively speaking, a higher self confidence and a lower self
esteem because we higher self confidence because we succeeded in
the biggest market economy on the planet. All right, we
killed it, and we say something cool. It's cool in
type type AI. We say something is cool. It's cool

(06:03):
in North Korea. Right, it's cool anywhere. We have created culture,
in a defined culture all around the world. But because
of the legacy of slavery, our self esteem tends to
be and Jim Crow, our self esteem tends to be lower.
I'll get into why in a moment. Our African and
Black Caribbean friends tend to have higher self esteem and

(06:27):
lower levels of confidence.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Why is that.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
They experienced slavery for much lower shorter periods of time
relatively speaking. Now, some absolutists will say, no, John, that's
not true. Those in Cuba, which is, by the way,
technically Latin America. Those in Cuba and those in Brazil
experienced for longer. Yes, on a linear timeline, yes, but

(06:52):
not the brutal, institutional bad capitalism model of American slavery.
I'm going to get to that in a moment. It matters.
Uh so, all people experienced in the in the Caribbean,
in Latin America, there were slaves, by the way, in
the Latin America before they were ever slaves in the
United States, by the way, and certainly much larger numbers.

(07:15):
But it was institutionalized as a commercial business with machinery
and bad capitalism here in the US. And so this
affected our self esteem. Okay, so this let's let's break
some eggs first. People say, oh, black folks, you're you're
you're stupid, You're you know, Black Americans, you're you're lazy. Really,

(07:35):
knock it off. Hold on, so waitter. So this the
the This the sixteen hundreds was an agricultural age, and
the crops of tobacco, cotton, et cetera were just booming.

(07:56):
And where that crop took off really was in the
fertile soil of the southern the American South. Yes, Caribbean, yes,
Latin America. But there was it was like all the
things lined up in the American south. But it was
it was hot, it was humid, it was it was

(08:19):
the soil had died, would die easily, and no one
knew how to work this soil or could work in
the soil. Who are the geniuses of the land. This
is not a trick question. Africans.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Their use.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
I just told you the sun is direct in Africa.
We used to hot, and we used to working in
these uh, these untenable environments. Surviving thriving. We've been doing
so much with so little for so long. We can
almost do anything with nothing. We were graded surviving and thriving,
and so we were geniuses of the land. We could
take dead soil and bring it back to life. So,

(08:54):
folks when halfway around the world, not because they hated you,
not because you were lazy, but because you were agricultural geniuses,
please understand this. You were geniuses. You are geniuses of
the land. To this day, Africa is the largest untapped
natural resource in the world, in the world, the African continent.
I will be doing a podcast just on that topic,

(09:16):
coming up next so or soon, shall I say, I
want to break this up so you get a little
bit of everything. So in my podcast series, So they
brought us here. And so it's twelve and a half million,
give or take slaves people who are enslaved, right, About
two million or so died killed, sacrificed in the Middle Passage.

(09:42):
About ten million or so get to this hemisphere. Here's
some radic, some incredible numbers. Most of them go to
the Caribbean or to Latin America. Only three hundred and
fifty thousand, give or take slaves, African slaves come into
North America. This is stunning numbers, minuscule. So all the
other places took slaves in and the numbers over time dissipated, right,

(10:06):
and it went from slavery to you know, integer servitude
or something else. In America, they mechanized it. They with
the cotton gin and these things were created. Slavery is
on with the dying industry, and it got mechanized and
rejuvenated to the point where half of all American exports

(10:26):
were tied to cotton by the mid eighteen forties or
midteen fifties. And that was the economic engine for America
and the export for around the world. It touched everyverything
and touched Wall Street back. Wall Street was born in
this regard in the south Montgomery, Alabama and other Alabama
towns and Mississippi towns is where Wall Streets start. Don't

(10:48):
trust me, look it up for yourself. These major Wall
Street firms had offices in Montgomery, Alabama. The wealthiest city
in the world per capita was not just Mississippi in
the eighteen hundreds. Yes, that's not a misquote. African slaves
were worth double railroads. We're the most valuable asset uh
in the country for a long time.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
We built it all for free. Okay.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
So now you got this big brother, you bring him
over here. He's an agricultural genius. You need his talent.
He knows how to take this dead soil, bring it
back to life, rejuvenated. It creates this this this crop,
which turns into economic gold. But you don't need his attitude.
You can't have him pushing back on you. He's twice
your size and he's built from battle. So you take

(11:34):
his you destroy his hope. We're not human beings having
a spiritual experience. We're spiritual beings having a human experience. Right,
you destroy his hope. You take as family members and
you separate them, and you sell the children off in
different directions. By the way, here's good definition between good
capitalism and bad capitalism. Good capitalism is where I benefit
and you benefit more. An entrepreneur creating a comb that

(11:57):
combs your hair, and then somebody in an a merchant
and for free enterprise finds the right price, right price
point where you find more value than costs. You buy
that cone because it provides value to unkink your hair.
That's good capitalism. I benefit it, you benefited more. Everybody won.
Bad capitalism is where I benefit and you pay a
price for it. This is an example of bad capitalism.

(12:19):
Times a thousand wasn't personal. Well it was personal too,
but it wasn't primarily personal. Nobody brought you halfway around
the world because they hated you. This was about business,
just bad business. And this will become crystal clear before
this podcast is over to anybody who likes math.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
I like math.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
It doesn't have an opinion, and I'm going to approve
before this podcast is over that race, while incredibly destabilizing,
racism is real. Racism is like rain. It's either fall
in someplace or it's gay gathering. So you might as
well get out an umbrella and the color you like
it starts frolling through it because it's not going to change,
so we muscle it's real, right. But race is actually

(12:56):
not the primary issue. And I'll explain that because I'm
gonna unp act race as part of this discussion. White black,
the whole thing, all in the course of an hour,
just to prove how simple this is and how people
are hiding the ball from you in playing sight and
playing on our depression and our whatever else you want

(13:17):
to call it. So Black Africans came here with all
this utzba. This big dude is sitting there, and they
have to destroy a spirit, not his body. They eat
his body, They sell the kids into different directions. So
now his hope is gone. His wife is there for
him to protect. They hold him down while they abuse her,

(13:37):
and they abuse her and hold him down until he
stops fighting back. Now he's lost his ability to protect
the one he loves. So now his self esteem has
been destroyed. Now it's time to put in a word.
And now you've got human machinery, which was the point.

(13:59):
And this this was a systemic effort to create machinery
of the fifteen, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And this went
from three hundre fifty thousand to four million. It's the
only place America where we manufactured slaves. Every place else
slaves came in and the numbers went down over time.

(14:21):
And it's notable that in Latin America, by the way,
the person who pushed the Spanish out of Mexico was
a former black slave who was part Black, part Mestiso, Aztec, Indian,
Mexican Spanish, you know Latino spent Hispano and black combination.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
He pushed, He led.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
An effort to push the Spanish European colonizers of that
time out of Mexico, so much so they made him president. Yes,
the second president in Mexico in eighteen twenty. I believe
it was was of African descent, a freedom fighter who
outlawed slavery forty years before Abraham Lincoln, just under forty

(15:09):
years before Abraham Lincoln. Yes, this is a whole another thing.
If you want me to go deep on this, let
me know in the comments when you see this outtakes,
and I'd be happy to break it down.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
His name was Guerrero.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
The only man in Mexico to have a state named
after him is Guerrero State.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
And by the way side note here he outlawed.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Slavery and the one area that was making money on
slavery so was enraged by his efforts. They removed themselves
from Mexico and that was an area that was called Texas.
It became the state of Texas, and Texas literally was created.
And I love Texas. I just came from Texas. I

(15:51):
have plenty friends in Texas. I love hanging out in Texas.
I'm not hating on Texas. I'm just giving you the
facts that literally Texas was created because it was a
to pursue slavery for another twenty thirty forty years before
slavery was banned in the Civil War. But this was
the reason that Texas left Mexico, and this was the

(16:12):
reason for indirectly the Mexican American War, and this was
the reason for the Alamo Battle and all that stuff.
American citizens were taking citizenship in Mexico, not the other
way around.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
People were coming here.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
We were going there because of the economic activity, the
freedom of the land, etc. And the endorsement of slavery. Until
Guerrero put his foot down and they ultimately killed him.
By the way, another story for another time. So now

(16:47):
you have all this economic activity going on in the
Southern States. It's based on this bad business model. And
the result of that, after slavery and Jim Crow, is
that black folks had I believe a devastated esteem. So
if I don't like me, I'm not gonna like you.
Explain so much. If I don't feel good about me,
I'm not gonna feel good about you. If I don't

(17:07):
respect me, don't expect me to respect you. If I
don't love me, I don't have a clue how to
love you. If I don't have a purpose in my life,
I'll wake your life of living hell. Whatever goes around
comes around. So you have this brilliance. Now that is
a bit of a lost soul that it hasn't healed.
But we are now in the biggest economy on the planet.

(17:30):
And the miracle of this story is we go from
this slavery story to the President of the United States
of America. Can I get an a man, President Barack Obama?
That we have these heroes and heroes that are symbols.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
All around the world.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
Jay Z Lebron, you know Robert F. Smith, the entrepreneur,
Reginald Lewis. I mean the Oprah Winfrey, all these heroes
and heroes from all walks of live Gail King, from
every corner of society, who are just killing it on
a global steal in spite of what I just told you.

(18:03):
Pretty amazing. We have mastered culture and cool all around
the world. The problem is other folks have mastered capitalism
and commerce. That's a mic drop, by the way, So
we just need to stop just rocking the mic and
start owning it. But you can't own it unless you

(18:24):
understand that somebody else doesn't want to distract you.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
With being entertainment alone.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
So I love my entertainment friends who now say, let
me be a Johnny, show me how to be a businessman,
because it's a show business. It's the business of show
it's the sports business. It's a business of sports. Back
to the topic, So now you have black folks who
have this incredible confidence because we're competent. You've shown you're competent.
That inspires confidence naturally. So you have high confidence, but

(18:56):
lower self esteem, which unfortunately can create things like crab
in the barrel, trust issues and all that stuff that
we all know so much about. If you're African American,
your head should be nodding right now. And I think
that the majority of African Americans are clinically undiagnosed to press.
That's the one thing I can't prove. I don't have
any data around it, but I just whenever I talk
to people that are like, yeah, that's real.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
And we never healed. This country didn't heal after the
Civil Wars. We didn't. We didn't.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
We didn't say that the Confederates who was bad and
and and that this is a nation of under God,
of all of us, and we didn't we know that
we won the Civil War. People moved on and in
many ways you still have h the philosophy of the
Confederacy and the philosophy of the Unionists, the you know
the anyway, that's another podcast for another time. Which one
of the reasons we aren't we have we can't deal with.

(19:43):
We haven't healed. But I'm focusing on you healing understanding
the challenges now. My black African friends and my black
Caribbean friends dealt with slavery for much shorter periods of
time and more importantly, had role models of nuclear families.
Their mom dad was there. Because Caribbean, the slavery model

(20:04):
and the Caribbean and Latin America, et cetera. Didn't punish,
it wasn't commercially brutal in the.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
Way I've just described the model in the US.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
And their families were often times left together and were
able to grow up together, right, and then slavery just
didn't last for long, so they were then able to
organize their normal communities, just didn't have just had less
rights and privileges, but they still said a mom and
a dad and the nuclear family, and they they the
governor was at some point black, and the Prime minister

(20:36):
was black, and the Dennists was black, and the the
you know, the robber was black, the criminal was black.
Everybody was black. So you have this, you have this
sense of belonging and this cultural sort of currency, and
so you have higher self esteem. But because these were
not leading economies in the world, you had lower levels

(21:00):
of confidence. It wasn't a market economy, wasn't a leading
market economy the Caribbean nations and Latin American areas.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
Et cetera.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
So you have black Africans and black Caribbeans who have
higher confidence, a higher self esteem, and lower confidence, and
you have afric Americans who have higher confidence and relatively speaking,
lower self esteem. There's your difference, and let me illustrate
how this difference works in real time. So Black Africans,

(21:30):
black Caribbeans, let's take Let me pick on Ethiopium. My
Ethiopian brothers and sisters. I've stayed at the Park Hyatt
in Washington, d C. You see an Ethiopian brother working
as the valet. After a couple of weeks coming in,
I see several other Ethiopians working as valets. And then
I see some Ethiopians at the front desk. And then

(21:53):
I see an Ethiopian assistant manager. And then I come
back and I see it. There's Ethiopians driving taxis, they
picking up guests. And then and then I come back
and say, what's going on? Oh yeah, we we we
we figured out this is this is an economic model here,
we're like, we're working together. And then they've gotten a
They've rent an apartment to park together, They've bought a

(22:13):
house together. They've now bought a black car together for
an uber or a Lyft. They're now got they're now
trading information, trading trading opportunities together. They got a little
economic mafia going on. Positive sense all the front desk
to the to the curb to you know, transporting throughout
the city is now at all an Ethiopian model. And

(22:37):
those who are from the from Africa the Caribbean know
exactly what I'm talking about, right, And because they have
no problem working together, because self esteem was not their
primary issue. It was a lack of opportunity. You give
them two or three years here and they're killing it.
Now somebody is going to now still be questioning whether
this makes any sense. And for us to have the

(22:58):
rest of this conversation, I've got to now deal with
the issue of whether black and white somebody so, no, No,
the real issue is is white racism. Well, white racism
is a big deal, but it's really just racism and
power really. So blacks and whites worked together in the

(23:19):
sixteen hundreds as indentured servants. That's true. Blacks and whites
were in dinger servants together, poor whites from Britain. They
were together. They ran off together. When they came back here,
the overseers aid, Boss, we have a problem. They run
off together, they become friends, and it's a problem because
we can have a race riot, we cannot have a

(23:40):
class right because we're the class.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
We got to break this up.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
And so they caught these runaways and they told the
white runaways, look, you can't do this again. Two more
years of in denser service and disure servitude, and now
you're in charge of the blacks.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
You're white like us.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
It was the first time the word white, racial word
white was created in five billion years of this world,
four billion years of organism life, a couple hundred million
years of Neanderthal life, a couple hundred thousand years of
modern mankind as you know it, six thousand years of
you want to call it enlightenment, three thousand years since
Christ that the racial word white was created in North

(24:18):
America in the sixteen hundreds for this reason. You're white
like us. Okay, so you're in charge of them. And
then they told the blacks you can't run away again,
because now you've are you're enslave for life. That's where
slavery began. It was a commercial penalty that separated the

(24:38):
poor class, the poor whites, from the poor blacks who
are getting along.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Before that, they were friends.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
So it doesn't sound ridiculous now that poor whites and
black poor blacks are at each other's throats. That's another
conversation for another time. We are not going to say
we've been bamboozo, we've been tricked, we've been hoodwink, we've
been running up. So uh, here comes this differentiation. But
now if you're poor white, what you didn't say, well,

(25:06):
they didn't say to their overseers was well, but am
I wealthy like you do? I have titles like you do,
I own property like you. That would have been a
different conversation. Never asked because there was It was a
lack of education, lack of high frequency, lack of understanding,
and so they didn't They didn't know what they didn't know.
They didn't know to answer question, which speaks to mindset. Right,
you go to my book. My last book is Financial

(25:27):
Literacy for All, number one still in the world on
business finance and business economics. Financial Lucy for All, book
before that, up from Nothing, book be from that, the
memo and I talk about the five pillars of success,
and I talk about the five things you need to
be successful. As much education you can shove down your throat.

(25:48):
Financial literacy understand which is the financial financial legacy is
a civil rights issue of this generation. When you know better,
you do better. It is that we live in a
capitalist democracy. Little big seed, little deep you don't believe that.
Look at the last election cycle. It's about the money.
You need, family structure and resiliency, You need self esteem
and confidence. Those two things are difference. I just described it.

(26:10):
You need role models in environment. If you have five
of those five things without, with all the barriers coming
at you, you'll succeed. All the two hundred ethnic groups
that have come to America SOMEBHW, two hundred ethnic groups
have come to this country. Who found those five things?
Are come here with those an obsession about education, understanding
how economics and financial literacy work. Family structure and resiliency,

(26:32):
self esteem and confidence, role models in environment. No matter
what the group is, you had those five things, you
killed it. Just by the way, don't trust me, do
your own research. Even my Jewish brothers and sisters, this
is literally a signal of their success. But you would
Italian Italians Polish. These are all groups that were called

(26:53):
horrible names. They were called Italians, were called the inward
in the early twentieth century, the early nineteen hundreds in America.
I mean, these were all groups who came to the Irish.
All these hard scrabble groups came to America, were at
the bottom of the social ladder. They needed things like
the New Deal created for them so they can come
up and Homestead Act and all that stuff. We don't

(27:15):
have time for that in this podcast. But they had
these five things. The three groups that don't have these
five things that have really less than the three things
Native American Indians, poor Whites, and African Americans. Don't believe me.
Do your own research, and it doesn't matter which to

(27:36):
these five things that you'd carve out as much. Education,
shove down your throat, financial literacy, self esteem and confidence,
role models, and environment, family, structural resilience. If you have
three or more of those things, you can kill it.
You have three or less of those things, you get killed.
And because you don't have the mindset, the tools in
order to succeed. And just to prove that race has
been a distraction in addition to being a real problem.

(27:59):
If all this was all about race, then all white
people would be wealthy, not having the largest population of
poverty in this country being poor white. All right, So
the number one group dying in America, I believe it's
still true, or high school educated white men dying of
a dying of opioid addiction, which is really a lack

(28:19):
of aspirational success. And the number one group of alcoholism,
unfortunately in this country are Native American Indians. I believe
that's still true on Indian reservations. It's depression. And we
know that at the bottom of the economic pyramid is
a group that built the country for free, which are
African Americans.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
Now, let me give you modern data.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Federal Reserve issued a study a few years ago in Boston,
Boston Federal Reserve, and it was on the front page
of the Boston Globe. And the Boston Globe said this
black American net worth black net worth eight bucks. I
think it was seven bucks anyway, seven or eight dollars.
I remember the exact number, but okay, you get the point.

(29:04):
And it had to say in the headline this is
not a typo because they thought no one would believe it.
Let's just say it was seven bucks the net worth
when you read the study, read the article. The net
worth of Caribbean blacks in the same study was twelve
hundred dollars now, and now the net worth of whites
was one hundred thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Plus.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
But the point of this is if racism was the
only issue, and it would affected everybody the same and equally,
because blacks is black as black as black. No one
knows a black African or a black Caribbean from a
Black American per se. When you're chasing them down the
street or trying to discriminate against them, you don't say,
pull out your ID cards and decide how much I'm
them to discriminate against you. If it's all the same,

(29:45):
then all black struggle should be the same, and that
networth should be all seven bucks or all twelve hundred dollars?
Can I get an amen?

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Right? But it wasn't. It was different.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
And so I want you to understand where we come
from so we know how we can go forward together.
So we need to be to get on the same page.
Because Africa is our home. Black Americans, in my opinion,
in my opinion, should become to Africa, the continent of Africa.

(30:17):
Would Jews are to Israel, which is a resource. We
need to reconnect with our with our heritage, with our background.
I where it right now an African band doing this podcast,
and I wear Mandela's prison number here, and I wear
these every day. I know that my DNA I've done
a DNH test through African ancestry. I know my DNA
is from seventy one percent camera room African next to Nigeria.

(30:41):
I know him twenty six twenty six percent in Europeans
is Asian, Indian, and other, which means whoever I hate.
If I decide to hate somebody, I hate myself and whoever.
And by the way, if you want to mess up
somebody's brain who's a racist, give him a DNA test
for him and his family Christmas a month before Christmas
dinner and have them open up the the test at

(31:01):
Christmas dinner and watch the races passed out on the
floor because he might be, in all likelihood, has got
some black blood in him. So this racism thing is
really stupid. But our misinformation amongst ourselves is unproductive and

(31:23):
we need to knock it off because we actually need
to find a pathway together. So the African continent is
a gold mine, but we were we suffered from misinformation
about that, and others are taken advantage of that while
we're sleeping.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
Just recently, China had a meeting with a bunch of
African leaders while America was bombing a nation in the
Middle East, China was cutting a deal with African business
African heads of state because Africa, China their model is
a low cost economic production, and they realize that China
that Africa is the lowest cost the largest resource of

(32:05):
natural resources in the world, and all of the resources
in China in Africa China needs in order to continue
to produce products at a low cost. And one of
the growing groups marrying black African women in all fifty
four countries, by the way, are Chinese men. And they're
not doing but just because they love our women. They're
doing it to lock in their economic interest by creating
family bonds. That's another podcast when I talk about Africa

(32:30):
and China and the world. But I'm trying to get
you to understand that we need to heal our pain
and why, and it starts with understanding where these differences
come from. So let me now talk about who we
are and summarize it. Black Africans descendants of slavery in America,

(32:54):
born from struggle, systemically oppressed but also deeply American, raised
within a system that both ardinalized.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
And shaped shaped us.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
We've been doing so much with so little for so long,
we can almost do anything with nothing. We have succeeded
against all odds, and as a result of that, we
are a true North, I believe for all people of
color in the world, Africans, Continental Africans growing up with
with the sovereignty and identity, however often under economic instability,
political conflict, and colonial hangovers. Pride in ethnic origin and

(33:27):
homeland more likely to come from collective visits of cultures
versus individualists. America intact family structures largely African Caribbeans, often
straddling worlds, post colonial struggle uh uh, diaspora identity, migration

(33:50):
stories from there to here here being America strong family
structures and entrepreneurial spirit, deep cultural resilience see despite limited
natural resource bases where they come from, temporarily lacking confidence
because they come from a place where you know, these
are small island economies where they need a moment to

(34:12):
sort of get get their sea legs. No pun intended.
We are cousins from different houses. The tragedy is that
we don't recognize our family resemblance. But the opportunity lies
in learning each other's stories and respecting them. So I

(34:37):
hope This was very helpful in understanding where we came from.
Let's talk about now the economic power and unity. Black
Americans represent about a one point eight trillion dollars annuals
consumer spending force. If we are a nation, we'd be
one of the largest in the world. Africa is the
youngest population in the world, riches in natural resources of
a I've already mentioned, the fastest growing group of young

(34:58):
people and the largest demographic I believe in the world
are Nigerians.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
I think that's still true.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Uh Caribbean is a gateway to trade, culture, tourism, and
policy innovation. And it's two hours off of our coast,
in some cases as little as an hour off our
coast in America. And there's a side story without Haiti
that be no American story. I'll tell this story very quickly.

(35:28):
Haiti was the economic engine for Again, people seem to
say we're stoop and all this stuff. Haiti was the
economic engine for France, and it was so important to
France as it ways war around the world that Uh,
France's military leader sent his brother Uh to oversee Haiti.

(35:48):
Napoleon sent his brother Haitians over decided they wanted freedom
and uh did you know, and ran his uh Napoleon's
brother out of Haiti. So Napoleon came and the only
place that's ever beat Napoleon is Haiti. And if Haitians
had stopped there and just organize themselves, the story would

(36:12):
be different. But they went on a rampage. That is
why I say, whenever you make an emotional decision, it's
a bad emotional decision, it's a bad one. They went
on a rampage and did some really horrible things to
French citizens and all that kind of stuff. And they
went next door the dr Dominican Republican did some not
some nice things there. This is my opinion. By the way,
some people, I'm sure they're going, I'm sure sure of

(36:34):
folks who are going to be all in the comments
from who are Haitians. But I'm giving you a compliment.
And at the same time, when they're messing up the economy,
that the economic engine that they were creating all this
money they were shoveling back to France.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
France was in the.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
Negotiation to sell what we now call New Orleans to America,
a very young America. But Haiti is so crippled the
economic engine for France that in an instant, France had
had to expand from this little place called New Orleans
to what was called the Louisiana Purchase, which which was
more than a dozen American states at this time, this
was the biggest representation of this new country of America.

(37:13):
And they only did it because they were desperate because
of what happened in Haiti. And now this last part
is just my opinion. I believe France got so angered
by that, having to do that and sell this land
to America for pennies on the dollar. By the way,
that they got so angry they actually organized themselves with
other European powers for which they would normally against it,

(37:34):
said we've got to now put Haiti in a poverty
box as a penalty. No one else can rise up
against us like this, and they need to be an
economic despot for five hundred years, which effectively is what's
the case.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
And actually Haiti had to pay reparations.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
If you can believe this back to France, that's a
whole nother thing for another time. And by the way,
I don't want you get angry about any of this
right there. If you want to find reason to be angry,
there are bums, and all of our families they're a
bum you know, I call a bum factor. Twenty percent
of black folks of bums, twenty percent of white folks
are bums. Twenty percent of Africans, Caribbeans of bums. Twenty

(38:07):
percent of Republicans and Democrats, Europeans, Asians, you know, are bums.
There's bums that I got bums in my own family.
You don't need to go to place blame. And by
the way, there were Africans involved in the slave trade.
How do you think people got to the coast, so
you know they were a native. There were Arabs and
Indians and middle people in the Middle East, and of
course Europeans involved in the slave trade. So this is

(38:29):
not about blame. This is about you understanding your history
and repairing it. So so there's your little sideline on
the debt wheel. I think to Haiti and why I
think people like President Bill Clinton and others have been
trying to repair Haiti eighties to this day is just
a sad and hopefully evolving story. But brilliants have come

(38:52):
from Haiti. I know several brilliant businessmen and businesswomen. Harold
Charles has An airport named after him in Turks and
k Coast Islands. I mean also many folks expanded left
Haiti and did incredible things once given a level of
playing food and the tools to be successful. And I'm
trying to give you the tools to be successful because

(39:13):
I know when the rules of published and the playing
fooders level is Jesse Jackson quote, where the rules of
publishing the playing Fieller's level, you kill it, just like
we did with the arts and professional sports, and church
and politics and in the military. When the rules of
published the plain bull's level, we succeed. And I'm trying

(39:33):
to give you the rules and a level playing through
on capitalism and free enterprise. So where are the possibilities
Black Africans invest in Africa and African infrastructure, in businesses, fintech,
real estate, agriculture, trade, African entrepreneurs. T happened to African
American markets and brand power everybody using their strength. Caribbean

(39:58):
nations become hubs for culture, tourism and offshore financial centers
for global black prosperity. We have invested in a Caribbean
nation Turks and Caicos like me and my family, and
I think this is just so natural to connect with
the Caribbean nations and African Americans on your way to
Everybody should go to Africa once a year. In my opinion,

(40:18):
you go there for a cultural exchange, find your roots
literally and then go. If you want to do business,
you need to go there probably three times a year.
But you need relationship capital. That's a whole other video
podcast for another time. And imagine a black silicon valley
between Atlanta, Lagos and Kingston or you know Rwanda. My

(40:40):
friend who is the President of Rwanda, has tried to
position Rwanda as a silicon valley because they're landlocked, and
I think he's doing a great job of it. It's
like it's like a vision for like Singapore without the water.
In Africa, there's so many breakout incredible stories. My friend
Stride Masee, who is the Bill Gates of Africa, is

(41:02):
the six richest man in Africa last time I checked.
Dear friend of mine met him through Ambassador Young. We
become dear friends, and he is when you bring him
in a room, he is the most He's the smartest
guy in the room. Not no one says he's a
black guy. They say he's a brilliant guy who happens
to be black. So, as we wrap this this segment
up and hopefully you've enjoyed this, we need to go
from division to collaboration. I need you to educate yourself

(41:27):
on what you don't know. Read, watch, listen to each
other's stories. God gave you two ears in one mouth,
so you listen to twice as much as you talk.
All right, Why, Quincy Jones, how'd you get so smart?
I'm just nosy as hell? He told me, I want
to know everything about everything, So stop knowing so much
and started listening. Be ear, hustling, and understand your history.
I've went and done my research of African ancestry andaccestory

(41:48):
dot com. If you were enslave, your history go only
goes back, but so bar because you weren't a name,
you weren't a family legacy. You are an You were property. Literally,
if you have there's a bank with a one hundred and
fifty year old history, they have slaves on their books
because if they were going to finance a plantation or farm,
that plantation or that farm had assets which include livestock,
include the real estate, physical assets, but it also included unfortunately,

(42:13):
slaves were not hum to humans. They were considered property.
You were't a human, you were property. And so you
literally banks are over one hundred and fifty years old
today have slaves on their books. Don't trust me and
go do your own research. So just understand the history
and have compassion and empathy for where people have come

(42:34):
from and how their stories are different.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
And let's meet in the middle.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Travel, get a passport, visit the motherland, or if you can't,
at least the islands. Collaborate when you get the islands,
do more than party. Collaborate on business, on art, on entrepreneurship,
on culture, on trade, build relationship capital, Start a Pan
African economic circle and invested with intention. If you like,

(43:00):
start a financial literacy circle. Teach your brothers and sisters
how this a system works. Again, I think this is
the civil rights issue of this generation. Financial literacy heal
acknowledge the trauma and begin the work of reuniting us
with us. If we unify, we're not minorities. We're a
global majority. With leverage.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
I've been to one hundred countries. I've been to.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
More than thirty countries in Africa, just more than just
more than half the countries in Africa. I've been to
South Africa more than forty times. I had offices in
South Africa, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, which I call consider a
sort of North North Africa and the UAE, but proper Africa.

(43:49):
I've been to many, many African countries and I just
love the Africa. Would coach me and my wife were
engaged in South Africa on safari.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
It is.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Just the earth feels different, the air smells different, the
experience will change. You don't laugh at Africa. Love Africa.
Understand that it is no laughing matter that that is
your If you're after American, that is your home. Well,
it's all of our home, but it's really your home,
and it's the missing link. It's why we don't feel complete.

(44:22):
Where we've spent too much time and for too long
separated by oceans and pain. It's time to build bridges
with our minds, our hearts, and then our money. We
want global black prosperity, not just black lives matter, Black
capitalists matter. I want you all to tell your friends

(44:43):
about this podcast, which is number which is a top
one hundred or one hundred and twenty five in the
world for on an Apple platform for business in top
fifty in the US for entrepreneurship. It's also top on
every content including the African continent, the South Africa in
particular in the UK for Europe, Chile for the Latin America,

(45:07):
Saudi Rabia from the Middle East. I'm sure I'm missed,
so Hong Kong for Asia. It's this is a this
is a global conversation. We're all in this together. Where
this country in this world is going to live or die,
prosper or not based on how we embrace each other
and find our common similarities with our versus our more
very uninteresting differences and find common ground. We need to

(45:30):
understand the what, the why, the where so we can
figure out the destination of how we all get there together.
This is John O'Brien, This is Money and Wealth The
Black Effect Network podcast episode in season two, and tell
your friends to go to Operation and Hope get your
coaching and counseling with the largest financial literacy coaching organization

(45:53):
in America, fifteen hundred offices in forty plus states. We're
the only organization allowed to operate inside of a bank
brand getting the bank out of the no business back
in the yes, business moving people up and out of
poverty at scale, getting your credit score up, your debt down,
your savings up, so the bank can say yes, because
the bank just wants a good loan. The bank's not
discriminating against you today because you're black. It might have
been forty to fifty one hundred years ago, for sure,

(46:16):
when the bank was privately owned by some racist family,
but now you know everybody owned some stock in money
center banks. If you're in the stock market. These banks
just want to make good loans, and I want them
to make a good loan to you, So I want
to get your credit score up to seven hundred. So
the bank just says yes, like they did to my mother.
So you can become a homeowner, a small business owner,
an entrepreneur, so you can send your kids to college,

(46:36):
so that you can travel and get your expansive experience.
You can get a good job either writing it either
cashing a check or get or create a business and
write a check so that you build wealth at scale.
This is a silver rights movement. From civil rights to
civil rights, from civil rights, civil rights to silver rights.
From the streets to the suites. This is an ownership

(46:58):
agenda and you can anticipate in it. You can be
a positive force in this world. And you don't have
to hate on anybody else to do it. Hate actually
is a problem if you do it. Doctor King once
said that hate and evil have within it the seeds
of their own destruction. I'm paraphrasing what doctor King said.
So don't hate on somebody else that may ricochet back

(47:19):
on you, because thoughts are things. To rationalize is to
tell rationalize, and disease is often disease. And you die
at sixty one years of age, if you have a
five hundred credit score with a surviving mindset, you don't
even get the Social Security age, which is sixty five,
I believe. But if you have a thriving and winning mindset,
a building mindset, you're optimistic, you believe in an opportunity

(47:40):
and potential, and you'll get your credit score up to
seven hundred. You lived at eighty one years of age
or better, and now you can live the American dream
for yourself and expand your legacy on for others. Let
us now be a light for the world, a light
for the world. Let's continue this work that we're all
in the world actually needs us. A world America, cannotsics
need unless black and brown people do. Yes, you heard

(48:03):
that here. And we need to embrace our poor white
brothers and sisters, and need to brace ourative Americans, are Asian,
our Indian women, we all. I need white folks to succeed.
If you're proper and if you mean well, I'm with
you one hundred percent. We need all everybody to come up.
Because if you live in America, your enemy is not

(48:24):
a black or white person next to you or a Republican,
are a Democrat. There are four countries trying to take
you out Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China. They want
your way of life, but they can't get in a
fair fight. They need for you to argue with each
other and get into fistfights. And everybody wants to be
an American, but Americans. Yes, I said it. Capitalism and
democracy are horrible systems except for every other system. Let's

(48:48):
stop trying to do the perfect. Let's just get this
system that we have here as imperfect as it is
and created slavery that I am a long descendant from.
My second great grandfather was a slave. Young fought in
a Union army for the emancipation proclamation. My grandfather, Arby Smith,
was a sharecropper my second grade, my second grade grandmother
on my mother's side was also a slave, So I

(49:10):
know where I come from, my mother who grew up
in a shotgun shack and East Saint Louis when Heeda
Smith got wrest of her soul. But I'm not gonna
harbor on that. I'm not gonna hate on that. I'm
gonna spend my time wrestling with that. I'm gonna move
up and out because I am God's child and this
is the rainbow after this storm, I'm out. John O'Brien,
I see you. The finish line. Money and Wealth with

(49:44):
John O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network.
For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit
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