Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Dr. Michael Eric Dyson.
📝 Summary of the Interview
Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, renowned public intellectual and author of over 20 books, joined Rushion McDonald to discuss his powerful work A Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America. The conversation explored systemic racism, police brutality, cancel culture, and the emotional toll of chronic injustice. Dyson reflected on the impact of smartphone technology in documenting racial violence, the trauma of Black death, and the need for hope-driven activism. He also emphasized the importance of storytelling, accountability, and redemption in the fight for racial justice.
🔑 Key Takeaways 1. Smartphones as Tools for Justice
- Smartphones have revolutionized racial justice by capturing police brutality and systemic abuse.
- Dyson calls it a “Gutenberg shift” in how Black communities document truth.
- Quote: “The smartphone has changed the game… It’s extraordinary.”
2. Emotional Toll of Chronic Injustice
- Dyson shares the deep emotional pain of revisiting historical and recent Black deaths.
- Visiting MLK’s room at the Lorraine Motel or watching documentaries evokes intense grief.
- Quote: “We are terrorized and we’re terrorized again.”
3. Purpose of His Book
- A Long Time Coming is structured as letters to victims like George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Hadiya Pendleton.
- Dyson aims to humanize their stories and provide context beyond media soundbites.
- Quote: “If they could endure the death, the least we could do is grapple with the hurt.”
4. Cancel Culture Critique
- Dyson critiques cancel culture as a form of modern-day digital lynching.
- He distinguishes between accountability and eradication.
- Quote: “Hold them accountable, make them responsible… but allow me a comeback.”
5. Hope vs. Optimism
- Dyson emphasizes hope as a deeper, more resilient force than optimism.
- Change requires action, not just prayer or wishful thinking.
- Quote: “Hope is something you believe in even when you can’t see the evidence.”
6. Detailed Storytelling
- Dyson meticulously documents the timeline and facts of cases like George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery.
- His research includes transcripts, video analysis, and legal proceedings.
- Quote: “I did the spade work… I wanted every element to be brought to the fore.”
7. Black-on-Black Violence Contextualized
- Dyson reframes it as “neighbor-to-neighbor violence,” noting similar patterns in white communities.
- He highlights the tragedy of Hadiya Pendleton’s death and its broader implications.
- Quote: “People kill where they live… That’s where the drama is.”
💬 Notable Quotes
- “We’ve been telling y’all the police act out of hand… now the video proves it.”
- “I don’t want to turn it into the pornography of Black death.”
- “Cancel culture is a white supremacist fantasy.”
- “Let me have a chance to be redeemed, to be restored.”
- “Change won’t happen because we hope it into existence… we must act.”
#SHMS #STRAW #BEST
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I am Rashan McDonald, a host of weekly Money Making
Conversation Masterclass show. The interviews and information that this show
provides are for everyone. It's time to stop reading other
people's success stories and start living your own. If you
want to be a guest on my show, please visit
our website, Moneymaking Conversations dot com and click the be
a Guest button. Chris submit and information will come directly
(00:23):
to me. Now let's get this show started. My next
guest is a person who's about planning, committed effort and
right direction. Point you in the right direction. He is
doctor Michael Eric Dyson. He's one of America's premier public
intellectuals and author of over twenty books, including seven New
York Times bestsellers. Doctor Dyson's recipient of two NAACP Image Awards.
Please welcome to the Money Making Conversations, my man, doctor
(00:46):
Michael Eric Dyson.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Brother McDonald, man, it's always great to see you. Hear
you milifluous language and that fluid articulation. I'm now with that. Bruh.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Well, we've been together a long time, man with Steve Harvey,
and I may all the way back to la days
when you first came on our radar, and as African
American men, you know how we've always felt about the
police from a standpoint of a strong level of comfortenness,
you know.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
And but it's seeing it play out in the public's eye.
How would you say cell phone has played has cell
phone has really been the game changer? And I pursued
a racial.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Justice, There's no doubt about that. It's a great way
to characterize it. The Gutenberg shift introduced by the smartphone,
right in particular, has changed the game. Now. You know,
Black folk and technology were always doing stuff outside the box. Yes, yes,
we had beepers before we knew doctors had beepers, right, yeah,
right right, physicians have them too, and we knew what
(01:46):
was up so and they wasn't just paging their girls. Absolutely. Uh.
We've always made exorbitant, extravagant use available technology, and what
we've done with the the smartphone has been extraordinary. To
be able to record I mean when we captured in
(02:06):
nineteen ninety two Rodney King, that was on a home
video record, but a portable one. Now with the smartphone,
it's even more accessible. Everybody in their mama, grandmama, grandson,
you know, cousin uncle has a smartphone. Everybody wants to
be Margaret brook White or you know, Gordon Woods and
(02:28):
so Is or Deborah Willis. So the thing is is
that we're able to use that smartphone to record what
we say is true. We've been telling y'all that the
police act out of hand. We've been telling y'all that
no matter what we do, they can cut the fool.
As my daddy used to say, they be too with disrespect.
They will ignore you often, they will ignore your humanity,
(02:51):
your desire to be treated with equality. They will be
angry at you and resentful for you even having a
backbone or a voice. And now these these video cameras
that recorded it, whether sometimes it's on the bodycams of
some of these police people. But we can't really rely
on that because they turn them off and on when
(03:12):
they want, and they capture what they edited in their
to their own advantage. But the video recorder on the
video camera on the smartphone has changed the game. George Floyd,
Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Jacob Blake, Sandra Bland. We know
that was recording from the from the bodycam, but we
(03:36):
know that the phone can change the game. And make
people see what we've seen and at least throw a
monkey wrench into the proceedings when people are trying to
act like we were acting the food. We were trying
to run away from the police, we were trying to
cuss them out, we were trying to shoot up. All
that has been put to rest. The smartphone is extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Now, let's talk about this because you know when you
when I'm reading your book, you know, because there's like
five chapters, you know title black Dead, Play, Blue Plague,
White Theft, Seeing Red, White Comfort. You know when you know,
whenever I see a Henry Lewis Gates Journey Junior, you know,
documentary was on PBS. You know, whenever he gets to
doctor Martin Luther King. Man, I can't watch that part. Man,
(04:15):
that's the part of history, mayor. I can't want he
was going to we got to that name, he said
in eighteen sixty eight. I turned off the TV.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Now you may not get there with you.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah, I heard that, seriously, I heard that part. I
turned it off. I turned it off. I believe I
believe you will tell you something.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
I don't eve want to rupt you, but given what
you're saying, when I go to the Civil Rights Museum
in Memphis and get to his room from three or six,
I cried like a baby every time, Sir, I can't
you know.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
And so the reason I bring that up because when
you start looking at the Emmitt Till and Eric Gann
Breonna Taylor, and you know what happened to the fifteen
year old out of Chicago Pendleton and they had nothing
to do with cop violence, but it was about you know,
black on black violence and somehow racial. They go back
to the thirteenth Amendment. When you want really going to
break it all the way down Sandral Bland out of Houston,
(05:05):
Texas area, how did you emotionally hold it together? That's
the question I want to write. And I'm talking to
doctor Eric MICUs Dawston his book Long Time Coming Reckoning
with RACI in America. Because you are a scholar, you're
an intellectual, but you're still emotional and you see all
this stuff lining up, you know, because what happened is
a certain series of disbelief coming about when you go, really,
I forgot about this, I forgot about this. Tell us
(05:27):
about that emotional journey and putting this book together.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
No, that's a great point you're making. And look, obviously
it was very difficult. Black people are traumatized and we're retraumatized.
We are terrorized, and we're terrorized again. We are hurt
and we're hurt again. And so having to watch this,
having to go to see King's place where he was assassinated,
(05:50):
which gets me every time, It makes me cry like
a baby. You know, people ask, well, why did you
write the book the way you did. I'll tell you why, because,
as you said, I'm not just an intellectual, I'm not
just a scholar. I'm a human being. I'm a black man.
When I see this stuff happening to black people, I
have a choice. I have to choose how to present it.
(06:12):
I have to choose how to articulate it. I have
to choose how to express it. But I make a decision.
Do I want to share the horror of what happened
to George Floyd? Yes? Yes? Do I want to share
the horror of what happened to Ammatt Arbor? Yes? Now,
I don't want to do it for sensational purposes. I
don't want to turn it into the pornography of black death,
where these are snuff films. The last few minutes of
(06:35):
black life shown on a recording that none of us
should see. There's no question. But at the same time,
I figure, if they could endure the death, if they
could actually die, if they could sacrifice their lives not intentionally,
their purpose here on earth wasn't, as far as they knew,
(06:56):
to amplify or to echo the extra ordinary quests for
black justice in our time. And yet because of the
nature of their death, that's exactly what happened. George Floyd
said he wanted to change the world. He didn't mean
die and change the world. He didn't mean die and
leave his daughter and other children behind. He didn't mean
(07:17):
die in an ignominious death where he was asphyxiated by
the cops on a pavement street, where they kept their
knees on his neck for more than nine minutes. But
because of how he died, that transformed this culture and
indeed shook the globe. So if they could endure the death,
(07:39):
the least we could do is to grapple with the hurt,
the pain, the trauma, so that when we watch it
and see it and learn about it, we can say
we don't want this happening to anybody else, and let's
make this the last time. That's the hope I have
and try to talk about what these people have been
through in this book.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Well, you style it unto letters, and it really was,
you know when I started reading, like I already told
you or it broken down in the five chapters, but
the letter like black Death is tied to Immit till
and your story. It really was a very humane way
of a sadness. Like you know, Sam Cook, you know
change is gonna come.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Okay, and we're gonna be at the mountain time we'll
see on the other side. I don't think so. And
that's what your book is trying to say. It's not
it's sane, but can we make it to the mountain
top and look on the other side, we'll change come,
Doctor Dyson.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah, that's a great question. Not inevitably, not automatically, Not
if we don't do it right to make it happen ourselves.
Not if we don't do the things that will make
change happen. It won't happen because we wish it into existence.
It won't happen because we hope it into existence. It
won't even happen if we pray it into existence, right,
You got to practice it into existence. We got to
(08:53):
operate it into existence. We got to act and do
real live you know, practice, real live you know, activities,
social motion, social revolution, social resistance. We got to get
up and intend the world to be different. It will
(09:13):
not change of its own. You and I must grapple
with the means toward that end. And I do believe
change can come, but only if we recognize that. We've
got to continue to raise our consciousness, raise our voices,
and raise the awareness of the dominant culture and among
(09:36):
ourselves of what things should be done, what things should
be addressed, the mechanisms by which that change occurs, and
how we can continue to resist, link arms and aims,
as Susan Taylor says, with other like minded people, to
make a difference in that sense, Yes, I am hopeful,
not optimistic optimism, as the Ryan Honeber, the theologian shit said,
(10:00):
as a shallow virtue. But hope it's deeper. Hope. It's
something that you believe it even when you can't see
the evidence for it. You keep all moving forward. That's
what I have, and I do believe the change will come.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Sam Cook has told us that Please don't go anywhere.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
We'll be right back with more money Making Conversations Masterclass.
Welcome back to money Making Conversations master Class hosted by
me Rashaan McDonald. Money Making Conversation master Class continues online
at Moneymaking Conversations dot com and follow money Making Conversations
(10:38):
Masterclass on Facebook, X and Instagram. We've been canceled all
the way because that information about slavery and how Jim
Crow laws is counseled, because they don't tell us about
that because they don't want white people to be uncomfortable
when he's sitting in the classroom talking about what their
ancestors did to us. So we've lived a life of
culture cancelation. What is your So I feel with the
(10:59):
right and asked this question, what is culture cancelation of
canceling culture.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
That's a brilliant, brilliant analysis, and we have certainly been canceled.
You are so right. That's why I'm against cancel culture
in our expression, because white supremacy is canceled culture. Yes,
this and I'm saying the cancel culture even if we
call it black Twitter or social media. Look, you might
get a Bill Cosby, you might get a Harvey Weinstein.
(11:25):
You might get an R. Kelly, but for the most
part you're doing the lateral movement. You're doing peer to peer,
and even some of the powerful people you go after
because you dislike them. But to cancel another human being,
that's a white supremacist fashion fantasy. That's a delusion that
we can totally evisceraate or wipe out, hold accountable, yes,
make people responsible, yes, But to cancel them if you
(11:48):
make a mistake, once you're done and gone. I believe
if Martin Luther King Junior, and Malcolm X were here today,
they would be canceled. Somebody would be trying to cancel them. Yes,
because of their faults, because of their failures, of their
narrowness on some issues. And yet these men did extraordinary
things for us, the absence of which would make us
(12:09):
far poorer in spirit and in racial achieved. He's talking
about cancel culture as pulling down them darn Confederates flags
and statues. Yeah, you know what, I'm all for that,
I'm all for pulling them off the pedestal. That's not
what I mean by cancel culture. His notion of cancel
(12:29):
culture is the ability to continue to be demagogic, and
to be dictatorial, and to be fascist, and to be
anti just anti black, anti brown, anti indigenous, and to
be exempt from social critique and moral responsibility. That ain't
what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the inclination to
(12:52):
believe that your moral position is the only one. That
the way you deal with people with whom you disagree
or who honestly make the miss is to obliterate them.
Is to wipe them out so that they have no
comeback if they make one mistake, whether they're the governor
of Virginia who appears in blackface, And if you canceled him,
(13:12):
what would you have missed? The fact that he restored
the voting rights of ten thousand ex prisoners in returning
citizens in Virginia, a large proportion of whom we're black,
The stuff he did with public health, and also the
wealth disparities and some of the social justice issues there.
If you cancel him, you cancel the opportunity to reorganize
(13:36):
the logic of democracy in Virginia. So my thing is
not to cancel people. Hold them accountable, make them responsible. Yes,
pay for your quote sins, but allow me a comeback.
So I can say with ll don't call it a comeback.
I've been here for years, Mama said, knock you out.
Let me have a chance to be redeemed, to be restored.
(13:59):
I am not with this evisceration, this eradication, this extirpation,
this is just wiping them out because I disagree with you.
Whether it's about sexuality, whether it's about gender, whether it's
about race. I don't want a witch hunt through white America. Hey,
twenty years ago, did you call somebody the N word?
Or did you do something wrong? I'm sure a lot
of people did a lot of stupid stuff. Or when
(14:20):
somebody's thirteen years old and they see some ignorant stuff
and now here they are, five, ten, fifteen years later
trying to you know, become a ball player or get drafted,
and we go dig up some of the stupid stuff.
They say, I mean right, And my thing is, I'm
not saying don't hold people accountable for If you still
feel the same thing at twenty five that you felt
(14:43):
at thirteen and it was racist and vicious, that's a
different story. But if you evolved, if you've grown, if
you said some stuff when you were young that was dumb,
or you said some stuff that when you were younger,
and now that you're more mature in a different position,
you're willing to change your mind. Let's provide people the
opportunity to grow and evolved.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
I believe with that, you know, in reading your book,
and I'm talking to doctor Eric Diys Michael Eric Dyson
a long time coming reckoning with RACI in America. The
thing that it was two things in the book that
really I was just taking it back. The detail you
know in your book, how you timelined out you know,
George Floyd's murder, how you timelined out the interactions between
(15:25):
Amon Aubrey when he was hunted down black man running
in the neighborhood. You know, you know, the father and
son and then the cameraman who said he was just
there alone for the moment, but then he blocks his path.
So what I'm telling you is this, you gave me
information I didn't know, which is a brilliant understand because
(15:48):
you realized that we need people like you to give
us the additional details because the media is only going
to give you a minute or ninety seconds or caption
of what it is. This book gives you the detail,
especially on that Mama Aubrey. If you want to know
exactly where read what do you got to write? They
got to buy your book, Michael, because your book, man
(16:09):
is like I was like, wow, you know you know,
I mean from the time he got shot, then he
got shot again, and then he hit him to try
to fend himself off while he was being pursued, while
he's being shot and attacked. How he was cut off
by this quote unquote. I was just there to take
film everything. I wasn't trying to stop him from escaping
(16:30):
or trying to stop him from doing anything. Why how
did all this information come to you? And how did
you think to detail it out like that? Because I'm
telling you it's brilliant, because it opened my eyes and
brought me emotionally back to the forefront. I got to
know more. I need to know more. And this is
a fantastic book.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
You wanted the very few to dig into that, to
acknowledge that, to talk about that. And I thank you
for reading the book thoroughly, my man number one, because
everybody who talking to you ain't read Joe book. And
you have read it. Not only have you read it,
you read it thoroughly. And that's a real honor and
thank you for that. Yes, I wanted to lay that out. Look,
(17:09):
I did the quote spade work. I did the shoe
leather on the pavement kind of work. I went and
dug up the facts. I listened to the transcripts of
what was happening there. I looked at the film. I
looked at the breakdown. I looked at the timing. I
looked at what the father was doing. I looked at
what they claimed that they were doing. But, like you said,
the witness, I'm just there as an innocent party. Now
(17:32):
you the third dude there, and you try to block
my man from going any further and then retroactively after
the fact ex post facto, you trying to, as my
daddy would say, make like you the darn hero, and
you the one who made it possible for the film
to get out in the world. But you know them
other two white boys are the father and son are
(17:53):
mad at him? White hell? Are you recording this? And
that recording is essentially it should clench our conviction. Yes,
it should put us in jail for the rest of
our lives. Yes, because we hunted this man down like
an animal. He was unarmed, he had no possibility of
self defense. He had committed no crime, and out of
(18:17):
wanting disregard for his life and the stereotypical pursuit of
a black man as an animal, they went and hunted
him down and shot him and killed him. And I
wanted every element of that to be brought to the fore,
the detail to be rich, so that people could understand
exactly what went down.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
I'm tell you again because now on this day why
he was brought up on charges, Because at first all
that come here was witness witness, and then when they
brought him up on charges, I really didn't understand why
he brought up on charges. But then when you say
he cut him off, which forced Arman Aubrey to go
back towards the father and son duo who were pointing
(18:56):
guns at him, and then they dropped out the truck,
and that's when he was just for his life. After that,
he was just fighting for his life after that. And
then when you looked at it, and then when you
laid down the detail on George Floyd, you know, one
was on his neck, one was on his back, and
one was on his legs. That type of detail really
allowed me to appreciate you know your the ability to
(19:17):
tell your story. You're a great storyteller. We need great
storytellers because of the fact that great storytelling tied to
great facts and great information. And you look at a
tremendous amount of information that uplifted me, opened my eyes
and also allowed me to be able to share this
book with other of my fans, my family member, my daughter,
and people who know me to understand. I just love
(19:38):
the way you told the story and tied it to
an individual who's been traumatized. They traumatized to the point
that they were killed by transactional whether it was tied
to the police or community gang violence type situation that
happened to the fifteen year old out of Chicago, a
young lady by name of Pumpelan who all knew was
a scholar student and all that and her life was
(19:59):
snuffed out. And your beauty of this story is like
the what if?
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Right right, sir? No, thank you again. The close reading
that what Don Madonald is doing here is an object
lesson in critique, criticism, and engagement with a book. Man.
This is what this is what authors like live for.
Then somebody takes them seriously. You ain't got to agree
with me. Just read what the heck I said, and
(20:25):
then how don't care if you argue with me? Aren't
you based on the facts of what you read? And
that's what you're doing? Man, Thank you so much. And yes,
I wanted to talk about both hands they have the appendalty.
I wanted to talk about. Now we know it's really
called neighbor to neighbor violence because people kill where they live.
Ninety three percent of black people who are killed or
killed by black people, but eighty four percent of white
(20:46):
people who are killed or killed by white people. So
we ain't got to no, Oh my god, why don't
white crime is going to drive White America into the
doldrums and create catastrophe. People kill where they live. They
don't get on no bus and take no tram and
take no train, kill nobody. They killing right where they
are because that's where the drama is, that's where the
trauma is, that's where the herd is, that's where the
(21:06):
beef is. So she was mistaken for a gang member
right they shot into the crowd, shot her in the back.
One of them shot her, the other one drove the
getaway car, and she was killed. Three lives lost, two
of them are serving life in prison and her Dea
Pendleton is lost, and that is the tragedy I wanted
(21:27):
to speak about to illuminate the context of cancel culture
because I draw a parallel between us snuffing out our
own in the radius of our intimacy where our kinfolk
are that ends up hurting and harming them, and the
way in which cancel culture operates to destroy communities, well,
(21:47):
destroy careers, and destroy human beings based upon the digital
lynch mob going out getting like they used to when
they want. You mentioned Immetil when they hung him and
murdered him. It's a digital version of that lynch mob
going on, and I wanted to address that and as
honest and straightforward the way as possible.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Well, thank you Michael for coming on the show. Thank
you for giving me a book to read.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
This has been another edition of Money Making Conversations Masterclass
hosted by me Rashaan McDonald. Thank you to our guests
on the show today, and thank you our listening audience. Now,
if you want to listen to any episode or want
to register to be a guest on my show, visit
Moneymakingconversations dot com. Our social media handle is money making Conversations.
(22:35):
Join us next week and remember to always leave with
your gifts. Keep winning,
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I am Rashan McDonald, a host of weekly Money Making
Conversation Masterclass show. The interviews and information that this show
provides are for everyone. It's time to stop reading other
people's success stories and start living your own. If you
want to be a guest on my show, please visit
our website, Moneymaking Conversations dot com and click the be
a Guest button. Chris submit and information will come directly
(00:23):
to me. Now let's get this show started. My next
guest is a person who's about planning, committed effort and
right direction. Point you in the right direction. He is
doctor Michael Eric Dyson. He's one of America's premier public
intellectuals and author of over twenty books, including seven New
York Times bestsellers. Doctor Dyson's recipient of two NAACP Image Awards.
Please welcome to the Money Making Conversations, my man, doctor
(00:46):
Michael Eric Dyson.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Brother McDonald, man, it's always great to see you. Hear
you milifluous language and that fluid articulation. I'm now with that. Bruh.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Well, we've been together a long time, man with Steve Harvey,
and I may all the way back to la days
when you first came on our radar, and as African
American men, you know how we've always felt about the
police from a standpoint of a strong level of comfortenness,
you know.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
And but it's seeing it play out in the public's eye.
How would you say cell phone has played has cell
phone has really been the game changer? And I pursued
a racial.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Justice, There's no doubt about that. It's a great way
to characterize it. The Gutenberg shift introduced by the smartphone,
right in particular, has changed the game. Now. You know,
Black folk and technology were always doing stuff outside the box. Yes, yes,
we had beepers before we knew doctors had beepers, right, yeah,
right right, physicians have them too, and we knew what
(01:46):
was up so and they wasn't just paging their girls. Absolutely. Uh.
We've always made exorbitant, extravagant use available technology, and what
we've done with the the smartphone has been extraordinary. To
be able to record I mean when we captured in
(02:06):
nineteen ninety two Rodney King, that was on a home
video record, but a portable one. Now with the smartphone,
it's even more accessible. Everybody in their mama, grandmama, grandson,
you know, cousin uncle has a smartphone. Everybody wants to
be Margaret brook White or you know, Gordon Woods and
(02:28):
so Is or Deborah Willis. So the thing is is
that we're able to use that smartphone to record what
we say is true. We've been telling y'all that the
police act out of hand. We've been telling y'all that
no matter what we do, they can cut the fool.
As my daddy used to say, they be too with disrespect.
They will ignore you often, they will ignore your humanity,
(02:51):
your desire to be treated with equality. They will be
angry at you and resentful for you even having a
backbone or a voice. And now these these video cameras
that recorded it, whether sometimes it's on the bodycams of
some of these police people. But we can't really rely
on that because they turn them off and on when
(03:12):
they want, and they capture what they edited in their
to their own advantage. But the video recorder on the
video camera on the smartphone has changed the game. George Floyd,
Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Jacob Blake, Sandra Bland. We know
that was recording from the from the bodycam, but we
(03:36):
know that the phone can change the game. And make
people see what we've seen and at least throw a
monkey wrench into the proceedings when people are trying to
act like we were acting the food. We were trying
to run away from the police, we were trying to
cuss them out, we were trying to shoot up. All
that has been put to rest. The smartphone is extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Now, let's talk about this because you know when you
when I'm reading your book, you know, because there's like
five chapters, you know title black Dead, Play, Blue Plague,
White Theft, Seeing Red, White Comfort. You know when you know,
whenever I see a Henry Lewis Gates Journey Junior, you know,
documentary was on PBS. You know, whenever he gets to
doctor Martin Luther King. Man, I can't watch that part. Man,
(04:15):
that's the part of history, mayor. I can't want he
was going to we got to that name, he said
in eighteen sixty eight. I turned off the TV.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Now you may not get there with you.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah, I heard that, seriously, I heard that part. I
turned it off. I turned it off. I believe I
believe you will tell you something.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
I don't eve want to rupt you, but given what
you're saying, when I go to the Civil Rights Museum
in Memphis and get to his room from three or six,
I cried like a baby every time, Sir, I can't
you know.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
And so the reason I bring that up because when
you start looking at the Emmitt Till and Eric Gann
Breonna Taylor, and you know what happened to the fifteen
year old out of Chicago Pendleton and they had nothing
to do with cop violence, but it was about you know,
black on black violence and somehow racial. They go back
to the thirteenth Amendment. When you want really going to
break it all the way down Sandral Bland out of Houston,
(05:05):
Texas area, how did you emotionally hold it together? That's
the question I want to write. And I'm talking to
doctor Eric MICUs Dawston his book Long Time Coming Reckoning
with RACI in America. Because you are a scholar, you're
an intellectual, but you're still emotional and you see all
this stuff lining up, you know, because what happened is
a certain series of disbelief coming about when you go, really,
I forgot about this, I forgot about this. Tell us
(05:27):
about that emotional journey and putting this book together.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
No, that's a great point you're making. And look, obviously
it was very difficult. Black people are traumatized and we're retraumatized.
We are terrorized, and we're terrorized again. We are hurt
and we're hurt again. And so having to watch this,
having to go to see King's place where he was assassinated,
(05:50):
which gets me every time, It makes me cry like
a baby. You know, people ask, well, why did you
write the book the way you did. I'll tell you why, because,
as you said, I'm not just an intellectual, I'm not
just a scholar. I'm a human being. I'm a black man.
When I see this stuff happening to black people, I
have a choice. I have to choose how to present it.
(06:12):
I have to choose how to articulate it. I have
to choose how to express it. But I make a decision.
Do I want to share the horror of what happened
to George Floyd? Yes? Yes? Do I want to share
the horror of what happened to Ammatt Arbor? Yes? Now,
I don't want to do it for sensational purposes. I
don't want to turn it into the pornography of black death,
where these are snuff films. The last few minutes of
(06:35):
black life shown on a recording that none of us
should see. There's no question. But at the same time,
I figure, if they could endure the death, if they
could actually die, if they could sacrifice their lives not intentionally,
their purpose here on earth wasn't, as far as they knew,
(06:56):
to amplify or to echo the extra ordinary quests for
black justice in our time. And yet because of the
nature of their death, that's exactly what happened. George Floyd
said he wanted to change the world. He didn't mean
die and change the world. He didn't mean die and
leave his daughter and other children behind. He didn't mean
(07:17):
die in an ignominious death where he was asphyxiated by
the cops on a pavement street, where they kept their
knees on his neck for more than nine minutes. But
because of how he died, that transformed this culture and
indeed shook the globe. So if they could endure the death,
(07:39):
the least we could do is to grapple with the hurt,
the pain, the trauma, so that when we watch it
and see it and learn about it, we can say
we don't want this happening to anybody else, and let's
make this the last time. That's the hope I have
and try to talk about what these people have been
through in this book.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Well, you style it unto letters, and it really was,
you know when I started reading, like I already told
you or it broken down in the five chapters, but
the letter like black Death is tied to Immit till
and your story. It really was a very humane way
of a sadness. Like you know, Sam Cook, you know
change is gonna come.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Okay, and we're gonna be at the mountain time we'll
see on the other side. I don't think so. And
that's what your book is trying to say. It's not
it's sane, but can we make it to the mountain
top and look on the other side, we'll change come,
Doctor Dyson.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah, that's a great question. Not inevitably, not automatically, Not
if we don't do it right to make it happen ourselves.
Not if we don't do the things that will make
change happen. It won't happen because we wish it into existence.
It won't happen because we hope it into existence. It
won't even happen if we pray it into existence, right,
You got to practice it into existence. We got to
(08:53):
operate it into existence. We got to act and do
real live you know, practice, real live you know, activities,
social motion, social revolution, social resistance. We got to get
up and intend the world to be different. It will
(09:13):
not change of its own. You and I must grapple
with the means toward that end. And I do believe
change can come, but only if we recognize that. We've
got to continue to raise our consciousness, raise our voices,
and raise the awareness of the dominant culture and among
(09:36):
ourselves of what things should be done, what things should
be addressed, the mechanisms by which that change occurs, and
how we can continue to resist, link arms and aims,
as Susan Taylor says, with other like minded people, to
make a difference in that sense, Yes, I am hopeful,
not optimistic optimism, as the Ryan Honeber, the theologian shit said,
(10:00):
as a shallow virtue. But hope it's deeper. Hope. It's
something that you believe it even when you can't see
the evidence for it. You keep all moving forward. That's
what I have, and I do believe the change will come.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Sam Cook has told us that Please don't go anywhere.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
We'll be right back with more money Making Conversations Masterclass.
Welcome back to money Making Conversations master Class hosted by
me Rashaan McDonald. Money Making Conversation master Class continues online
at Moneymaking Conversations dot com and follow money Making Conversations
(10:38):
Masterclass on Facebook, X and Instagram. We've been canceled all
the way because that information about slavery and how Jim
Crow laws is counseled, because they don't tell us about
that because they don't want white people to be uncomfortable
when he's sitting in the classroom talking about what their
ancestors did to us. So we've lived a life of
culture cancelation. What is your So I feel with the
(10:59):
right and asked this question, what is culture cancelation of
canceling culture.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
That's a brilliant, brilliant analysis, and we have certainly been canceled.
You are so right. That's why I'm against cancel culture
in our expression, because white supremacy is canceled culture. Yes,
this and I'm saying the cancel culture even if we
call it black Twitter or social media. Look, you might
get a Bill Cosby, you might get a Harvey Weinstein.
(11:25):
You might get an R. Kelly, but for the most
part you're doing the lateral movement. You're doing peer to peer,
and even some of the powerful people you go after
because you dislike them. But to cancel another human being,
that's a white supremacist fashion fantasy. That's a delusion that
we can totally evisceraate or wipe out, hold accountable, yes,
make people responsible, yes, But to cancel them if you
(11:48):
make a mistake, once you're done and gone. I believe
if Martin Luther King Junior, and Malcolm X were here today,
they would be canceled. Somebody would be trying to cancel them. Yes,
because of their faults, because of their failures, of their
narrowness on some issues. And yet these men did extraordinary
things for us, the absence of which would make us
(12:09):
far poorer in spirit and in racial achieved. He's talking
about cancel culture as pulling down them darn Confederates flags
and statues. Yeah, you know what, I'm all for that,
I'm all for pulling them off the pedestal. That's not
what I mean by cancel culture. His notion of cancel
(12:29):
culture is the ability to continue to be demagogic, and
to be dictatorial, and to be fascist, and to be
anti just anti black, anti brown, anti indigenous, and to
be exempt from social critique and moral responsibility. That ain't
what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the inclination to
(12:52):
believe that your moral position is the only one. That
the way you deal with people with whom you disagree
or who honestly make the miss is to obliterate them.
Is to wipe them out so that they have no
comeback if they make one mistake, whether they're the governor
of Virginia who appears in blackface, And if you canceled him,
(13:12):
what would you have missed? The fact that he restored
the voting rights of ten thousand ex prisoners in returning
citizens in Virginia, a large proportion of whom we're black,
The stuff he did with public health, and also the
wealth disparities and some of the social justice issues there.
If you cancel him, you cancel the opportunity to reorganize
(13:36):
the logic of democracy in Virginia. So my thing is
not to cancel people. Hold them accountable, make them responsible. Yes,
pay for your quote sins, but allow me a comeback.
So I can say with ll don't call it a comeback.
I've been here for years, Mama said, knock you out.
Let me have a chance to be redeemed, to be restored.
(13:59):
I am not with this evisceration, this eradication, this extirpation,
this is just wiping them out because I disagree with you.
Whether it's about sexuality, whether it's about gender, whether it's
about race. I don't want a witch hunt through white America. Hey,
twenty years ago, did you call somebody the N word?
Or did you do something wrong? I'm sure a lot
of people did a lot of stupid stuff. Or when
(14:20):
somebody's thirteen years old and they see some ignorant stuff
and now here they are, five, ten, fifteen years later
trying to you know, become a ball player or get drafted,
and we go dig up some of the stupid stuff.
They say, I mean right, And my thing is, I'm
not saying don't hold people accountable for If you still
feel the same thing at twenty five that you felt
(14:43):
at thirteen and it was racist and vicious, that's a
different story. But if you evolved, if you've grown, if
you said some stuff when you were young that was dumb,
or you said some stuff that when you were younger,
and now that you're more mature in a different position,
you're willing to change your mind. Let's provide people the
opportunity to grow and evolved.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
I believe with that, you know, in reading your book,
and I'm talking to doctor Eric Diys Michael Eric Dyson
a long time coming reckoning with RACI in America. The
thing that it was two things in the book that
really I was just taking it back. The detail you
know in your book, how you timelined out you know,
George Floyd's murder, how you timelined out the interactions between
(15:25):
Amon Aubrey when he was hunted down black man running
in the neighborhood. You know, you know, the father and
son and then the cameraman who said he was just
there alone for the moment, but then he blocks his path.
So what I'm telling you is this, you gave me
information I didn't know, which is a brilliant understand because
(15:48):
you realized that we need people like you to give
us the additional details because the media is only going
to give you a minute or ninety seconds or caption
of what it is. This book gives you the detail,
especially on that Mama Aubrey. If you want to know
exactly where read what do you got to write? They
got to buy your book, Michael, because your book, man
(16:09):
is like I was like, wow, you know you know,
I mean from the time he got shot, then he
got shot again, and then he hit him to try
to fend himself off while he was being pursued, while
he's being shot and attacked. How he was cut off
by this quote unquote. I was just there to take
film everything. I wasn't trying to stop him from escaping
(16:30):
or trying to stop him from doing anything. Why how
did all this information come to you? And how did
you think to detail it out like that? Because I'm
telling you it's brilliant, because it opened my eyes and
brought me emotionally back to the forefront. I got to
know more. I need to know more. And this is
a fantastic book.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
You wanted the very few to dig into that, to
acknowledge that, to talk about that. And I thank you
for reading the book thoroughly, my man number one, because
everybody who talking to you ain't read Joe book. And
you have read it. Not only have you read it,
you read it thoroughly. And that's a real honor and
thank you for that. Yes, I wanted to lay that out. Look,
(17:09):
I did the quote spade work. I did the shoe
leather on the pavement kind of work. I went and
dug up the facts. I listened to the transcripts of
what was happening there. I looked at the film. I
looked at the breakdown. I looked at the timing. I
looked at what the father was doing. I looked at
what they claimed that they were doing. But, like you said,
the witness, I'm just there as an innocent party. Now
(17:32):
you the third dude there, and you try to block
my man from going any further and then retroactively after
the fact ex post facto, you trying to, as my
daddy would say, make like you the darn hero, and
you the one who made it possible for the film
to get out in the world. But you know them
other two white boys are the father and son are
(17:53):
mad at him? White hell? Are you recording this? And
that recording is essentially it should clench our conviction. Yes,
it should put us in jail for the rest of
our lives. Yes, because we hunted this man down like
an animal. He was unarmed, he had no possibility of
self defense. He had committed no crime, and out of
(18:17):
wanting disregard for his life and the stereotypical pursuit of
a black man as an animal, they went and hunted
him down and shot him and killed him. And I
wanted every element of that to be brought to the fore,
the detail to be rich, so that people could understand
exactly what went down.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
I'm tell you again because now on this day why
he was brought up on charges, Because at first all
that come here was witness witness, and then when they
brought him up on charges, I really didn't understand why
he brought up on charges. But then when you say
he cut him off, which forced Arman Aubrey to go
back towards the father and son duo who were pointing
(18:56):
guns at him, and then they dropped out the truck,
and that's when he was just for his life. After that,
he was just fighting for his life after that. And
then when you looked at it, and then when you
laid down the detail on George Floyd, you know, one
was on his neck, one was on his back, and
one was on his legs. That type of detail really
allowed me to appreciate you know your the ability to
(19:17):
tell your story. You're a great storyteller. We need great
storytellers because of the fact that great storytelling tied to
great facts and great information. And you look at a
tremendous amount of information that uplifted me, opened my eyes
and also allowed me to be able to share this
book with other of my fans, my family member, my daughter,
and people who know me to understand. I just love
(19:38):
the way you told the story and tied it to
an individual who's been traumatized. They traumatized to the point
that they were killed by transactional whether it was tied
to the police or community gang violence type situation that
happened to the fifteen year old out of Chicago, a
young lady by name of Pumpelan who all knew was
a scholar student and all that and her life was
(19:59):
snuffed out. And your beauty of this story is like
the what if?
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Right right, sir? No, thank you again. The close reading
that what Don Madonald is doing here is an object
lesson in critique, criticism, and engagement with a book. Man.
This is what this is what authors like live for.
Then somebody takes them seriously. You ain't got to agree
with me. Just read what the heck I said, and
(20:25):
then how don't care if you argue with me? Aren't
you based on the facts of what you read? And
that's what you're doing? Man, Thank you so much. And yes,
I wanted to talk about both hands they have the appendalty.
I wanted to talk about. Now we know it's really
called neighbor to neighbor violence because people kill where they live.
Ninety three percent of black people who are killed or
killed by black people, but eighty four percent of white
(20:46):
people who are killed or killed by white people. So
we ain't got to no, Oh my god, why don't
white crime is going to drive White America into the
doldrums and create catastrophe. People kill where they live. They
don't get on no bus and take no tram and
take no train, kill nobody. They killing right where they
are because that's where the drama is, that's where the
trauma is, that's where the herd is, that's where the
(21:06):
beef is. So she was mistaken for a gang member
right they shot into the crowd, shot her in the back.
One of them shot her, the other one drove the
getaway car, and she was killed. Three lives lost, two
of them are serving life in prison and her Dea
Pendleton is lost, and that is the tragedy I wanted
(21:27):
to speak about to illuminate the context of cancel culture
because I draw a parallel between us snuffing out our
own in the radius of our intimacy where our kinfolk
are that ends up hurting and harming them, and the
way in which cancel culture operates to destroy communities, well,
(21:47):
destroy careers, and destroy human beings based upon the digital
lynch mob going out getting like they used to when
they want. You mentioned Immetil when they hung him and
murdered him. It's a digital version of that lynch mob
going on, and I wanted to address that and as
honest and straightforward the way as possible.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Well, thank you Michael for coming on the show. Thank
you for giving me a book to read.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
This has been another edition of Money Making Conversations Masterclass
hosted by me Rashaan McDonald. Thank you to our guests
on the show today, and thank you our listening audience. Now,
if you want to listen to any episode or want
to register to be a guest on my show, visit
Moneymakingconversations dot com. Our social media handle is money making Conversations.
(22:35):
Join us next week and remember to always leave with
your gifts. Keep winning,
Host
Rushion McDonald
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