April 29, 2021 • 31 mins
It’s mourning' time in America. Erika and Whitney reflect on their reparations journey and calculate the personal toll it's taken. The great Reverend Barber resets the room and builds a powerful theological case, through the lens of “The Five Pillars.” A case that exposes the moral repercussions of reparations, and what the bondsman's price will be if America continues to ignore the bill. Then, after 28 years, Erika returns to her father's grave at Rosemont Cemetery in Elizabeth, NJ to share her personal theory on individual moral justice, while also looking to absolve her father's case for debts paid in full, through his own pain and suffering. And finally, we get an encore visit from Erika’s mother, Ms. Sammie, who gets the last word and gives us a Star-Spangled Banner 'drop the mic' performance. Step back, Mahalia!
For more info about this episode, please visit https://reparationsbigpayback.com
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
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):
This episode is dedicated to Sarah Miller Arnon, mother of
our producer Ben Arna. Sarah was a loving mother, wife, teacher,
and guiding light. We love you, Sarah until we meet again.
I'm Erica Alexander.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
That I'm Whitney Dow.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome to Reparations. The Big Payback, a production of Color
Farm Media, iHeartRadio, and The Black Effect Podcast Network.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
That theme of paying back is also a very deeply
churched name. When I grew up, there was a songwek
saying called heyday is coming after Awhile, And there were
a number of songs that suggested that injustice just doesn't
get away. Now, when I think about the moral piece
of this, I want to look at it through two lenses.
(00:51):
One lens is the religious land of Judeo Christian perspective,
and then the other is from the constitutional And the
third one might be that many people don't realize Erica,
that for years there was no separate study of economics
in this country or in the world, that the study
(01:14):
of economics was a part of morral philosophy. In other words,
you would study.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Did you hear that?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Did I hear what? Reverend Barber?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
No? No? After Reveren Barber that.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
Silence, Yes, I heard it. Why are we listening to silence?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Erica?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Well, you know, as a reminder of where we're all
going at this brief life's end, you know. And the
other day we went on a field trip to visit
my dad's cemetery out in New Jersey and I hadn't
been there in over thirty years. And we'll get into
why that is. But remember after we talked, before we left,
we just stood there for a little while and listened
(02:02):
to the silence.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I remember that. But why are you thinking about that
right now?
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Because we've been going so fast. We threw ourselves into
this big reparations world and all that comes with it.
So maybe we need a moment to settle down and
just listen, stop talking, And if we did, maybe we'd
be able to hear the angels speak. I don't know.
Maybe I mean also to remember why we wanted to
(02:39):
do this. What do we want to get out of it?
What did you want to get out of it?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Well?
Speaker 4 (02:53):
I think that I wanted to get a couple of
things out of it, something for myself that I wanted
to get a deeper understanding of this idea of reparations
and what it might mean for our country, because I
think that so much of the time you think you
understand something and you don't really understand it. You have
sort of a vague idea about it, and once you
(03:13):
dig into it, you realize it's so much more complicated
then something I want on a larger scale. I really
I've always talked about Eric. I know you laugh at it,
but this idea that I'm trying to say white people
and I really want.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
What I mean by that, I wanted to bring.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
White ears to this story that I think that so
much of the time white people think that the story
of reparations really is something for black people, so they
could hear themselves in that story. And I think if
you can bring white ears to the story, you also
have the opportunity to bring white hearts as well.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
It's kind of like Reverend Barber.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Who's decade his life to the Poor People's Campaign and
the work of Martin Luther King, and he has this
goll of fusion politics, and what that means is that
the fates of black and white people are linked together.
They're fused together, that we aren't on these separate journeys
that were connected, and so what affects one affects the other.
And I think sort of what we've done here, Eric,
(04:06):
I hope we've done is we've kind of been trying
to do fusion storytelling, where we show that the black
and white story are intimately together and you can't understand
one without the other.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Well, it's been a hell of a journey, and I
got to give it up for the race advocates, people
like Reverend Barber, the Poor People's Campaign, He's amazing. I
don't know how they all stay sane in this world.
It's exhausting. I mean, we're definitely not the same people
we were when we started this, or perhaps we were
(04:40):
always our same selves, and this process created extraordinary conditions
to test the outer limits of who we thought we
were versus who we really are. As you can see,
I've become confusions in between all this. But yeah, stress
it's a purifier. Pain and suffering too.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Well, what do you mean by that, Erica, that it's
a purifier, Like who's a pure fine?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
I don't know. You know, that's actually a deep question,
because if you know, if stress and pain could purify something,
you think the United States would be in a better space.
But I think it's been so successful at what it's
done in terms of the oppression on people of color
and black people, that it really hasn't experienced the pain
(05:22):
enough and suffering of that to change. I really don't.
But before our trip to the cemetery, had I ever
told you about my dad's death?
Speaker 4 (05:31):
No, we've talked a lot about your family, of course
your mom know, not specifically about your father's passing.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Why do you want to talk about him now?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Well, because my father's story is a tell of morality,
and that topic indirectly is relevant to what we are
talking about. What lies underneath this whole reparations talk is
one of personal character and accountability morality. So okay, let's
talk about it, and let's talk about our road trip.
(06:00):
Glad we took Revern Barber along with us to sit shotgun.
He knows a little something about the road we were traveling.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
He certainly does. In fact, he led the way you.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Would study moral philosophy, And as a part of moral philosophy,
you've studied economics because the suggestion was there was no
way to be moral if you were emmral with your
money and ear marl with the way you treated people
based on their relationships with money and wealth that was
separated in America in large part due to slavery, because
(06:33):
you can't, on the one hand, say that the economics
is a moral issue when you build a system on
slavery that has five underpinnings, and the first of it
is evil economics and an evil economics. And I've kind
of coined these five evil economics, meaning that the end
(06:54):
justifies the means. So if your goal is to get
wealthy and to exceed other nations that have been in
existence thousands of years before you, and the only way
to do that is to turn people into property, then
the end your wealth justifies the means, which is a
form of evil economics.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Do you know where the grid is?
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
She said it was under a big oak. I was
hoping that there would be somebody here we could ask.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
So Erica, how did your dad die?
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Well, it was pretty brutal. Let me put it to
you this way. If he had been an animal, they
would have put him down years before, just to end
his suffering. But I don't know, Whitney. The details are
like pain pornography, and I don't want to get into that.
Speaker 6 (07:54):
So we're just coming out of the Holland Tunnel into
New Jersey.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
We're at Rose Mount Cemetery in New Jersey, Elizabeth, New Jersey,
and my father is buried here and I don't know
exactly where, but my mother said it was in front
of a oak tree and the office is closed.
Speaker 6 (08:17):
There's a lot of trees here.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
I think that there's a big oak tree over there.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah. So the identifying marker of this place is that
everything's flat. There are no like standing graves. I don't
know if that's just what they decided so they can
maybe put more people here, but uh, it's not the
prettiest place. Well. His name was Robert Lee Murray Alexander.
(08:52):
It was a preacher and he lived a tough life.
He was also a complicated, fascinating person. Born in the
South of West, he was an orphan and his hobole
preacher life certainly took its toll, and in his short
life he ran fast, but he wasn't built for speed.
(09:13):
I don't know where it is. In fact, I haven't
been here in over thirty years. He died in nineteen
ninety three and we buried him and I haven't come
back since. He was born with a bad heart. He
died of congestive heart failure and adult diabetes. He was
(09:37):
I think fifty years old and he passed away in
East New York, Brooklyn. We lived in the parsonage where
my mother, Sammy, also an orphan and soon to be
a widow, performed her vow to death to us part
and she took care of him until he breathed his
last And it wasn't easy because toward the end of
his life his legs started to rot and turn ganggreen
(09:59):
because of the circular it was so compromised. He died
January thirteenth, nineteen ninety three. It was just before I
was going to start the Cosby Show, and funeral director
had an interesting comment that he said to my mother.
He said that my dad must have been paying a
debt because it marked his flesh and bone is fair trade.
(10:20):
He told my mother that he had never seen a
body that had gone through as much pain and suffering
and all his years of undertaking.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Wow, I see.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
The next one issue would be sick sociology, and that
is that people can be around each other physically, but
there has to be a hierarchy. There has to be
a us them, you cannot have an equal society. The
third pillar would be political pathology, and that is that
(10:50):
all of your politics are designed to protect this evil
economics and to protect this sociology, so much so that
when you even write your documents, you have to make
sure that the system of slavery is protected, because you
can't even have a unity or a constitution without that.
The last two bad biology. So in the seventeenth century,
(11:13):
a French scientist came up with this idea. You can
read about this in one of Cornell West's book called
Prophesied Deliverance, in which they said you could determine brain
size by skin color. You saw some of this in
the movie Django, and people thought it was just the movie.
It was actually real. There were scientists who suggested that
you could determine brain size by skin color. Therefore, skin
(11:37):
color became a sign of one's lesser humanity, or actually
one's lack of humanity. And then the last one is
heretical ontology. Ontology is the study of God's intentions. And
so the argument was that God intended the evil economists,
(11:58):
God intended the sixth sociology, God intended the political pathology.
God intended the bad biology. God intended the system of slavery,
which is in itself a hered heress. It is the
abuse and missus of theology. So when you asked that
question about from a moral perspective, I just wanted to
(12:19):
lay that out first.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Now, to be clear, my father was no Hitler, no Polepot,
no Dick Cheney, and yet in an unfair way here
he was in East New York mythology. Now that's near Brownsville,
and this is the early nineties. It's a real rough
place that his physical body looked so tortured that it
was a standout visual for pain and suffering. It's deep.
(12:41):
But why aim, Why did my father, a local preacher,
What did he do to deserve that? In my best
guess is that he didn't do anything. He's just how
life is. Life is unfair, imbalanced, it's cruel. Right. He
(13:02):
was a star in anyone's room. He was very charismatic.
He was very smart. He was intelligent. He was a genius.
He could pick up languages quick. He was very good
at reading rooms, reading people. He was a healer. He
was an extraordinary healer. Pastors noted how gifted he was,
but also touched by the spirit. It was more than
(13:24):
just a calling or something that his grandmother said he'd do.
He was really made for it. But we try to
make sense of these things. So I rethought about it,
and this is what I came up with. That my
dad had violated a moral honor code and that the
(13:44):
ramifications of that debt penetrated another dimension, and he would
not be allowed to leave his human life without paying
that bondsman. My great grandmother, who was present at his birth,
she was a very powerful woman, they say, with a
very deep voice. Maybe that's where I get it from
A little bit saw signs of his anointing and declared
(14:06):
that he was special and that he was to be,
in her words, a man of God, and that marked
him with the brand. And my father was special. He
was mostly fulfilled that mission as far as I'm concerned.
But when his life choices morally didn't add up to
his destined mission, the universe served him up a world
(14:26):
of pain that match the likes of job as payment
for undelivered services. So America may be in the same situation.
She may have to pay the reaper a hard price
for failing to fulfill her mission. I really believe there's
a bounty on America's head for the sin and failure
of being so immoral. And if there is a God,
(14:51):
then maybe in death my father has earned his place
back into his good graces. But it was going to
have to be through great pain and suffering.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
In Judeo Christian thinking, in the Old Testament, there was
always reparations, always represations. You never just took from people.
In fact, every fiftieth year there was something called the
season of Jubilee, and in that season of Jubilee, all
slaves were to be free, all debts were to be canceled,
(15:23):
all people were to be restored. And there was a
thinking among the early Jewish rabbis and all that if
that ever happened, if it ever actually happened, that the
Kingdom of God would come in his fullness. In the
New Testament, Jesus clearly taught that if you stole from somebody,
you didn't just replace what you stole. You had to
(15:45):
replace two, three fourfold what you stole. And until that happened,
there's a very powerful story of a tax person in
the Scripture that says he wants to follow Jesus. Jesus
doesn't say go get baptized. Jesus doesn't say, put some
all on your head. Jesus doesn't say, say how the
new year. Jesus doesn't say that. He said, who have
you stolen from? Zach kids? And he says, well, I
(16:07):
stole them different. He said, okay, go and return to
the folk that you have stolen from. And he goes out,
and he returned. He said, I've done even more than
just what I took. I restored three four four. And
then Jesus say, now salvation has come. Now words, he
couldn't just say I stole from all those folk, but oops,
now want to be saved? Can you accept me? And
(16:28):
Jesus says, said, you're forgiving.
Speaker 5 (16:30):
No no, no, no no, no no no no.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
You have to restore what you're stolen, and then salvation. So,
whether we look at it historically or constitutionally or from
a religious perspective, the issue of reparation is a serious theological, moral,
and constitutional issue.
Speaker 6 (16:55):
How do you feel standing here?
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Oh, it's a not a nuh nice place. It's pretty ugly,
feel like it's a Soviet type of compound, you know,
the it's everything's flattened, the grass is patchy, and I
don't know. If you didn't know grave yard was here,
you just think it was a really badly unkept yard.
And my father, who didn't pay attention to those types
(17:22):
of things, probably would have liked to s to be
in a nicer place. It's too bad he's not.
Speaker 7 (17:28):
There's no headstones, it's all flat markers, and you're just
the only thing that's vertical are some of the flowers
that are poking up around. So we're pretty close by
the uh Newark Airport and the highway. Mean, well, thank
you for bringing me.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Here, Eric, thank you, And Dad, I'm sorry we don't
have a marker for you.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
But he did.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
He doesn't live here anymore, so it doesn't matter what's
here or not here. Took a reparations documentary and a
discussion about race to get me back to see my father,
which is interesting. Yeah, anyway, this journey is bigger than us.
(18:26):
It's bigger than the sound of our voice and our understanding,
but it is not bigger than a vision laid out
long before we arrived here on this hot blue spin
and rock you know America.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
In the context of this conversation about morality, this idea
that people often say that people shouldn't be judged by
the worst thing they've ever done? Or they asked that question,
should people be judged by the worst thing that they've
ever done? And I think sort of collectively, that's what
white Americans are grappling with now. Are we as white Americans?
Can we escape this thing? Can we escape this immoral
(19:00):
thing of slavery that's our legacy? Are we somehow captives
to this worst thing they've ever done? Can we ever
outlive it?
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Can we ever outrun it?
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Can we ever change it? Is reparation something that could
even change it? We're living in this time of reckoning
right now. And is there anything that we can do
that will balance the scale? Is there anything we can
put on the other side of the scale that will
equal the sins of the past.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Oh, well, that's a human thing. That's why reparations is
a heavy subject, because it's weighed down by centuries of
hand wrangling and debates over what it is to be human?
Who gets to be human? And alongside the idea of
debt and repayment between discrownal parties, we're also talking about
moral debt. Again, this is outside of cash or gold
(19:53):
or diamonds or oil, it's a moral repayment restitution. It's
one that perhaps can men fences and create bridges to
a more perfect union. And that's epic stuff. We'll need
more silence going forward so we can listen as we
search and try to rescue the ingredients that can make
our nation, in all its glory, a reality. It's important
(20:16):
to ask the big questions, how do we do reparations? Well,
that depends on us facing a national moral reckoning and
thinking about my life and others I know who may
be dealing with existential crises can lay the blueprint of
how we approach these difficult questions and come up with
better answers. Yeah, better answers. Where do I always come
(20:41):
up with better answers? I know, I'll ask my mom.
Speaker 5 (20:46):
Sometime like, demand's more about than we can give. And
I was thinking sometime we are malnourished, are under nurtured
for the lives that are forced upon us. And I
think that Robert gave what he could. Sometimes I believe
(21:12):
that he might have been induced to things because of
his male nourishment in life and looking at others wishing
that he had this or that, and feeling inadequate. Sometimes,
you know, deeds didn't match up because you're trying to
(21:33):
reach for that ring grab and sometime you fall. But
I won't be harsh in how I judged his commitment.
I think he wanted very much to be a leader,
a person that gave, and those were the sentiments of
(21:53):
his last days. That's the reason I say you look
at someone's heart, because you can't really say you love
someone unless you are willing to look at the whole
of that person. They're good, they're bad, they're failures, their successes.
(22:15):
I don't think that he became the person that he
wanted to become for many reasons. I think that there
were times that life hit him so hard and he
was so discouraged that he couldn't bounce back. He was
afraid to say yes to life many times, and I
(22:38):
think that that was one of his greatest regrets.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Do you feel, because we've been talking about reparations in
the United States, that black people are kind of like
in this really unholy marriage, that they feel the same way.
That is very difficult to walk away from something that's
not working for them, that actually harms them, that can
actually do harm to them, continues to and they are
(23:02):
unwilling to because of their ultimate humanity, or what do
you think is going on there?
Speaker 5 (23:08):
I think we stayed for very complex reasons, just as
one would stay in a marriage for very complex reasons.
And most of us have come to realize the sacrifice
and the toll that our four parents paid in their
own blood. And to walk away from this country, and
(23:33):
no matter how hateful and onerous it may be, to
walk away would be to ignore their sacrifice, to say
that it was in vain. That is the way I feel.
They were not paid, but they built a country, they
(23:55):
fought for a country, shed their blood, and were treating
it less than human beings. If I walked away before
their descendants had gotten their due in every way by
having a full measure, that would be the greatest dishonoring
(24:19):
of their sacrifice. So yes, I say, And I can't
just live on the laurels and say my four parent sacrifice.
It means that I must constantly work. There is a
scripture in the Bible says you must work out your
soul's salvation. So to me staying in this country, contributing
(24:43):
to it, seeing saying to it, no matter what you
do to me, how you dishonor me. I will honor
what belongs to me. If we walk away and it
said we're giving up on this country. It's never going
(25:05):
to be what it should be, then all of that
would be lost. We can't allow that.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Lastly, I want to talk to you about morality to
America's personal responsibility and immorality and moral calling that they
put in their constitution. What would you say to the
government now that they have the opportunity to step forward
into that light? What is the forward motion for us
(25:34):
all for America? The government? Morality and immorality.
Speaker 5 (25:39):
Well, there is a lesson that we need to reckon.
America taluts itself as being a Christian country in large part,
but we seem to have lost our moral pompous and
now the word democracy is threatened. You're hearing people say
(26:03):
that our constitution is outdated. You're hearing people say that
it's all right if one particular group are our majority group,
does whatever they wish, that the ends justify the means,
and that the God that we have created and is
(26:28):
not the one that has created us, and we seem
to serve that God, to prefer to serve that God,
then the one that says to us, love your enemy.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Be just toward every man. Stand fast in the faith
(26:52):
that was once delivered to you by your ancestors. Teach
your children what I have done for you, and to
you how I brought you, so that they will worship
me and they will recognize the hand of God. All
(27:13):
of those things are in the Bible, setting a light
a path for us. But we have chosen to create
our own God, one of gold, one of silver, one
that says, take what you wish. It doesn't matter if
the other fella starves, It doesn't matter if the other
(27:35):
fella doesn't have a home. That's our morality. Now. Our
morality is, don't worry about righteousness getting you into a kingdom.
You can always buy Peter at the gate anyway. Who
believes in heaven anymore? Our heaven is right here, and
(27:57):
we can make hell for those folks whenever we want to.
So now they say, oh, you can't protest anymore because
it's getting dangerous from me, Not because you don't have
a right to your voice. You don't have a right
to any action that says you can take what belongs
(28:19):
to you. We say survival of the fittest, but we
don't want to test the fitness of certain people. You know,
we have a morality that says one thing does another.
The Native Americans said, we speak with the four tongues.
I sometimes say we speak from both orifices, and none
(28:43):
of that is beneficial. So I think that America is
soon coming to the time when she will be called
to redeem herself or to fight for whatever new existence
that she's says she wants to maintain. You know, you
will either give in and say that the people of
(29:07):
all races, all stresses of life, you have a right
to exist and we will live in peace, or we
will say no, you will be annihilated, and only as
they say that krem day like crime will survive, and
we'll see. I think we're fast coming to that place.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Mom, one last thing, Could you sing a little bit
of the star spangled banner?
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Oh say? Can you see by the doge?
Speaker 4 (30:02):
This podcast is produced by Eric Alexander ben Arnon and
Whitney Down.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
The executive producers are Charlemagne the God and Dolly s. Bishop.
The supervising producer is Nicole Childers.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
And the lead producer is Devin Mavock Robbins, the producer
writer is cersee Castle, and the associate producer is Kevin Fann,
with additional research support.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Provided by Nile Blast. Original music by dj dpp.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Oh Gom Step Back, Mahelia, a Star's Board, Hach Reparations.
(31:05):
The Big Payback is a production of color Farm Media,
iHeartRadio and The Black Effect Podcast Network in association with
Best Case Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
This episode is dedicated to Sarah Miller Arnon, mother of
our producer Ben Arna. Sarah was a loving mother, wife, teacher,
and guiding light. We love you, Sarah until we meet again.
I'm Erica Alexander.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
That I'm Whitney Dow.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome to Reparations. The Big Payback, a production of Color
Farm Media, iHeartRadio, and The Black Effect Podcast Network.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
That theme of paying back is also a very deeply
churched name. When I grew up, there was a songwek
saying called heyday is coming after Awhile, And there were
a number of songs that suggested that injustice just doesn't
get away. Now, when I think about the moral piece
of this, I want to look at it through two lenses.
(00:51):
One lens is the religious land of Judeo Christian perspective,
and then the other is from the constitutional And the
third one might be that many people don't realize Erica,
that for years there was no separate study of economics
in this country or in the world, that the study
(01:14):
of economics was a part of morral philosophy. In other words,
you would study.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Did you hear that?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Did I hear what? Reverend Barber?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
No? No? After Reveren Barber that.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
Silence, Yes, I heard it. Why are we listening to silence?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Erica?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Well, you know, as a reminder of where we're all
going at this brief life's end, you know. And the
other day we went on a field trip to visit
my dad's cemetery out in New Jersey and I hadn't
been there in over thirty years. And we'll get into
why that is. But remember after we talked, before we left,
we just stood there for a little while and listened
(02:02):
to the silence.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I remember that. But why are you thinking about that
right now?
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Because we've been going so fast. We threw ourselves into
this big reparations world and all that comes with it.
So maybe we need a moment to settle down and
just listen, stop talking, And if we did, maybe we'd
be able to hear the angels speak. I don't know.
Maybe I mean also to remember why we wanted to
(02:39):
do this. What do we want to get out of it?
What did you want to get out of it?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Well?
Speaker 4 (02:53):
I think that I wanted to get a couple of
things out of it, something for myself that I wanted
to get a deeper understanding of this idea of reparations
and what it might mean for our country, because I
think that so much of the time you think you
understand something and you don't really understand it. You have
sort of a vague idea about it, and once you
(03:13):
dig into it, you realize it's so much more complicated
then something I want on a larger scale. I really
I've always talked about Eric. I know you laugh at it,
but this idea that I'm trying to say white people
and I really want.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
What I mean by that, I wanted to bring.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
White ears to this story that I think that so
much of the time white people think that the story
of reparations really is something for black people, so they
could hear themselves in that story. And I think if
you can bring white ears to the story, you also
have the opportunity to bring white hearts as well.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
It's kind of like Reverend Barber.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Who's decade his life to the Poor People's Campaign and
the work of Martin Luther King, and he has this
goll of fusion politics, and what that means is that
the fates of black and white people are linked together.
They're fused together, that we aren't on these separate journeys
that were connected, and so what affects one affects the other.
And I think sort of what we've done here, Eric,
(04:06):
I hope we've done is we've kind of been trying
to do fusion storytelling, where we show that the black
and white story are intimately together and you can't understand
one without the other.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Well, it's been a hell of a journey, and I
got to give it up for the race advocates, people
like Reverend Barber, the Poor People's Campaign, He's amazing. I
don't know how they all stay sane in this world.
It's exhausting. I mean, we're definitely not the same people
we were when we started this, or perhaps we were
(04:40):
always our same selves, and this process created extraordinary conditions
to test the outer limits of who we thought we
were versus who we really are. As you can see,
I've become confusions in between all this. But yeah, stress
it's a purifier. Pain and suffering too.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Well, what do you mean by that, Erica, that it's
a purifier, Like who's a pure fine?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
I don't know. You know, that's actually a deep question,
because if you know, if stress and pain could purify something,
you think the United States would be in a better space.
But I think it's been so successful at what it's
done in terms of the oppression on people of color
and black people, that it really hasn't experienced the pain
(05:22):
enough and suffering of that to change. I really don't.
But before our trip to the cemetery, had I ever
told you about my dad's death?
Speaker 4 (05:31):
No, we've talked a lot about your family, of course
your mom know, not specifically about your father's passing.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Why do you want to talk about him now?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Well, because my father's story is a tell of morality,
and that topic indirectly is relevant to what we are
talking about. What lies underneath this whole reparations talk is
one of personal character and accountability morality. So okay, let's
talk about it, and let's talk about our road trip.
(06:00):
Glad we took Revern Barber along with us to sit shotgun.
He knows a little something about the road we were traveling.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
He certainly does. In fact, he led the way you.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Would study moral philosophy, And as a part of moral philosophy,
you've studied economics because the suggestion was there was no
way to be moral if you were emmral with your
money and ear marl with the way you treated people
based on their relationships with money and wealth that was
separated in America in large part due to slavery, because
(06:33):
you can't, on the one hand, say that the economics
is a moral issue when you build a system on
slavery that has five underpinnings, and the first of it
is evil economics and an evil economics. And I've kind
of coined these five evil economics, meaning that the end
(06:54):
justifies the means. So if your goal is to get
wealthy and to exceed other nations that have been in
existence thousands of years before you, and the only way
to do that is to turn people into property, then
the end your wealth justifies the means, which is a
form of evil economics.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Do you know where the grid is?
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
She said it was under a big oak. I was
hoping that there would be somebody here we could ask.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
So Erica, how did your dad die?
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Well, it was pretty brutal. Let me put it to
you this way. If he had been an animal, they
would have put him down years before, just to end
his suffering. But I don't know, Whitney. The details are
like pain pornography, and I don't want to get into that.
Speaker 6 (07:54):
So we're just coming out of the Holland Tunnel into
New Jersey.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
We're at Rose Mount Cemetery in New Jersey, Elizabeth, New Jersey,
and my father is buried here and I don't know
exactly where, but my mother said it was in front
of a oak tree and the office is closed.
Speaker 6 (08:17):
There's a lot of trees here.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
I think that there's a big oak tree over there.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah. So the identifying marker of this place is that
everything's flat. There are no like standing graves. I don't
know if that's just what they decided so they can
maybe put more people here, but uh, it's not the
prettiest place. Well. His name was Robert Lee Murray Alexander.
(08:52):
It was a preacher and he lived a tough life.
He was also a complicated, fascinating person. Born in the
South of West, he was an orphan and his hobole
preacher life certainly took its toll, and in his short
life he ran fast, but he wasn't built for speed.
(09:13):
I don't know where it is. In fact, I haven't
been here in over thirty years. He died in nineteen
ninety three and we buried him and I haven't come
back since. He was born with a bad heart. He
died of congestive heart failure and adult diabetes. He was
(09:37):
I think fifty years old and he passed away in
East New York, Brooklyn. We lived in the parsonage where
my mother, Sammy, also an orphan and soon to be
a widow, performed her vow to death to us part
and she took care of him until he breathed his
last And it wasn't easy because toward the end of
his life his legs started to rot and turn ganggreen
(09:59):
because of the circular it was so compromised. He died
January thirteenth, nineteen ninety three. It was just before I
was going to start the Cosby Show, and funeral director
had an interesting comment that he said to my mother.
He said that my dad must have been paying a
debt because it marked his flesh and bone is fair trade.
(10:20):
He told my mother that he had never seen a
body that had gone through as much pain and suffering
and all his years of undertaking.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Wow, I see.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
The next one issue would be sick sociology, and that
is that people can be around each other physically, but
there has to be a hierarchy. There has to be
a us them, you cannot have an equal society. The
third pillar would be political pathology, and that is that
(10:50):
all of your politics are designed to protect this evil
economics and to protect this sociology, so much so that
when you even write your documents, you have to make
sure that the system of slavery is protected, because you
can't even have a unity or a constitution without that.
The last two bad biology. So in the seventeenth century,
(11:13):
a French scientist came up with this idea. You can
read about this in one of Cornell West's book called
Prophesied Deliverance, in which they said you could determine brain
size by skin color. You saw some of this in
the movie Django, and people thought it was just the movie.
It was actually real. There were scientists who suggested that
you could determine brain size by skin color. Therefore, skin
(11:37):
color became a sign of one's lesser humanity, or actually
one's lack of humanity. And then the last one is
heretical ontology. Ontology is the study of God's intentions. And
so the argument was that God intended the evil economists,
(11:58):
God intended the sixth sociology, God intended the political pathology.
God intended the bad biology. God intended the system of slavery,
which is in itself a hered heress. It is the
abuse and missus of theology. So when you asked that
question about from a moral perspective, I just wanted to
(12:19):
lay that out first.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Now, to be clear, my father was no Hitler, no Polepot,
no Dick Cheney, and yet in an unfair way here
he was in East New York mythology. Now that's near Brownsville,
and this is the early nineties. It's a real rough
place that his physical body looked so tortured that it
was a standout visual for pain and suffering. It's deep.
(12:41):
But why aim, Why did my father, a local preacher,
What did he do to deserve that? In my best
guess is that he didn't do anything. He's just how
life is. Life is unfair, imbalanced, it's cruel. Right. He
(13:02):
was a star in anyone's room. He was very charismatic.
He was very smart. He was intelligent. He was a genius.
He could pick up languages quick. He was very good
at reading rooms, reading people. He was a healer. He
was an extraordinary healer. Pastors noted how gifted he was,
but also touched by the spirit. It was more than
(13:24):
just a calling or something that his grandmother said he'd do.
He was really made for it. But we try to
make sense of these things. So I rethought about it,
and this is what I came up with. That my
dad had violated a moral honor code and that the
(13:44):
ramifications of that debt penetrated another dimension, and he would
not be allowed to leave his human life without paying
that bondsman. My great grandmother, who was present at his birth,
she was a very powerful woman, they say, with a
very deep voice. Maybe that's where I get it from
A little bit saw signs of his anointing and declared
(14:06):
that he was special and that he was to be,
in her words, a man of God, and that marked
him with the brand. And my father was special. He
was mostly fulfilled that mission as far as I'm concerned.
But when his life choices morally didn't add up to
his destined mission, the universe served him up a world
(14:26):
of pain that match the likes of job as payment
for undelivered services. So America may be in the same situation.
She may have to pay the reaper a hard price
for failing to fulfill her mission. I really believe there's
a bounty on America's head for the sin and failure
of being so immoral. And if there is a God,
(14:51):
then maybe in death my father has earned his place
back into his good graces. But it was going to
have to be through great pain and suffering.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
In Judeo Christian thinking, in the Old Testament, there was
always reparations, always represations. You never just took from people.
In fact, every fiftieth year there was something called the
season of Jubilee, and in that season of Jubilee, all
slaves were to be free, all debts were to be canceled,
(15:23):
all people were to be restored. And there was a
thinking among the early Jewish rabbis and all that if
that ever happened, if it ever actually happened, that the
Kingdom of God would come in his fullness. In the
New Testament, Jesus clearly taught that if you stole from somebody,
you didn't just replace what you stole. You had to
(15:45):
replace two, three fourfold what you stole. And until that happened,
there's a very powerful story of a tax person in
the Scripture that says he wants to follow Jesus. Jesus
doesn't say go get baptized. Jesus doesn't say, put some
all on your head. Jesus doesn't say, say how the
new year. Jesus doesn't say that. He said, who have
you stolen from? Zach kids? And he says, well, I
(16:07):
stole them different. He said, okay, go and return to
the folk that you have stolen from. And he goes out,
and he returned. He said, I've done even more than
just what I took. I restored three four four. And
then Jesus say, now salvation has come. Now words, he
couldn't just say I stole from all those folk, but oops,
now want to be saved? Can you accept me? And
(16:28):
Jesus says, said, you're forgiving.
Speaker 5 (16:30):
No no, no, no no, no no no no.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
You have to restore what you're stolen, and then salvation. So,
whether we look at it historically or constitutionally or from
a religious perspective, the issue of reparation is a serious theological, moral,
and constitutional issue.
Speaker 6 (16:55):
How do you feel standing here?
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Oh, it's a not a nuh nice place. It's pretty ugly,
feel like it's a Soviet type of compound, you know,
the it's everything's flattened, the grass is patchy, and I
don't know. If you didn't know grave yard was here,
you just think it was a really badly unkept yard.
And my father, who didn't pay attention to those types
(17:22):
of things, probably would have liked to s to be
in a nicer place. It's too bad he's not.
Speaker 7 (17:28):
There's no headstones, it's all flat markers, and you're just
the only thing that's vertical are some of the flowers
that are poking up around. So we're pretty close by
the uh Newark Airport and the highway. Mean, well, thank
you for bringing me.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Here, Eric, thank you, And Dad, I'm sorry we don't
have a marker for you.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
But he did.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
He doesn't live here anymore, so it doesn't matter what's
here or not here. Took a reparations documentary and a
discussion about race to get me back to see my father,
which is interesting. Yeah, anyway, this journey is bigger than us.
(18:26):
It's bigger than the sound of our voice and our understanding,
but it is not bigger than a vision laid out
long before we arrived here on this hot blue spin
and rock you know America.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
In the context of this conversation about morality, this idea
that people often say that people shouldn't be judged by
the worst thing they've ever done? Or they asked that question,
should people be judged by the worst thing that they've
ever done? And I think sort of collectively, that's what
white Americans are grappling with now. Are we as white Americans?
Can we escape this thing? Can we escape this immoral
(19:00):
thing of slavery that's our legacy? Are we somehow captives
to this worst thing they've ever done? Can we ever
outlive it?
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Can we ever outrun it?
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Can we ever change it? Is reparation something that could
even change it? We're living in this time of reckoning
right now. And is there anything that we can do
that will balance the scale? Is there anything we can
put on the other side of the scale that will
equal the sins of the past.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Oh, well, that's a human thing. That's why reparations is
a heavy subject, because it's weighed down by centuries of
hand wrangling and debates over what it is to be human?
Who gets to be human? And alongside the idea of
debt and repayment between discrownal parties, we're also talking about
moral debt. Again, this is outside of cash or gold
(19:53):
or diamonds or oil, it's a moral repayment restitution. It's
one that perhaps can men fences and create bridges to
a more perfect union. And that's epic stuff. We'll need
more silence going forward so we can listen as we
search and try to rescue the ingredients that can make
our nation, in all its glory, a reality. It's important
(20:16):
to ask the big questions, how do we do reparations? Well,
that depends on us facing a national moral reckoning and
thinking about my life and others I know who may
be dealing with existential crises can lay the blueprint of
how we approach these difficult questions and come up with
better answers. Yeah, better answers. Where do I always come
(20:41):
up with better answers? I know, I'll ask my mom.
Speaker 5 (20:46):
Sometime like, demand's more about than we can give. And
I was thinking sometime we are malnourished, are under nurtured
for the lives that are forced upon us. And I
think that Robert gave what he could. Sometimes I believe
(21:12):
that he might have been induced to things because of
his male nourishment in life and looking at others wishing
that he had this or that, and feeling inadequate. Sometimes,
you know, deeds didn't match up because you're trying to
(21:33):
reach for that ring grab and sometime you fall. But
I won't be harsh in how I judged his commitment.
I think he wanted very much to be a leader,
a person that gave, and those were the sentiments of
(21:53):
his last days. That's the reason I say you look
at someone's heart, because you can't really say you love
someone unless you are willing to look at the whole
of that person. They're good, they're bad, they're failures, their successes.
(22:15):
I don't think that he became the person that he
wanted to become for many reasons. I think that there
were times that life hit him so hard and he
was so discouraged that he couldn't bounce back. He was
afraid to say yes to life many times, and I
(22:38):
think that that was one of his greatest regrets.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Do you feel, because we've been talking about reparations in
the United States, that black people are kind of like
in this really unholy marriage, that they feel the same way.
That is very difficult to walk away from something that's
not working for them, that actually harms them, that can
actually do harm to them, continues to and they are
(23:02):
unwilling to because of their ultimate humanity, or what do
you think is going on there?
Speaker 5 (23:08):
I think we stayed for very complex reasons, just as
one would stay in a marriage for very complex reasons.
And most of us have come to realize the sacrifice
and the toll that our four parents paid in their
own blood. And to walk away from this country, and
(23:33):
no matter how hateful and onerous it may be, to
walk away would be to ignore their sacrifice, to say
that it was in vain. That is the way I feel.
They were not paid, but they built a country, they
(23:55):
fought for a country, shed their blood, and were treating
it less than human beings. If I walked away before
their descendants had gotten their due in every way by
having a full measure, that would be the greatest dishonoring
(24:19):
of their sacrifice. So yes, I say, And I can't
just live on the laurels and say my four parent sacrifice.
It means that I must constantly work. There is a
scripture in the Bible says you must work out your
soul's salvation. So to me staying in this country, contributing
(24:43):
to it, seeing saying to it, no matter what you
do to me, how you dishonor me. I will honor
what belongs to me. If we walk away and it
said we're giving up on this country. It's never going
(25:05):
to be what it should be, then all of that
would be lost. We can't allow that.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Lastly, I want to talk to you about morality to
America's personal responsibility and immorality and moral calling that they
put in their constitution. What would you say to the
government now that they have the opportunity to step forward
into that light? What is the forward motion for us
(25:34):
all for America? The government? Morality and immorality.
Speaker 5 (25:39):
Well, there is a lesson that we need to reckon.
America taluts itself as being a Christian country in large part,
but we seem to have lost our moral pompous and
now the word democracy is threatened. You're hearing people say
(26:03):
that our constitution is outdated. You're hearing people say that
it's all right if one particular group are our majority group,
does whatever they wish, that the ends justify the means,
and that the God that we have created and is
(26:28):
not the one that has created us, and we seem
to serve that God, to prefer to serve that God,
then the one that says to us, love your enemy.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Be just toward every man. Stand fast in the faith
(26:52):
that was once delivered to you by your ancestors. Teach
your children what I have done for you, and to
you how I brought you, so that they will worship
me and they will recognize the hand of God. All
(27:13):
of those things are in the Bible, setting a light
a path for us. But we have chosen to create
our own God, one of gold, one of silver, one
that says, take what you wish. It doesn't matter if
the other fella starves, It doesn't matter if the other
(27:35):
fella doesn't have a home. That's our morality. Now. Our
morality is, don't worry about righteousness getting you into a kingdom.
You can always buy Peter at the gate anyway. Who
believes in heaven anymore? Our heaven is right here, and
(27:57):
we can make hell for those folks whenever we want to.
So now they say, oh, you can't protest anymore because
it's getting dangerous from me, Not because you don't have
a right to your voice. You don't have a right
to any action that says you can take what belongs
(28:19):
to you. We say survival of the fittest, but we
don't want to test the fitness of certain people. You know,
we have a morality that says one thing does another.
The Native Americans said, we speak with the four tongues.
I sometimes say we speak from both orifices, and none
(28:43):
of that is beneficial. So I think that America is
soon coming to the time when she will be called
to redeem herself or to fight for whatever new existence
that she's says she wants to maintain. You know, you
will either give in and say that the people of
(29:07):
all races, all stresses of life, you have a right
to exist and we will live in peace, or we
will say no, you will be annihilated, and only as
they say that krem day like crime will survive, and
we'll see. I think we're fast coming to that place.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Mom, one last thing, Could you sing a little bit
of the star spangled banner?
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Oh say? Can you see by the doge?
Speaker 4 (30:02):
This podcast is produced by Eric Alexander ben Arnon and
Whitney Down.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
The executive producers are Charlemagne the God and Dolly s. Bishop.
The supervising producer is Nicole Childers.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
And the lead producer is Devin Mavock Robbins, the producer
writer is cersee Castle, and the associate producer is Kevin Fann,
with additional research support.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Provided by Nile Blast. Original music by dj dpp.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Oh Gom Step Back, Mahelia, a Star's Board, Hach Reparations.
(31:05):
The Big Payback is a production of color Farm Media,
iHeartRadio and The Black Effect Podcast Network in association with
Best Case Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.