August 14, 2018 • 41 mins
Despite a belief that race relations are getting worse, a majority of Americans agree that someone’s racial identity is not hard-wired into their DNA, but the result of decades of socially constructed differences, according to a new survey by Northwestern University’s Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy. On this thought-provoking and inspiring episode, host Baratunde Thurston sits down with musician and activist Wyclef Jean and Associate Professor of political science, Alvin Tillery, to discuss how people view the connections between genetics and race, what is “true” vs what different groups of people believe to be true about themselves, where we have made strides, where we have a ways to go and hopes for a more ethically perfect world in the future. The conversation gets real, emotional and personal as all three share their stories. Wyclef talks immigrating to Brooklyn with his fearless “Haitian Black Panther” bravado; “My Dad always told me, don't forget, you're a descendant of 1804, Toussaint L'Ouverture. So, this was how I was brought up with a very fearless attitude”. Al details his harrowing story of surviving a lynching attempt “When I integrated my bus stop in New Jersey in 1980, some high school kids decided that they were going to hang me in a tree. And kill me at 9 years old. Thank God the bus driver was on time and cut me down and I made it, and that’s why I do this work every day…” Spit is a new iHeartRadio podcast with 23andMe. Enjoy this episode? Subscribe, rate and review Spit on iTunes. And be sure to tell your friends all about it. Find out more about our host Baratunde Thurston at Baratunde.com or sign up for his text messages at 202.902.7949 and #spitpodcast Wyclef Jean can be found performing with his Carnival Tour across the country for the remainder of 2018 https://www.wyclef.com/events You can find Alvin Tillery on Facebook @CSDDatNU, or visit the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy https://www.csdd.northwestern.edu.
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 (00:03):
I'm Barton day Thurston and this is Spit and I
Heart Radio podcast with twenty three and me. This is
the podcast that explores how DNA is changing our lives
and the world around us. Today. We talk about race,
the stories that define it, and how the science matches up,
if at all. And my life's work is to have
a world where it looks like Star Trek. You know,
(00:25):
Star Trek. Everyone has got these different sort of skin
colors and you're from these different planets and everybody notices it,
but it doesn't define who you are morally. We have
so much more in common than you could even imagine.
The basic thing you put two kids together, They're gonna
want to wake up, They're gonna want to play, They're
gonna want to have a good time. As they get older,
(00:47):
they're gonna want to fall in love, have opinions. This
is every kid and they all have a heart. We
are here for another session of Spit in the room.
He has so many possible titles and accolades, but he
prefers that you know that he was the kid who
took the donkey to school. Facts why cleft gen. Thank you,
(01:08):
Thank you so much man for pronouncing my name right
through the years, they've I've been like waiting to get awards,
and they'd be like, the next award goes to why
cleft gene like man, you know, so thank you. My
French teacher would be ashamed if I did not get
Jean correct. And he is the director of the Center
for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University,
(01:31):
doctor Al Tillery. How you doing, brothers, Good to see you.
Good to see you two. At point of full disclosure,
Al was like a resident assistant in my dorm in college.
So this is a little bit of a about five
years ago. Yeah, I say four or five years ago,
something like that, give or take a couple of decades.
So so we're here to continue our conversation about genetics,
(01:53):
about our history, about who we are and what science
can tell us about that, and why cleft. I'd like
to start with you. It is the story that you
know in terms of who you are, into your ancestry,
your your racial makeup, your genetic makeup, what were you
born into? What was the story you've got man? So
I would say for me, it started off in Haiti.
(02:14):
I was born in Haiti and a small place called
kadet Bukea and uh inside of kwaidet bout is even
a smaller village inside of that called Lisa. And in
this village, the chances of you getting out is like
really rare. My father, of course, similar to other parents,
got a chance to come to America before me. My
(02:35):
daddy left me when I was one. He came to
the United States and the idea of a possible dream
on making things better to get his kids over to America.
And my dad he had a gift. He was a minister.
He was a man of the cloth. He was a
Nazarian minister. But now peep the catch. My grandfather was
(02:56):
a voodoo priest, right, so the story definitely gets interesting.
So my father basically defied the teachings of my grandfather
was like, yo, I'm going to be a minister. And
then years later, of course, he brings me to the States.
My dad brings us to the States. But but growing
up the Haitian Revolution eighteen o four, the first black
(03:20):
general towsnt loverture and this is coming out of Haiti.
So the fascinating thing to me, you gotta understand. By
the time I got to the United States and I
was reading history in school. Something bothered me because when
it was going back to black history, I was like, man,
(03:40):
I did you know we're talking about Mark Luther King.
We're talking about um Harriet Tubman, right, and who who
I idolized. But I'm like, Yo, how come nobody talking
about two sons Lovertu're like, we have to explain to
these people in this class that you had Haitians that
basically were free while you had Black Americans that was
(04:01):
slave in America, and the idea of keeping them separated
and making sure that these people, um never got together.
So my dad always told me, don't forget you are
a descendant of eighteen o four two cent lovature. So
this was like how I was brought up with a
very fearless attitude, almost like at times I think it
(04:24):
was stupid. You know what I'm saying. You'd be like, yo, duld,
be like, yo, get off the block. I am not
getting off the block. I am. I descended them to,
you can shoot if you want me. I will not
get shot. You know, I am exactly Haitian black man.
So yeah, that that's what they instilled in me in
the very beginning, that you are part of a revolution.
(04:49):
So for me, um, I've never understood like the idea
of not making it, Like in my brain ten years old,
I get to America, I can't speak no English. By
the time I'm barely fourteen years old, I'm in the
studio with Curtis Blow like that typical immigrant story. And
(05:11):
then it was always bigger than music because I was like, look,
you know before you rode the the audio and he
was like, yo, how you want to be introduced? And
I was like, yo, just why Cleft Young? Because I
think to anyone who's listening to it, okay, we can say, oh,
why Cleft Young? He wrote My Loves Your Love for
Whitney Houston. Why Cleft Young? He's the guy who wrote
(05:31):
Shakira Shakira, Hips Don't Lie, breaking Michael Jackson and Elvis
record with the biggest song in airplay. But to a
kid like my daughter is thirteen, she's like, so what,
Like you know what am I going to get out
of this? So I think the idea of saying, well,
we started from nothing, like coming from a place where
it looks like impossible to make it and then actually
(05:52):
making it is more of a bigger story. So for me,
like just the idea of growing up and understanding a
Haitian revolution. It taught me a lot, Thank you, man Al.
This is a nice segue to some of your work
and in politics and race and how do you come
to a conversation about genetics and history, especially given the
(06:15):
context that Wide Cleft has given us, where he's already
laid out some Transatlantic slavery and the different forks in
the road that that has led to some of our folks.
What's so amazing about White Left story is he's telling
an individual story, right, about his family, about how he
was able to climb out of a certain socio economic
situation to where he is today. And of course there's
(06:36):
some God given talent mixed up in there, and I
love the part about him being a preacher's kid, right,
But but what I hear in that story is a
story that is shaped by structures, by you know, the
structure of the world, and there's a racial structure to
that world. His narrative about the Haitian Revolution, that's a
sort of group based narrative that we tell ourselves and
(06:59):
our family and we all have them, right. His is
one that valorizes black freedom and black rebellion. And I
bet that that's something that helped him propel forward. Right.
Not everyone achieves that kind of success just because they
have that story in their background. And what's so interesting
(07:19):
about the sort of DNA ancestry work is that it's
opening us up to new stories that we weren't aware of, right,
And it's opening us up to the possibility of learning
new stories that we can tell ourselves. But you know,
I've got to say and challenge him a little bit.
You know, as a black American growing up in a
in a pro black household, I knew about Toussaint, I
knew about Christoph right has an historian of these times.
(07:43):
I know that the Gabriel Rebellion in Virginia, those brothers
were trying to get to Haiti, right because they had
heard what had happened there. So it's really is a
kind of story that transcends boundaries and so, but it
is still a story that is shaped by the realities
of the slave trade and the racial structures that we
all live with. And what we tried to do with
the twenty three and Me project was figure out how
(08:05):
much of those stories matter for the stories that Americans
tell themselves about their identities and their race even when
they do the genetic testing. And I would like to
intervene for a second if I may. So you definitely
made a strong point and about you you understanding and
(08:26):
you knowing the fact of history. But what was going
on right at the time was within a school system
that we was in, within a public school system, within
structure of academics, and what we were getting these stories
were not told, and of course in parts of America,
(08:52):
I'm sure that it was. But living in the projects
and and and growing up, so the way that a
lot of my friends found these stories, which was funny,
was through the vendors in the streets. So a lot
of this knowledge. I wanted to throw that in there.
(09:12):
So you had two parts of education going on. You
had that formal and then you had the brothers and
the sisters on the street, like yo, this is the
part of it. That So when I'm listening to like
nas illmatic, you know, and we talked about different books
like you know, Egyptian Book of the Dead or you
know the israel Lights that will keep you on the
street and debate for you with you for like a
(09:33):
hundred million dollars. Yeah, you like it. It's too hot.
But and at the same time, though it's like this
was it was, it's so important, like within this so
when we're talking about like DNA structure and everything, and
where did it come from? So class wise, there was
two forms of education. There was one going on in
institution for us, and then one going on outside, which
(09:55):
was the streets. I totally agree. Where I found out
about the Hasty Revolution was from that same informal, uh
sort of education West Philadelphia. My parents household the books
that were there. It wasn't in the school system. And
that's exactly the point that I'm making is that that absence,
that lack of information was intentional, as intentional as the
(10:17):
billion dollars that Haiti had to pay in reparations after
defeating the French, which is still the reason today that
Haiti's poor. Right, it's all part of the same and
I shared a lot of the same story. I mean, look,
I have a Nigerian name, We're not Nigerian, right. My
mom was like a very woke woman back in the
sixties and seventies and wanted to reclaim some part of
(10:39):
our own African narrative and story, and so I heard
some of these things outside of the classroom, getting quizzed
on all the nations of Africa, and I'm like eight
years old to make sure I entered this world with
a dual set of skills. So I appreciate both of
these perspectives, which aren't even different perspectives. Al you made
reference to a project, and I want to go a
little deeper on this survey that you've done that examines
(11:01):
American's attitude towards race and genetics. Can you describe the
study and and tell us some highlights of what you
found out, especially things that we might not expect. Sure, well,
you know we're living in tense times when it comes
to racial and ethnic issues. All of the surveys that
we see in the media that academics like my self
(11:21):
conduct show that tensions are on the rise. Americans are
deeply concerned about the way our politics is spilling over
into our social interactions, our neighborhood interactions. And it's a
very tense moment in our in our republic, in our democracy.
And so what twenty three and me wanted to know,
what Joanna Mountain and an which I you wanted to know,
(11:43):
was how much is an idea of the genetic race
concept playing in these rising tensions. And also, how is
the work that they're doing at their company affecting the climate?
Is it sort of leading to positive self understanding where
people can bridge some of these differences, or you know,
(12:06):
is it reafying race? Is it? Is it making making
it worse? Right? And and and I give Joanna and
An a lot of credit for just wanting to know.
I mean, they came to me and said, you know,
you know about race relations. How can we design a
study where we can see what Americans think about the
relationship between genetics and race. So, spoiler force, what's the answer.
(12:28):
Are we better? Are we worse with what's going on?
We're a hell of a lot better than I thought
we were. So so what I expected as the expert
on race is that about two thirds of Americans would believe,
uh that race and genetics are tightly bound together. We
actually found the opposite. Only about a third of Americans
(12:48):
nationally see a strong connection. But you know, if you
think about our popular parlance or are are common everyday talk,
we hear things like, oh man, he can't jump he's white,
or let's think about the news stories. The reason we
need affirmative action at places like M. I. T. And
Yale or Stanford is because Latino kids, uh, you know,
(13:09):
we're black kids. They can't get these test scores. And
this is the Bell curve argument, Charles Murray. And so
we expected these types of scientific understandings of race to
be widely distributed in the popular consciousness, and they're not.
And that's good news because it means it's all social.
Is it that people don't think that race is defined
(13:31):
by genetics or they don't think that the stereotypes of
racial performance and superiority are defined by It's both. It's
more the first, but we did test for the second
thing as well. So about a third of Americans and
all of the big census demographic categories believe that race
is defined by genetics. But there are variations. So white
(13:54):
Americans believe in that that third and you know that's white,
they believe in it slightly more strongly than the other groups. Right,
But then when you start to ask people questions about
realms of human possibility or the way that we behave
in the world athletics, cooking, dancezing, all things that you
(14:15):
and white you know, our world champions at right, we
see sort of a creeping up of black and Latino
and Asian responses in the belief that so so Blacks
believe that there's a little bit more genetic mix with sports, right,
Latinos believe it with the cooking, or right, and so
so the things in which the group has narratives of dominance.
(14:38):
That third creeps up a little bit. And I think
that there's a scientific, scientific explanation for it, but overall,
most people in all these groups don't see the science
as part of an explanation. So we've established in this series,
and I think anyone who starts to look at genetics,
we'll discover this interesting statistics and whack left. I love
your take onto someone who seen so much in the world.
(14:59):
We're not to that point genetically the same. There's zero
point five percent difference between all humans that genetically explains
how we're not quite like each other. And we spent
a lot of time focusing on that zero point five
percent difference. First of all, what's your reaction to that
idea white left? Well, I mean, first, I'm excited. I
(15:19):
just took my DNA test. I'm waiting for the results.
My daughter said, I'm one percent white so why should
say that I don't know, we gotta I don't know. Um. So,
once again, it's very interesting just listening to the overall statistics,
Like I'm very surprised, I would say, like traveling probably
(15:44):
half of the globe. I think it's something that everyone
should know, Like we have so much more in common
then you could even imagine. It's like the basic thing.
You put two kids together, They're gonna want to wake up,
They're gonna want to play, they're gonna want to have
a good time, they're gonna have as they get older,
they're gonna want to fall in love, they're gonna have opinions.
(16:09):
This is every kid like, and they all have a heart.
Within this heart, it's going to be shaped. And I
just think that a lot of times we just forget that,
right and because I just think like through the idea
of politics and religion at times, these two things. At
(16:31):
times it separates the fact that from a cell we become,
and so this is important, From a cell we become.
And I always go back to that because I mean,
science will prove it. So this cell, like, however you
want to look at it any part of the world,
it's not like it doesn't appear as some like holy grail,
(16:55):
you know what I mean, Like this coming from this
side of the region, it's a holy grail cell, you know,
coming from So whether we're in the Middle East, we're
in Africa, we're in Haiti, and in all parts of
the world, we find common ground within the structure of
the youth no matter what. And I always tell people like,
this is part of it that you should definitely think of.
(17:18):
I'm gonna give you a case studies. So before I
was here, I was in uh Georgia right next to Russia,
then Turkey, then Switzerland. Right then I come back all
the way on this side, and I'm in Alburquerque. I'm
in New Mexico, and I'm in the six oh six
and I'm chilling in the six h six and man,
like yo, man, do you know this is where Billy
(17:39):
the Kid hung out at and they used to and
he got killed three hours from here. Right now, they're
having a conversation about Billy the Kid, and then it
goes beyond Billy the Kid to a conversation about mighty
warrior Indians. And within this conversation, now you can see
the conversation is happening amongst the youth, right, and then
(18:02):
you have Mexicans, you have Americans, you have but within
the youth there's no fire arms. It's this ideology of conversation.
So I always think like past the point of science, right,
even nostro diamonds right, the idea of saying like, okay,
he has the gift, and then who who is Christian
in heart right understands like they still have to be
(18:23):
a bigger explanation of things. And I think sometimes we
cry at death. We cry when when people die, we cry,
But the idea of birth, which is the greater miracle,
like we don't really pay attention to that. And I
think that we're selfish when we're leaving po. You don't
want to see somebody leave you. You love the idea
(18:44):
of them being born, but you don't want to see
them leave. And I think that when we are born
right and from this cell we become. I think the
unification as the world moves forward, it's understand that the
kids are more unified then we are as adults. It's
so important to understand that all you know something that
(19:05):
that white left was talking about with the politics and
the religion. It reminds me a bit of your study
and the survey. You have this people looking for the
scientific explanation of race, but it turns out it's more
of a social explanation. And what we cling to is
not based in science. It's based in our behavior and
how we live together. Does that give you more concern
(19:29):
or more hope? Well, it makes me more hopeful, right,
I mean again, starting from my knowledge of how Americans
think about race and the ways in which powerful institutions, government,
sort of financial, sort of our geared towards structuring our lives.
To disrupt the beautiful narrative that white cleft is talking about.
(19:53):
White cleft is absolutely right. If you go to a
classroom of children below the age of five, they have
no consciousness of what races. They know that you know,
my friend Isaac or Johnny skin maybe brown or white,
and mind is different, but they have they attached no
moral judgments and whatsoever to those differences. So they're taught
(20:19):
by adults. It's all around them. They're taught by institutions. Right,
and so has someone that's spent their life. I spent
my entire life combating sort of racial inequalities and trying
to bring us together. The idea that this is one
less front that I have to fight on, that we
as a society have to fight on, is incredibly hopeful
(20:41):
to me, because, of course, you know, we in the
social sciences and sciences, we've we've known for thirty years
that it's not genetic, but we were worried about what
the man on the street with the woman on the
street things, because, as I said, all these inequalities that
we live with today, that Haiti lives with today started
with taking narratives about that point five skin color difference
(21:04):
that we have that makes us these visible differences and
giving them the weight of science. So people are brought
from Congo and Benin to Haiti and Georgia and Virginia,
where my people are from, because the slavers believe that
their brown and black skin would make them better suited
to work on plantations in the hot sun. Right. That's
(21:26):
a scientific explanation, pseudo scientific, it's a cultural explanation for
cruelty that is freighted with science. Right. And so you know,
the idea that we have one less front to disrupt
this narrative on is very very hopeful to me. It's
good news. This survey is good news. We have a
lot more that we need to find out, but this
(21:48):
is a fantastic start. So let me test a pseudo
scientific theory on you. As we saw the fast paced,
relatively recent, fast paced acceptance of marriage equality in this country,
one of the reasons offered was more of us started
realizing we have gay and lesbian brothers and sisters within
our own families, like they are part of us. We
(22:10):
are part of them, and so they're not so distant.
It's not a whole other. It's like, oh, that's my cousin.
As we start to do more of these different genetic
tests and find out, oh, I gotta got a little
congo in me, got a little banine in me, do
you see any similar possibility or is that just way
too naive and hopeful. No, it's not not even hopeful
at all. We we don't know. And I think that's
(22:31):
the next enterprise for for the Center for the Study
of Diversity and Democracy in twenty three to take on.
We can get at that with experimental research, and we
hope to figure that out. But but there is a
worry that you know, for example, the testing can cut
both ways. You can have someone saying I am you know,
one percent Congolese, and so I should get the same
(22:57):
type of consideration in universe see emissions or or employment
that someone who is ninety nine nine percent Congolese and
lived in you know the projects in New Work or
you know Westfielle. You know. So this is coming right,
and so there are dangers there. But but the hope
is that it is like the story in the twenty
(23:17):
three and Me commercial where the young woman's I think
her name is McKinney, she's got this very genomic scan
up and she's she says, I'm going to Cultivoir, where
my wife is from. By the way, shout out to
the Ivorians or and so you know, this this idea
that that of her that's Ivorian makes her want to
(23:38):
go to Ivory Coast, but she had a lot of
other things that she's not choosing right. And so my
concern is that as we get into these tests, people
will choose to stress the parts of their genetic makeup
that they identify with already from stories or the ones
that will give them some sort of advantage, and that
(24:00):
something that our society has no idea how to mediate. Yet,
So white left, if your daughter is right that you
that your one percent white? Will you use that for
financial advantage? No? Actually, white officers, my daughter, I had
my right here. You can just let me. It's not
(24:21):
gonna work. I mean, I gotta work. I'm black and
I'm a rapper. That's actually how I start my class
self there today, because I've been using my own scan
for fifteen years. And uh, you know, I don't know
if you know the smelling, but I'm actually a lynching survivor.
When I when I integrated my bus stop in New Jersey,
some high school kids decided that they were going to
hang me in a tree and kill me at nine
(24:43):
years old. And thank god the bus driver was one
time and cut me down and I made it. And
that's why I do this work every day. Right, So
I always thinking back to what it was like being
in that tree. Right. So the first question I asked
my class I say, I put up my scan that
shows that I'm thirty percent Scottish, right, And I say,
(25:05):
so what does this mean? This cat is Scottish? What
does he look like? Well, he probably can pass for white, well,
you know, And then I reveal at the end that
you know, this is my scan and they're like shocked, right,
And I think the testimony to those boys when I
was nine years old that hey, I'm thirty Scottish wouldn't
(25:25):
have made any difference. And that's what you know. You know,
the institutions that are policing all of these differences, the
people that are policing all of these differences, there's no
evidence they're going to be swede by the genetic scan, right,
but we we just don't know where it's going. Yes,
you have so sports, yeah, music right? Food? Right? Does
(25:56):
your genetics matter for that? Like for example, of a
dude's like, yo, I'm supposed to play golf. You know,
the idea of brothers. It's only like when we see
them playing golf, we get so excited because we'd be like, oh,
it's only a couple of them. Or women, for example,
when we see them doing certain sports we like holy criddle, right,
or earlier when you was like white man, cand jump,
(26:18):
you know what I'm saying. So I really want to understand,
like scientifically genetic wise does display part of the DNA.
So it's really interesting that you you go there, white left, because,
as I said in the survey, when you get to
food and sports, the sort of Black and Latino and
Asian acceptance of a kind of genetic explanation for race
(26:42):
creeps up. So let's say it moves from like thirty
to on those questions, right, So still the majority of
people don't believe that it's an explanation. But but you know,
in our full community, when I'm in my barbershop, you know,
cats are talking about you know, you know, why would
they pick a white boy in an NBA draft? Or
you know, can this guy you know who's Asian? Can
(27:02):
he actually be the point guard for the Knicks? Right? Like,
I mean, these are the questions that we live with
every day. And the reality is we only see one. Yeah,
they'd be going to them places and they'd be like, Okay,
out of all of them, it looks like this one
he can surpass the norm. Right So that so, well,
these are social stories, is what I'm gonna say. So,
(27:24):
if so, basketball is the sport that black men in
my age, Cohort grew up believing was there's football and basketball,
not baseball. You go back fifty years, the sport that
my grandfather believed was the sport of black men was baseball.
Jackie Robinson integrating the Major Leagues was the huge monumental achievement. Right,
(27:46):
So what changed in that fifty years Neighborhood poverty in
Black America gets worse. City government start closing down baseball
fields and they replaced them with basketball hoops, and then
you get a revolution. My grandfather broke his heart that
I didn't want to play any baseball, right, So so
that's part of it. But there is a genetic story
(28:07):
whe left. So you you you take people, you steal
people from western Central Africa, Nigeria, Congo, and you bring
them over to the United States, Haiti, Jamaica, Antigua, and
you isolate them genetically. You say you cannot have sex
or marry anyone except the people that have that skin color.
(28:29):
You're gonna reproduce a taller genetic population, right, Nigeria, Congo,
these are all among the tallest countries in the world.
So you bring people over, you isolated for five years. Yes,
Black Americans are on average taller than others. My Scottish
ancestry is holding me back at five nine. This is
(28:49):
where I wish, I wish things are different, right, But
so so you do that and then you put basketball
hoops in these communities where people are on average taller,
it's not surprising that we have an NBA that looks
the way it looks. So the stories, the culture, social forces,
the genetics all come together, but the indability doesn't track
(29:10):
the genetics. That was so and and I overstand that.
So I guess through failed policies through the past, what
seventy eight years have shaped a rebirth of genetics? Right?
I'm I'm also fascinated by this idea that even what
(29:31):
is explained by genetics still needs some social environmental consideration. Right.
I may have certain genes that lead me to be
predisposed for certain things, but if it's not activated by
my environment, if it's not reinforced by the community, I
may never expressed that um and so you know, when
the society pushes you in that direction, we may activate
(29:54):
those things a little bit more. Why cleft, I want
to abruptly change because I just want to get this out.
You mentioned this beforehand. What are you working on right now?
So what's interesting about this theory of everything that's going on.
I'm gonna give a music theory to the world on genetics,
(30:14):
just based on all this conversation, because just listening to
the style. So coming inside of the music industry at
the age of seventeen years old, right from the gate,
they let you know like, okay, if you're a black man,
certain forms of music don't even step in the field
(30:35):
because of the way these charts are set up. Right,
music genome, yes, so music geno. So what I did
was I defied that because I don't I didn't believe
in that. So I'll take you through a few albums.
So the idea of the fuji's creating a score and
going into as a producer. What was I listening to
(30:59):
when I was listening to doing the score as a
studio engineer. Now, if I was to tell anybody who's
listening now, why Cleps Young a hip hop artists, right
at the age of nineteen, how was he crafting the score?
And then I would tell you I was listening to
Pink Floyd and I was telling you I was listening
(31:22):
to the Wall. Now, a lot of people is probably like,
holy sh it, we would have never guessed that. But
hold on, why would you have not guessed that, because
you'd be like, hold up, this kid is from Haiti,
he grew up in the projects of Brooklyn. How did
he discover Pink Floyd. So once again, right, so we
defied the idea of you saying we must listen to
this because we are in that certain environment. Also, I
(31:45):
want people that are listening to this, um the youth
challenge your environment, right because statistically we are put in
these environments through all of these years, like you said,
through failed policies, so we're supposed to be taller, were
supposed But at the same time, I want them to
understand that you are the masters of your own destiny.
(32:05):
So after the score and this is all proven theory, right,
So I went on to create an album called The Carnival.
The Carnival is in more than five languages. Now if
anyone from Sony Music is listening to this from the
headman in charge at the time, that was Donnie Einer
Tommy Mattola, the score cells over eighteen million right now.
(32:31):
Why Cleve Jon has an idea because you know the
the label one another eighteen millions. You show up and
you're like, yo, this is my new album. It's called
the Carnival. And they put this thing on It has English, French, crayon, Spanish, right,
and they're like, what the hell is this? Because once again,
(32:55):
it's not supposed to fit within the geo space of saying, well,
which chart are we gonna put this on? Because if
you sing and gone to November, this sounds like a
grassroots record. And then you turn around and then you're
doing b GS that sounds like this go then you
turn around and you're singing one Thana meta like dude,
like you're all over the place. Why can't I be
(33:19):
all over the place? Literally? Yeah? But what? But what
what defines you? Why must you just be in one space?
How am I able to understand the bigs and at
the same time understand sell your cruise? So it's important.
Now I feel we're in modern time and I feel
like streaming has disrupted that. So what streaming has done
(33:40):
now is it has proven my theory of the carnivore.
Because now my daughter she listened to what the hell
she want to listen to? Nobody could tell her don't
go to a tell us swift to me goes to
whatever she does, whatever she wants. So now streaming has
allowed the youth and the internet now the revolution as
(34:01):
the Internet has allowed each individual to define themselves, like
now you can't put no kid in the geo category
and say, oh, you can't listen to this right. So
then we had The Eclectic and I called up Kenny
Rogers and I was like, yo, Kenny um, I need
you to do a drop for my album, The Eclectic,
And people go you from Haiti man, what the hell
(34:24):
do you know about country music? Then I go into well,
people from the Caribbean, this is common, like country music
is one of the most natural form of music, and
they go white cleft, we don't get it. So here
it is. So back in the days before we even
was born, you had the evangelists that were bringing the
(34:45):
faith over to the Caribbean. So when that was bringing
the idea of the faith to the Caribbean, there were
radio stations and there was antennas. So a lot of
these antennas were bought by people that love country music
because there's a part that people don't understand. Country music
is storytelling, but at the same time, it's a lot
of Bible versus the original country music. So the idea
(35:08):
would be, okay, we would bring country to the islands.
So now when I'm in the projects in Marlboro and
it's a Sunday afternoon and my mother's listened to Devil
went down to Georgia to find a soda stale, you know,
and I'm like, yeah, that's Charlie Daniels. What what I
don't get a Cleft. So I just want everyone to
to to really understand. So at the end of the day,
(35:28):
I don't know what my DNA is. My daughter says,
I'm one percent white, I might be British. I don't
know what's going on. But I only say that to say,
do not limit yourself to putting yourself in a box
like challenge that. So, for example, like the next Wild
Cleft album, it's gonna be a country album, right, who
is Who's gonna tell me I can't do a country album.
(35:52):
I sang at the Johnny Cash tribute and if y'all
look at this is gonna trip people out once again,
there's still a stereotype fact the right. So they're like,
my man is like, okay, the next artist coming up,
why class young? Um, he's about to do a Johnny
Cash and dude, the place was startled and I'm not.
(36:13):
And when I'm standing up to sing Johnny Cash, what
tripped everybody out? I'm not doing a popular Johnny Cash song.
I'm doing a song that they wouldn't even know, you
know what I'm saying that. So, what I want people
to understand is, at the end of the day, do
not limit yourself like to a box. Yes, through policies,
we've been structured to say, Okay, you know what, the
(36:35):
baseball fields are going down, we're putting up basketball courts.
But I really want as we move forward, I really
want the kids to understand that you could defy that,
you can still rise up beyond that and say this
is what I'm gonna want my future to be, you know,
clean with the Johnny Cash deep cut. You already gone, baby, already.
(37:00):
There's a consistent theme that comes up in these do
that at conversations and and almost any scientific conversation. You
see science and this basis as a limit, as a prescription,
or as a possible foundation, as a partial description, and
grow from there. Al what what have you seen in
your work, maybe in the survey results that might be
(37:23):
consistent with this advice that wide Cleft is offering young people. Well,
I think it's fantastic advice. And I think no matter
what your positionality is in this society, adopting that why
Cleft Sean uh you know, Haitian revolution attitude. We're all
eighteen o four, it's the way to go for it.
(37:45):
There there, there, there's a real like sort of you know,
motivational book in there right at the sort of eighteen
o four attitude, right. But at the same time, what
I would like to see is a society that turns
on the possibility that the structures that put these divisions
in place begin to work to unravel them. If everyone
(38:08):
has that a ten o four mentality, it's a glide
path to a fully realized democracy where you're not geo
coded into basketball players or soccer players, country music listeners
or hip hop listeners. Right, And that's what we really
have the work to do. And that what I think
(38:31):
is great about the twenty three and Me project is
that they're trying to leverage their power in this space
to push in that direction. And and my life's work
is to have a world where it looks like Star Trek.
You know, Star Trek. Everyone has got these different sort
of skin colors, and you're from these different planets and
everybody notices it, but it doesn't define who you are morally,
(38:56):
And in that system, you're shaped much more by take
easts and interest in the hybridity that is a fundamental
part of the kind of cultural experience that Wycleft is
talking about, and we're a very long way away from that. Right,
we didn't even start on this path until about ninety,
(39:18):
about six years before I was born. Right, we don't
even get laws to say that you can live wherever
you want until right, And so what we've done is
we've passed the laws and then we've forgotten about it,
and people are still living mostly isolated, racially geo coded life.
(39:39):
We're still living in the world of the charts, and
we're still living in the world of the charts. And
so it's going to take incredible cultural capital, incredible investment
on the part of massive institutions and governments to move
us in a direction where everyone has the kind of
space to flow in any way they want. Well, I
(40:02):
feel very fortunate that we have cultural capitalists like white
Cliffs Gan in the room, that we have powerful institutions
like Northwestern University in the room, and that we can
keep having conversations like these two break down those charts,
to think outside of the genetic box, but also understanding
(40:22):
the value of those and to get to a more
diverse and democratic future. Thank you both so much for
being here. Thank you, and I just have to say
I'm so proud of you man. See where you've come from,
and uh, I remember many days on the stoop with
you in front of Claverley Hall, and I'm just incredibly
proud of you. Thanks Dad. I want to dig in
(40:53):
more on today's topics and guests. Check our show notes
and if you enjoyed the episode, share it with a
friend all your friends and be sure to leave a review.
If you want to hear more surprising stories about how
we're all related, search and follow Spit on I Heart
Radio or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Spit is
an I Heart Radio podcast with twenty three and me.
(41:13):
I'm barraitune Day Thurston. You can find out more about
me at barratune Day dot com or sign up from
a text message. It's just hit me up at two
O two nine O two seven nine four nine. Put
hashtag Spit podcast in your message. I know where you
came from.
I'm Barton day Thurston and this is Spit and I
Heart Radio podcast with twenty three and me. This is
the podcast that explores how DNA is changing our lives
and the world around us. Today. We talk about race,
the stories that define it, and how the science matches up,
if at all. And my life's work is to have
a world where it looks like Star Trek. You know,
(00:25):
Star Trek. Everyone has got these different sort of skin
colors and you're from these different planets and everybody notices it,
but it doesn't define who you are morally. We have
so much more in common than you could even imagine.
The basic thing you put two kids together, They're gonna
want to wake up, They're gonna want to play, They're
gonna want to have a good time. As they get older,
(00:47):
they're gonna want to fall in love, have opinions. This
is every kid and they all have a heart. We
are here for another session of Spit in the room.
He has so many possible titles and accolades, but he
prefers that you know that he was the kid who
took the donkey to school. Facts why cleft gen. Thank you,
(01:08):
Thank you so much man for pronouncing my name right
through the years, they've I've been like waiting to get awards,
and they'd be like, the next award goes to why
cleft gene like man, you know, so thank you. My
French teacher would be ashamed if I did not get
Jean correct. And he is the director of the Center
for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University,
(01:31):
doctor Al Tillery. How you doing, brothers, Good to see you.
Good to see you two. At point of full disclosure,
Al was like a resident assistant in my dorm in college.
So this is a little bit of a about five
years ago. Yeah, I say four or five years ago,
something like that, give or take a couple of decades.
So so we're here to continue our conversation about genetics,
(01:53):
about our history, about who we are and what science
can tell us about that, and why cleft. I'd like
to start with you. It is the story that you
know in terms of who you are, into your ancestry,
your your racial makeup, your genetic makeup, what were you
born into? What was the story you've got man? So
I would say for me, it started off in Haiti.
(02:14):
I was born in Haiti and a small place called
kadet Bukea and uh inside of kwaidet bout is even
a smaller village inside of that called Lisa. And in
this village, the chances of you getting out is like
really rare. My father, of course, similar to other parents,
got a chance to come to America before me. My
(02:35):
daddy left me when I was one. He came to
the United States and the idea of a possible dream
on making things better to get his kids over to America.
And my dad he had a gift. He was a minister.
He was a man of the cloth. He was a
Nazarian minister. But now peep the catch. My grandfather was
(02:56):
a voodoo priest, right, so the story definitely gets interesting.
So my father basically defied the teachings of my grandfather
was like, yo, I'm going to be a minister. And
then years later, of course, he brings me to the States.
My dad brings us to the States. But but growing
up the Haitian Revolution eighteen o four, the first black
(03:20):
general towsnt loverture and this is coming out of Haiti.
So the fascinating thing to me, you gotta understand. By
the time I got to the United States and I
was reading history in school. Something bothered me because when
it was going back to black history, I was like, man,
(03:40):
I did you know we're talking about Mark Luther King.
We're talking about um Harriet Tubman, right, and who who
I idolized. But I'm like, Yo, how come nobody talking
about two sons Lovertu're like, we have to explain to
these people in this class that you had Haitians that
basically were free while you had Black Americans that was
(04:01):
slave in America, and the idea of keeping them separated
and making sure that these people, um never got together.
So my dad always told me, don't forget you are
a descendant of eighteen o four two cent lovature. So
this was like how I was brought up with a
very fearless attitude, almost like at times I think it
(04:24):
was stupid. You know what I'm saying. You'd be like, yo, duld,
be like, yo, get off the block. I am not
getting off the block. I am. I descended them to,
you can shoot if you want me. I will not
get shot. You know, I am exactly Haitian black man.
So yeah, that that's what they instilled in me in
the very beginning, that you are part of a revolution.
(04:49):
So for me, um, I've never understood like the idea
of not making it, Like in my brain ten years old,
I get to America, I can't speak no English. By
the time I'm barely fourteen years old, I'm in the
studio with Curtis Blow like that typical immigrant story. And
(05:11):
then it was always bigger than music because I was like, look,
you know before you rode the the audio and he
was like, yo, how you want to be introduced? And
I was like, yo, just why Cleft Young? Because I
think to anyone who's listening to it, okay, we can say, oh,
why Cleft Young? He wrote My Loves Your Love for
Whitney Houston. Why Cleft Young? He's the guy who wrote
(05:31):
Shakira Shakira, Hips Don't Lie, breaking Michael Jackson and Elvis
record with the biggest song in airplay. But to a
kid like my daughter is thirteen, she's like, so what,
Like you know what am I going to get out
of this? So I think the idea of saying, well,
we started from nothing, like coming from a place where
it looks like impossible to make it and then actually
(05:52):
making it is more of a bigger story. So for me,
like just the idea of growing up and understanding a
Haitian revolution. It taught me a lot, Thank you, man Al.
This is a nice segue to some of your work
and in politics and race and how do you come
to a conversation about genetics and history, especially given the
(06:15):
context that Wide Cleft has given us, where he's already
laid out some Transatlantic slavery and the different forks in
the road that that has led to some of our folks.
What's so amazing about White Left story is he's telling
an individual story, right, about his family, about how he
was able to climb out of a certain socio economic
situation to where he is today. And of course there's
(06:36):
some God given talent mixed up in there, and I
love the part about him being a preacher's kid, right,
But but what I hear in that story is a
story that is shaped by structures, by you know, the
structure of the world, and there's a racial structure to
that world. His narrative about the Haitian Revolution, that's a
sort of group based narrative that we tell ourselves and
(06:59):
our family and we all have them, right. His is
one that valorizes black freedom and black rebellion. And I
bet that that's something that helped him propel forward. Right.
Not everyone achieves that kind of success just because they
have that story in their background. And what's so interesting
(07:19):
about the sort of DNA ancestry work is that it's
opening us up to new stories that we weren't aware of, right,
And it's opening us up to the possibility of learning
new stories that we can tell ourselves. But you know,
I've got to say and challenge him a little bit.
You know, as a black American growing up in a
in a pro black household, I knew about Toussaint, I
knew about Christoph right has an historian of these times.
(07:43):
I know that the Gabriel Rebellion in Virginia, those brothers
were trying to get to Haiti, right because they had
heard what had happened there. So it's really is a
kind of story that transcends boundaries and so, but it
is still a story that is shaped by the realities
of the slave trade and the racial structures that we
all live with. And what we tried to do with
the twenty three and Me project was figure out how
(08:05):
much of those stories matter for the stories that Americans
tell themselves about their identities and their race even when
they do the genetic testing. And I would like to
intervene for a second if I may. So you definitely
made a strong point and about you you understanding and
(08:26):
you knowing the fact of history. But what was going
on right at the time was within a school system
that we was in, within a public school system, within
structure of academics, and what we were getting these stories
were not told, and of course in parts of America,
(08:52):
I'm sure that it was. But living in the projects
and and and growing up, so the way that a
lot of my friends found these stories, which was funny,
was through the vendors in the streets. So a lot
of this knowledge. I wanted to throw that in there.
(09:12):
So you had two parts of education going on. You
had that formal and then you had the brothers and
the sisters on the street, like yo, this is the
part of it. That So when I'm listening to like
nas illmatic, you know, and we talked about different books
like you know, Egyptian Book of the Dead or you
know the israel Lights that will keep you on the
street and debate for you with you for like a
(09:33):
hundred million dollars. Yeah, you like it. It's too hot.
But and at the same time, though it's like this
was it was, it's so important, like within this so
when we're talking about like DNA structure and everything, and
where did it come from? So class wise, there was
two forms of education. There was one going on in
institution for us, and then one going on outside, which
(09:55):
was the streets. I totally agree. Where I found out
about the Hasty Revolution was from that same informal, uh
sort of education West Philadelphia. My parents household the books
that were there. It wasn't in the school system. And
that's exactly the point that I'm making is that that absence,
that lack of information was intentional, as intentional as the
(10:17):
billion dollars that Haiti had to pay in reparations after
defeating the French, which is still the reason today that
Haiti's poor. Right, it's all part of the same and
I shared a lot of the same story. I mean, look,
I have a Nigerian name, We're not Nigerian, right. My
mom was like a very woke woman back in the
sixties and seventies and wanted to reclaim some part of
(10:39):
our own African narrative and story, and so I heard
some of these things outside of the classroom, getting quizzed
on all the nations of Africa, and I'm like eight
years old to make sure I entered this world with
a dual set of skills. So I appreciate both of
these perspectives, which aren't even different perspectives. Al you made
reference to a project, and I want to go a
little deeper on this survey that you've done that examines
(11:01):
American's attitude towards race and genetics. Can you describe the
study and and tell us some highlights of what you
found out, especially things that we might not expect. Sure, well,
you know we're living in tense times when it comes
to racial and ethnic issues. All of the surveys that
we see in the media that academics like my self
(11:21):
conduct show that tensions are on the rise. Americans are
deeply concerned about the way our politics is spilling over
into our social interactions, our neighborhood interactions. And it's a
very tense moment in our in our republic, in our democracy.
And so what twenty three and me wanted to know,
what Joanna Mountain and an which I you wanted to know,
(11:43):
was how much is an idea of the genetic race
concept playing in these rising tensions. And also, how is
the work that they're doing at their company affecting the climate?
Is it sort of leading to positive self understanding where
people can bridge some of these differences, or you know,
(12:06):
is it reafying race? Is it? Is it making making
it worse? Right? And and and I give Joanna and
An a lot of credit for just wanting to know.
I mean, they came to me and said, you know,
you know about race relations. How can we design a
study where we can see what Americans think about the
relationship between genetics and race. So, spoiler force, what's the answer.
(12:28):
Are we better? Are we worse with what's going on?
We're a hell of a lot better than I thought
we were. So so what I expected as the expert
on race is that about two thirds of Americans would believe,
uh that race and genetics are tightly bound together. We
actually found the opposite. Only about a third of Americans
(12:48):
nationally see a strong connection. But you know, if you
think about our popular parlance or are are common everyday talk,
we hear things like, oh man, he can't jump he's white,
or let's think about the news stories. The reason we
need affirmative action at places like M. I. T. And
Yale or Stanford is because Latino kids, uh, you know,
(13:09):
we're black kids. They can't get these test scores. And
this is the Bell curve argument, Charles Murray. And so
we expected these types of scientific understandings of race to
be widely distributed in the popular consciousness, and they're not.
And that's good news because it means it's all social.
Is it that people don't think that race is defined
(13:31):
by genetics or they don't think that the stereotypes of
racial performance and superiority are defined by It's both. It's
more the first, but we did test for the second
thing as well. So about a third of Americans and
all of the big census demographic categories believe that race
is defined by genetics. But there are variations. So white
(13:54):
Americans believe in that that third and you know that's white,
they believe in it slightly more strongly than the other groups. Right,
But then when you start to ask people questions about
realms of human possibility or the way that we behave
in the world athletics, cooking, dancezing, all things that you
(14:15):
and white you know, our world champions at right, we
see sort of a creeping up of black and Latino
and Asian responses in the belief that so so Blacks
believe that there's a little bit more genetic mix with sports, right,
Latinos believe it with the cooking, or right, and so
so the things in which the group has narratives of dominance.
(14:38):
That third creeps up a little bit. And I think
that there's a scientific, scientific explanation for it, but overall,
most people in all these groups don't see the science
as part of an explanation. So we've established in this series,
and I think anyone who starts to look at genetics,
we'll discover this interesting statistics and whack left. I love
your take onto someone who seen so much in the world.
(14:59):
We're not to that point genetically the same. There's zero
point five percent difference between all humans that genetically explains
how we're not quite like each other. And we spent
a lot of time focusing on that zero point five
percent difference. First of all, what's your reaction to that
idea white left? Well, I mean, first, I'm excited. I
(15:19):
just took my DNA test. I'm waiting for the results.
My daughter said, I'm one percent white so why should
say that I don't know, we gotta I don't know. Um. So,
once again, it's very interesting just listening to the overall statistics,
Like I'm very surprised, I would say, like traveling probably
(15:44):
half of the globe. I think it's something that everyone
should know, Like we have so much more in common
then you could even imagine. It's like the basic thing.
You put two kids together, They're gonna want to wake up,
They're gonna want to play, they're gonna want to have
a good time, they're gonna have as they get older,
they're gonna want to fall in love, they're gonna have opinions.
(16:09):
This is every kid like, and they all have a heart.
Within this heart, it's going to be shaped. And I
just think that a lot of times we just forget that,
right and because I just think like through the idea
of politics and religion at times, these two things. At
(16:31):
times it separates the fact that from a cell we become,
and so this is important, From a cell we become.
And I always go back to that because I mean,
science will prove it. So this cell, like, however you
want to look at it any part of the world,
it's not like it doesn't appear as some like holy grail,
(16:55):
you know what I mean, Like this coming from this
side of the region, it's a holy grail cell, you know,
coming from So whether we're in the Middle East, we're
in Africa, we're in Haiti, and in all parts of
the world, we find common ground within the structure of
the youth no matter what. And I always tell people like,
this is part of it that you should definitely think of.
(17:18):
I'm gonna give you a case studies. So before I
was here, I was in uh Georgia right next to Russia,
then Turkey, then Switzerland. Right then I come back all
the way on this side, and I'm in Alburquerque. I'm
in New Mexico, and I'm in the six oh six
and I'm chilling in the six h six and man,
like yo, man, do you know this is where Billy
(17:39):
the Kid hung out at and they used to and
he got killed three hours from here. Right now, they're
having a conversation about Billy the Kid, and then it
goes beyond Billy the Kid to a conversation about mighty
warrior Indians. And within this conversation, now you can see
the conversation is happening amongst the youth, right, and then
(18:02):
you have Mexicans, you have Americans, you have but within
the youth there's no fire arms. It's this ideology of conversation.
So I always think like past the point of science, right,
even nostro diamonds right, the idea of saying like, okay,
he has the gift, and then who who is Christian
in heart right understands like they still have to be
(18:23):
a bigger explanation of things. And I think sometimes we
cry at death. We cry when when people die, we cry,
But the idea of birth, which is the greater miracle,
like we don't really pay attention to that. And I
think that we're selfish when we're leaving po. You don't
want to see somebody leave you. You love the idea
(18:44):
of them being born, but you don't want to see
them leave. And I think that when we are born
right and from this cell we become. I think the
unification as the world moves forward, it's understand that the
kids are more unified then we are as adults. It's
so important to understand that all you know something that
(19:05):
that white left was talking about with the politics and
the religion. It reminds me a bit of your study
and the survey. You have this people looking for the
scientific explanation of race, but it turns out it's more
of a social explanation. And what we cling to is
not based in science. It's based in our behavior and
how we live together. Does that give you more concern
(19:29):
or more hope? Well, it makes me more hopeful, right,
I mean again, starting from my knowledge of how Americans
think about race and the ways in which powerful institutions, government,
sort of financial, sort of our geared towards structuring our lives.
To disrupt the beautiful narrative that white cleft is talking about.
(19:53):
White cleft is absolutely right. If you go to a
classroom of children below the age of five, they have
no consciousness of what races. They know that you know,
my friend Isaac or Johnny skin maybe brown or white,
and mind is different, but they have they attached no
moral judgments and whatsoever to those differences. So they're taught
(20:19):
by adults. It's all around them. They're taught by institutions. Right,
and so has someone that's spent their life. I spent
my entire life combating sort of racial inequalities and trying
to bring us together. The idea that this is one
less front that I have to fight on, that we
as a society have to fight on, is incredibly hopeful
(20:41):
to me, because, of course, you know, we in the
social sciences and sciences, we've we've known for thirty years
that it's not genetic, but we were worried about what
the man on the street with the woman on the
street things, because, as I said, all these inequalities that
we live with today, that Haiti lives with today started
with taking narratives about that point five skin color difference
(21:04):
that we have that makes us these visible differences and
giving them the weight of science. So people are brought
from Congo and Benin to Haiti and Georgia and Virginia,
where my people are from, because the slavers believe that
their brown and black skin would make them better suited
to work on plantations in the hot sun. Right. That's
(21:26):
a scientific explanation, pseudo scientific, it's a cultural explanation for
cruelty that is freighted with science. Right. And so you know,
the idea that we have one less front to disrupt
this narrative on is very very hopeful to me. It's
good news. This survey is good news. We have a
lot more that we need to find out, but this
(21:48):
is a fantastic start. So let me test a pseudo
scientific theory on you. As we saw the fast paced,
relatively recent, fast paced acceptance of marriage equality in this country,
one of the reasons offered was more of us started
realizing we have gay and lesbian brothers and sisters within
our own families, like they are part of us. We
(22:10):
are part of them, and so they're not so distant.
It's not a whole other. It's like, oh, that's my cousin.
As we start to do more of these different genetic
tests and find out, oh, I gotta got a little
congo in me, got a little banine in me, do
you see any similar possibility or is that just way
too naive and hopeful. No, it's not not even hopeful
at all. We we don't know. And I think that's
(22:31):
the next enterprise for for the Center for the Study
of Diversity and Democracy in twenty three to take on.
We can get at that with experimental research, and we
hope to figure that out. But but there is a
worry that you know, for example, the testing can cut
both ways. You can have someone saying I am you know,
one percent Congolese, and so I should get the same
(22:57):
type of consideration in universe see emissions or or employment
that someone who is ninety nine nine percent Congolese and
lived in you know the projects in New Work or
you know Westfielle. You know. So this is coming right,
and so there are dangers there. But but the hope
is that it is like the story in the twenty
(23:17):
three and Me commercial where the young woman's I think
her name is McKinney, she's got this very genomic scan
up and she's she says, I'm going to Cultivoir, where
my wife is from. By the way, shout out to
the Ivorians or and so you know, this this idea
that that of her that's Ivorian makes her want to
(23:38):
go to Ivory Coast, but she had a lot of
other things that she's not choosing right. And so my
concern is that as we get into these tests, people
will choose to stress the parts of their genetic makeup
that they identify with already from stories or the ones
that will give them some sort of advantage, and that
(24:00):
something that our society has no idea how to mediate. Yet,
So white left, if your daughter is right that you
that your one percent white? Will you use that for
financial advantage? No? Actually, white officers, my daughter, I had
my right here. You can just let me. It's not
(24:21):
gonna work. I mean, I gotta work. I'm black and
I'm a rapper. That's actually how I start my class
self there today, because I've been using my own scan
for fifteen years. And uh, you know, I don't know
if you know the smelling, but I'm actually a lynching survivor.
When I when I integrated my bus stop in New Jersey,
some high school kids decided that they were going to
hang me in a tree and kill me at nine
(24:43):
years old. And thank god the bus driver was one
time and cut me down and I made it. And
that's why I do this work every day. Right, So
I always thinking back to what it was like being
in that tree. Right. So the first question I asked
my class I say, I put up my scan that
shows that I'm thirty percent Scottish, right, And I say,
(25:05):
so what does this mean? This cat is Scottish? What
does he look like? Well, he probably can pass for white, well,
you know, And then I reveal at the end that
you know, this is my scan and they're like shocked, right,
And I think the testimony to those boys when I
was nine years old that hey, I'm thirty Scottish wouldn't
(25:25):
have made any difference. And that's what you know. You know,
the institutions that are policing all of these differences, the
people that are policing all of these differences, there's no
evidence they're going to be swede by the genetic scan, right,
but we we just don't know where it's going. Yes,
you have so sports, yeah, music right? Food? Right? Does
(25:56):
your genetics matter for that? Like for example, of a
dude's like, yo, I'm supposed to play golf. You know,
the idea of brothers. It's only like when we see
them playing golf, we get so excited because we'd be like, oh,
it's only a couple of them. Or women, for example,
when we see them doing certain sports we like holy criddle, right,
or earlier when you was like white man, cand jump,
(26:18):
you know what I'm saying. So I really want to understand,
like scientifically genetic wise does display part of the DNA.
So it's really interesting that you you go there, white left, because,
as I said in the survey, when you get to
food and sports, the sort of Black and Latino and
Asian acceptance of a kind of genetic explanation for race
(26:42):
creeps up. So let's say it moves from like thirty
to on those questions, right, So still the majority of
people don't believe that it's an explanation. But but you know,
in our full community, when I'm in my barbershop, you know,
cats are talking about you know, you know, why would
they pick a white boy in an NBA draft? Or
you know, can this guy you know who's Asian? Can
(27:02):
he actually be the point guard for the Knicks? Right? Like,
I mean, these are the questions that we live with
every day. And the reality is we only see one. Yeah,
they'd be going to them places and they'd be like, Okay,
out of all of them, it looks like this one
he can surpass the norm. Right So that so, well,
these are social stories, is what I'm gonna say. So,
(27:24):
if so, basketball is the sport that black men in
my age, Cohort grew up believing was there's football and basketball,
not baseball. You go back fifty years, the sport that
my grandfather believed was the sport of black men was baseball.
Jackie Robinson integrating the Major Leagues was the huge monumental achievement. Right,
(27:46):
So what changed in that fifty years Neighborhood poverty in
Black America gets worse. City government start closing down baseball
fields and they replaced them with basketball hoops, and then
you get a revolution. My grandfather broke his heart that
I didn't want to play any baseball, right, So so
that's part of it. But there is a genetic story
(28:07):
whe left. So you you you take people, you steal
people from western Central Africa, Nigeria, Congo, and you bring
them over to the United States, Haiti, Jamaica, Antigua, and
you isolate them genetically. You say you cannot have sex
or marry anyone except the people that have that skin color.
(28:29):
You're gonna reproduce a taller genetic population, right, Nigeria, Congo,
these are all among the tallest countries in the world.
So you bring people over, you isolated for five years. Yes,
Black Americans are on average taller than others. My Scottish
ancestry is holding me back at five nine. This is
(28:49):
where I wish, I wish things are different, right, But
so so you do that and then you put basketball
hoops in these communities where people are on average taller,
it's not surprising that we have an NBA that looks
the way it looks. So the stories, the culture, social forces,
the genetics all come together, but the indability doesn't track
(29:10):
the genetics. That was so and and I overstand that.
So I guess through failed policies through the past, what
seventy eight years have shaped a rebirth of genetics? Right?
I'm I'm also fascinated by this idea that even what
(29:31):
is explained by genetics still needs some social environmental consideration. Right.
I may have certain genes that lead me to be
predisposed for certain things, but if it's not activated by
my environment, if it's not reinforced by the community, I
may never expressed that um and so you know, when
the society pushes you in that direction, we may activate
(29:54):
those things a little bit more. Why cleft, I want
to abruptly change because I just want to get this out.
You mentioned this beforehand. What are you working on right now?
So what's interesting about this theory of everything that's going on.
I'm gonna give a music theory to the world on genetics,
(30:14):
just based on all this conversation, because just listening to
the style. So coming inside of the music industry at
the age of seventeen years old, right from the gate,
they let you know like, okay, if you're a black man,
certain forms of music don't even step in the field
(30:35):
because of the way these charts are set up. Right,
music genome, yes, so music geno. So what I did
was I defied that because I don't I didn't believe
in that. So I'll take you through a few albums.
So the idea of the fuji's creating a score and
going into as a producer. What was I listening to
(30:59):
when I was listening to doing the score as a
studio engineer. Now, if I was to tell anybody who's
listening now, why Cleps Young a hip hop artists, right
at the age of nineteen, how was he crafting the score?
And then I would tell you I was listening to
Pink Floyd and I was telling you I was listening
(31:22):
to the Wall. Now, a lot of people is probably like,
holy sh it, we would have never guessed that. But
hold on, why would you have not guessed that, because
you'd be like, hold up, this kid is from Haiti,
he grew up in the projects of Brooklyn. How did
he discover Pink Floyd. So once again, right, so we
defied the idea of you saying we must listen to
this because we are in that certain environment. Also, I
(31:45):
want people that are listening to this, um the youth
challenge your environment, right because statistically we are put in
these environments through all of these years, like you said,
through failed policies, so we're supposed to be taller, were
supposed But at the same time, I want them to
understand that you are the masters of your own destiny.
(32:05):
So after the score and this is all proven theory, right,
So I went on to create an album called The Carnival.
The Carnival is in more than five languages. Now if
anyone from Sony Music is listening to this from the
headman in charge at the time, that was Donnie Einer
Tommy Mattola, the score cells over eighteen million right now.
(32:31):
Why Cleve Jon has an idea because you know the
the label one another eighteen millions. You show up and
you're like, yo, this is my new album. It's called
the Carnival. And they put this thing on It has English, French, crayon, Spanish, right,
and they're like, what the hell is this? Because once again,
(32:55):
it's not supposed to fit within the geo space of saying, well,
which chart are we gonna put this on? Because if
you sing and gone to November, this sounds like a
grassroots record. And then you turn around and then you're
doing b GS that sounds like this go then you
turn around and you're singing one Thana meta like dude,
like you're all over the place. Why can't I be
(33:19):
all over the place? Literally? Yeah? But what? But what
what defines you? Why must you just be in one space?
How am I able to understand the bigs and at
the same time understand sell your cruise? So it's important.
Now I feel we're in modern time and I feel
like streaming has disrupted that. So what streaming has done
(33:40):
now is it has proven my theory of the carnivore.
Because now my daughter she listened to what the hell
she want to listen to? Nobody could tell her don't
go to a tell us swift to me goes to
whatever she does, whatever she wants. So now streaming has
allowed the youth and the internet now the revolution as
(34:01):
the Internet has allowed each individual to define themselves, like
now you can't put no kid in the geo category
and say, oh, you can't listen to this right. So
then we had The Eclectic and I called up Kenny
Rogers and I was like, yo, Kenny um, I need
you to do a drop for my album, The Eclectic,
And people go you from Haiti man, what the hell
(34:24):
do you know about country music? Then I go into well,
people from the Caribbean, this is common, like country music
is one of the most natural form of music, and
they go white cleft, we don't get it. So here
it is. So back in the days before we even
was born, you had the evangelists that were bringing the
(34:45):
faith over to the Caribbean. So when that was bringing
the idea of the faith to the Caribbean, there were
radio stations and there was antennas. So a lot of
these antennas were bought by people that love country music
because there's a part that people don't understand. Country music
is storytelling, but at the same time, it's a lot
of Bible versus the original country music. So the idea
(35:08):
would be, okay, we would bring country to the islands.
So now when I'm in the projects in Marlboro and
it's a Sunday afternoon and my mother's listened to Devil
went down to Georgia to find a soda stale, you know,
and I'm like, yeah, that's Charlie Daniels. What what I
don't get a Cleft. So I just want everyone to
to to really understand. So at the end of the day,
(35:28):
I don't know what my DNA is. My daughter says,
I'm one percent white, I might be British. I don't
know what's going on. But I only say that to say,
do not limit yourself to putting yourself in a box
like challenge that. So, for example, like the next Wild
Cleft album, it's gonna be a country album, right, who
is Who's gonna tell me I can't do a country album.
(35:52):
I sang at the Johnny Cash tribute and if y'all
look at this is gonna trip people out once again,
there's still a stereotype fact the right. So they're like,
my man is like, okay, the next artist coming up,
why class young? Um, he's about to do a Johnny
Cash and dude, the place was startled and I'm not.
(36:13):
And when I'm standing up to sing Johnny Cash, what
tripped everybody out? I'm not doing a popular Johnny Cash song.
I'm doing a song that they wouldn't even know, you
know what I'm saying that. So, what I want people
to understand is, at the end of the day, do
not limit yourself like to a box. Yes, through policies,
we've been structured to say, Okay, you know what, the
(36:35):
baseball fields are going down, we're putting up basketball courts.
But I really want as we move forward, I really
want the kids to understand that you could defy that,
you can still rise up beyond that and say this
is what I'm gonna want my future to be, you know,
clean with the Johnny Cash deep cut. You already gone, baby, already.
(37:00):
There's a consistent theme that comes up in these do
that at conversations and and almost any scientific conversation. You
see science and this basis as a limit, as a prescription,
or as a possible foundation, as a partial description, and
grow from there. Al what what have you seen in
your work, maybe in the survey results that might be
(37:23):
consistent with this advice that wide Cleft is offering young people. Well,
I think it's fantastic advice. And I think no matter
what your positionality is in this society, adopting that why
Cleft Sean uh you know, Haitian revolution attitude. We're all
eighteen o four, it's the way to go for it.
(37:45):
There there, there, there's a real like sort of you know,
motivational book in there right at the sort of eighteen
o four attitude, right. But at the same time, what
I would like to see is a society that turns
on the possibility that the structures that put these divisions
in place begin to work to unravel them. If everyone
(38:08):
has that a ten o four mentality, it's a glide
path to a fully realized democracy where you're not geo
coded into basketball players or soccer players, country music listeners
or hip hop listeners. Right, And that's what we really
have the work to do. And that what I think
(38:31):
is great about the twenty three and Me project is
that they're trying to leverage their power in this space
to push in that direction. And and my life's work
is to have a world where it looks like Star Trek.
You know, Star Trek. Everyone has got these different sort
of skin colors, and you're from these different planets and
everybody notices it, but it doesn't define who you are morally,
(38:56):
And in that system, you're shaped much more by take
easts and interest in the hybridity that is a fundamental
part of the kind of cultural experience that Wycleft is
talking about, and we're a very long way away from that. Right,
we didn't even start on this path until about ninety,
(39:18):
about six years before I was born. Right, we don't
even get laws to say that you can live wherever
you want until right, And so what we've done is
we've passed the laws and then we've forgotten about it,
and people are still living mostly isolated, racially geo coded life.
(39:39):
We're still living in the world of the charts, and
we're still living in the world of the charts. And
so it's going to take incredible cultural capital, incredible investment
on the part of massive institutions and governments to move
us in a direction where everyone has the kind of
space to flow in any way they want. Well, I
(40:02):
feel very fortunate that we have cultural capitalists like white
Cliffs Gan in the room, that we have powerful institutions
like Northwestern University in the room, and that we can
keep having conversations like these two break down those charts,
to think outside of the genetic box, but also understanding
(40:22):
the value of those and to get to a more
diverse and democratic future. Thank you both so much for
being here. Thank you, and I just have to say
I'm so proud of you man. See where you've come from,
and uh, I remember many days on the stoop with
you in front of Claverley Hall, and I'm just incredibly
proud of you. Thanks Dad. I want to dig in
(40:53):
more on today's topics and guests. Check our show notes
and if you enjoyed the episode, share it with a
friend all your friends and be sure to leave a review.
If you want to hear more surprising stories about how
we're all related, search and follow Spit on I Heart
Radio or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Spit is
an I Heart Radio podcast with twenty three and me.
(41:13):
I'm barraitune Day Thurston. You can find out more about
me at barratune Day dot com or sign up from
a text message. It's just hit me up at two
O two nine O two seven nine four nine. Put
hashtag Spit podcast in your message. I know where you
came from.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
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