Lets Talk About It

Tamika D. Mallory and Mysonne first discuss the significance of Juneteenth, and the importance of celebrating Black joy. They reflect on personal experiences and the role of community standards in ensuring that local establishments maintain a level of decency and cleanliness. Next, they get into a  conversation about the emotional turmoil of a stepfather who felt excluded from his stepdaughter's graduation due to ticket limitations, leading to a discussion on the complexities of family dynamics. They were then joined by therapist Elliot Connie for Mens Mental Health Month, where they discuss, empathy in relationships, especially in blended families, while also addressing the broader implications of mental health in the context of celebrity culture.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Tamika D.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
Mallory and the ship Boy my Son in general.

Speaker 1 (00:03):
We are your host of Tami.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Tamika and my Son's Information, Truth, motivation and inspiration, name.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
New Energy, same o us. What's up my song?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Huh am blessed Black and highly favored. I'm still celebrating Juneteenth.
Shout out to Actively Black, get shirt and so far,
Like you gotta read this back of the shirt because
I need you to see what they say back and
this shp read reading that a loud.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
It says made from cotton grown by black farmers. Oh,
made from cotton. This shirt is made from cotton. Oh yeah,
they said they're gonna send me one of those shirts.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
So shout out to Actively Black. They we supporting me.
Everything I got on right now is black on this
hat and the Cavil coaches my hat. The sneakers come
from Enzo. Shout out to Enzo. They got some of
the most comfortable sneakers. So this was on my you
know black, I'm black and the black and the black.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Some people say that the time period of like the
week of Juneteenth is the Jubilee week or Juneteenth week,
So you know, black folks, they don't you can't tell
us that something is on one day. It was already
being observed by many people, many black folks, before it
became a federal holiday. And I remember when when Biden

(01:23):
first announced that that Juneteenth would be a federal holiday.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
At first, I was kind of like, who asked for this?

Speaker 3 (01:30):
Like this is not exactly like what we're looking for
in terms of, uh, something to address the issues of
Black America.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
And then I heard folks like Roland Martin and our
sister Monique Presley and others who are like from Texas
and understand the history of the day. And then you
know miss Lee, who's an older woman, you know, elderly woman.
You know, it's so many different people, and they gave
a historic perspective or historical perspective her words together about

(02:07):
the importance of Juneteenth, and I thought to myself and
then over time I still wasn't one hundred percent convinced.
But then I guess after I realized that you wake
up in the morning on like this recent June teenth,
you wake up in the morning.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
And things have to actually be closed.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
It is definitely going to force children and others to
say to their parents, what does today mean? You know,
it's going to force people to do a little bit
of Google searching, you know, and also give people the
opportunity to feel a sense of pride, because I see
that all over the timeline, even.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
For people who are working.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
They like I work at the hospital, so I have
to go to work today, but I'm wearing this.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
I have a pen.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
I saw that Delta gave people a bracelet and you know,
shout out to Delta. And it's exactly what I'm talking
about as it relates to target.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
When people be.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Like, oh, well, you know, so many companies are rolling
back DEI, wife, just focus on target. Well, guess what,
I also love Delta. I travel Delta. I'm over a
million mile status, you know. You know already Delta is
my airline. And guess what they are sticking to their
DEI strategy and their DEI I don't want to say campaign,

(03:20):
their DEI efforts, right, and so they gave out a red,
black and green bracelet to riders.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
That's that's a big deal, you know.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
So I now am thinking that the holiday, while it
doesn't take the place of the needs of Black America,
it certainly is something that will require the world to
stop and especially as they roll back our education, the
little piece of slither of black history that was being
taught in schools, you know, and and in other places.

(03:52):
It makes the world have to stand still and address
something that has to do with us, at least now.
And it has a store worry behind it that if
you go to Google, it's not just a big old
celebratory day. It's really a struggle that our people went
through not even knowing that they were free, and how
they found out and all of that.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
So I guess it's a it's a good thing.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
I mean, we should have time to celebrate some things, right,
we should. We should be able to like we I think,
and I find myself being a victim of it, right
that I want equity, justice, equality so much that I
don't want the micro anything. Everything is on a macro level.
So we can't even celebrate June team people like Juete

(04:35):
that ain't freedom anytime we do so, they said that
ain't freedom. They ain't give you no freedom, And it's like,
I know they didn't give me freedom, But it's a
day that I can reflect that I could study the
history understand how my people gain some level, gained level
to freedom, that we you know, and understand that and
be able to celebrate that. And while I'm celebrating, I'm
still fighting on the macro fight, right, So why why

(04:56):
do we get so caught up in this? It's swear.
I don't want to be. I don't want to be
the black man that's overly mad all the time about everything.
And I understand that we could. We have every right
to be overly mad about everything. We could be so
militant that we don't enjoy nothing that anything in America gives.
That's not completely and totally equity and it's not reparations

(05:20):
and all that. If it's not all the way that
we could just say fuck everything, we could. We have
every right. But I'm saying, why shouldn't we Why shouldn't
we just want to enjoy a little bit of something?

Speaker 3 (05:31):
Sometimes well, some people will say that we as black
folks do so much enjoying and celebrate and that sometimes
we lose our sense of focus and purpose for what
is actually you know, what will give us lifelong joy.
And so you know, I hear that, I see that,
I understand that, you know, as like right now in

(05:55):
this time period where the boots are on the ground
thing is such a big deal, and everybody's learning to
and it's all over social media. It's kind of calmed
down now. If you know what, you know it. If
you don't, you have to get it in the backyard.
But at one point it was like, really a big deal.
And at the same time, people are being kidnapped off
our streets by men with masks on their face that

(06:15):
don't even have a warrant. We have wars that are
developing all around us. You know, our rights are being
rolled back, our social security, our medicare, medicaid, all of
that is being impacted. You've got one body of the
federal government voting for any and every damn thing that

(06:36):
crazy stuff like deporting American citizens. Like it's so much
stuff happening, and meanwhile we out here talking about I
put my boots on the ground, you know, and I
get it. We need a moment to be able to decompress.
People don't want to live in depression and shock and
horror and trauma every second of the day.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
However, there are a lot of.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
People who are among the boots on the ground community
that don't want to pay attention to it at all.
And that's where I think things get to be a little.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
But theo is if they don't want to pay attention
to it at all, they're not gonna right. So you
trying to impose your ideology or your your understanding about
where we should be on somebody who doesn't care as
much as you do. It's not changing.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
They don't care.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Mostly I don't care.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Some people just can't handle it in their minds and.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
It's not there. It's not it's not that it's not
their fight. It's not the way that they fight. Right.
Everybody like when they say boots on the ground, like
we literally boots on the ground. So for pretty much
the last five to six years, all we've been doing
is fighting. Like sometimes you want to dance to boots
on the ground, just have it and not think boots
on the ground means I need to be on the
front line. Somebody might die and we gotta like sometimes

(07:50):
you just want to, like you said, decompress. And I
think we steal that from people when when we talk
about Juneteenth and holidays a certain thing and first thing
you said, well, it ain't reparations. They ain't really did
nothing for you, Like we we we don't even get
to celebrate any little thing, any black person. Oh, that's
just a black face in the hot space. It don't
mean like nothing means nothing to some of these people.

(08:12):
If we if we haven't had complete control of something,
if America has to say listen, we're gonna give you
half of America, then nobody black should be celebrated anything.
If they put a black person that educated and went
up through the ranks and did all the shit, that's
just another blackface in hot space. It don't mean shit
to us.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
And it's just like I think, I personally think that
you are also making it like you're you're you're Your
definition of how people feel is.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
A little, a little extreme.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
It's not to me.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
I don't think people don't.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Okay, I'm asking you this now.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
People on your Instagram cannot those are not even those.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
But I'm saying there are millions of people. There are
so many people that when you talk about any black
person who has done something, they'll tell you they ain't ship.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
There's not millions of people, but there are some very
very there's.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
There's a there's there's a very yeah, there's a very
strong dynamic and and you know, gender people that will
say that about every black person. I don't gre for
what you said, Oh, such sance did Obama. I ain't
never this ship blood, I ain't never dishift black. I
don't care who you say. It just it's like we
just have to.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
About about who historians or historical figures like. I don't
think a lot of people. I've heard some people say, oh,
doctor King didn't do this and that, But I think
there is a consensus around, uh, with the majority of
black folks, the majority that doctor King actually is an

(09:49):
important figure I think about. I think about, you know,
even the Black Panthers, there's a there is a majority,
a majority that feel he was in for I think
about Malcolm X.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
The majority people say.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
What I'm trying to say, is this her and this
is what I want.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
You to contribution was significant. But when it comes to women,
it's like, oh, but she wasn't.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
It's not just it's not it's not just because they're black.
Right is when you all of these people that you
talk about, they they were still pretty much in their infantry.
They were thirty something years old, they hadn't been elevated
to anything. They were pretty much just most of them

(10:36):
was still like grassroots they were pretty much grassroots. They
would they this is what I'm trying to tell you.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
They elevated to anything. What would be the elevation.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
What the elevation is when none of them gained any
power within the in the system, none of them conquered
the system. They was just still people on the ground fighting.
And once you start getting gaining ground and you moved
past you're just throwing rocks and you start getting and
they give you a medal for something. Now you no longer,
You're no longer relevant to our people, no.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
More to our I don't I think you just got.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
To be because I.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Don't think it's to our people.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
I think more people, just like we say all the time,
with all the hate that we receive, there are more
people who are with us, who tell us every time
they see us, we with you, we with you. I
don't believe that it is to our people. I think
it is always good to say to some people to faction.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
But when you listen to Malcolm, when you listen to
Malcolm X, he didn't feel like that. When you listen
to marcol Luther King, he didn't feel like he felt
like they felt like their people hated them.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
Well, I feel like it's not. I don't think it's
their people.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
I think that what happens with all of us is
that we become so concerned and consumed with the two
or three people, and that's all of us. We all
do it the two or three, and then the hundred
is like we just kind that in a way, take

(12:01):
them for granted. And the reason why I say that
is because I think about something as simple as Instagram comments.
I post something, two hundred people or let's say twenty
people can make a comment and it'll be a one
person who will be like, oh, you think you something
important because you got a little bit of money and

(12:22):
now you turned your back on the community. And I
will say to that person, like you know why you're
on my page, like just go away or whatever in response,
And meanwhile, the twenty people, nineteen other people, I haven't
even said thank you, appreciate you hearts.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
So we just.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
Become consumed at times with the two or three because
they sound loud, but they're really not as loud as
the twenty who are really with us. So I think
that has something to do with it, but it's not,
And that's not and those two or three people can
be harmful. So I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't care
about it at all. But I don't think it's true
that the majority of our people don't want to see

(13:04):
us get medals or whatever. But there is a particular
group that if you do anything, if you do a
black history slash Women's History Month ad for Cadillac that
you didn't even get paid for, they mad. You know
what I mean, That's just the way it is. So anyway, anyway,
I not choose black joy. You know, nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
I do as well.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
My son graduated yesterday and I'm going to celebrate that.
Shout out to King cam you graduated from junior high school.
Just watch it. Just knowing that he is almost fourteen
years old. Wow, Like it's crazy to me. Wow, you know,
just holding him in my arms as a baby and
just seeing him almost as told as me right now,

(13:46):
it's just amazing. So shout out to him. I love
you the life.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
King, Congratulations. So that brings me to my thought of
the day. And you know what, it's really kind of
in keeping. I know, y'all hear me talk about rats
all the time, so it's kind of like, h get
over it. People probably tired of me bringing up this topic,
but this is very very important and a little different.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
Well for me, okay, let me judge.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
So you know, my birthday, Lushawan Thompson, my dear sister,
and I celebrate our birthdays at the same time.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
People are like, why do y'all have so many events?

Speaker 3 (14:31):
Well, because it's two people who have different friends, which
we're all kind of one big family now, but still
different friends, different interests, and there's a ten year age difference,
which really is fine because we kind of like the
same music, we kind of like to do the same things,
but there are some differences between the two groups, and

(14:53):
so we merge to do a lot of different fun
activities over X amount of days.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Now. I don't know about y'all listening out there.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
And yes, people think because they see us always going
somewhere and always doing something that we're always like having
fun or doing fun things. But I can't tell you
the last time. The last time we went to karaoke
all of us was like seven months ago. You know,
it's not a thing. We don't really get out that often.

(15:24):
And so I think during this particular time June eighth
and ninth, my birthday's the eighth her this is the ninth.
I'm forty five now she's fifty five. And so during
this particular time, for the last four years, we've been
coordinating different activities, parties and stuff where our friends and
family come together and enjoy. And so this year, because

(15:44):
of that five number, we decided to have five days
of fun and we planned everything from a little Harlem
meet and greet, which ended up turning into a whole
party that was crazy at Sylvia's restaurant. The next day
was what was it? It was karaoke, Yeah, it was karaoke.
And then you know, Saturday night I had a party.

(16:05):
Sunday we had a barbecue at her at a Lushan's
New Dispensary in Belleville, New Jersey.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Shout out to Nevey Verday.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
Nevey Verday, please check that out to make sure we
get that right. Nevy Verday is not divertedt No, it's Verday, yeah,
because that means green, right, Okay, So Nevey Verday in Belleville, beautiful,
beautiful dispensary. She's got all the flavors and there was
a barbecue there and then we went out to Caviar

(16:37):
restaurant in Edgewater, New Jersey, and then on Monday we
had Oh Lushan had her birthday party at row House
in Harlem, and then we went back to row House
the next day because SNS is so good and so
we were just out. So it ended up being six
nights actually, and so in the process of putting all
this together, you know, that's the joy of my life.

(16:57):
Finding a lot of black owned space, or at least
trying to get things in certain parts of the community
where we can support the local economy. That's you know,
that would be the ideal situation. Similar to when we
did Bahamas last year. We try to make sure we
pick out the black owned restaurants and experiences, the DJs,
the whomever.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
So that's you know, a big thing.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
So when we were trying to figure out a place
for karaoke, the place that we wanted to go was
like super expensive, you get nothing included, and.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
I was like, you know what, I don't want to
do that.

Speaker 3 (17:31):
I looked up online and found that in Harlem there
is a place that has karaoke on Friday nights.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
So I was like, okay, this is perfect.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
So I contact the man and you had to go
over there, and you went over there, you know whatever happened.
We get all the details and we say we're going
to use this small kind of club like lounge setting
to do our karaoke. I get a whole arrangement with
the guy Lushawn, and I are like, this is perfect.

(18:00):
So when arriving at the place, the front door, this
is when I'm going to pay the deposit.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
So I get there.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
And the front door of this venue is shattered, and
so I pick up the phone and I call the
owner from the front door.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
I haven't even walked inside.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
There's a big security guard outside because they're getting ready
for their evening opening for their affair. And so when
I walk up and I see the doors shattered, I
contact the owner immediately to be like, hey, I'm at
your spot. I'm coming to bring the deposit. But I
notice that the front door is shattered. Are you planning
on getting this fixed? And he says no, He's like, no,

(18:42):
I'm not fixing it. I've had He's like that door
has been like that for five years since COVID, and
he's like, there's nothing wrong with it.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
If you touch the door.

Speaker 3 (18:51):
You'll see that it's not like shattered to the touch.
The shatter is on the inside of the plexiglass. It's
basically a bulletproof glass. So he's like, no, it's not
you know, I'm not planning on doing anything. He said,
I can't afford it. Okay, so cool. So I'm like, okay,
me the type of person that I am, I would

(19:12):
walk away right now just by the idea that the
front door is not presentable for me to bring a
crowd of people here. But it's in Harlem. I'm like,
you know what, we're not going to make this a
big deal. People will talk about it for two seconds,
but once they get inside, it's great karaoke, we have
food and drinks. It's going to be great. That was

(19:34):
era number one on my part. Right there, I already
made a mistake, so I and okay. So anyway, I
go inside and there's a woman in there. She's getting
the bar set up. I give her the money for
the deposit, she takes it. She's now and I'm still
talking to the owner like, oh well, and I tell him,
I said, this is not a good representation of your business,

(19:56):
and oh okay, well I'm not fixing it.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
Okay. Cool.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
He wasn't nasty, but just still talking back and forth.
So I go and I say, okay, I'm putting the
money and the bars in his hand. She says to me, well,
how much is the No, she said, she said, what
is your name? What's the date and time? So she's
getting her paper to write the details down, which gives
me time to inspect and look all around. And as

(20:21):
I turned my face to the side, a rat runs
this way and then something over here go and I'm like,
oh my god. So I jump up and down a
little bit. I didn't do too much, but I was like,
oh my god. And then it occurs to me. The
owners still on the phone, and it occurs to me,
get your money back. So I asked the lady. I'm like,

(20:42):
you know, thank you. So just as quick as the
money went in her hand, let me have it back.
And I say to the owner, sir, you have rats
in here, and he goes, a rat, oh, and she says, oh,
where is it. No one is upset. No one is
like oh my god, we're so sorry. No one is
like that. And then I say, okay, thank you, I'm
out of here. He goes, Okay, that's it. It's not

(21:03):
a big deal.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
It's not nobody is stressed about this rat but me
rat or rats or whatever. So the thing my thought
of the day here.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
Is that the presentation of how you operate and how
you maintain your business is more than likely an indication
of what's going on inside. So how people will look
at you and say, well, you know, just because that
person doesn't dress neat and clean or keep their hair

(21:39):
neat and clean, or you know whatever, it doesn't mean
that they're dirty or whatever. But generally, how you look
on the outside, or how a business especially looks on
the outside, has a lot to do with what's going
on on the inside. So as soon as I walked
up and saw that the door.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
Was shattered to this place, it should have been.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
An indication to me that the inside of this venue
is not being kept up. Because he does not even
have the respect for his business to say, I don't
want it to look crazy now. It happens to be
in Harlem, and the corner that it's on in Harlem,
it's a little while over there, like a lot of
things go on in that area, And so he doesn't

(22:23):
have respect for the community that he would say I
need to make sure, my business looks up to you know,
it has a good upkeep or whatever.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
So why would I.

Speaker 3 (22:32):
Ever think that I could go inside it there and
that his kitchen would be clean, that his glasses and
you know silverware, the utensils or whatever, the bathrooms or
whatever are being kept to a particular standard. But now
here's the real kicker. That part is.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Or you know, in and of it is one thing,
but this is the other part of my thought of
the day. I got a two part thought of the
day today.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
I don't know whether this man is black or not,
but I thought twice about and I still have decided.
I'm not gonna say the name of the place, but
if people know on Friday night's a place in Harlem
has karaoke, they'll figure it out.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
And it's packed in there, packed okay.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
But what I was thinking was, because he may be black,
I did not want to put it on my platform
to where he might lose business. But then I thought
to myself, if that same business owner had his space
was on one twenty fifth Street or forty second Street

(23:38):
or ninety sixth Street or some other place, he could
not keep that door shattered that way, he would not
be able to keep his door that way because the
community would demand something different from him. So rats get
into any venue. You could go to the best restaurants

(23:58):
in New York and other city where they have rat issues,
and especially if things are being kept in the basement,
you may run into a rat like sometimes they come
out sometimes, you know, you see it in videos, they
running around the restaurant. Want of them fell out. The
events things happen, I'm not saying they don't. But his
space is ranky, dank, like even when going inside, I'm like, damn,

(24:22):
I can't believe that I'm having an event in here.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
But I also know that our crowd is not so.

Speaker 3 (24:28):
Bougie that they can't do a good hood night, you
know what I'm saying, Like, we could do a good
hood night, but we do not have to subject ourselves
to rats and vermin and and and doors being shattered.
And I because I have a tendency to try to
I don't want to say, shrink myself, but I try
to check myself because all of y'all say, all, Tamika,

(24:52):
you always, you know, got a problem with everything. You
always see everything. Why you always gotta know that this
and that and the third, just enjoy your let.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Your hair down. And so I started to have.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
A little bit of a complex about how I want
things to be at a certain level. And as a
result of that, I allowed myself to walk in a
place to force myself to do something that I really
didn't want to.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Do off the front door. But I still tried.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
And what I ended up learning it was it reaffirmed
for me what I know is that if it don't
look right from the beginning, it ain't no sense in
going down the road because each time you're gonna end
up finding out that your first instincts about it was
the right instinct.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Well, first of all, I would like to say that
you definitely are very critical, super critical of things, but
in this instance, you aren't. You know, when you walked
in there and the rat was there, the thing was broken.
Like when you told me somebody what like this, it
didn't even make sense to me, you know that somebody

(25:56):
would And the fact that he had no real care,
like his response was oh, really, okay, all right, don't
worry about it and just take the money back. Like
like like you said, if it was in a different
area within Harlem, he would have cared more because the
community would have commanded and demanded more from him. And
I think that's what happens in our community and a

(26:17):
lot of our establishments, is that the community doesn't require
that right. You know, the people wherever he's at, it's like, oh,
it's just a little spot, we're gonna go in there,
will you know? They might see it rat, they might
not know.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
I don't think the rat would be okay to most communities.
They're not paying attention to that, probably because they don't
go there at the time.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
There's probably no way that nobody's seen the rat in
there before it had to and if you come on,
people have seen resident and it ain't stopping people from
going there.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
But also I think another part of it is that
you know, when he says he can't afford to change
the door, that's a lie because everybody said that. Well,
it's two or three things that he has. He has
a karaoke knight that's packed, and that particular venue is
very lgbt q I a friendly and so at times

(27:07):
there will be parties in there are other moments when
it's like an entire lgbtqu I a crowd, And I
know that for that community to find places where they
feel safe and protected and they can have a good time.
It's not that many because different different places people make
you feel a way. You don't like the way the
staff talks to you, the owners not really. And so

(27:28):
when you find a place that's like, Okay, this is
cool there, you know people will go there. So I'm
saying that that's at least two audiences.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Right there that I know for you.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
Right, so you could have gotten the doors, but it's
not and it's not a priority because we as a
people and the community that he's in, to your point,
have not commanded demanded that you can't be here and
operate your business in our neighborhood unless it is up
to a certain standard. And I you know, it's it's
funny because, as you know, our homegirl works for the

(28:02):
City of New York. As you know, our girlfriend Tiffany
works for the City of New York. She is actually
a deputy mayor. And so I call her and I'm like, Tiffany,
let me tell you what happened.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
I'm like, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
I don't really want to report the man because it
might be a black venue. And then you know, if
I you know, people always like, oh, we got to
give black people a chance race, right, some grace, And
so I tell us, I'm like, what you think.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
She's like, let me be clear with you, because, first
of all, Tiffany does not do discrimination of accountability. Okay.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
She wants everybody to be accountable, and that she with.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
The law and the rules are the rules. Okay.

Speaker 3 (28:42):
So if you go on a white restaurant, white owned
restaurant or Asian owned restaurant and there's a rat, she
wants that reported, and she also want the black people
report it.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
And she sends me anytime I call Tiffany.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
And tell her that anything happened, Tiffany will send me
three one one. She's like, call three one one and
report the details. So I set to her in the
text message, I'm like, I mean on the conversation, I'm like,
I don't really want I don't know what to do.
And she said, listen, let me be very clear with you.
There are restaurants in Harlem, lounges and venues, and she

(29:17):
knows because they get the inspection report that they don't
have rats, and even if they get one from the
front door, they work hard. The inspectors are there the
extermination people are there. There is a constant effort to
keep that type of stuff out of their establishments. If
those people can do it, so can miss the so

(29:39):
and so on whatever street.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
It is not acceptable.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
And there are people who are maintaining their establishments in
the same neighborhood. You got pont Bistro. Ponti Bistro is
right down the street from this place. And guess what
we know because we know Pebe Brass he has other restaurants.
The chef from there. He don't play about that. He
don't play about rats and rodents and all of that.

(30:03):
So I just felt the way because I realized that,
you know, on one hand, I'm like, I want to
be careful and mindful of the struggle of our business
I still don't even know if the man is black,
but I want to be careful and mindful of the
struggle of our businesses. But also, how do we as
a community ensure that there's a level of accountability. What

(30:24):
do we do about that at the same standard.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Of just decency, right, we should we should have we
should have community based organizations that care enough to provide
a clean and healthy space for our people.

Speaker 3 (30:42):
And we do have community boards. We do have that,
and it's like that should be a part of the focus.
But guess what a lot of times these community boards
have people on them who are very much so older. Right, well, no, no,
I'm talk about community boards, like the community.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
Boys that are responsible.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
A lot of them are older people, like so much
love to my godmother, you're what would you say? She's
like an auntie to you and to all of us.
Hazel Duke's she was on every damn community everything you
could think of. But when she passed away, she was
ninety two years old. So she's on a community board,
but she don't go to the local club, so she

(31:22):
don't have a clue what's going on at the local spot.
If she didn't know, oh I could you already know,
Hayes gonna be like this door needs to be changed,
or were gonna be outside every day and you won't
even be able to open and operate exactly. But if
she doesn't know because it's not her area, you know,
it's not something, it's not someplace that she frequents, then

(31:43):
how does she and other people because I bet you
everybody else on the community board is sixty seventy eighty
ninety years old. We have to take on that responsibility
at thirty forty, even twenty years old.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
We have to show up for our communities. Sure, so
you know, because you can't blame the people who are
on the community board.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
They're gonna make sure the senior centers are good. They're
gonna make sure the streets are the garbage is being
picked up. They're gonna make sure that.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
The safety they're concerned.

Speaker 3 (32:11):
Exactly are the safety issues are are are addressed. They're
gonna make sure that the police deal with the people
in the community a certain way to the extent they
can that. You know, they're gonna see to it at
the grocery store is there, but they don't know to
go check the front door and the inside cleanliness of

(32:32):
the local club.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Well, I hope the local club owned here this and
realizes that we're talking about you. So we don't have
to say who you are. Just do better, man, you know,
we just we wren't. Decency in our community shouldn't be
rats and shattered windows. We should we should want our
communities to represent us properly.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
I guess so, I guess that's what we want him
to do. But I think I think that is true.
But moreover, I just want to know it's not so
much for him because I'm sure he won't hear this,
so you don't sound like that type of person. But
what so for people who are listening, who I know,
go to that place and will we demand something different?

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Makes sense?

Speaker 1 (33:18):
There's that all right? Well that was long and drawn out.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
But what I mean but it made sense. You know,
you had to get the story, had to be told
that way to get the full synopsis.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah, I mean I could have just said I went
to a place in Harlem and this is what happened.
But if you know, the color around everything is what
makes it like special.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
That's why.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
Because somebody would say, like, well, what the hell would
you be going to the place in Harlem on the
corner of X Street for any way to have a party.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Wow, it's trying to have at night, you know, so
it makes sense. Good old hood night, a good old
hood night. AnyWho.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
That brings me to let's see what's next TMI. Well,
some people say it's a split decision here, okay, six
thousand comments on one post. I just happened to see
this in my two am musings. There's a man who
has been taking care of a young girl, which is

(34:16):
his wife's daughter, since she was four months old. Came
into the daughter's life by way of meeting the mother
when the child was four months and I think they
got married once the.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
Child was two years old.

Speaker 3 (34:29):
Okay, Now, when it comes graduation time for this young
lady to go to college or at least to get
out of high school, she has a graduation and she
does not prioritize having her stepfather at the graduation. In fact,
who ended up being there is the actual biological father

(34:54):
and some other people.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
Now there were folks, you know.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
I I when I heard that the father, the actual
bio logical father, was there, I was kind of like, okay, well,
you know, that makes sense to me. And then they
said there were eight tickets. Eight tickets is not only
because it said, oh, the.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
Father wrote a whole post about it. The stepfather wrote
a post about.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
It, and he said and then I learned there were
only eight tickets. I'm like, eight tickets is a lot
of tickets, right, That's a lot of tickets.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
And if you've been taking care of a.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
Child since they were four months old, and particularly married
to the mother, not like we met, and then I
just kept the relationship with them while I was no
longer with the mother. But no, they actually are still
currently married. That is a significant relationship. But when it
came time to distribute the tickets, they went to the

(35:48):
mother's sisters, the girl's boyfriend I think, the grandmother, an uncle.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
And the biological father, and of course the mother.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
So the eight tickets were taken and the stepfather was
not given a ticket, so he was not allowed to go.
So he was so upset and heard about it that
he said, well, now she's grown, I'm taking her off
my car insurance and my health insurance and whatever other
things that he did for her. And he said, now
you know, since I wasn't chosen, now, if she needs

(36:18):
somewhere to go, she should go stay with her father
and she doesn't have to be on my insurance benefits. So,
like I said, six thousand, six hundred comments on one
post about this, and of course when you read the comments,
it's very split. I actually saw Jamel Hill who said
that his feelings are valid, but his actions went too far,

(36:40):
and it was a lot of people like that. But
then little Moe was in the comments like trolling, being
funny as she is, but nonetheless basically saying that she
agreed that he was supposed to take it to that
extreme because what they did to him was wrong. And
then a lot of people blamed it on her mother, right.
They were like, come, mom was supposed to take care

(37:01):
of that. It's her fault. You have all these different perspectives,
and I guess the TMI like who's doing too much
in this situation? The question for everybody is do people
not understand where he's coming from?

Speaker 1 (37:14):
And I'll give my opinion.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
I would say that I don't know if I would
have in that moment said I'm taking you off my
insurance and all of that, because it is certainly a
way to show like you're trying to retaliate based upon
your feelings immediately.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
I do think, though.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
That this young lady is still a child, and later
on in life she will realize that something should have
been done about the arrangement here to ensure that her
stepfather was able to be there, including having her boyfriend
meet her after the graduation instead of having to be
there and have that ticket. I don't know the situation

(37:56):
where all her family members, her grandmothers and aunts, maybe
they are very close family personally, two aunts, I don't
feel two aunts.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
Need to be there.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
We need to make a choice as a family that
one aunt is one aunt is gonna go and or
the boyfriend is not gonna go, but somebody needs to
fall back to make space. There's no way that eight
people should have attended that graduation and not allow a
man who.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
Has been there.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
He said that it's caused turmoil in his house because
he took her off his insurance, and I kind of
feel like they're taking advantage of him, But I do
I would say that we have to be mindful not
to react to everything in the moment, because it gives
the impression that you kinda are dangling money and things
over her head, although insurance is not just money, that

(38:47):
is me taking care of you a certain way. And
I and I and I think this is where I
differ from some people because it seems that people are
targeting her biological father being the one who's should have
been replaced. I don't agree with that. I don't know
the relationship, but the mere fact that he was there,
I'm just gonna assume that they have a decent relationship.

(39:09):
That he may not be able to afford insurance and
things of that nature. But nonetheless he was there, so
there must be some relationship. I think both dads should
have been there, but an aunt needed to step back,
and the boyfriend absolutely could have met me on right
outside as soon as I come outside of the graduation.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
It should be based on the relationships. You know, if
her biological father, although he probably wasn't able to take care,
if he's been in her life and they have a
very strong relationship.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
Or a decent relation, decent.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
Relationship, right, then he has the right to be her graduation.
But if I married a woman who has a child
and his father has n't been present, and then probably
just recently, you're trying to rekindle a relationship, I'm just
telling you me.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
I'm saying if I know, but that's what I'm saying.
I don't want to make a so I want to assume.
But jadon assume because I want to assume because he
didn't say that that man hasn't.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
Been But he's saying he'd been taken care.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Of, right, But that doesn't mean that your other dad
wasn't there.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
But to say that he's been taking care of a
child since you know the child, since the infant means
that for me to be saying I'm taking care of that,
miss me, somebody else wasn't taking care because if I'm
taking care of you, and and for me to say that,
that means I know that this person hasn't been present.
That's the only way that I would have this level

(40:32):
of okay. Then if that's how you feel, and cool
if you because he didn't say you chose your boyfriend
over me, you chose other people. He believes that he's
been more of a father to her than her biological father,
because he said, you chose to allow your biological father
to come. So cool, So that's what his issue was.
It wasn't the other people that came, because he probably

(40:53):
felt like those people are significant. He probably feel like
this man hasn't been present this whole time. I've been working, hustling,
doing everything I gotta do to make sure that you survive.
And then now he come in a picture and it
supersedes me because he has your biological and it's cool
and I understand it, but now I feel like you
don't value me at all.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
Right, I feel like you say you would just jump
up and take the I don't.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
I wouldn't just jump up and take, but moving forward,
I would acknowledge that, right, and then when I start
making decisions, I can't prioritize you in a way that
you don't prioritize me, right, I want to do the
best for you and cool, I would let you know
first of all, hurt my feelings, and then and then
moving forward, you know, I would have to prior I
have to treat that the relationship has to be equal

(41:38):
to me, you know, and you can't hurt somebody's feeling
if I'm thinking you might pretty much he's thinking this
is his daughter, you know, since an infant, he's raised
as a daughter, and to feel like you don't value me,
and because this man shows up now, because that happens,
there are situations where it happens and you have thingoledg.

(41:58):
I don't even know if as a father, a biological father,
I can't really see a situation where I wouldn't be
there for my kids. Let's when I was in prison,
and when I was in prison, this is real shit
to me. Right when I was locked up, my son's
mother had a man that she was with, you know,
she was with him and he pretty much raised my

(42:20):
son for seven years when I wasn't there, and then
when I came home and I was still giving myself
on my feet, he was still taking care of my
son like he was his mother. He provided things that
I wasn't and I respected that man and I told
him and I told her I respect him right, and
I felt that he had to be like when we
were graduations things. I made sure that everybody know that

(42:40):
I'm not uncomfortable with him being there because that man provided,
he prog That's.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
What I'm saying. Both dads should be present.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
And that's what I'm trying to say. So because you.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
Don't know what the circles, and I want to believe
the best that maybe the dad, like you said, was
in prison or maybe not, let's take that off of
his name. Maybe he just didn't have the resources. And
if you living in the house, would child automatically. It
makes you have a certain type of relationship. Get that
job from now, when your insurance and different things you
put them on, because that's your wife's child who.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Lives with you, And that's what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
So I'm saying that the boyfriend doesn't need to be
there but like Jamie my best friend said, you know,
when we was young, we were stupid. We ain't even
going to the graduation if our boyfriend can come. But
that's type of stuff we would say, not some about
we as in young girls.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
Listen to me, it doesn't make sense. And I understand
the man's frustration, and just based off the fact that
he pointed out the father, he believes that that father
hasn't done nearly enough to actually be able to.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
Supersede him for a ticket. Okay, I think two aunties.
If I was two aunties, I would say, I'm gonna
stay back and get the dinner together, straighten out the
restaurant or whatever whatever, get the balloons, but I don't
need to go.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
But the anties has to be what grade, what she is,
she graduated high school. That might have said, you've.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Grown that the mother was supposed to regulate that though everybody.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
Said that, I feel like that's true.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
But I also because it cost so much, turnoi in,
your aunt.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
Was supposed to stay at the house and get everything together.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
If that's your husband and it's the person that pays
the bills and the tranquility in your home, you allowed
this young girl who's who's making the decision that she
don't even understand the dynamics of that decision to affect
your home, like your assurance, Like you know how serious
people died about insurance. People ain't got no insurance, car insurance,

(44:38):
what mental medical assurance? Like, come on, it's crazy.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
Like I feel for the man. I hope that they
find a way to work.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
Feel for them to.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
Apologize to that man. We sorry, sir. Well, we have
a friend, our brother, our friend. Elliott Kannie is joining
us yes for this episode where we're talking about men's
mental health awareness. I didn't know that June is Men's
mental health months. We should have done some more stuff,

(45:07):
like you know you learned these months.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
I don't know where the months be coming from, but
they got dates and months and sibling day and this
day and that day to try to keep up.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
We need a calendar around.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
But anyway, Elliott Kannie is a psycho therapist. He also,
as far as I'm concerned, this is a therapist to
all of us in the movement, because we all everybody
be calling them on the load and nobody tells anybody,
but everybody knows you call Elliott Khannie when you're in
trouble with some mental health issues. But he also is
our podcast sibling at the back Black Effect podcast Network.

(45:41):
He has a show called Family Therapy and has been
a guest on our show before.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
We've been guests on his show.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
And it's good to have our brother Elliott Connie with
us today.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
We need some kind of thanks for joining us.

Speaker 4 (45:59):
Brother, No problem is good to be here. I love
y'all both.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
Yes, yes, thank you for coming on.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
So we were actually just talking about something and I
just wanted to get your take on it. We generally
don't well, sometimes we do ask our guests to lean
into other topics that are on the show for this
week or that particular week. And this week we were
talking about on our TMI segment, which is a segment
where we discuss whether or not people are doing too

(46:25):
much or some folks are like no, actually what they
did is just right. The response to this issue was
a man who was not able to attend the graduation
of his stepdaughter who is currently married to her mother.
So he's currently married to her mother. He's known this

(46:46):
child since she was four years old and four months old.
Four months old, and he mentions that now that she's grown.
So when he says, now that she's grown, I know
that this is not a graduation for elementary school or
middle school. This is a high school graduate at least
I hope not college.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
I'm sure it's got him.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
Come on, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
It's got to be high school. And so he was
not able to go.

Speaker 3 (47:14):
There were eight tickets allotted to the families for the graduation,
and he was not one of those individuals. But the
biological father was allowed to go, and so he said that,
you know, he was so upset about it.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
His films were so hurt.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
When he got home, he took his stepdaughter off of
his health insurance, his car insurance, and whatever other things
he was doing for her. He said, she can go
live with her father if since she's grown now go
stay with him. And so that gives my son the
impression that the father had not been showing up in
a certain type of way for this young lady's life.

(47:54):
I said, let's try to look at it that the
father has been around, and perhaps he just didn't have
the resources to be able to take care of the child.
But nonetheless, stepdad is really really upset and just wondering
how what you know when we're talking about men's mental health.
This man is hurt, very hurt, and I just wanted
to know if you were counseling him, what would you

(48:15):
say and would you be in agreeance with him to
just cut his stepdaughter off of all of the health
benefits and you know, financial benefit just like that because
he's upset.

Speaker 4 (48:26):
Absolutely not.

Speaker 5 (48:28):
I don't think it really matters whether or not the
biological father has been showing up or not. I think
the bigger issue is we have a tendency to treat
children as if they are like miniature adults. And I
have no problem with this stepfather having hurt feelings, but
he needs to understand that though this child is likely eighteen,

(48:50):
I agree.

Speaker 4 (48:51):
With you this is probably think. I think it was
a high school graduation. I saw the story.

Speaker 5 (48:56):
He has every right to have hurt feelings, but he
has to address it as an adult and explain to
this step daughter that he has hurt feelings. And we
have to understand that even though the biological father, let's
say the biological father wasn't around, children will live their
lives in pursuit of approval and connection from their biological parent,

(49:18):
and this might be an attempt for this child to
get that.

Speaker 4 (49:23):
Now, is she doing the right thing?

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Probably not.

Speaker 5 (49:26):
And he has a justified reason, justifiable reason have his
feelings hurt, but he's now taking it out on the child,
and he's making the child's life worse and more complicated.
And when you marry this woman and take on the
responsibility of raising that child, you are taking on the
responsibility of being good for her and to her, even

(49:46):
while you have hurt feelings. Now, stepdaughter or not, like
the two of you, have children, and sometimes your children
hurt your feelings. Your children will do and or say
things that hurt your feelings. But you have a responsibility
to be there for child, to make the child's life better.
And he is not doing that right now. He has
hurt feelings. He's acting from a place of hurt, behaving

(50:07):
in a very petty way. And this girl, she's gonna
grow up and realize, oh, I really shouldn't have done that.
But you've got to allow her the ability to grow
up and stop treating her as a little mini at
you're adult, because she's not.

Speaker 4 (50:17):
She doesn't know what she's doing.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
Well, So I'm gonna give a little pushback. If when
my son got to a certain age when he was
grown and he started to talk to me or do
things that were disrespectful to me, to when you start
hurting me, hurting my feelings, I told him you got
to get out. I'm not paying no more bills. You

(50:39):
need to find you somewhere to go. Right, So, as
much as I understand what you're saying, but if this
man made a decision that this is a grown woman. Now,
she made a decision on her own that I wasn't
valuable enough to go to that graduation, and all the
other people, the other eight people she allowed to go
there were more important than me than my resources in

(51:00):
my home shouldn't be as important to you? Right? You
like I don't. And then I'm saying, maybe I probably
wouldn't do that in this situation. But if I felt
disrespected because I've kicked my son out at eighteen years old,
you gotta go somewhere else and didn't feel a way,
And when when you realize who I am, and you're
gonna treat me like a man in my house, but

(51:22):
you can't stay in my house and disrespect me and
disregard me. So I hear what you're saying that at
that point, once you graduate, then you you you made
a decision that you're a grown person and you make
own person decisions and choices.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
So I have to make it you made a decision
just because you graduated that you're grown.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
No, when you made a decision that I'm going to
invite the people I want at this graduate.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
But what about if her mother probably helped control the list?
See that that makes it a little bit different.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
But regardless of what if you and your mother, and
this is what I'm saying, cool, y'all got it?

Speaker 1 (51:56):
You gotta stop until you finish eating that or you
want a tissue because you like slurin. I'm telling you,
and I know you're not gonna want that, So you
want to just finish real quick?

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Yeah, not gonna be real quick. Okaya, it ain't gonna.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
Be real all right. Well, I just still I don't know.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (52:17):
I don't know because I feel like, again I told
you the boyfriend probably because of the makeup, the makeup
of the guests were it says her two sisters. So
I think I may be wrong that it's not the
two aunts, it's the two sisters that are the girls'
biological sisters, right, an uncle, an aunt, a boyfriend, a grandparent,

(52:41):
the biological father, and the mother, right, and so of
all those people, I could now now if it's not
two aunts, I can kind of see how they looked
at that whole list and said, who are we gonna
kick out? Because you know you're not kicking my boyfriend
off them, because I'm not even going to the whole graduation.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
If my boyfriend can't, well, you're a boy.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
If you need to pay for your car insurance.

Speaker 5 (53:03):
But here I'm gonna here's my response to my son's pushback,
which I actually.

Speaker 4 (53:07):
Agree, Like, I understand where you're coming from.

Speaker 5 (53:10):
But there are two variables, and just from reading the story,
I don't actually have the context for these two variables.
But the first one is in your situation my son, Like,
my guess is you have talked to your son about
like in essence, he was breaking rules that you had
taught him not to break, and then he gets to
the point where he continuously breaks them, and you say, well,

(53:32):
if you're gonna keep doing this, I'm now perceiving this
as disrespect and you need to go live someplace else.
And I don't know whether or not the stepfather overtly
told the child, if you do this, I will feel
disrespected and thus will take an action. And then the
second thing that my son's children, this particular child doesn't

(53:52):
have is a stepdad. So my son is the biological
father and step parents at a level of what do
I do with that? If I'm eighteen years old and
I got an eighteen year old brain, what do I
do with the fact that I love my stepdad and
I'm so appreciative of the role they played in my life.
But I love my biological father and even if he

(54:13):
wasn't there, I want this connection.

Speaker 4 (54:16):
So what do I do with that as an eighteen
year old?

Speaker 5 (54:18):
And also maybe I'm being influenced by mom being influenced
by these aunts, Like there's so much context that we
don't have. But I will say the responsibility is always
with the adult.

Speaker 4 (54:30):
So the stepdad. A.

Speaker 5 (54:32):
I hope this stepdad had a conversation with this daughter
leading up to this moment the stepdaughter leading up to
this moment.

Speaker 4 (54:37):
And B.

Speaker 5 (54:38):
I would like to know that this person is capable
of being a bigger person and at least having empathy
for the complicated situation that all step children find themselves
in I.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
Understand, but I just want us to have empathy and
understand that if a man raises a child as his
own pretty much since they're four months old, and you
make putting somebody on your insurance and your health insurance,
that's that's that's a different thing. Like you don't just
putting people on your health with dying every insurance like

(55:09):
these are these are real things. So you you're paying
like you're you're you're paying a lifetime bill something that
affects your life in their life. You connected somebody in
your life, right, So when you've connected somebody in your
life in that in that manner, and to know that
that they didn't see the other four maybe the aunt
or one of them saying, hey, I know you look,

(55:32):
we're gonna let you live streaming. But this person right here,
this person right here been paying these bills and this
to it and whatever ever for his whole life, and
I know he would love to see me be here.
That's that's a conversation that somebody should have had. That
should have been I'm just saying in my opinion, and
and he's and and things, and maybe he he shouldn't

(55:55):
have done what he does. But I'm just trying to
say that he was not wrong for how he feels,
and maybe his reaction is completely I mean, it is
not how I would have done it. But I can't
say that he's wrong. That's I'm true.

Speaker 5 (56:08):
I one hundred percent believe that he had every right
to have his feelings hurt. He just shouldn't have taken
that action. And the reason I keep saying that the
onus is on the adult. Like children don't immediately understand
all the sacrifices it takes to raise them. Do we
understand what paying somebody's car insurance and life insurance is?

Speaker 4 (56:28):
But both of you, I'm sure in.

Speaker 5 (56:30):
Your older years you were like, oh man, now I
understand what it was like for my mother to do this,
this or this.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Yeah, you know what I mean.

Speaker 4 (56:39):
But at eighteen, I didn't. I didn't have that perspective.

Speaker 5 (56:42):
I didn't have that So this this, this stepdaughter one
hundred percent should have invited the man that raised her.
And if she was sitting right here, I would say
to her, you've got to find a way to honor
your your feelings about both dads. At eighteen, she doesn't
know how to appreciate car insurance. She doesn't know how
to appreciate.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
But it's a good segue into a broader conversation around
you know, when you're dealing as we're talking about men's
mental health, and man, I mean just on social media alone,
it's a whole mental health situation. Like they I want
the whole Internet to just shut down for a few days.
I'm like, can we have a COVID go through the internet. No,

(57:27):
don't kill anybody, but just shut the thing down because
there's so much it's a cesspool of people's emotions and
feelings and what so many different people are going through.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
And I wonder about this idea of you.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
Know, parent co parenting or parenting stepdads and families. And
you see so many men, especially when you're coming up
on Father's Day, saying that they don't feel appreciated or
they feel like everything is about the mother. And you know,
I think I saw somewhere that the number of like

(58:01):
the revenue for Father's Day is so much lower than
it is for Mother's Day. And you have so many
men who's like, yeah, get your socks, and and it's
like a joke, Like my cousin wrote something on his
page and it made me sad. But he it was
like he wrote like a joke, like, oh hey, everybody,

(58:22):
make sure you get your socks dad. You know, mom
gets a watch, Dad gets socks. And I wonder when
you're dealing with your clients, especially with men, is this
a real thing or is it that men just don't
know how to ask for what they want because Mom's like,
I want to watch.

Speaker 4 (58:38):
I think it's both.

Speaker 5 (58:39):
Actually I think it is a real thing, But I
also think that men don't always know how to ask
for that thing that they want, and they don't know
what always know how to be vulnerable and say this
is how I need to experience your love, and this
is how I need to experience that you care about me.
So children don't always grow up knowing what to do.

(59:01):
But one of the things I often talk about with
my client is funny. I just had a conversation with
a client yesterday who is a dad and in a
very difficult situation. But we need to understand we're parenting
for the life cycle.

Speaker 4 (59:14):
Like you didn't.

Speaker 5 (59:15):
You didn't have that child hoping that you'd get a
watch for Father's Day. You had that child with a
much bigger picture and our reward is watching our children
and particularly young boys, grow up to be the kind
of men that we can we can respect and value
and know that the type of children that command respect
and on some level, like we've got to just parent

(59:37):
through the life cycle and understand it was never about
socks in the first place.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
I know it's tough when you don't get a pair
of socks right, because when you that's why I can
identify with the man right even as a stepfather, but
as a father, real father. You we put so much
emphasis on making sure that the mother is satisfied on
Mother's Day, cater to infraction. Somehow there's just this level

(01:00:03):
of disregard for Father's Day. Like the people they just
don't see the need to. They might tell you happy
Father's Day, you know, they don't even see the need
to write your card, give you just you know, you
have sons that won't say, hey, I'm gonna take you
out for this, or I buy your hat. I know,
you something that you're like, hey, let's go get some
and eat. Like that's not a thing. It's just not

(01:00:25):
And I don't think it's because they don't care. I
just think that it's it has never been taught to
them to value it in that man.

Speaker 4 (01:00:33):
But I think it's deeper than that, my son.

Speaker 5 (01:00:35):
I think I think men traditionally take on the role
of provider, and this is a byproduct of being the provider.
Because if all childhood you are providing for the home
that includes their mother and you are not the recipient
of providership.

Speaker 4 (01:00:52):
You are the provider.

Speaker 5 (01:00:54):
So when it comes time to take care of you,
that's just not how the system is conditioned. Now I'm
not saying that's right or wrong, but I'm saying this
is a byproduct of being a provider.

Speaker 3 (01:01:04):
It's a byproduct of being a provider. And do you
think vulnerability has something to do with it as well?
That you know, uh are you say you're breaking up?
You know that maybe, like you said, they haven't been
taught because a man is not necessarily bringing up that. Hey,
I would like to have, you know, people celebrate me

(01:01:26):
for my birthday for five because it's not just Father's Day,
even birthdays and other special days. You have a lack,
if you will, of interest the same way that it
is for women. And so do you think that vulnerability
is just an issue across the board for men in

(01:01:47):
many different ways. That allows men to fall into a
place of like feeling, let's see, like having animosity that's
never addressed, which creates all types of anger issues, so
on and so forth.

Speaker 5 (01:02:02):
Absolutely, I think I think men, in particularly Black men,
perceive vulnerability as a showing of weakness. So a lot
of black men won't advocate for themselves and won't say, Hey,
my birthday's coming up in last year, y'all got me socks.
I would really like it if I got something that
showed me how much you value my energy, effort and

(01:02:22):
time and just Most men don't say that because they'd
rather be perceived as I don't need anything because I'm
the provider.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
Yeah, So anyway, we went down a rabbit hole that
was never our intention, but it just, you know, it came.

Speaker 5 (01:02:38):
I'll say, I'll say one more thing before we un
rabbit hole, and I'll use my son as an example.

Speaker 4 (01:02:45):
I've always I've been a fan of this.

Speaker 5 (01:02:47):
Dude from his rap days twenty years ago and as
i've gotten to know him more recently, Like, my son
is a very strong, principled man.

Speaker 4 (01:02:57):
Why so is it fair for me to call you that?

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
Yes? It is.

Speaker 4 (01:03:00):
And I saw a video of.

Speaker 5 (01:03:02):
You one time where you did not like Nike's response
to Kyrie Irving and you put all of your Nikes
down an insiderator yep, And I was like, like, this
dude truly stands on what he believes in a very

(01:03:23):
principled way, and I respect that about you, even if
you stand on certain principles that I may or may
not agree with, like the fact that you live how
you talk, and you talk how you live.

Speaker 4 (01:03:35):
I would be willing to bet if as a father.

Speaker 5 (01:03:40):
If my son only gets socks every birthday in every
father's day, but observes his children growing up in an
equally principled manner because that's the role model that they watched,
he would feel successful, successful and valued as a dad.
So that's why I say, I think that we need
to look at it in a much bigger scope.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
Like our blessings and our gifts come differently.

Speaker 4 (01:04:05):
Right, exactly, And.

Speaker 5 (01:04:08):
That's because our responsibilities and our roles are different.

Speaker 4 (01:04:12):
So thus what we get is different.

Speaker 5 (01:04:14):
Like we can't really say I want to be treated
like the other parent when your roles and responsibilities within
the dynamic are different. But if we raise a child
in this case, I'll just use a son as an example.
And you know, twenty years from now, my son is
in his sixties and you know, growing older, and he
observes his son holding his morals and principles and values

(01:04:40):
in the way that my son role modeled for him,
that would be far more.

Speaker 4 (01:04:45):
Valuable than socks.

Speaker 5 (01:04:46):
This is true, And I think that's the purpose, and
that's how we get rewarded. And quite frankly, we can't
expect the same rewards when our responsibilities are not the same,
is true.

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
Yeah, that's going to be the title of this show.

Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
More than Socks, that's what we're gonna call it. But
more than Socks is Mental Health Awareness Month for men,
And would love to just hear from you. What have
you been doing this month working with your clients? How
are you honoring Mental Health Awareness Month for men?

Speaker 4 (01:05:23):
Mean, you know, people.

Speaker 5 (01:05:26):
Ask me that every time it's Mental Health Awareness Month
or Men's mentalth Wedness.

Speaker 4 (01:05:30):
People ask me that, And for me, it's not really
any different.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
Like this month.

Speaker 5 (01:05:34):
I have been in the I've traveled the world and
in the past like three weeks, I've been in Poland,
I've been in the UK, I've been in Canada. I've
been in Durango, Colorado. I'm now in Los Angeles. I've
been in Gosh. I can't even think I've been in
all these places because mental health drives everything that I do,
and that's not changed by any particular month.

Speaker 4 (01:05:56):
That's not changed by any particular day.

Speaker 5 (01:05:59):
Every single client has my cell phone, I respond to
their phone calls and text messages because mental health it's
part of everything that I do. I decided to make
this my life, and I live that as if it's
my life, every single day, regardless of whatever month it is.
So what do I do the same thing I always do.
I get on these airplanes and I go to Poland,
and I go to the England, and I go to Toronto,

(01:06:21):
and I go to la and I am constantly doing
sessions when I'm on Zoom and all these crazy places,
and I'm taking people's phone calls because I love people,
and I love our people, and I think our culture
from mental health perspective, is wildly underserved. So my whole
purpose is I want to make sure that people know

(01:06:43):
that you can make very subtle small changes in your
life and change your whole lived experience. And for me,
that's all mental health is about. It's like changing the
way you live your life to change your entire lived experience.
And that's the same for me in January as it
is in December and every month in between.

Speaker 3 (01:06:59):
There's black people in Poland, and they're black people in
these places that you've been traveling to.

Speaker 5 (01:07:07):
Absolutely, yeah, there are black people in those places. But
also something that's very very important to me, I exist
in academic spaces where there are not a lot of
black people, and I think it's very important that black
students see the black man given a keynote at the
predominantly white conference, so that they know there are no

(01:07:28):
spaces where we can't go, and there's no spaces where
we can't influence, and there's no spaces where we can't
go and be our authentic selves. When I go and
do these keynotes, I'm wearing clothes that represent where I'm from.

Speaker 4 (01:07:40):
I think it is.

Speaker 5 (01:07:41):
Incredibly important that young black students see that there is
no space we cannot go and have influence.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
That's amazing. Do you have a therapist?

Speaker 4 (01:07:51):
No? Not currently?

Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
Not currently? Okay, Okay, I want to ask a very
controversial question. Oh shit, okay, because you know how I
follow you. So I listened to you, and there were
people coming out talking about Cassie Yes, and you made
a post and you and people were saying that she
was complicit and this and that, and you made a
post and you explained pretty much. I want you to

(01:08:16):
tell what you explained, right, and then after you give
a little bit of a synopsis to that, I want
to know, do you feel like Diddy has mental health
that somebody should pay attention to or should have some
level of accountability to what's happening, Because when I look
at me, just when I look at both situations, I
think there are two people who are dealing with mental health, right,

(01:08:39):
and I don't. And I think that we look at
the power dynamics and we and we just ignore the
fact that this man was on drugs. This man was
probably definitely dealing with levels of insecurity, all of these things.
And I don't know what his background is, his child upbringing,
but I don't I want to know if you feel
that he has mental health that could kind of be

(01:09:04):
able to relate to what has happened in this situation.

Speaker 5 (01:09:09):
Well, it's funny, bro, if you ask a controversial question,
I'm going to give you a controversial answer, probably, But
what I tried to explain to people is I got
really irritated because I saw a lot of people attacking Cassie.
And for me, it is irrelevant whether or not Cassie
got paid. It is an irrelevant whether or not Cassie

(01:09:29):
was using Diddy for a music career. None of that
gives him the right to assault her.

Speaker 4 (01:09:37):
Number one, which is what is alleged. Number two.

Speaker 5 (01:09:42):
Is there are a lot of people are who truly
believe that like a woman deserves certain treatment.

Speaker 4 (01:09:50):
And I want to say, I am.

Speaker 5 (01:09:52):
The child of a person who watched an abusive dad
not treat his children or wife. Well, there's a psychology
of how the women are controlled in that environment, and
unless you like understand that psychology, you really should just
be quiet, because, like I.

Speaker 4 (01:10:13):
Think you don't get it.

Speaker 5 (01:10:16):
Like I watched an interview one time with and Jay
Z referenced in one of his songs where Farrakhn said, like,
you should be quiet too.

Speaker 4 (01:10:25):
I think it was Wallace in.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
One of the interviews, Mike Wallace.

Speaker 5 (01:10:28):
Right, and he was basically saying, like, you don't understand
the thing that you're saying, so.

Speaker 4 (01:10:32):
You should just be quiet.

Speaker 5 (01:10:33):
And how I felt about this dynamic is unless you
understand the power dynamics between abuser and abused and how
control is initiated and kept going, then you don't understand
why Cassie didn't leave.

Speaker 4 (01:10:52):
So and there's no justification.

Speaker 5 (01:10:54):
I don't care if Cassie was using him for money
and opportunity and everything else.

Speaker 4 (01:10:59):
Some of the things.

Speaker 5 (01:11:00):
That are alleged do not give him the right to
treat her that way.

Speaker 4 (01:11:04):
So that was the point of my video.

Speaker 5 (01:11:09):
Now to answer my songs question one hundred percent, like
mentally healthy people don't do the things that Diddy is
alleged of doing. But here's the controversial thing I'm going
to say, So, yes, I think did he had mental
health issues, and he probably had those mental health issues
long before he became the person that we knew of

(01:11:29):
as Diddy. But wealth and fame also produce mental health
issues because you get used to the world catering to
what it is that you want, and you eventually lose
the ability to know that there are boundaries in this
world that you have to respect. And the more wealth
and fame you have, the easier it is for you

(01:11:51):
to lose that boundary and the longer you are wealthy
and famous, the harder it is to hold on to
the reality that not everything in this world is access
to you. And I think if I take a person
who's got some troubles, and there's if what is alleged
is true, Sean Colmes clearly has some troubles, and then
I give that troubled person unbelievable amounts of wealth and

(01:12:13):
unbelievable amount of fame.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
I e.

Speaker 5 (01:12:15):
Power, It's very easy to see how people lose the
boundary between what is mine and what is not my Hm.

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):
Wow, that's interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:12:24):
I mean definitely, I think some mental health stuff was there,
and I think that the defense has already attempted to
make the case that he was, you know, all high often,
very often, and therefore not necessarily in his right mind.
And we've argued this many times in different circles. I mean,

(01:12:45):
you know, well, and I don't know if you know this,
but you know, I love Puff very much. I have
a good relationship with him, and he has always been
very good to me. You know, I've never ever witnessed
any of this stuff. And that's generally what we say
when you know someone and you love them and you've

(01:13:05):
not seen it, but it does not make me numb
to and or confused about what I saw on that
video and also other things that I just believe to
be true. So I think that you know, and I
always tell mice, I think we as humans are walking
contradictions that you know, we can love Pooky knowing that

(01:13:26):
Pooky did some crazy stuff, right, We as black folks
say free John John all the time, and it's like, bruh,
John John was over there bugging you know.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
What I'm saying. And I mean, as long as we're
honest about it.

Speaker 3 (01:13:39):
I think that because when our young people are watching us,
when kids are watching us as they grow up, they
hear what we say and they see how we act
and how we react. And when someone that we don't
know does something, we are automatically This is kind of
like a question you could just jump in, but we
are automatically like, ill, there's an X on you because

(01:14:01):
you are a person that either I don't know or
I don't like. But when it's someone that we know,
we have familiarality with, or you know, at some point
we appreciated there aret, their talent or whatever, and they
do something, then it's kind of like h well, he
ain't never do it to me, or should have done this?

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
Or why didn't she leave? Well, why didn't this happen?
Or that happen? And I don't know about all the
other things. I think we will see what a jury
says about sex trafficking or what a jury says about
coheression and extortion and this and that and the third.
But the abusive side, which is not what.

Speaker 3 (01:14:37):
He has been indicted of, by the way, it's not
him abusing Cassie, is not there that part. I don't
understand how people are debating that. No, I see, I'm
not talking about you. You know you can't cause you. No,
I'm talking about I see people online who are like, well,
she might have done this or that and the third.

Speaker 1 (01:14:57):
And I feel like that may.

Speaker 3 (01:14:59):
Be because we have this contradiction of if it was
happening by someone else that we did not know or
appreciate for whatever reason, we'd be really pissed about it.
But when it's somebody we do know a half familiarality with,
we can make excuses for them.

Speaker 4 (01:15:15):
Well, we have a tendency.

Speaker 5 (01:15:18):
There's this thing in the psychological world that's known as
confirmation bias, which means if I have a positive feeling
towards you and I learned something negative, I have a
tendency to disbelieve it. And if I have a positive
feeling towards you and I and I hear something positive,
I have a tendency.

Speaker 4 (01:15:33):
To believe it, or vice versa.

Speaker 5 (01:15:34):
If I have a negative feeling towards you and I
hear something negative about you, I tend to believe it.
And if I hear something positive while I think negative you,
I tend to not believe it. But the important thing
is exactly what you said. It is okay to love
someone and believe that they should be held accountable because
we live in a society like for example, one of
the things now, I have never assessed Diddy, so I'm

(01:15:57):
not saying this is true, but if I were to
assess it, and one of the things that would be
on the list of things I'd be considering is narcissism.
And narcissists look for targets, and Tamika, You're not a
great target, and they look for targets. They look for
people with low self esteem that could be more easily controlled,

(01:16:17):
and they look for people that don't understand their self
worth they look for people need something from them that
they can use to control them. And you would not
be perceived by most narcissists as an easy target. So
I'm not surprised that you would say, well, I always
got this X, Y, and Z kind of treatment. Yeah,
because you don't have the kind of personality that would
have triggered him to do these alleged things.

Speaker 1 (01:16:39):
And I was not always this person.

Speaker 3 (01:16:42):
And that's why I know that what you're saying is true,
because there was a time in my life where I was,
you know, not living at home with my parents when
I should have been, and then I had no money,
you know, so I was kind of like living from
pillow to posts, as they say, not listening, not being respectful,
dropped off the school, and so it put me in

(01:17:02):
situations where people were able to take advantage of me
because they knew this girl doesn't have her shit together,
she's out of whack, she looks crazy, she's not well kept,
and they knew and they took advantage of that. And
and I'm just I'm taking Cassie and people like that
off the table. But to your point, people know who
they can do certain things, right.

Speaker 5 (01:17:24):
That is absolutely correct and Narcissists are always looking for targets.
Narcissists don't have relationships, and again, want to be clear,
I don't I do not know m to be narcissists,
but that's one of the things on the short list
i'd be considering. And they always always look for targets,
and you're not a great target. So it's not surprising
that you would say, well, I always got treated pretty

(01:17:44):
well because outside of the target, most people would say, oh,
he was very nice in charming. I know a lot
of celebrities that were at parties around him, and all
of them have said to me, I wasn't aware of
the things that were happening outside of what I saw
at the White Party.

Speaker 2 (01:18:02):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:18:02):
And because none of them really lined up as targets,
so they don't get they don't see it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:07):
And see me and my son and I argue this
one point that because my son knows a lot of
guys who work for Puff, they have they were like
raised not by him, but like, what would you say
in the environment.

Speaker 2 (01:18:20):
Since since ninety eight, I used to Mace is a
close friend of mine that been around I know a
lot of his security sad personal like people that were
his personal assistance, assistance. So I've seen different elements from
ninety eight until now, I know, and a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:18:38):
Of people and none of them, I mean, with the
exception of Mace, because he said the man's evil and dis.

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):
And I mean, I'm not understand from him suicide. Yeah,
with the exception of Maze, they had their own personal
situation and it was finance. It was based on finances.
It wasn't based on you know, a lot of the
accusations that's dealing with now. But for the most part,
they haven't seen this level of him, you know what
I'm saying. And a lot of them have like, well,

(01:19:04):
you know, I know he was. They deal, they do
deal with the narcissism, and they like, I know, he
definitely was the person that wanted to control and he
would do this and in all of those situations. But
they just didn't see And I think and I'm not
even saying they didn't see this version because what they
what they're presenting inside this case, a lot of these things,
you know, is about control or whatever. So you know,

(01:19:26):
you have to take it, believe it or you don't.
But I just think that what the media was projecting
prior to that's just all these Diddy parties and it
was just this freak ass where hundreds of people was
in and he was just taping people and he was
raping women and all that. Nobody that wasn't even a thing,
you understand I'm saying. So I think that's what it was.

(01:19:46):
And I think most people we were saying to yourself,
like now when you're saying this Diddy parties, like a
lot of us had went to parties that Puffet had
and we never seen any situations like this. So I
think that was the mindset going into the trial. Now
when you look at the trial, you realize it's more
geared around his personal relationships and how he carried on

(01:20:07):
his sex life and how they utilized it and the
people he utilized to control whatever whatever they're legend. So
it's a different premise than it was before. You know,
That's what had a lot Those were the conversation I
was having. I was like, I know too many people
that wouldn't be in the circumference of all this shit
that they talk about. It just wouldn't have happened in

(01:20:28):
that man. So now when we're looking up and say, okay,
this is that man personal life. For the most part,
it's him and the people and his staff that were
you know, he were utilizing them and within his personal sex.

Speaker 1 (01:20:38):
So say so, I.

Speaker 2 (01:20:41):
Mean, that's what the accusations is, but that wasn't what
they were saying.

Speaker 3 (01:20:45):
Yeah, the way they project in other words, but my
I mean, I hear what you're saying, y'all don't have
to translate it. But for my own whatever is that
the media made it seem like it was just any
party you went to because people would actually say that
to us and to other people, like, oh, you was
at a ditty party, So it was a freak off
because in their mind, you walk through the door and

(01:21:05):
immediately in order for you to be here, you gotta
get down. And that's just not the case. To your point,
most of the environments that we've been in have been fantastic, beautiful,
you know, everybody enjoined themselves. And then if these things
are true to your point, it goes on at a
time when folks don't see it, which is another part

(01:21:26):
of how people get away with some of the things
that they do. And again, not talking about Ditty so much,
but the broader perspective is that a lot of people
have another life that folks people know about, you know
what I mean.

Speaker 4 (01:21:41):
Yeah, So, but anyway, and think about the way power exists, Like.

Speaker 5 (01:21:48):
If I'm aware of the other life as you put it,
and he is Sean Colmes and everybody loves him and
they love his music and they love his work, and
he donuts to charity and.

Speaker 4 (01:21:59):
He does this, does that, and I accuse him of something.

Speaker 5 (01:22:03):
It is very often that the woman is not believed,
and most women live in a world there's like I'm
afraid to say anything because that person is very powerful.
So all I can say is and this goes back
to what you were saying to Meka, like I wish
the internet would just take a pause. And part of
the reason I wish that is people overvalue their opinions

(01:22:23):
and think they should be able to share them about
things they know nothing about. I have no idea what
Diddy was doing in his personal life, and I think
a lot of the stuff that Mice was just referring to.
It's just like the media and people on social media
like sharing their opinions and thoughts. Just because you like
that dude music doesn't mean that he didn't do every
single thing alleged in the indictment, and we need to

(01:22:44):
just sit back and let the courts like review the
evidence and say what happened and what didn't happen, and
live with what the judgment is.

Speaker 3 (01:22:52):
Well, how do we say that, because we don't live
with the judgment of a whole lot of things. We
get upset. We say that black men are being railroad.
And now you see that this issue with Tyler Perry
has come up. And I don't know if you read
the all the slides, because I read all the text
messages in the.

Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
Slot, and I you know, you know it was some
some funny business.

Speaker 3 (01:23:15):
I can tell that you know clearly this was a
relationship that's outside outside of.

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
The buying the bay the excuse me.

Speaker 3 (01:23:24):
This was a relationship that was outside of the boundaries
of a work employee relationship. And I keep telling everybody
that I work with, everybody that will listen to me.
People probably so tired of me saying over and over
again that you have to be very careful when you're
the boss and you work with people and the types

(01:23:46):
of relationships that you carry on with people, because it
doesn't matter what that person is saying to you. They
could be laying on the table butt, naked, everything open
begging you.

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):
To take it.

Speaker 3 (01:23:58):
In the moment you touch it, you are the one
with the power in that situation.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
And I keep telling people that, but nobody wants to
listen to me.

Speaker 3 (01:24:06):
But you do have this element of folks who are like,
well are Kelly and now Puff and then of course
Bill Cosby and then now here we go with Tyler Perry.

Speaker 1 (01:24:16):
So all the.

Speaker 3 (01:24:19):
Big time, very successful black men seem to be taken
out around sexual things, harassment, rape, things like that, and
folks are not willing to accept that.

Speaker 1 (01:24:31):
They just like this is even if they don't like
these people.

Speaker 4 (01:24:35):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:24:35):
Well, I want to be I want to be really careful,
make sure I express myself accurately.

Speaker 2 (01:24:39):
Here.

Speaker 5 (01:24:41):
One of the best things that you can do to
protect your mental health is mind your own business.

Speaker 2 (01:24:47):
That's that's a good one, Yes it is, but it's true.

Speaker 4 (01:24:52):
It's absolutely true.

Speaker 5 (01:24:53):
If I want to be a mentally healthy person, I
got to mind my own business, which I think is
harder to do in today's eight then it's ever been before,
because I have access to more of stuff that is
not my business than ever before.

Speaker 4 (01:25:07):
But I have to I have to recognize it.

Speaker 5 (01:25:10):
If I want to have a healthy life and take
care of my own mentality. I've got to learn how
to mind my own business.

Speaker 1 (01:25:15):
And drink water and drink.

Speaker 5 (01:25:17):
Water and you know, exercise whatever. But like, just mind
my own business. Now connected to that, I don't have
to like the system, and I can oppose.

Speaker 4 (01:25:26):
The system, but in an individual basis, I don't know
what Tyler Perry did or didn't do.

Speaker 5 (01:25:32):
I don't know what he said or didn't say, so
I'm gonna just not judge that. But I'm not unaware
of the pattern that black men seem to be targeted
once they get a certain level of wealth. And I
can say I oppose the system that seems to be
targeting black men, but I don't know that that specific
black men didn't do exactly what's allegedly I really don't

(01:25:52):
know there.

Speaker 3 (01:25:53):
But how do you reconcile those two things when people
feel like they're constantly attacked by the system, And now
here we are in a situation where one after the
next after the next, it's like they dropped like flies.

Speaker 1 (01:26:05):
I mean, what was his name, Cuba Gooding?

Speaker 3 (01:26:08):
I mean, is every time you turn around, it's one
of us, even even Elliott, even.

Speaker 1 (01:26:15):
What's his name? The one from the movies that.

Speaker 3 (01:26:21):
You know, As far as I'm concerned, he was over
there trying to protect himself from that woman.

Speaker 1 (01:26:25):
What's his name?

Speaker 2 (01:26:25):
Oh gosh, that was just In Creed, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:26:31):
The one who who who is in a relationship with
Megan Good.

Speaker 5 (01:26:36):
Oh yeah, yeah, major.

Speaker 3 (01:26:43):
Look at what happened to him, like you know, and
every people will have their own opinion, but it was
very clear the man told the lady leave him alone,
He got out the car, he ran from the lady.

Speaker 1 (01:26:53):
Yes, did she have bruises?

Speaker 3 (01:26:54):
Yet she did, but nonetheless he they got into whatever
they got into, and like my son says, top relationships,
shit happened. And then on top of that, then he
gets away from her and now somehow he becomes like
he loses everything right as a result of that. So
I'm just saying it's kind of hard for people to
be able to decipher. And again I'm not saying whether

(01:27:16):
folks did right or wrong, because if you bring r
Kelly up around me, like my whole birthday, people kept
playing r Kelly at all the parties and it was really.

Speaker 1 (01:27:24):
Making me upset.

Speaker 3 (01:27:25):
But when I turn around, everybody was having such a
good time that I said he had go negative Nancy
want to go over to the DJ, and the DJ
is into it, like, yeah, they doing I don't smigny
not and everybody's having a good time, and here I
go negative Nancy finding my way to the DJ booth
to say, please, don't play R Kelly. I did it

(01:27:46):
the first night at Sylvia's. The DJ looked at me
a little bit like what, and I'm like, yeah, we
don't play R Kelly.

Speaker 1 (01:27:52):
But as every day went on, it's kind of hard
to always be the one.

Speaker 3 (01:27:57):
But I don't want R Kelly played at my parties.
I don't listen to R Kelly. I don't want to
hear it. So I'm not trying to say that I'm
defending any of them, but I can understand, especially as
a black man, watching one after the next after the next,
and on top of that, cousin Pooky, cousin John John,
and even maybe me, we're all in the caught up
in this system that just finds everything wrong with us,

(01:28:20):
and it's hard for me to just sit here and
be like, yeah, these people did all these things and
they all need to go to jail for the rest
of their lives.

Speaker 5 (01:28:28):
Yeah, no, I agree with that, and I don't think
all these people did all these things, and they all
should go to jail for the rest of their lives,
and they all deserve advocation winning if there are improprieties.
But I want to go back like again, So let
me bring up confirmation bias. One of the ways that
racism works. Let's say I have a bias against black people,

(01:28:53):
and as a consequence of that bias, I don't look
at my song and see an upstanding, good person.

Speaker 4 (01:29:01):
And then I see my son in a video with
a woman running from him.

Speaker 5 (01:29:10):
It is very easy for me and my negative bias
to believe a negative thing about him. So when someone
then says my son was being inappropriate with that woman,
that's how the system works because there's a negative bias
against black people in the system. So black people end
up overcharged. They end up frequently charged when non black
people wouldn't be. And one of the things that I

(01:29:33):
would say, and I have lots of conversations, like, if
you were a black celebrity, you have probably called me
within the last couple of years and we have probably met,
and I have to tell them, like you have to
know you exist in a society that doesn't look at
you and give you grace. So that means if you
find yourself in a toxic situation, you are now risking

(01:29:55):
all of what you have built. You have a higher
responsibility because you have to be aware you live in
a society that wants to see you fall. That's just
the reality of what it's like to be a successful
black man. So if I said, oh, I got a
secret video of my song some women running from by.

Speaker 2 (01:30:13):
Soan, people would want to watch that.

Speaker 5 (01:30:15):
But if I said I got a secret video somebody
running from mister Rogers, They're probably not as interested because
they know the bias doesn't exist and people have a
hard time believing.

Speaker 4 (01:30:25):
So we have an unfair out.

Speaker 1 (01:30:29):
Here, that's what you're said. We black out here.

Speaker 5 (01:30:32):
Yeah, we black out here, and we have an unfair responsibility.
But that responsibility is still there, and that is I
have to be very careful with how I live my
personal life.

Speaker 4 (01:30:43):
I have to be very careful with what I do.

Speaker 5 (01:30:45):
Like, can an average person send inappropriate text messages.

Speaker 4 (01:30:49):
To their employees?

Speaker 2 (01:30:50):
Probably because nobody cares.

Speaker 5 (01:30:51):
But if I were sitting there talking to Tyler Perry,
I would say, if you want to say these things,
go over and say the things to the person. Yes,
because you text them, you're giving evidence, and that evidence
will be devoured by the world differently simply because of you,
who are a black man.

Speaker 1 (01:31:06):
We're gonna wrap it up.

Speaker 2 (01:31:07):
But I just want you to just on as we
leave for Men's Mental Health Month, give just us black men, Well,
I give us just one piece of advice to deal
with this, all these things that we have to deal
with every day, understanding the dynamic understanding that we black

(01:31:29):
out here. You know, give what would be just a
piece of advice that you can give just every black
man for Mental health mon.

Speaker 4 (01:31:38):
Fight. That's what I would say.

Speaker 5 (01:31:42):
I would I would tell every black man to fight
on the battlefields with which they're capable of fighting. Fighting
an advocation leads to hope, and fighting an advocation leads
to change. So I would say, advocate, push, push the boundary.
It's like my way of fighting is. I am a

(01:32:03):
black psychotherapist, and roughly ten percent of all psychotherapists are black.
It's a wildly unrepresented, underrepresented community. And one of the
ways that I fight is I exist in these white
academic worlds and a lot of my books are academic
and I will go to conferences where I'm the only
black person on the stage speaking. And one of my

(01:32:25):
ways of fighting is making sure I show up and
I represent my culture in.

Speaker 4 (01:32:29):
The way that I do that.

Speaker 5 (01:32:30):
It's in the way that I dress, talk, walk, act,
It's in everything that I do. One of the ways
that my son fought is he made sure he was
aligned with a basketball player and he doesn't wear Nike anymore.
But whatever your battlefield is, make sure you fight. This
world is not fair to us. It is a threat
every single moment of every single day, and we have

(01:32:54):
to we have to fight. And in that fight, we
also have to understand that the best way we can
fight is economically. We have to understand that dollars win fights.
And there are two examples that I can get. The
first one I'll be I'll be current. The first one
is what's happening with the boycott with Target. The Target

(01:33:16):
boycott is one of the most effective financial boycotts of
the Common era, and it's leading to conversations within Target
because they are losing massive amounts of money simply because
black people said, we're not going to spend our dollars there.
And economic fighting is one of the best. And the
other thing I'll say about an example of that is
Rosa Parks. Now we we were told, or I was

(01:33:40):
told when I was studying history, that Rosa Parks and
the boy the bus boycott in Montgomery was because Rosa
Parks didn't sit down and it led to this huge
uproar and then eventually the the bus companies allowed black
people to sit whatever they wanted on the on the bus.

(01:34:00):
But that's actually not the full story. The full story
is well, first of all, there was a woman before
Rosa Parks that wasn't the ideal candidate to trigger this boycott.

Speaker 4 (01:34:14):
There you go exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:34:15):
So they got a more ideal candidate and Rosa Parks
who intentionally did what she did, and then they use
that as an opportunity to stage a boycott. Now what
they don't tell you is that all started because the
bus companies raised their prices by a penny per ride,
and they knew the predominant population using the bus were black,

(01:34:35):
so now we got to pay more to be treated poorly.
The black people said, no, this is not going to work,
so we're not going to ride on your buses.

Speaker 4 (01:34:43):
The bus boycott lasted.

Speaker 5 (01:34:44):
Over a year, and in that time, the church community
created car pooling to make sure black people could get
to their appointments and to their jobs and those sorts
of things. There were three bus companies in Montgomery, Alabama
when the boycott started, and two of them went out
of business, meaning they would rather go out of business
than serve black people with dignity and respect. The remaining

(01:35:08):
bus company thought to themselves, if we sort this out,
we will be the last bus company remaining and thus
will get all the business, and that is why they rely.
They stopped that increase of up to a penny, and
they stopped having black people sit in the back of
the bus.

Speaker 4 (01:35:25):
So we think of this as like, oh, this.

Speaker 5 (01:35:28):
Woman got really tired and she didn't sit on the
bus and the bus company decided to change.

Speaker 4 (01:35:32):
That's not true.

Speaker 5 (01:35:33):
We gave economic punishment to the bus companies for the
way that they treated us, and that's what led to change. So,
if you're going to tell me what's one thing that
I would have say that black men in particular need
to do, it's fight because in the fight is hope
that the fight will lead towards change, and the most
powerful thing in any journey of mental health is hope.

(01:35:55):
So everyone needs to fight on the battlefields with which
they have access to. My saw, he has a large audience.
So one of the things he did to fight was
I'm gonna throw these nikes away and I'm gonna make
a video of me doing it. I'm gonna explain why
that was. That was an advocatory step by him. Now,
the average person who might be like a gym teacher

(01:36:16):
or whatever, you got to find what your battlefield is.
But we need to fight. We need to fight collectively.
We need to give economic punishments to people who refuse
to teach us with dignity and respect, and in those
actions it leads to hope for change.

Speaker 2 (01:36:29):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (01:36:30):
You the man Elliott Elliott Connie Man, I tell you
you guys, make sure you tap into Family Therapy, his
podcast on the Black Effect pac podcast Network.

Speaker 1 (01:36:41):
He is our sibling in this space.

Speaker 3 (01:36:43):
And you know, we appreciate our brother Charlemagne of God
and all of the team members there at Black Effect
Podcast Network for giving us a platform to be able
to share information and topics that some people might not
find to be the what is it, you know? The
trend the trending topics. Listen to what we're talking about.

(01:37:04):
It is absolutely trending because it's trending in our lives,
and mental health awareness is trending, as you said, Elliott,
every single day. It's not just during a month for
our men. It's not just during a moment for women,
for families, for anybody. Every single day we're dealing with
issues and trying to figure out ways to stay sane

(01:37:25):
in a society that is completely out of control, whether
it be the overstimulation of what we have on our
phones every day, watching us be killed, watching our rights
be rolled back, looking at a president who is completely
our president needs you.

Speaker 1 (01:37:41):
You should call.

Speaker 3 (01:37:42):
Up to the White House and say my name is
Elliott Kannie, and I don't support you, but I feel
like I can help you. You need my health for real,
because the brother is in trouble. I mean seriously, And
you know I was thinking the other day is that
I think presidents get held hostage right by their own
team members. And because it's very clear that like when

(01:38:06):
he comes out and he says, well, we can't really
continue to deport the farmers, and you know, we got
to make sure that the hotels are good. He says
all these things which would have made since in the beginning,
and then days later he goes to like, no, you know,
we're gonna go back and go hard, and Ice needs

(01:38:27):
to get out there and do what they need to do.
It tells me that from the moment that he speaks
until he goes back in the back room somewhere, he's
got people who are white nationalists, like a man by
the name of Stephen Miller and others who are telling
him we have to stick to the Project twenty twenty
five plan, even though he knows because he is even

(01:38:49):
as a failed business person, he in some people's minds,
they're like, he's not that fail shit. He made it
to be president of the United States. And he lives
in the Trump tap Like it doesn't matter if he
has cash. People don't care about if you have cash
in the bank. They care about what kind of car
you drive, what kind of plane you fly on. They
don't know that you gotta trade you ask for your head.
They don't care about that.

Speaker 1 (01:39:10):
They just want you to have the stuff that looks
like you have success. And so he looks like a
very successful man.

Speaker 3 (01:39:18):
He's got Trump International Hotels, he's.

Speaker 1 (01:39:21):
Got all of this stuff. These people they think he
knows what he's doing.

Speaker 3 (01:39:24):
And guess what, he knows that his businesses will not
work without the population that they are trying to destroy
in this nation, and that is the immigrants that make
up a huge part of the workforce in America. And
but you know what, he can't just go off and
do and say whatever he wants because he promised all
these people that he was going to help them fulfill

(01:39:46):
their agenda and now he's stuck having to do it
or else they'll be like Elon had different issues. So
Elon said, I'm gonna put the shit in the newspaper.
The other people they say, we control your security detail.

Speaker 1 (01:39:57):
But let me be.

Speaker 3 (01:39:59):
Quiet, all right, Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
Elliott Connie.

Speaker 5 (01:40:06):
You know I agree with every word you know, and
I would love to call it what I wouldn't say,
I support you, but because I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:40:12):
You don't I said you don't.

Speaker 5 (01:40:13):
I don't support you, but no, I don't support you,
but you do need help. But again, narcissism would be
on the very short list of things I would be
thinking about it.

Speaker 4 (01:40:23):
Why I would assess.

Speaker 1 (01:40:24):
Him too, that's full circle.

Speaker 4 (01:40:26):
Yeah, so it's.

Speaker 5 (01:40:27):
We live in a really difficult world. And I think
it's hard being black out here. I think it's hard.
I think it's hard being anything other than a sis
gender white male and I and I think we have
to I think we got to fight. Like I really
mean that, like we I mean fight is a strong
word and it evokes emotion, but I really we'd have
to advocate. We have to stand up, we have to
do what we think is right, and we have to

(01:40:48):
bond together. When we bond together, we're essentially unstoppable. In
history has bared that out. Yeah, so we're not always
great at bonding together, but when we do, mountains literally move,
that's right and history has absolutely.

Speaker 4 (01:41:04):
Shown that up.

Speaker 5 (01:41:05):
And on some level, I almost don't care how big
the barrier or obstacle or oppressive attempt to put around
my people because we have a historical history, we have
a pattern of overcoming everything put in front of us.
So all you're doing by doing the crazy things you're
doing with Project twenty five is you're giving our future

(01:41:28):
selves a story to tell because we're going to overcome
this too, because that's what we always do.

Speaker 1 (01:41:32):
Absolutely well.

Speaker 3 (01:41:33):
I just hope that we don't perish in the midst
of these people's wars that they're creating. But you know,
like you said, even that will be okay. It's good
to see you. Everybody needs an Elliott Connie in their lives.
So get you an Elliott Connie and you can go
listen to him at Family Therapy on the Black and
Pect And you can go listen to Elliott Connie at

(01:41:54):
Family Therapy on the Black Effect podcast network.

Speaker 4 (01:41:59):
Yeah, thanks for having me. I love y'all so much.

Speaker 5 (01:42:02):
I support everything that y'all do, and the voices that
you guys are for black people is incredibly powerful and.

Speaker 4 (01:42:10):
Impactful, and I hope you guys always know that.

Speaker 5 (01:42:12):
So when I say fight, I think you guys are
great examples of people who advocate for what you believe
in and always do that.

Speaker 1 (01:42:18):
Thank you. That was good. I mean, listen, here's the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:42:23):
He is, like what I like about Elliott, and there's
a lot of there are people who they do one
thing and that's all they can talk about. It is
like one thing that you know, whatever, if it's if
it's therapy, that's all they want to talk about. If
it's politics, that's all they want to talk about. With him,
you can go from politics to mental health to hot
topics of the day, and he's able to sort of

(01:42:45):
cover the gamut.

Speaker 1 (01:42:45):
And so that's why I like talking to him.

Speaker 3 (01:42:47):
I spend a lot of time listening to the things
he says and trying to get his take. And like
he said, we don't always agree, but I agree with
him more than I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:42:56):
Agree with all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:42:58):
He's very sensible and he's very descriptive, right, and he
breaks things down to where you let me like, he
doesn't leave room for you to be like, well, what
it's like he's very good at what he does.

Speaker 3 (01:43:13):
Yeah, he is so, but you know, and he's also mature.
You can always lived through some life, you know, and
that's important. I mean, I think even with us, like
when we're talking about things, sometimes people may not get it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:28):
Yeah, that's true. People don't always get it.

Speaker 3 (01:43:31):
And it's like you will, you know, but we have
to learn that because we've been ahead of our time.

Speaker 1 (01:43:37):
On issues all the time. And then then next thing,
you know, everybody's saying what we already said.

Speaker 2 (01:43:43):
Yeah, it's very strange. That brings me to my I
don't get it. I have I have two I don't
get it. Oh my god, to one of them is
gonna be really quick. I just don't get anybody that
still is a Trump supporter, like, I just don't get it.
It's at this point you deal with mental health. You're
dealing with some than that you need. Elliot Khanni, you
definitely need to go see Ellia Connie. If you, if you,

(01:44:05):
if you're looking at Trump right now, the where we
are right now, and man, we said he was going
to end the wars on day one, who has made
every other war worse and about to have us on
into World War three, if you're you're still trying to
convince yourself or anyone else that Donald Trump is a

(01:44:25):
good president, you're dealing with No, No, You're really dealing
with some ship that we can't help you, Elliot Cohnnie
might be able to help you, but I can't help you.

Speaker 1 (01:44:34):
I know, Tom can't we My you should not say.

Speaker 2 (01:44:39):
No, no, we can't. We can't help anybody that right now.
If you in your home, you're like Trump Trump, you
are dealing with Jim Jones Colt like mentality where where
you might drink poison and jump off the roof because
you just don't even realize where you are at this point.
So that's just my first I don't get it. My second,

(01:45:00):
I don't get it. It's a little more logical. It's serious.
But you know, if you are living Harlem, from Harlem,
if you're from New York City, you know, you know
that there is an unwritten rule that during Malcolm X's
birthday that the stores closed down. A lot of people
didn't know. To me, said she didn't remember. She didn't know.

(01:45:22):
So what I know is that on Malcolm X's birthday
there is a three to four hour window that they
shut all the stores down. I think it's from like
one to four. It's three hour. I think it's like
from one to four all of the stores shut down
out of respect for Malcolm X, you know, and it's
been going on for years. I happened to be walking

(01:45:43):
on one twenty fifth Street during this and I was
about to go into storey there. Yo, we got five
more minutes because we gotta shut down, Like what you
mean you gotta shut down? And I was like, oh,
forgot is Malcolm X's birthday. And there was they were
doing the march. You know, you see them walking down
the streets and end up going somewhere else, driving off
and leaving. But later on that day, I've seen that

(01:46:09):
Chick fil A, who's only been there probably about a
year now. I don't even know if Chick fil A
has been on one twenty fifth Street a year, but
they didn't honor this ship. Now like every other store,
every other store I think from I want to say,
from Lenox down to Saint Nick. All the stores are

(01:46:29):
closed on one twenty fifth Street, and Chick fil A
didn't want to honor it. And I seen people outside
and they they refuse to let people in, like it
was a mab like sis, y'all if y'all not.

Speaker 1 (01:46:45):
Go You saw the protest, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:46:48):
Literally saw the protests like now yeah, and they were
standing in front of Chick fil A and they refused
to let people in. And it's like for me, I
would think that if you come to a community as
a corporation, organization, franchise, you will want to respect the
rules of the community. Because every other store, planning, fitness

(01:47:08):
foot locker, Jimmy Jazz, I mean, you name the stores,
all of them, Kentucky Fried Chicken, you name any store
they understood they put they had their signs in their windows,
store will be closed from one to four. An observers
of Malcolm X's birthday, I don't understand why would chick

(01:47:29):
for late and not get the memo, And I know
somebody gave them because it's a thing everybody knows that
they what they do is they go down the street.
I think they go down like a day or two
before and they notify.

Speaker 1 (01:47:43):
You A day or two is not enough.

Speaker 2 (01:47:45):
It is to notify you that the thing is gonna
be shut down because we're giving you a whole day.

Speaker 3 (01:47:51):
I just said a day or two is not enough.
It doesn't I think with you know me, I think
about process. So I would say that people need a
lot of time in order to know so that they
can prepare themselves and just know what they have to do. However,
it doesn't matter if they found out.

Speaker 1 (01:48:08):
Two days before. Repebody else is doing it.

Speaker 2 (01:48:11):
Respective community should be.

Speaker 3 (01:48:12):
But you know a lot of times some of the
people and I don't know if this is inappropriate to say,
so I'm apologizing from the gate, and you can correct
me if I'm wrong, because we used to say this.
But it's a lot of things we used to say.
We can't say no more. But a lot of those
folks are foreigners. They like the owner or the managers,

(01:48:33):
the people who run these businesses, they're not really from here.

Speaker 2 (01:48:39):
Is the manager's supposed to call a corporate office and
let them, but the.

Speaker 3 (01:48:42):
Corporate office is automatically getting ready to tell you that
they don't observe.

Speaker 2 (01:48:46):
Because that's not true because every other this what I'm
trying to tell you, have every other franchise that close
their doors. And I know the people in the store.
They don't have the authorization to say we're not we're
gonna close. No, they got the word from them, Okay,
we're gonna respect the community. Because I already think it's
disrespect that Malcolm X doesn't have a national Holidays but
the fact that you won't even observe the little bit

(01:49:07):
of the thing that he got from a six block radius,
that you just shut your store down for three hours
out of respect, and the community demands that. So when
I watched the people outside of Chick fil A, and
they was like, well, listen, if you don't respect Malcolm,
then you can't We even don't respect you. Yeah, And
I actually haven't been back.

Speaker 1 (01:49:27):
To Chick fil A since you shouldn't eat it nowhere.

Speaker 2 (01:49:29):
I mean, I don't my kids like to eat it,
so once in a while I'll buy. But now when
they be like Chick fil AaB like nah, they don't
respect Malcolm X, so we ain't. We ain't going there.

Speaker 1 (01:49:37):
Well, here's what I'll tell you.

Speaker 3 (01:49:40):
I agree with you, and I think that they got
one protest, which is a warning now. And I don't
know if folks want to wait all the way until
next year, but they probably will to see if these
people do right next year. But you can't forget about it.
You have to make sure that next year it's clear. Okay,
let's see what you're gonna do, and the next time,
if they don't do it, it got their warning.

Speaker 1 (01:50:01):
They don't do it the next time.

Speaker 3 (01:50:03):
The whole it has to be you can't even eat
at that particular store.

Speaker 1 (01:50:10):
It has to be closed. You can't stay there.

Speaker 3 (01:50:11):
That you take a page out of New Era Detroit's book,
where they don't they're like your doors in our community.
I think that's I agree with you. I was just saying,
like we should make sure they are. They have now
been informed a year.

Speaker 2 (01:50:26):
They have demed.

Speaker 3 (01:50:27):
But but you know, the turnover in these places, the
ownership or whatever. It's a franchise, so it's not like
the corporate office has but so much jurisdiction over what
the local franchises do. Like the franchise, you know, there's
a rule book. There's a rule book that has you know,
certain things that they know. You can't have people if

(01:50:48):
the whole company shuts down on Sundays and says you
can't open yours on Sunday. But you don't necessarily have
to follow every single detail. Your franchise has a little
bit of room. So you got to find out, you know,
been some work that has to be done. But I
think what it has shown is that the people ain't playing.
So hopefully you just shut shit down for three hours

(01:51:09):
and be quaiet A.

Speaker 2 (01:51:12):
Don't go on the target list.

Speaker 1 (01:51:13):
Now, oh well there's that shut it down.

Speaker 2 (01:51:18):
And with that said, we've come to the end of
another episode. We appreciate shout out to our guest today,
Elliot Khannie extraordinariy psychologists.

Speaker 1 (01:51:27):
Will you He is a psychotherapist psycho therapist.

Speaker 2 (01:51:31):
He is an amazing individual, Like he's so cool and
every time I see him, he always gives me love
hugs and you know, it always gives me my flowers
and I give him his He's a dope dude. Once again,
continue to follow us. Let us know what you like,
let us know what you don't like. Give us ideas
about guests that you want to see. Let us know
some topics. Tell us you love us, tell us you

(01:51:52):
hate us, tell us anything. Make sure you follow us
at tam Underscore Show on Instagram and on YouTube. It's
t of my show PC. I'm not gonna always be right.
Tamika D. Mallories and I could always be wrong, but
we will both always and I mean always, be authentic.

Speaker 1 (01:52:10):
That's how