Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Small, help from Small, Small, Human area, Small, It's so funky.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Welcome to another edition of Small Doses Podcast, Live and
Direct from the Mayhem, the Descending Madness, and all the above.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I your girl, Amanda Seals, find.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Myself on a daily basis trying to take it all
in and filter out what can be actually alchemized into art,
into activism, into inspiration, while not letting the rest that's
left behind degrade degrade me internally, I think about the
(00:59):
people of you done, people of Bosnia and Herzegova, Palestine, Cambodia, Brasil, Chile,
who watched this happen to their own nations. And I
wonder what we can learn, what we can learn South Korea.
This is what I'm always trying to figure out, like
(01:20):
what can we learn?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
What can we learn to apply?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I also have a deeper conflicting feeling, which is that
a number of those places that I just named, the
United States was at the crux of their descent into fascism,
So why wouldn't we.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Be at the suffering hands of it in our own time?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
And I know that there are so many people who
still say things like they got what they voted for.
I know there are so many people who still say
things like na see Kamala, and I just I'm always
fascinated when I see this because I wonder, at what
point do you wake up and realize, if at all,
(02:07):
that this was unavoidable. Trump just signed a so during
the hole Tariff's madness, he signed an elective order that
gives DOGE, that gives DOSE the right to audit federal elections.
So when I tell y'all that there might not be
(02:27):
a mid term, I'm not exaggerating. And even if there
is a mid term, it's already being set up to
be a setup. So this episode is grounded in when
I look at the landscape of things against what I'm
learning from other places that have been in this similar landscape,
(02:50):
I'm also identifying similarities, right, And one of the similarities
is the bourgeoisie class.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
There's always a bourgeoisie class that claims to be like
a political but ultimately they are political in the fact
that they will essentially do whatever to retain their access
to money, to power, to convenience, and thus.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
They are political. I mean, there's just no way around that.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Right, once you're in a fascist framework, I mean, even
before that but especially if you're in a fascist framework,
your access to these things is going to have to
be through political channels. The United States has a different
makeup than a lot of other places in that it
is such a melting pot, if you will, of ethnicities,
(03:44):
of class of people who are also different status in
terms of citizens. So you've got like undocumented, then you've
got immigrants who are documented. Then you've got visa holders
who have very different types of visas. Then you have
of you know, folks who are Green card holders. Then
you have naturalized citizens, then you have American born citizens.
(04:06):
So you know, there's just such a very wide arrange
in many different directions of individuals that exist as Americans.
And one of the unique aspects in that range is
of black Americans. We exist here differently than we exist
anywhere else. Black people exist in the United States differently
(04:26):
than we exist anywhere else because of slavery and how
the United States has dealt with slavery or not dealt
with it, because of the civil rights movement, and how
the United States has dealt with the civil rights movement
or not dealt with it because of reconstructions, because or sorry, reconstruction.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
But that was really Black American of me too.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
You see, I'll put an s on that for no reason,
because of reconstructions, because of the prison industrial complex, all
of these things, and I'm top lining right now, there's
subsets to all of these things. All of these things
are very unique to the Black American experience.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
So is the black bourgeoisie.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Because the black bourgeoisie and their access to all the
things I said that the bourgeoisie class is typically trying
to protect right. So their access to wealth, their access
to power, their access to resources has not been simply
just by you know, an ability to be in certain
political spaces. It hasn't been simply just by an ability
(05:28):
to have money. But race, as of whiteness, the literal
construct of whiteness, became the currency. I find it imperative
that I acknowledge that race is a construct. As we
are witnessing Donald Trump, the President of the United States,
(05:50):
pass an executive order that says he is restoring let
me not.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Even play with this. I'm going to give you the
exact name the order.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Its Executive Order one four five sixty three Restoring Truth
and Sanity to American History, and it gives the administration
control over the National Museum of African American Histories exhibits
and insists and insists that race listen close to this
is a biological reality, not a social construct. So this
(06:21):
bucking of science as it relates to climate change has
now descended upon as it relates to race, and all
the black folks that have been out here saying this
is not our issue, this is not our problem.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Where boots on the ground.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, I hope that you got a lot of dancing
in because it's time. White culture is literally just oppression,
and the black bourgeoisie were formed in seeking access to safety,
to freedom, to wealth, to legislative power with whiteness as
(07:01):
a currency. This is something that is different now because
after the Civil Rights Movement, the whiteness as a currency
shifted to simply capitalism as a currency. But capitalism does
the work of white supremacy, and so it no longer
meant that you have to be white passing or light skin.
(07:26):
It meant that you just have to be willing to
do the work of white supremacy. You have to be
willing to uphold capitalism. And so today on this episode,
I want to talk about what that looks like in
current examples, and why some of the folks that we
(07:47):
may think are kinfolk are really just skin folk, and
what it is about their behavior as a member of
the black bourgeoisie that harms, and why the black bourgeoisie
as an existence in the United States, particularly in this time,
is a contributing factor to the dissent into fascism.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Let's get into a gem.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Drop dim dropping, gem dropping, dim dropping.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
We're dropping on these. So today's gym dropping is black
conservatives versus the black bourgeoisie. And it's a similar square
to rectangle situation. You know, like a square is a rectangle,
but a rectangle can't be a square. And this is
a similar comparison to in my opinion, the black conservatives
and black bourgeoisie. In order to be a black conservative,
(08:44):
you simply just have to align with conservative ideals. And
when I say conservative, I mean specifically conservative political ideologies.
So I don't simply just mean conservative as it relates
to like, oh, I've been wearing long skirts. I mean
conservative political ideologies that ultimately extend beyond simply just religion
(09:05):
or fiscal conservatism, but also extend to the ways in
which certain communities are addressed, managed, disregarded, etc. Black bourgeoisie
are folks who exist at a.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Certain tier of class, even in their blackness.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
They exist at a certain tier of class that makes
it to where they don't have to necessarily be conservative.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
They typically are, but they don't have to be conservative.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
They just need to be willing to do what needs
to be done to protect their position as the black bourgeoisie.
So you're not simply back bourgeoisie because you have money.
You're black bourgeoisie because of what you're committed to doing
to protect that money, to protect that access. Because ultimately
you can be a member of the black bougaisie, whether
(09:54):
it's Obama in the White House or Donald Trump in
the White House. You just have to be willing to
uphold a stableflishment because establishment is what allows you to continue.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
To uphold your position above.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
What is considered to be the swaths or the community
I should say of black and brown people. Black conservatives
are often within that framework, operating within the black conservative
framework with a goal of attaining black bourgeoisie ship, not
realizing that ultimately, if you ain't they already and you're
(10:29):
a member of the black working class and you are
a black conservative, you are literally being counterproductive to your
own elevation because the bourgeoisie, white, black, purple polke about
otherwise retain their position due to their being a minority.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Everybody can't get or else to day worth having.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
So when we talk about the black bourgeoisie, we're talking
about a subsect of people who have managed to gain
wealth and access regardless of.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Being black, and have committed to maintaining that.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
And consider that the maintenance of that is outside of
whatever repercussions come to other members of their race. For them,
race is not even a social construct. It's irrelevant as
long as they have access to the methods that control it.
(11:30):
Black conservatives, I believe, are people who ultimately believe in
America and the United States that doesn't believe in them.
They believe in a vision of democracy that didn't consider them.
They are committed to a ideology that again sees them
(11:56):
as biologically inferior no matter what they believe. So when
we look at these two groups, ultimately what we're seeing
are two lineages.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Is that a word lineage is linear.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Are two tributaries that are leading into the elevation of
white supremacy via the weaponization of black people against other
black people.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
And some might say, well case orrah, so be it.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I believe that there is something very precious and worth
protecting in the legitimacy of what it is to be
a Black American within this nation and our unique indigenity
as such. And so when it comes to either of
(12:51):
these groups, I consider it imperative to be able to
identify and address them directly. So when we talk about
the black bourgeoisie, you know, there's this idea that if
you are a believer in education, that if you are
(13:14):
a believer in black excellence, etc. That you are somehow
like a member of the black bourgeoisie. I literally was
called a member of the black petty bourgeoisie petite bourgeoisie,
because I said, if you're using your money to buy
Nike suits and Jordan's and you don't have a passport,
then you're losing.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
And people just came at my neck for that. They
were just livid.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
They said, Amanda Seals is an elitist member of the
black petty bourgeoisie who is passport shaming disenfranchised black folks.
Even though I didn't say anything about black people in
my tweet. I guess the reference to Jordan's made my
tweet about black folks. But ultimately, if we address that,
that to me had nothing to do with anything about
(13:59):
being petty bourgeoisie and everything to do with wanting black
folks in this country to understand that our consumerism will
not save us.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
That was the point in that tweet.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Our consumerism will not save us. Our consumerism will not
give us access to safety. Our consumerism will not break
us out of the limitations of what the United States
creates for perspective for so many black folks. That's what
that tweet was about. The black bourgeoisie of the United
States have not It's not like there's something new. Their
(14:30):
trajectory or their mechanism is somewhat shifted over the past
I would say forty years. However, they have existed because
there have always been sellouts, and there have always been
the weak, and there have always been capitalists.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
As long as capitalism existed. Once there became a means
to gain at the expense and exploitation of others, you
gonna get that in every color, baby.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
So whiteness, the social construct of whiteness, which was created
and appropriated for the sake of advancing the Transatlantic slave trade,
because slavery existed before, but it was whiteness that was
created to make the Transatlantic slave trade a legitimate form
of business, and not just folks acting up out of
(15:20):
lack of civilization. Literally, they created the right to oppress
as some type of act of showing they were civilized.
It's incredibly backwards and ridiculous. Nonetheless, it was effective because
it allowed for the business of slavery to go untethered,
unchallenged for hundreds of years.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
In the United States.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
There naturally became folks who were the result of that slavery,
born out of rape, and their access to the white
construct was less about their being the benefactor of their
parents because in the United States it was different than
(16:06):
in the Caribbean. In the Caribbean, if you were the
child of a slave owner, you were still a part
of his lineage and thus had a right to being
a benefactor of his wealth. In the United States, that
was not the case in the United States. If you
are a slave and you were taken advantage of by
(16:27):
your slave owner, and you bore a child, that is
fifty percent the genes of that slave owner.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
That child is still a slave.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
So out of this we get children who are of
course bearers of the recessive gene of whiteness, and who
then are able to immerse themselves in white society by
completely severing ties with anything related to their black identity.
And we know that whiteness is a construct because you
(16:58):
can do that, right.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
We know that whiteness is a construct because you can
do that.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
We know that Judaism exists both as a religion and ethnicity,
because there are Jewish people who practice the religion that
are not of the ethnicity, that can at the drop
of a hat, immerse themselves into the umbrella of white
supremacy without any issues. We know this, But then you
(17:24):
have places like the South Louisiana, for what it's worth,
that establish societies out of folks who may not have
completely crossed over into whiteness, but who by their light
skin have adjacency to whiteness, who buy their light skin,
are able to deal in the spaces of whiteness differently
(17:46):
than their darker skinned can folk. And thus a class forms,
a bourgeoisie class that has the money and has the access,
and there becomes a preservation of this.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
This is when you hear about the paper bag tests.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
This is when you hear about organizations not allowing certain
black people into their organization who have a darker skin tone.
This is when you hear about parents, grandparents chiding their
children for letting their kids be out in the sun
too long, or for marrying somebody who has darker skin,
because now this is going to affect their access to
(18:24):
this bourgeoisie class that is based on access to whiteness.
The whiteness is the currency. And this has gone on.
This went on and on and on on until the
Civil rights movement, right, the civil rights movement ends up
pretty much disrupting this in great ways because the civil
rights movement becomes about specifically black people having access to
rights that they deserved, regardless of their adjacency to whiteness,
(18:50):
regardless of their skin shade, regardless of their class, regardless
of their membership in a petty bourgeoisie.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
They should have these rights.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
And then on the heel so that you have the
Black power movement, which really sought to say we should
be proud of our blackness, not squandering it for access
to that which ignores us.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
And this was a beautiful time.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
And there's many things that have happened between that time
to now and during that time to now. One of
the many things that happened was the floodgates of capitalism
being opened to black people to access. Eli miss Style
talks about brown versus Board of Education, and he talks
about how, you know, the crust of brown versus board
(19:33):
of education.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Was not to say we want to go to school
with you.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
It was to say, we're paying taxes and you're not
giving us the same thing you've given them. If the
white kids got ten buses, we pay in the same
taxes and we only got two buses. So can we
need to get our money so we can get our
buses so we can bust our kids to school.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
The concept of integration.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
When Martin Luther, doctor Martin Luther King was first positioned
at the forefront of it was this idea that you know,
black people should be treated e equally and we should
have access to our rights. However, as he continued to
develop in his knowledge and understanding of what the resistance
really called for, it became well, we deserve reparations, like
(20:13):
we deserve way more than just Hey, we should get
our rights we should get our rights.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
And then some the.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Petty bourgeoisie said no, no, no, we're actually really cool
where we are, and you're stirring up trouble because in
order for us to be special, we can't have everybody
having access to all that, So can you like calment down?
Speaker 3 (20:34):
And that's what a lot of people don't want to acknowledge.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
They don't want to address the romanticism that is put
on the civil rights movement and the fact that romanticism
was very.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Much pushed by white people.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Who are white supremacists like Ronald Reagan, undermining the radicalism
of doctor Martin Luther King by naming him like this
is our favorite black. Look at this black look at
his black in his time, not about time. Ah is
black and as high he's America's black guy. And they
completely shaved off the rough edges that were honed within
(21:07):
the jail cells, within the marches, within the speeches by
doctor Martin Luther King and realizing this is way deeper
than us being dressed up, fancy and marching. We got
to get everybody access. The black bourgeoisie have always maintained
(21:31):
everybody don't deserve access. We up here and in order
for us to be up here, anybody can't be up here,
and they dabble in black conservatism in order to maintain this.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
In order to be an actual kin folk not skin.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Folk, you have to ask yourself where do your values
lie in access? Should everybody get access to liberation? Should
everybody get access to the same resources of education? Should
everybody get access to steak? Or should only certain groups
who act a certain way be allowed this? Capitalism created
(22:11):
an additional n road for folks to get into the
black bourgeois because it meant that even people who were
not by a certain skin color or who were not
in a certain trade could.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Get access to this.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
So that's how you get a lot of folks from
the hood making their way into this space, right, people
who were just savvy business people. And by the way,
you don't have to be smart to be savvy, you
just good at capitalism. I know a lot of dumb
millionaires to be clear, okay. And the black bourgeois is
(22:45):
made up of both, right, some people who are genuinely
smart and some people who are just really savvy. But
it's ultimately made up of people who have made their
way into access and will do what needs to be
done to keep it. And so that's why so often
when you see members of the black bourgeoisie who have
come up, you like, oh, you changed, because that's not
(23:05):
how you got here. Take someone like.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Snoop for example, We've seen Snoop go from murder with
the case that they gave me.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
To doing commercials funded by Zionists on the Super Bowl. Now,
in his mind, and I've had enough conversations with Snoop
to know this, in his mind, at the end of
the day, it's all about economics. In his mind, it's
all about money and the preservation of access to wealth.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Anything else is really not that important.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
You know. He may say, you know, the criminality, like
the crime bill, et cetera. But at the end of
the day, you can't simultaneously be against Joe Biden and
the crime bill and before Donald Trump, like you can't
like you can be against one and four to one.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
But the petty bourgeoisie understands that they are tools and
in order to retain their position as the petty bourgeoisie,
they have to be useful. What is so disconcerting in
this time of fascism is the real fact that the
petty bourgeoisie are useful in weaponizing their blackness against black folks,
and sometimes it can seem like a banal act, but
(24:13):
it's very that where's the NAACP, Where's the Black Lives
Matter global movement?
Speaker 2 (24:20):
They're involved in fundraising, right, They're involved in interacting with
the democratic base. The democratic base, though, is not involved
in enhancing the lives of the working class. The democratic
base is not involved in working to undermine the insistent
funding of police. The democratic base is not actively trying
(24:44):
to find legislative measures that can dismantle the present deductrial crisis.
These are all children of slavery, all of these things
I'm naming, so all of them continue to suppress and
oppress Black folks at large, but not the black mouvois
because the black bourgeoisie are able to slip through these cracks.
And some might be listening saying, but Amanda, you're a
(25:06):
manter of the black bourgeoisis because you have money.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Having money is not the same as being a capitalist.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
In order to be a capitalist, you have to be
willing to exploit people in order to keep your money.
I am not willing to exploit people in order to
keep my money. The black bourgeoisie are willing to exploit
people in order to keep their money, their position, their access.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Look at Clarence Thomas.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Clarence Thomas is a member of the black bourgeoisie. Clarence
Thomas is somebody who said I will weaponize my blackness
against black people in order to have access, in order
to give my children or my niece access.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
These are just names I'm naming that you recognize.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
However, I think it's worth being able to really identify
amongst your peers, amongst your family, amongst your community, who
do you feel exists within this class? How do you
feel about this class? Do you consider the petty bourgeoisie
to be a goal? Because what I consider it to
(26:10):
be is a literal class of black people that have
been created to be the impediment of elevation that will
ultimately dismantle white supremacy.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
They are the bumper to prevent.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
The gutterball in Bohling, They're the buffer, and our own
civil rights movement has been used to create them. Not
just in what I was saying about Martin Luther King,
doctor Martin Luther King, the Reverend, doctor Martin Luther the King.
Not just that, but even in the fact that our
civil rights movement has been presented in such a fashion
(26:45):
that it is as if many people feel like if
whatever we're doing now doesn't look exactly like that, then
it's not worth it, or that it's not it exactly Jordie.
There's a conceptualization that there is no leader like the
leaders we've had. Social media has made it to a
point where everyone feels like they are so deserving of
(27:06):
access to everybody that there's no way for anyone to
meet the purification standards that people have created.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
It's not even possible.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
And anytime there's people who are courageous or who do
step in or step up, there's so many methods at
work to be able to undercut and diminish them. And
there's so much willingness that has been sown within all
black folk, not just the black petty bourgeoisie or the
black bourgeoisie. There's so much willingness to aid in the
(27:37):
tearing down. We are at a state of we pass
the state of emergency. We're watching the descent of many
levels of devil here in the United States. And in
that time, I want you to pay attention to who
is seeking to rise and who is seeking to stay afloat,
and what does that look like for them? That one time,
(28:09):
I had to really ask myself at a certain point
what my goals were, because in order to really be
a part of the petty bourgeoisie, you have to exhibit
the same sociopathy as the capitalists and the wealthy in
the United States, which is, you know, a willingness to
stab people in the back and not give a damn
about it, a willingness to just only care for self
(28:31):
and not give a damn, like you have to really
not care.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
And as an mpath like, I'm not even wired that way.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
However, you know, once I got to LA and I
started in show business and I you know, was getting
auditions and I started booking things, you know, it started
to feel like okay, like I could make it here.
Like I literally ended up moving because I had a
casting director say to.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Me, you will work if you move here, you will work,
so you know, just make the move. And she was right.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
I mean, I booked into I moved to LA September fifth,
twenty fifteen, and I booked Insecure March of twenty sixteen,
and it aired October of twenty sixteen. I mean, so
many people were telling me, like, it's gonna take years
for you to book something.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
I don't know. They annoyed by me. People were like, oh,
you know, you're not on the hierarchy.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
You know, there's a hierarchy that you have to go
through to get certain roles, blah blah blah. Within three seasons,
I was a series regular and I was late they
actually made me a series regular. No, actually, I was
a series regular by season two, but they gave everybody
else who was a series regular or raise except for
me in season three. No explanation, no reason why. I
don't know what that was about, and my agents were
(29:44):
too lame to even be on top of something like that.
But nonetheless, you know, once you're on a show like that,
you are considered a success.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
I mean that's just basically what it is.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Basically, once you're on a show that goes past two seasons,
you're considered successful. Most shows do not make it pa
last two seasons. That's a norm in Hollywood. Most shows
won't pick a pass one season. And back in the day,
a season used to be like twenty four episodes, and
network TV is now the only place where shows are
going to be that many episodes. And back in the
day they would buy twenty four episodes off top. Now
(30:16):
they buy six episodes and they test it out. Okay,
we'll see if we're going to do another episode order,
then they'll add six more episodes, you know. So it's
a very different game in network TV. I was in
cable TV premium cable, which is HBO. HBO ordered eight
episodes of Insecure, and I think the last season we
did ten. And when you're on a show like that,
that is very truncated. But on premium cable they also
(30:39):
won't allow you to work anywhere else without their permission.
So you know, by having that type of contract and
you know security, they will pay you enough to keep
you good, so you end up being considered successful, but
it's never enough. So in LA it's like okay, and now,
(30:59):
what what are you going to do now? Because in LA,
I would say LA is one of the hubs of
the black bourgeoisie because it allows a route to there
that is not about your family line, it's not about
your legacy education.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
You know, you can kind of just like get in there, right.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Politics is another route to becoming a part of the bourgeoisie,
the black bougeoisie.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
So in LA you got a lot of.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Folks that got that new money and end up being
a part of the black bourgeoisie. And when I found
myself in Los Angeles trying to figure out what the
vibe was in Hollywood, in Black Hollywood, I realized, Oh,
black Hollywood is just the black bourgeoisie on the TV.
(31:45):
They're not going to be resistors. They're not going to
stand together for shifting anything. They're not going to be radical.
There might be some that will tap your shoulder like, hey,
I'm with you, you know, I mean we think the same,
but they're not, as a practice, gonna move in that way.
They're just not in The system itself isn't even set
(32:06):
up for that to look whack.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
So it's a way of life. Whenever you see your favorite.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Black person in Hollywood doing a role that make you
be like what, or saying something in an interview that make.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
You be like what.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
They're a member of a class that they have to
behave a certain way in order to protect that position,
and for whatever reason, protecting that position is more important
than their integrity, and in some cases, their integrity is
not even a part of the conference. They're like, what
is that is my integrity? Gonna pay this bill for
(32:41):
this maseriety. So the more I was there and the
more I start to see this, the more I start
to understand why I was always the problem, you know,
like when they did Unlikablegate, and it's always like, oh man,
this seals is difficult.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Yes I am.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
I am absolutely difficult because I don't make sense in
them situation.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
I don't make sense.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
I'm supposed to be quiet and protect what's going on
over here, because over here it's supposed to be some special,
fantastical land that we preserve that you got to earn
your way into. And so I was breaking the rules.
I'm always breaking the rules because I'm supposed to shut up.
I'm not supposed to talk so much. I'm not supposed
to say people name when they do dirt to me.
(33:25):
I'm not supposed to do none of this. And what's
wild is how many folks outside of the black bourgeoisie
are like, can you stop doing that? You're ruining our
fantasy because they want to be in the black bourgeoisie.
And I don't know if they even realize what that
contract means for them. I began to realize it, and
I truly fully understood it when I no longer felt
(33:48):
like it was home. When I think about like my
transitioning and radicalizing and shifting of the mind, I understand
that it was not that I was like becoming something else.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
I was just becoming who I always was.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
And I have a sense of competition, I have a
sense of ambition, So that was always there, but it
was existing within a framework that was very loud, which
is capitalism. It's never fit though, Like I remember people
being like, oh, you know, you need to try and
get you a production deal like Lena Waite. You need
to try and get you a production deal like Easter Ray.
And I was like, I guess I should want that,
(34:24):
because these are these multimillion dollar deals where you're making
shows and you know you're a big deal. And it
was like I could not will myself to want it.
I couldn't will myself to want it. And then I
would see them giving production deals to like Michelle and
Barack Obama and Stephen Curry and Naomi Osaka, and I'm like,
(34:44):
but they're.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Not even creatives. Why ad I getting production.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Deal's fault doesn't matter because it's not about being creative.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
None of us has to do with that.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
It's about making money, capitalism and names, and I was
never going to be the safe name. So then I
had to realize that I was on a path that
I was going to constantly fall on my face on
because that wasn't where I was supposed to be. And
that's how you end up in a midlife crisis that
(35:14):
becomes a midlife awakening. And I talk about it in
my upcoming book, By the Way from Through the Bs,
there will also be an audiobook. And I started to
realize that I was just like existing in somebody else's
idea of what it means to be a black person
in America who's made it, and according to a capitalist,
white supremacist framework, being a member of the black bourgeoisie
(35:37):
is that you've made it. You've got through the cracks
that we tried to plug up. You dug through the
concrete that we laid to keep you down there, You
clawed through the dirt that we put on top of
the concrete to keep you down there, And now you're here,
aren't you tired? You don't ever want to go back
down there again, right exactly, So, just stay up here
(35:57):
and keep watering our flowers up here. Just stay up
here and enjoy the sun. We don't even really need
you to do much. We just need you to stay
up here and lounge around to prevent anybody else from
coming up through the same holes you got through. That
is what it means to be a member of the
Black BOUGEOASIE, and that is the group that holds so
(36:18):
many positions in government and so many positions by partisan
that look like they're doing things because they look like
what so many people think they want to be, but
they are consistently active in suppressing any level of resistance
that gives everybody access to where they are. And remember,
(36:39):
access is simply just the right to don't everybody got
the capability or the motivation, or the strength, etc.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
To do the same as the other, but you should
have a right to a right to try.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
When I was studying African American studies, I feel like
doctor many Maryble really brought this to the fore, and
I feel like doctor Robin dg.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Kelly brought it to the four. But I wasn't there yet.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
I wasn't able to see yet what this really is
and what really exists, and that I want to be
no part of it, and that when you decide to
not want to be a part of it, they gonna
make you pay, and it's gonna be painful because they're
literally Okay, well they're not literally, but they are essentially
pushing you back down through the whole you came up. Now,
(37:24):
y'all know, I love me some pop culture, and one
of the best ways to teach is to use pop
culture examples, because you may not know people's bins and
outs that are simply just in the public sphere, but
you be knowing these characters. So let's talk about some
members of pop culture that are members of the black
bourgeoisie over here.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
At the special Patreon segment Come on Steel Squad the Last.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
So as we stumble face first into the future that
the United States created for itself, know that there is
an entire swath of black folks who do not consider
it to be their problem, because they consider their problem
to be how to retain access in the midst of
it regardless, And what I fear is the level of
(38:18):
sociopathy that they will commit to in order to do so.
And as a Black person who believes in the preservation
of this beautiful culture and ethnicity that was wielded in
spite of terror, I believe that it's not just America's
last stand. I believe that what we are facing is
Black America's last stand. I believe that what we are
(38:40):
facing is also our own as black people's, our own
reconciling of if we are going along with it, if
the assimilation is complete, or if we really are our
ancestors
Small, help from Small, Small, Human area, Small, It's so funky.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Welcome to another edition of Small Doses Podcast, Live and
Direct from the Mayhem, the Descending Madness, and all the above.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I your girl, Amanda Seals, find.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Myself on a daily basis trying to take it all
in and filter out what can be actually alchemized into art,
into activism, into inspiration, while not letting the rest that's
left behind degrade degrade me internally, I think about the
(00:59):
people of you done, people of Bosnia and Herzegova, Palestine, Cambodia, Brasil, Chile,
who watched this happen to their own nations. And I
wonder what we can learn, what we can learn South Korea.
This is what I'm always trying to figure out, like
(01:20):
what can we learn?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
What can we learn to apply?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I also have a deeper conflicting feeling, which is that
a number of those places that I just named, the
United States was at the crux of their descent into fascism,
So why wouldn't we.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Be at the suffering hands of it in our own time?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
And I know that there are so many people who
still say things like they got what they voted for.
I know there are so many people who still say
things like na see Kamala, and I just I'm always
fascinated when I see this because I wonder, at what
point do you wake up and realize, if at all,
(02:07):
that this was unavoidable. Trump just signed a so during
the hole Tariff's madness, he signed an elective order that
gives DOGE, that gives DOSE the right to audit federal elections.
So when I tell y'all that there might not be
(02:27):
a mid term, I'm not exaggerating. And even if there
is a mid term, it's already being set up to
be a setup. So this episode is grounded in when
I look at the landscape of things against what I'm
learning from other places that have been in this similar landscape,
(02:50):
I'm also identifying similarities, right, And one of the similarities
is the bourgeoisie class.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
There's always a bourgeoisie class that claims to be like
a political but ultimately they are political in the fact
that they will essentially do whatever to retain their access
to money, to power, to convenience, and thus.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
They are political. I mean, there's just no way around that.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Right, once you're in a fascist framework, I mean, even
before that but especially if you're in a fascist framework,
your access to these things is going to have to
be through political channels. The United States has a different
makeup than a lot of other places in that it
is such a melting pot, if you will, of ethnicities,
(03:44):
of class of people who are also different status in
terms of citizens. So you've got like undocumented, then you've
got immigrants who are documented. Then you've got visa holders
who have very different types of visas. Then you have
of you know, folks who are Green card holders. Then
you have naturalized citizens, then you have American born citizens.
(04:06):
So you know, there's just such a very wide arrange
in many different directions of individuals that exist as Americans.
And one of the unique aspects in that range is
of black Americans. We exist here differently than we exist
anywhere else. Black people exist in the United States differently
(04:26):
than we exist anywhere else because of slavery and how
the United States has dealt with slavery or not dealt
with it, because of the civil rights movement, and how
the United States has dealt with the civil rights movement
or not dealt with it because of reconstructions, because or sorry, reconstruction.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
But that was really Black American of me too.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
You see, I'll put an s on that for no reason,
because of reconstructions, because of the prison industrial complex, all
of these things, and I'm top lining right now, there's
subsets to all of these things. All of these things
are very unique to the Black American experience.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
So is the black bourgeoisie.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Because the black bourgeoisie and their access to all the
things I said that the bourgeoisie class is typically trying
to protect right. So their access to wealth, their access
to power, their access to resources has not been simply
just by you know, an ability to be in certain
political spaces. It hasn't been simply just by an ability
(05:28):
to have money. But race, as of whiteness, the literal
construct of whiteness, became the currency. I find it imperative
that I acknowledge that race is a construct. As we
are witnessing Donald Trump, the President of the United States,
(05:50):
pass an executive order that says he is restoring let
me not.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Even play with this. I'm going to give you the
exact name the order.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Its Executive Order one four five sixty three Restoring Truth
and Sanity to American History, and it gives the administration
control over the National Museum of African American Histories exhibits
and insists and insists that race listen close to this
is a biological reality, not a social construct. So this
(06:21):
bucking of science as it relates to climate change has
now descended upon as it relates to race, and all
the black folks that have been out here saying this
is not our issue, this is not our problem.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Where boots on the ground.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, I hope that you got a lot of dancing
in because it's time. White culture is literally just oppression,
and the black bourgeoisie were formed in seeking access to safety,
to freedom, to wealth, to legislative power with whiteness as
(07:01):
a currency. This is something that is different now because
after the Civil Rights Movement, the whiteness as a currency
shifted to simply capitalism as a currency. But capitalism does
the work of white supremacy, and so it no longer
meant that you have to be white passing or light skin.
(07:26):
It meant that you just have to be willing to
do the work of white supremacy. You have to be
willing to uphold capitalism. And so today on this episode,
I want to talk about what that looks like in
current examples, and why some of the folks that we
(07:47):
may think are kinfolk are really just skin folk, and
what it is about their behavior as a member of
the black bourgeoisie that harms, and why the black bourgeoisie
as an existence in the United States, particularly in this time,
is a contributing factor to the dissent into fascism.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Let's get into a gem.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Drop dim dropping, gem dropping, dim dropping.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
We're dropping on these. So today's gym dropping is black
conservatives versus the black bourgeoisie. And it's a similar square
to rectangle situation. You know, like a square is a rectangle,
but a rectangle can't be a square. And this is
a similar comparison to in my opinion, the black conservatives
and black bourgeoisie. In order to be a black conservative,
(08:44):
you simply just have to align with conservative ideals. And
when I say conservative, I mean specifically conservative political ideologies.
So I don't simply just mean conservative as it relates
to like, oh, I've been wearing long skirts. I mean
conservative political ideologies that ultimately extend beyond simply just religion
(09:05):
or fiscal conservatism, but also extend to the ways in
which certain communities are addressed, managed, disregarded, etc. Black bourgeoisie
are folks who exist at a.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Certain tier of class, even in their blackness.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
They exist at a certain tier of class that makes
it to where they don't have to necessarily be conservative.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
They typically are, but they don't have to be conservative.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
They just need to be willing to do what needs
to be done to protect their position as the black bourgeoisie.
So you're not simply back bourgeoisie because you have money.
You're black bourgeoisie because of what you're committed to doing
to protect that money, to protect that access. Because ultimately
you can be a member of the black bougaisie, whether
(09:54):
it's Obama in the White House or Donald Trump in
the White House. You just have to be willing to
uphold a stableflishment because establishment is what allows you to continue.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
To uphold your position above.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
What is considered to be the swaths or the community
I should say of black and brown people. Black conservatives
are often within that framework, operating within the black conservative
framework with a goal of attaining black bourgeoisie ship, not
realizing that ultimately, if you ain't they already and you're
(10:29):
a member of the black working class and you are
a black conservative, you are literally being counterproductive to your
own elevation because the bourgeoisie, white, black, purple polke about
otherwise retain their position due to their being a minority.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Everybody can't get or else to day worth having.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
So when we talk about the black bourgeoisie, we're talking
about a subsect of people who have managed to gain
wealth and access regardless of.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Being black, and have committed to maintaining that.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
And consider that the maintenance of that is outside of
whatever repercussions come to other members of their race. For them,
race is not even a social construct. It's irrelevant as
long as they have access to the methods that control it.
(11:30):
Black conservatives, I believe, are people who ultimately believe in
America and the United States that doesn't believe in them.
They believe in a vision of democracy that didn't consider them.
They are committed to a ideology that again sees them
(11:56):
as biologically inferior no matter what they believe. So when
we look at these two groups, ultimately what we're seeing
are two lineages.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Is that a word lineage is linear.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Are two tributaries that are leading into the elevation of
white supremacy via the weaponization of black people against other
black people.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
And some might say, well case orrah, so be it.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I believe that there is something very precious and worth
protecting in the legitimacy of what it is to be
a Black American within this nation and our unique indigenity
as such. And so when it comes to either of
(12:51):
these groups, I consider it imperative to be able to
identify and address them directly. So when we talk about
the black bourgeoisie, you know, there's this idea that if
you are a believer in education, that if you are
(13:14):
a believer in black excellence, etc. That you are somehow
like a member of the black bourgeoisie. I literally was
called a member of the black petty bourgeoisie petite bourgeoisie,
because I said, if you're using your money to buy
Nike suits and Jordan's and you don't have a passport,
then you're losing.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
And people just came at my neck for that. They
were just livid.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
They said, Amanda Seals is an elitist member of the
black petty bourgeoisie who is passport shaming disenfranchised black folks.
Even though I didn't say anything about black people in
my tweet. I guess the reference to Jordan's made my
tweet about black folks. But ultimately, if we address that,
that to me had nothing to do with anything about
(13:59):
being petty bourgeoisie and everything to do with wanting black
folks in this country to understand that our consumerism will
not save us.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
That was the point in that tweet.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Our consumerism will not save us. Our consumerism will not
give us access to safety. Our consumerism will not break
us out of the limitations of what the United States
creates for perspective for so many black folks. That's what
that tweet was about. The black bourgeoisie of the United
States have not It's not like there's something new. Their
(14:30):
trajectory or their mechanism is somewhat shifted over the past
I would say forty years. However, they have existed because
there have always been sellouts, and there have always been
the weak, and there have always been capitalists.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
As long as capitalism existed. Once there became a means
to gain at the expense and exploitation of others, you
gonna get that in every color, baby.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
So whiteness, the social construct of whiteness, which was created
and appropriated for the sake of advancing the Transatlantic slave trade,
because slavery existed before, but it was whiteness that was
created to make the Transatlantic slave trade a legitimate form
of business, and not just folks acting up out of
(15:20):
lack of civilization. Literally, they created the right to oppress
as some type of act of showing they were civilized.
It's incredibly backwards and ridiculous. Nonetheless, it was effective because
it allowed for the business of slavery to go untethered,
unchallenged for hundreds of years.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
In the United States.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
There naturally became folks who were the result of that slavery,
born out of rape, and their access to the white
construct was less about their being the benefactor of their
parents because in the United States it was different than
(16:06):
in the Caribbean. In the Caribbean, if you were the
child of a slave owner, you were still a part
of his lineage and thus had a right to being
a benefactor of his wealth. In the United States, that
was not the case in the United States. If you
are a slave and you were taken advantage of by
(16:27):
your slave owner, and you bore a child, that is
fifty percent the genes of that slave owner.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
That child is still a slave.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
So out of this we get children who are of
course bearers of the recessive gene of whiteness, and who
then are able to immerse themselves in white society by
completely severing ties with anything related to their black identity.
And we know that whiteness is a construct because you
(16:58):
can do that, right.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
We know that whiteness is a construct because you can
do that.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
We know that Judaism exists both as a religion and ethnicity,
because there are Jewish people who practice the religion that
are not of the ethnicity, that can at the drop
of a hat, immerse themselves into the umbrella of white
supremacy without any issues. We know this, But then you
(17:24):
have places like the South Louisiana, for what it's worth,
that establish societies out of folks who may not have
completely crossed over into whiteness, but who by their light
skin have adjacency to whiteness, who buy their light skin,
are able to deal in the spaces of whiteness differently
(17:46):
than their darker skinned can folk. And thus a class forms,
a bourgeoisie class that has the money and has the access,
and there becomes a preservation of this.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
This is when you hear about the paper bag tests.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
This is when you hear about organizations not allowing certain
black people into their organization who have a darker skin tone.
This is when you hear about parents, grandparents chiding their
children for letting their kids be out in the sun
too long, or for marrying somebody who has darker skin,
because now this is going to affect their access to
(18:24):
this bourgeoisie class that is based on access to whiteness.
The whiteness is the currency. And this has gone on.
This went on and on and on on until the
Civil rights movement, right, the civil rights movement ends up
pretty much disrupting this in great ways because the civil
rights movement becomes about specifically black people having access to
rights that they deserved, regardless of their adjacency to whiteness,
(18:50):
regardless of their skin shade, regardless of their class, regardless
of their membership in a petty bourgeoisie.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
They should have these rights.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
And then on the heel so that you have the
Black power movement, which really sought to say we should
be proud of our blackness, not squandering it for access
to that which ignores us.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
And this was a beautiful time.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
And there's many things that have happened between that time
to now and during that time to now. One of
the many things that happened was the floodgates of capitalism
being opened to black people to access. Eli miss Style
talks about brown versus Board of Education, and he talks
about how, you know, the crust of brown versus board
(19:33):
of education.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Was not to say we want to go to school
with you.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
It was to say, we're paying taxes and you're not
giving us the same thing you've given them. If the
white kids got ten buses, we pay in the same
taxes and we only got two buses. So can we
need to get our money so we can get our
buses so we can bust our kids to school.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
The concept of integration.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
When Martin Luther, doctor Martin Luther King was first positioned
at the forefront of it was this idea that you know,
black people should be treated e equally and we should
have access to our rights. However, as he continued to
develop in his knowledge and understanding of what the resistance
really called for, it became well, we deserve reparations, like
(20:13):
we deserve way more than just Hey, we should get
our rights we should get our rights.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
And then some the.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Petty bourgeoisie said no, no, no, we're actually really cool
where we are, and you're stirring up trouble because in
order for us to be special, we can't have everybody
having access to all that, So can you like calment down?
Speaker 3 (20:34):
And that's what a lot of people don't want to acknowledge.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
They don't want to address the romanticism that is put
on the civil rights movement and the fact that romanticism
was very.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Much pushed by white people.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Who are white supremacists like Ronald Reagan, undermining the radicalism
of doctor Martin Luther King by naming him like this
is our favorite black. Look at this black look at
his black in his time, not about time. Ah is
black and as high he's America's black guy. And they
completely shaved off the rough edges that were honed within
(21:07):
the jail cells, within the marches, within the speeches by
doctor Martin Luther King and realizing this is way deeper
than us being dressed up, fancy and marching. We got
to get everybody access. The black bourgeoisie have always maintained
(21:31):
everybody don't deserve access. We up here and in order
for us to be up here, anybody can't be up here,
and they dabble in black conservatism in order to maintain this.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
In order to be an actual kin folk not skin.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Folk, you have to ask yourself where do your values
lie in access? Should everybody get access to liberation? Should
everybody get access to the same resources of education? Should
everybody get access to steak? Or should only certain groups
who act a certain way be allowed this? Capitalism created
(22:11):
an additional n road for folks to get into the
black bourgeois because it meant that even people who were
not by a certain skin color or who were not
in a certain trade could.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Get access to this.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
So that's how you get a lot of folks from
the hood making their way into this space, right, people
who were just savvy business people. And by the way,
you don't have to be smart to be savvy, you
just good at capitalism. I know a lot of dumb
millionaires to be clear, okay. And the black bourgeois is
(22:45):
made up of both, right, some people who are genuinely
smart and some people who are just really savvy. But
it's ultimately made up of people who have made their
way into access and will do what needs to be
done to keep it. And so that's why so often
when you see members of the black bourgeoisie who have
come up, you like, oh, you changed, because that's not
(23:05):
how you got here. Take someone like.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Snoop for example, We've seen Snoop go from murder with
the case that they gave me.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
To doing commercials funded by Zionists on the Super Bowl. Now,
in his mind, and I've had enough conversations with Snoop
to know this, in his mind, at the end of
the day, it's all about economics. In his mind, it's
all about money and the preservation of access to wealth.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Anything else is really not that important.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
You know. He may say, you know, the criminality, like
the crime bill, et cetera. But at the end of
the day, you can't simultaneously be against Joe Biden and
the crime bill and before Donald Trump, like you can't
like you can be against one and four to one.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
But the petty bourgeoisie understands that they are tools and
in order to retain their position as the petty bourgeoisie,
they have to be useful. What is so disconcerting in
this time of fascism is the real fact that the
petty bourgeoisie are useful in weaponizing their blackness against black folks,
and sometimes it can seem like a banal act, but
(24:13):
it's very that where's the NAACP, Where's the Black Lives
Matter global movement?
Speaker 2 (24:20):
They're involved in fundraising, right, They're involved in interacting with
the democratic base. The democratic base, though, is not involved
in enhancing the lives of the working class. The democratic
base is not involved in working to undermine the insistent
funding of police. The democratic base is not actively trying
(24:44):
to find legislative measures that can dismantle the present deductrial crisis.
These are all children of slavery, all of these things
I'm naming, so all of them continue to suppress and
oppress Black folks at large, but not the black mouvois
because the black bourgeoisie are able to slip through these cracks.
And some might be listening saying, but Amanda, you're a
(25:06):
manter of the black bourgeoisis because you have money.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Having money is not the same as being a capitalist.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
In order to be a capitalist, you have to be
willing to exploit people in order to keep your money.
I am not willing to exploit people in order to
keep my money. The black bourgeoisie are willing to exploit
people in order to keep their money, their position, their access.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Look at Clarence Thomas.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Clarence Thomas is a member of the black bourgeoisie. Clarence
Thomas is somebody who said I will weaponize my blackness
against black people in order to have access, in order
to give my children or my niece access.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
These are just names I'm naming that you recognize.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
However, I think it's worth being able to really identify
amongst your peers, amongst your family, amongst your community, who
do you feel exists within this class? How do you
feel about this class? Do you consider the petty bourgeoisie
to be a goal? Because what I consider it to
(26:10):
be is a literal class of black people that have
been created to be the impediment of elevation that will
ultimately dismantle white supremacy.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
They are the bumper to prevent.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
The gutterball in Bohling, They're the buffer, and our own
civil rights movement has been used to create them. Not
just in what I was saying about Martin Luther King,
doctor Martin Luther King, the Reverend, doctor Martin Luther the King.
Not just that, but even in the fact that our
civil rights movement has been presented in such a fashion
(26:45):
that it is as if many people feel like if
whatever we're doing now doesn't look exactly like that, then
it's not worth it, or that it's not it exactly Jordie.
There's a conceptualization that there is no leader like the
leaders we've had. Social media has made it to a
point where everyone feels like they are so deserving of
(27:06):
access to everybody that there's no way for anyone to
meet the purification standards that people have created.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
It's not even possible.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
And anytime there's people who are courageous or who do
step in or step up, there's so many methods at
work to be able to undercut and diminish them. And
there's so much willingness that has been sown within all
black folk, not just the black petty bourgeoisie or the
black bourgeoisie. There's so much willingness to aid in the
(27:37):
tearing down. We are at a state of we pass
the state of emergency. We're watching the descent of many
levels of devil here in the United States. And in
that time, I want you to pay attention to who
is seeking to rise and who is seeking to stay afloat,
and what does that look like for them? That one time,
(28:09):
I had to really ask myself at a certain point
what my goals were, because in order to really be
a part of the petty bourgeoisie, you have to exhibit
the same sociopathy as the capitalists and the wealthy in
the United States, which is, you know, a willingness to
stab people in the back and not give a damn
about it, a willingness to just only care for self
(28:31):
and not give a damn, like you have to really
not care.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
And as an mpath like, I'm not even wired that way.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
However, you know, once I got to LA and I
started in show business and I you know, was getting
auditions and I started booking things, you know, it started
to feel like okay, like I could make it here.
Like I literally ended up moving because I had a
casting director say to.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Me, you will work if you move here, you will work,
so you know, just make the move. And she was right.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
I mean, I booked into I moved to LA September fifth,
twenty fifteen, and I booked Insecure March of twenty sixteen,
and it aired October of twenty sixteen. I mean, so
many people were telling me, like, it's gonna take years
for you to book something.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
I don't know. They annoyed by me. People were like, oh,
you know, you're not on the hierarchy.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
You know, there's a hierarchy that you have to go
through to get certain roles, blah blah blah. Within three seasons,
I was a series regular and I was late they
actually made me a series regular. No, actually, I was
a series regular by season two, but they gave everybody
else who was a series regular or raise except for
me in season three. No explanation, no reason why. I
don't know what that was about, and my agents were
(29:44):
too lame to even be on top of something like that.
But nonetheless, you know, once you're on a show like that,
you are considered a success.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
I mean that's just basically what it is.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Basically, once you're on a show that goes past two seasons,
you're considered successful. Most shows do not make it pa
last two seasons. That's a norm in Hollywood. Most shows
won't pick a pass one season. And back in the day,
a season used to be like twenty four episodes, and
network TV is now the only place where shows are
going to be that many episodes. And back in the
day they would buy twenty four episodes off top. Now
(30:16):
they buy six episodes and they test it out. Okay,
we'll see if we're going to do another episode order,
then they'll add six more episodes, you know. So it's
a very different game in network TV. I was in
cable TV premium cable, which is HBO. HBO ordered eight
episodes of Insecure, and I think the last season we
did ten. And when you're on a show like that,
that is very truncated. But on premium cable they also
(30:39):
won't allow you to work anywhere else without their permission.
So you know, by having that type of contract and
you know security, they will pay you enough to keep
you good, so you end up being considered successful, but
it's never enough. So in LA it's like okay, and now,
(30:59):
what what are you going to do now? Because in LA,
I would say LA is one of the hubs of
the black bourgeoisie because it allows a route to there
that is not about your family line, it's not about
your legacy education.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
You know, you can kind of just like get in there, right.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Politics is another route to becoming a part of the bourgeoisie,
the black bougeoisie.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
So in LA you got a lot of.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Folks that got that new money and end up being
a part of the black bourgeoisie. And when I found
myself in Los Angeles trying to figure out what the
vibe was in Hollywood, in Black Hollywood, I realized, Oh,
black Hollywood is just the black bourgeoisie on the TV.
(31:45):
They're not going to be resistors. They're not going to
stand together for shifting anything. They're not going to be radical.
There might be some that will tap your shoulder like, hey,
I'm with you, you know, I mean we think the same,
but they're not, as a practice, gonna move in that way.
They're just not in The system itself isn't even set
(32:06):
up for that to look whack.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
So it's a way of life. Whenever you see your favorite.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Black person in Hollywood doing a role that make you
be like what, or saying something in an interview that make.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
You be like what.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
They're a member of a class that they have to
behave a certain way in order to protect that position,
and for whatever reason, protecting that position is more important
than their integrity, and in some cases, their integrity is
not even a part of the conference. They're like, what
is that is my integrity? Gonna pay this bill for
(32:41):
this maseriety. So the more I was there and the
more I start to see this, the more I start
to understand why I was always the problem, you know,
like when they did Unlikablegate, and it's always like, oh man,
this seals is difficult.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Yes I am.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
I am absolutely difficult because I don't make sense in
them situation.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
I don't make sense.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
I'm supposed to be quiet and protect what's going on
over here, because over here it's supposed to be some special,
fantastical land that we preserve that you got to earn
your way into. And so I was breaking the rules.
I'm always breaking the rules because I'm supposed to shut up.
I'm not supposed to talk so much. I'm not supposed
to say people name when they do dirt to me.
(33:25):
I'm not supposed to do none of this. And what's
wild is how many folks outside of the black bourgeoisie
are like, can you stop doing that? You're ruining our
fantasy because they want to be in the black bourgeoisie.
And I don't know if they even realize what that
contract means for them. I began to realize it, and
I truly fully understood it when I no longer felt
(33:48):
like it was home. When I think about like my
transitioning and radicalizing and shifting of the mind, I understand
that it was not that I was like becoming something else.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
I was just becoming who I always was.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
And I have a sense of competition, I have a
sense of ambition, So that was always there, but it
was existing within a framework that was very loud, which
is capitalism. It's never fit though, Like I remember people
being like, oh, you know, you need to try and
get you a production deal like Lena Waite. You need
to try and get you a production deal like Easter Ray.
And I was like, I guess I should want that,
(34:24):
because these are these multimillion dollar deals where you're making
shows and you know you're a big deal. And it
was like I could not will myself to want it.
I couldn't will myself to want it. And then I
would see them giving production deals to like Michelle and
Barack Obama and Stephen Curry and Naomi Osaka, and I'm like,
(34:44):
but they're.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Not even creatives. Why ad I getting production.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Deal's fault doesn't matter because it's not about being creative.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
None of us has to do with that.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
It's about making money, capitalism and names, and I was
never going to be the safe name. So then I
had to realize that I was on a path that
I was going to constantly fall on my face on
because that wasn't where I was supposed to be. And
that's how you end up in a midlife crisis that
(35:14):
becomes a midlife awakening. And I talk about it in
my upcoming book, By the Way from Through the Bs,
there will also be an audiobook. And I started to
realize that I was just like existing in somebody else's
idea of what it means to be a black person
in America who's made it, and according to a capitalist,
white supremacist framework, being a member of the black bourgeoisie
(35:37):
is that you've made it. You've got through the cracks
that we tried to plug up. You dug through the
concrete that we laid to keep you down there, You
clawed through the dirt that we put on top of
the concrete to keep you down there, And now you're here,
aren't you tired? You don't ever want to go back
down there again, right exactly, So, just stay up here
(35:57):
and keep watering our flowers up here. Just stay up
here and enjoy the sun. We don't even really need
you to do much. We just need you to stay
up here and lounge around to prevent anybody else from
coming up through the same holes you got through. That
is what it means to be a member of the
Black BOUGEOASIE, and that is the group that holds so
(36:18):
many positions in government and so many positions by partisan
that look like they're doing things because they look like
what so many people think they want to be, but
they are consistently active in suppressing any level of resistance
that gives everybody access to where they are. And remember,
(36:39):
access is simply just the right to don't everybody got
the capability or the motivation, or the strength, etc.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
To do the same as the other, but you should
have a right to a right to try.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
When I was studying African American studies, I feel like
doctor many Maryble really brought this to the fore, and
I feel like doctor Robin dg.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Kelly brought it to the four. But I wasn't there yet.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
I wasn't able to see yet what this really is
and what really exists, and that I want to be
no part of it, and that when you decide to
not want to be a part of it, they gonna
make you pay, and it's gonna be painful because they're
literally Okay, well they're not literally, but they are essentially
pushing you back down through the whole you came up. Now,
(37:24):
y'all know, I love me some pop culture, and one
of the best ways to teach is to use pop
culture examples, because you may not know people's bins and
outs that are simply just in the public sphere, but
you be knowing these characters. So let's talk about some
members of pop culture that are members of the black
bourgeoisie over here.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
At the special Patreon segment Come on Steel Squad the Last.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
So as we stumble face first into the future that
the United States created for itself, know that there is
an entire swath of black folks who do not consider
it to be their problem, because they consider their problem
to be how to retain access in the midst of
it regardless, And what I fear is the level of
(38:18):
sociopathy that they will commit to in order to do so.
And as a Black person who believes in the preservation
of this beautiful culture and ethnicity that was wielded in
spite of terror, I believe that it's not just America's
last stand. I believe that what we are facing is
Black America's last stand. I believe that what we are
(38:40):
facing is also our own as black people's, our own
reconciling of if we are going along with it, if
the assimilation is complete, or if we really are our
ancestors
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