EP. 13 | Reimagining The American Dream feat. Dometi Pongo - Selective Ignorance with Mandii B

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another episode of selective ignorance.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's your girl, Mandy B. And you know what, I'm tired,
tired of the lie.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
We was sold that shiny little thing called the American dream,
the one with the degrees, the nine to five in
the house, with the white pick of fence to kids,
and the golden retriever. Yep, that dream, and it's looking
more like a nightmare these days now.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Listen.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
I got degrees plural, okay, and with them debt deep
salt snatch and interests accruing debt.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
They said education was key, but forgot to mention.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
It unlock bills, not wealth. And in this economy, those
degrees don't guarantee shit. Rent is higher than salaries, eggs
costs more than my sanity. And don't get me started
on trying to own anything. Y'all heard my thoughts and
views on purchasing and owning property in my episode with Ish,

(00:56):
and if you haven't, make sure you go check that out.
And relationships don't even match the script anymore. We were
told to find the one, subtle down, split bills, and
raise a family. But these outdated gender roles, these unrealistic timelines.
That's not partnership. That's pressure. The truth is, the dream

(01:16):
was never built for all of us. It was curated
for a time, a people, and a privilege.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Y'all.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
See what I did there That doesn't reflect the chaos
we live in now, and yet we still feel guilty
when we can't make it all happen. Nah, it's not us,
it's the dream that's broken. And this week, y'all, I
am joined to have this conversation with my good friend,
first generation Ghanaian American and cultural commentator Domity Pongo.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Y'all, this is selective ignorance.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Sit back, buckle up, and get ready for another episode. Well,
based on my views, at the end of the day,
the American dream is an actual fluke. But I'm here
with someone to debate me because you know, I'm not
first generation anything. I'm just American. But we do have

(02:07):
a wonderful guest with us today. We have Domitity Pongo,
who is former MTV News correspondent. Y'all have probably seen
his work all over Paramount including MTV. He is the
current host of MTV's True Life series as well as
the host of Chestnut Checkers podcast. By the way, I

(02:29):
couldn't go through all of the things that you do,
because y'all may see him on any and every red
carpet for any and every MTV Awards show, every festival,
all the things. But I also have two guys that
shall are very familiar with that, unfortunately I have to introduce.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
But we are also very American here, so well, okay,
Puerto Rican, Puerto Rico is American.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
I'm suffering, We've gotten there. Colonialism the US gives me
a different name. So in spirit, in spirit, you American. No,
in spirit, I'm not.

Speaker 4 (03:03):
Okay, we.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Insperiment. I'm aligning with this with Ghana and my brother
over here.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
But yeah, that's Jason Rodriguez Stordinaire and a king. Why
are we taking all of this out?

Speaker 4 (03:19):
How did you act?

Speaker 3 (03:20):
We're gonna get slept down?

Speaker 5 (03:21):
Nobody get a child tet journalist, right.

Speaker 4 (03:29):
Funny? Not funny though.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
We we weren't recording, but it was really funny. So
did my research on Domecy and saw that he was
first generation Gaian American and literally so I'm talking to
him about his family and I was like, are you
were they?

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Can I can I call you an immigrant?

Speaker 4 (03:48):
Like she thought it was a slur.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
She's like are you and we were talking.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
About because where we're at, I'm like this thing a truck.

Speaker 5 (04:00):
The climate has changed the wording around everything. I think
we underestimated pre Trump era what the president means for
how we look through everything in the American lens, Like right,
the word to use uses how he and I said off,
I was saying the same thing like he says Mexican,
Like it's a slur.

Speaker 4 (04:18):
So even when you say, you know Mexican, you be
kind of like, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Why he removed Mexico from the golf, He said, the
Gulf of America, the Gulf of the United.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
States of America. Like, I agree.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
I am first, I am the proud son of immigrants. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (04:35):
I love being from Ghana. I love my grandmothers and sisters.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, like so being from Ghana.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
So I'm from Florida, another country too, you know.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
So embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
But my views on being born here and the privilege
of being born here or what the American dream entailed
to me was a lie, was a fallacy the same way.
You know again they science is questionable too, But I
told y'all it's my trauma from them removing Pluto as
a planet. But I want to ask you, as a
first generation Ghanaian American, what the American dream looked like?

(05:15):
Maybe for your parents because you were born here. Yea,
that's first generation. For those of y'all who choose to
be ignorant and not know what it means. You are American,
but your parents were not born here?

Speaker 4 (05:25):
Correct?

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yes, So what what were their views of the American dream?
Because I assume they had one having you born here.

Speaker 5 (05:32):
Yeah, and they are they are safe. They are it's
safe from deportation. They got all the papers. However, I
don't know if you did see I did see. Did
you see the recent I was gonna say that. I
thought it was seven hundred and fifty thives.

Speaker 4 (05:45):
Oh, it may have been. It's the last time I
read it. You may be one.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Hundred and fifty thousand.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
People have had their citizenships revoked, so Cuban, Americans, Venezuela
and American like certain countries of course.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
But he's going through removing city.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
And ship rights, attempting because the judges are still well
that's the thing. The same way he took away those
federal jobs and then they was like, wait, nigga, you
actually can't do that we're gonna reinstate these things. There
may be something that comes down through the pipeline where
these citizens who earn their rights to live here get
those back.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
But baby, it's it's tricky waters.

Speaker 5 (06:19):
And people have been misusing the word deporting, because when
you deport someone, you send them to the country that
they're originally from. He is missing in these people, not
even to the country that they.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
Wait, oh wait, I missed that. He's just sending them.

Speaker 4 (06:28):
You didn't say the word you said, Salvador. I believe
it is he send them to.

Speaker 3 (06:33):
Be So some some immigrants, their country is not no
longer taking them back. So if you're swaling, you might
not be able to go back to mineswaling, so you're
gonna pit stop somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
So El Salvador is taking a lot of these immigrants
in by choice.

Speaker 5 (06:47):
Or some are going to Cuba and they putting them
in essentially like camps, or would it be an equivalent
of karcole communities, like basically incarcerating folks just and these
are people who had whether it was temporary stat that is,
or they were permanent residents or you know, I haven't
read up on it recently.

Speaker 4 (07:04):
So you know, you might have to fact check a
little bit of my selection.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Oh yeah, yah, yah, might the fact check if I
say a number. Look, luckily we got a stat up
there and we'll get into it.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
But yes, but before we go there, what was what
was the dream that your parents had bring like having
you here in America?

Speaker 4 (07:18):
Oh, the main thing was just better life.

Speaker 5 (07:20):
So my dad was he went to school for divinity,
and he has a PhD in philosophy with the focus
on divinity. And he went to University of Chicago and
sent for my mom a little while later, and they grew.
I got two older sisters. We all were born in Chicago.
But his whole goal was to come here, go to school,

(07:41):
got a scholarship. And the American dream is exactly what
we all thought it would be. Right, go to school,
get a job, build a foundation, boy some land, and
then in America and then eventually go back home, you know,
maybe build a house back home, retire, you know, back
back in Ghana.

Speaker 4 (07:57):
But where is.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
He at in that?

Speaker 6 (08:00):
In that dream, everybody think they're gonna go back, they
end up up they spending ten years between visits and
all of that, and then before you know, you know,
you just end up settling down where you are.

Speaker 4 (08:11):
And that's what my parents did.

Speaker 5 (08:13):
That's what most Yeah, you become American and that's what
most of my cousins parents did, most of my uncle
and aunts.

Speaker 4 (08:17):
You know, they always have it.

Speaker 5 (08:18):
And we I mean, we have a house back in Ghana,
but you know, the goal is to go back and
live there, but you end up building a life here.
You don't expect to build a life for several decades
in a place and not feel.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
Like it's home and call it home.

Speaker 5 (08:29):
And how the American dream has evolved for them is
you now you can get saddled with student debt.

Speaker 4 (08:35):
You know, you're an accountant.

Speaker 5 (08:36):
You know this, you do, and I know student debt,
and you know student debt. You know what I'm saying,
Thank god I paid mine off.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
I do not want to, man, but she knocking on
my door monthly.

Speaker 4 (08:47):
Child.

Speaker 5 (08:47):
Man.

Speaker 4 (08:47):
Still, I'll be like, girl, do you even pay that back?

Speaker 2 (08:51):
You know what's crazy?

Speaker 1 (08:52):
It just dinged my my credit score and I am
looking to purchase.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
A home because of the rules.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Right, Well, well that's the thing.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
So during the pandemic and stuff, of course they stopped,
they defaulted everything. But if Trump want to remove the
Department of Education. I'm hoping it removes these loans.

Speaker 4 (09:11):
But now you said the SBA woman is going.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
To be hell no, apparently, Yeah, and that's the crazy
thing I pay that Hey, hold on, SBA is getting
the bare minimum.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
Okay, the SBA was at a one percent interest rate.
My student loans maybe I've been paying for since twenty eighteen.
And I don't even think I've touched the principle yet, because.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
That's what they do. They get you on that guy.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
And I don't know the APR rate, but it's given
a new car with bad credit, it got to be
at a twenty four percent rate because I don't understand
how I haven't even touched the principal.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Like I think I'm still.

Speaker 4 (09:44):
It like we got to pay more than a minimum.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Without paying more than well that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yeah, and maybe you're getting just the one hundred and
thirty dollars or whatever the.

Speaker 4 (09:52):
Minimum, whatever the minimum. But you know, here's what's happened.
One of my dreams was to pay off mine.

Speaker 5 (09:56):
I always said that was like, I'm powering my student
loans with one check just because I thought I was
to do That's a flex and that was a flex
and I was able to do it.

Speaker 4 (10:02):
And my credit score went down.

Speaker 5 (10:05):
After because I don't like that because you no longer
had that monthly charge.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Did you.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Did you have credit cards or that was just probably
your only dad?

Speaker 5 (10:12):
And I had one credit card. I still only have
two credit cards, you know what I'm saying. I got
a business credit in a personal one, okay, but uh
yeah they bruh, it went down. I'm like, that's not
what this is supposed to. But I didn't do any
research before because I had this thing in my head
because I wanted to be able and going back to
the American dream. Right, So my parents thought that the
only way the chief success in this country was a
couple jobs. You're lawyer, a doctor, and an engineer pretty

(10:35):
much it yep, and maybe we'll let you get away
with business orccounting, right, you know what I'm saying that.
And so when I majored in business, I went to
economics because it was still something I was rigorous, like,
it was something I could hang my hat on. Dad,
I'm starting studying numbers and all of that. But then
I got into creative work after working it. I worked
in corporate America for a year, got into creative work,
and then my career took off, and it kind of

(10:56):
was like a cognitive dissonance for my family, where like,
wait a minute, the other.

Speaker 4 (11:00):
Ways to make it in this country.

Speaker 5 (11:01):
And now we're seeing not just immigrants, but Americans, millennials
in particular, the American dreams out to reach. For most
of us, there's a well gap between boomers and Gen
X and millennials. What used to be true is and
true anymore about what your degree means than economy slowed
if you don't let you be even a gen Z
coming out during the time of the pandemic.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Oh, the people who couldn't graduate high school in person
or went into college online. And then the addition of
chat AI and chat ChiPT and artificial intelligence in how
you're even gathering information and things like it's not even
Google now, it's chet chept like to see how quick
the landscape and go. And it's crazy too that you

(11:42):
even bring up just from an international perspective, even for
me being in Florida, right, everything that I saw growing
up a job was a blue collar job.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
I didn't grow up seeing.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Many doctors, lawyers, white like finance accounting. That became an
option for me when I moved to New York, because
that's the number one industry here. It's finance and accounting,
and then real estate is number two, and I forgot
what the third one is here in New York, if
you want to fact check that. But growing up in Florida,
everyone that I knew did hair so was into cosmetology,

(12:16):
was into hospitality, either hotels or theme parks or hospitals.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
That was what you want to do. It's one of
those fields.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
And so I think even geographically, there's an element of
where you're limited with your perception on what the American
dream looks like like. For most of the people I
went to school with, when I go back down to Orlando,
all of them they're actually still some of them, majority
of them married or with children with high school sweethearts
or people they met in high school. Some of them

(12:47):
live on the same blocks that they grew up in.
They work jobs that you know, very but their lives
are very I don't want to say ordinary, but compared
to how maybe you live in New York or even
a Chicago, a major city, even our complex way less
complex than if you have actually the big world picture.

(13:08):
And what's crazy is the big world picture having had it,
having come from Florida, having even studied abroad. This idea
that we have the ability to reach, this falsehood of
an American dream is gone. It doesn't exist, I think
even for us as creatives. I think it's interesting seeing

(13:29):
all the gen zers want to be YouTubers, want to
be influencers, even the landscape of how you make money,
to know that you could be nineteen, no degree, never
traveled anywhere and be a millionaire.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
Do you want to do the American dream?

Speaker 4 (13:46):
What the American dream is?

Speaker 3 (13:46):
Because I know we're.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Here, we go.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Americans are split over the state of the American dream,
of course, according to a study last year by the
Pew Research Center, now here's the American dream, quoteun quote,
it's a century old phrase used to describe the idea
that anyone can achieve success in the US through hard
work and determination. And right now about half of Americans

(14:13):
fifty three percent actually do still believe that the dream
is possible. So over half, me not being a part
of the half, do believe that this dream is still possible,
which I don't understand how you can believe through hard
work and determination. You can achieve getting a home, You
can achieve being debt free, you can achieve being able

(14:35):
to raise multiple children within a household even with two incomes,
when we're literally being told every day that there's not
enough money, Like there is enough money in the economy,
but even two income households aren't able to truly exist
without one emergency.

Speaker 4 (14:51):
Yeah. See, see, this is what it is.

Speaker 5 (14:53):
The American dream is essentially the belief that capitalism allows
for upward mobility capitalism to exist, that has to be
an underclass, and that is why the American dream will
always be unattainable for a subsect of American society. Capitalism
cannot exist withou an underclass.

Speaker 1 (15:14):
Which is crazy that fifty three percent of Americans see
it to be possible considering only two percent have the
money that.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Like when we talk about where we are in the
realm of economics, majority of US are underserved, underprivileged, making
below damn near poverty line or below. Like when you
look at the average income across multiple states within the US.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
It's like forty five thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
Mind you, we're seeing that one bedroom apartments are now
fucking two thousand dollars a month, half of your half
going to rent.

Speaker 6 (15:53):
And then they want you to make four times the
rent a New York is a different type of.

Speaker 5 (16:00):
Like, y'all you're able to make a quarter bill to
live right here. I make a quarter bill and I'm
not living here.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
I mean it was a part of me moving right
Like even someone who is definitely in the one percentile
of the money that I make, being in New York
seemed like what am I doing? Like the cost of
living here is outrageous? The what's the something of life?

Speaker 4 (16:25):
Quality of life?

Speaker 2 (16:26):
Although I ain't gonna hold you, I don't move to Atlanta, like.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
No, I need washing fold service, pick it up, drop
it off, and fold it.

Speaker 5 (16:35):
But see, here's the whole thing that America sits on.
It's the fact that it's called a dream is because
everybody else is supposed to believe in it. And even
through slavery, right we had white people needed white people
in the South. Most white folks during slavery could not
afford to own slaves, but they bought into the idea
of an underclass. They needed to know that we are

(16:55):
better than them over there, We're better than dark that
that was a nun to uphold capitalism. So you need
to believe in an Elon Musk. You need to believe
in a Donald Trump, whether it's rational or not. You
need to think I can get there. And that's why
we worship those kinds of businessmen and those type of people.
So the dream needs to almost like an American myth

(17:16):
that is necessary for us to believe in for this society.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
Continued, Okay, I'm going to take it a little hot. Okay,
you just brought up Elon, you brought up Trump. You
said we have to believe that they exist. So then
do you find it to be a problem. Do you
find it to be a problem that within our own
community we look at the Oprahs, the Tyler Perry's, Thesa Rays.
Is it a myth that we can reach their level
of success knowing that they are black?

Speaker 2 (17:41):
They are you know either I don't know if any
of them.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Specifically are first generation, but there are also first generation
and American African American individuals who reach those levels of success.
Is it a myth for us, as millennials or gen
Z and everyone all of their predecessors to look up
to them?

Speaker 4 (17:59):
I don't think it's a myth, but I think it's
an imbalance.

Speaker 5 (18:02):
I think that we have America over prioritizes Hollywood and celebrity,
and they broke and they don't be the ones with
the bread, you know what I'm saying, and so like,
and so we often denigrate our community for being a
microcosm of what American society at large does. America is

(18:25):
obsessed with Hollywood. Black America is obsessed with Hollywood. So
it's not a myth that Oprah and Easter Ray and
Tyler Perry and jay Z and Will Smith, the use
knows as models are not a myth, but we can't
say that they are the only forms of success. Also,
we need to look at some of those blue collar people,
because in that blue collar thing that you're talking about
back home, there's someone who owns a plumbing company who

(18:47):
makes a lot more than that quartermal we're talking about.
Somebody is a millionaire sitting on a blue collar business.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
I don't know if you get into housewives, but maybe
Shemiah's husband literally owns he owns the company that provides
the HVAC systems for airports and they live in a
nine million dollar home.

Speaker 5 (19:06):
He is, and there's somebody out there right now saying
heating and cool and my man can't be no heating
and not knowing.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
Okay, first of all, you taking us to somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
I think that's another thing within our community. There's an
element of there's an element and stigma around certain jobs,
like whether it be the construction worker, whether it be
the plumber, whether it be the bus driver.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
We saw that last year.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Ebie K went on there and said she wouldn't date
the bus driver, and that became a whole thing, right,
And it's crazy because we're not afforded generational wealth or
being Nepo babies a lot of us, majority of us,
and yet we also look down on the hard worker
when it says the definition is hard work and determination
will lead you to this dream that we all have.

(19:53):
I also saw a quote somewhere, and I don't know
if it's in here, but it was great, but it
pretty much said that the American dream is a dream
because you only have it while you're sleep.

Speaker 4 (20:06):
So when you woke, when where.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
You woke, it's maybe too woke here.

Speaker 5 (20:11):
Republicans are so good going back to Mexican immigrants.

Speaker 4 (20:14):
They then may woke because words remember when we used
to be proud to be woke. Imagine it's actually true.
It's such a effect now, that's what I mean because
whenever they use that.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
World, why did you whisper nigga? You could say it, well, no,
I just just.

Speaker 5 (20:36):
But that does mean when they say that they're speaking
to a particular people, that's when they say the I they.

Speaker 4 (20:41):
Speaking to a particular people. That's what it is.

Speaker 5 (20:43):
It's exactly cold switch co word. We do it to
ourselves as well. I remember, like and people who call
themselves whole teps can.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
Own this to do you call yourself them?

Speaker 4 (20:56):
Originally it means what does it means? Peace right?

Speaker 5 (20:59):
And it used to be brothers who are trying to
instill a consciousness in us. They just became a caricature
of themselves because a lot of hoteps also trafficking misogyny
and all these Not only.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
That it's the outfit, it's the whole outfit.

Speaker 5 (21:10):
But the point I'm making is we now laugh at
the conscious community when actually these are people that are
trying to teach us knowledge yourself. Now, I'm not saying
that I'm not championing all the whole taps on the
internet on my head. And now mister Johnson, my brother Johnson.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
I'm I missed with the brother nineteen kids.

Speaker 5 (21:31):
Yeah, but I don't know he would call himself a
hotel because of a bad connotation to it. I tell
my homegirls just now is I'm trolling him? But I'm
like your grand rise and quick get the fun. I'm like, yo,
how do you right?

Speaker 4 (21:43):
Hold you? His name is king sister? You know what,
it's not even it's an affirmation. Come on that. And
I'm trying to say, this is who I'm trying. I'm
trying to nigga. Well, Kanye, say what you have to say.
I am a nigga, and anybody got a problem with that.
But when I say I'm a god, it's a problem.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Conversation.

Speaker 4 (22:08):
Okay, go to your original question. Man hate and.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
You know what, And this could be me wanting to
to continue to be selectively ignorant there, Like I get
it that they have a purpose.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
I actually don't get you don't You don't do the grand.

Speaker 4 (22:24):
Rising, not at all?

Speaker 5 (22:25):
I think because I think it's people be we be
so smart, We're done. Like I think that people people
are using etymology to say that mourning is like, like
you know, the study of words, and people talk about
mourning with m O you are in whatever and mourning like, no,

(22:49):
we're not mourning, we are happy. And I think those words,
those words are actually different.

Speaker 4 (22:53):
So literally it ain't even But I want, I want
to get.

Speaker 5 (22:57):
Back to your original question because I veer too far
off what you It's okay you said, is it a
myth around using these other people, and so just to
put a button on that, I think that we have
truncted what success looks like and we need to expand it.

Speaker 4 (23:10):
So just like we have now expanded that the.

Speaker 5 (23:12):
Influencer and the internet can make you know, millionaires and
all of that, let's know that HVAC can make millionaires.
Let's know that there are so many there. I got
a homie who works in corporate America. He makes on
the lower six figures, but he's got so many investments
and live so frugally that his net worth is and
he's given me investment strategies right, And a lot of

(23:32):
my money doesn't come from what I make salary. Why i'
so different than what my investments are. And I learned
it from somebody whose salary is lower than my.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
Mouth, So I was gonna say, that's also another element
of where the American dream. When I grew up, it
was never taught to me markets investments. The only investment
was was at one point a home and then you
have your four oh one K social Security and retirement funds,
like those were the only things that as a millennial

(23:59):
I was taught again coming from Florida, coming from a
low income, middle class family, those were the only investments.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
So for me, and also working multiple jobs. My mom
worked multiple jobs.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
My dad, like everyone in my family, barely made it
with multiple jobs, so you always had to have multiple
streams of income. But what you're saying in terms of
even having someone talk to you about where to invest
your money, that part of it was never part of
the American dream. But also maybe because while I was
in high school, eight is when the.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
Huge market crash took place.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
And so again I think leaving high school, graduating in
two thousand and nine formed me to almost immediately be like,
what the fuck is next? Like the market crash happened,
gas was at the its highest. Everything we thought couldn't
happen right, and eight we got a black president.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Everything that I had thought to be just this.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
World I lived in and how to go about doing
everything almost seem to And I hate to blame us
having a black president because I'm not, but everything that
I thought existed as the world we lived in seemed
to immediately shift as soon as I got out of school, right,
So all of these people who lost their jobs caused
the unemployment rate to skyrocket. Multiple people lost their homes

(25:19):
because they had their money within the markets, and the
housing bubble happened, and so to me, maybe it's why
it took me seven years to even go back to school,
because I was like, well, what the fuck do I do?
I think the pandemic brought me back to that too,
where I essentially don't view a world of planning or
goal setting because at any given moment, we could have

(25:41):
the fucking president remove the entire Department of Education, and
now that means nothing. At any given point, I could
sit here and beyond the routes to feel like I
can be in control of my body, and they reverse
Roe v.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
Wade.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
So it's why y'all may listen to me and I
have these outlandish opinions, but when I sit here and
look at in a blink of an eye, my goals,
what I thought the world was, what I thought life was,
where I thought my life would be five or ten
or fifteen years from now. Because we're told to plan right,
none of it matters. None of it matters. And it

(26:15):
reminds me of like when you go on dates and
you're supposed to ask someone what their five year plan
is and things like that. That is one one question
now because of the eight market crash, because of how
I busted my ass through college, and now I'm working
without my degree because of the pandemic.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Bitch, I'll just be existing.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
I literally even had a conversation with my boyfriend where
I was like, well, this, don't do this.

Speaker 4 (26:44):
Here you go, you're saying years ago.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
I mean in terms of even right, what we envision
a life with a partner supposed to be again, Yeah,
you date, you get engaged, get married, you have the kids.
You I think that even now, that element of the
American dream has fell upon me to where I'm like,
I've seen so many public divorces, divorce rates are at

(27:11):
an all time high that it's just.

Speaker 4 (27:13):
Like, oh, it's you.

Speaker 5 (27:14):
You bring up a good thing, because I think that,
you know, we talked about the American dream terms of money, capitalism,
and economics, but how relationship people. I put it off
starting families. They were just yeah, I wonder, I wish
I it was either New York or New York magazine.
I weard a couple of months ago that were talking about,
you know, the implications of millennial starting families later later.
What does it mean we can't for we're not able

(27:36):
to afford houses as early as we used to. What
does it mean that was starting families later? What will
it look like? Because social security is reaching this captain
paying into it, it ain't gonna see it.

Speaker 4 (27:48):
So what about the generation after us? All right? So
what do all of these different things mean?

Speaker 5 (27:52):
But one thing that's somewhat of a I don't know
if it's a silver lining, because there's a risk and
looking at somebody like weaning as bad as them, and
that's like toxic. But one thing that I think we
should remember in America as difficult at all as it is,
poverty in America looks a lot different than it does
elsewhere in the world. Yes, and you still have you know,
God bless their hearts, all of these you know, immigrant

(28:15):
migrants and people fleeing real turmoil, whether it's war overseas,
whether it's gang wars, whether it's just general depredation and
the lack of a high GDP in a country that
coming from poverty here looks totally different from poverty anywhere else.
And a motherfucker come out of school and be damned
and depressed because they can't get a job. And I
go to Ghana and I'll see somebody with less happier

(28:37):
than most of the people I know.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
So that's what I wanted to say, talk to me.
I think that that's another lie that we were fed.
I think that even still positioning the experience of living
in the US above all these other countries is a false,
brainwashed narrative that we have only because we do have

(29:00):
gang violence, we do have wars literally in our backyard,
with the police, the people who are supposed to protect us,
with the government, between sexes, between races like even it's
interesting now because on decisions decisions we talk about a
non traditional way of living. We've also been I don't
want to use the word brainwash, but brainwashed into this

(29:21):
Western idea of monogamy that has hindered what a village
actually looks like, which now we're talking about non monogamy
that exists in all so many other countries because it's
about building a village. It's about being able to afford
housing and raising children with a village, because you may
live in poverty like in a lot of those townships

(29:42):
and communities, there's multiple men and women and children in
the household, and they've been able to exist in that
way because this is what we have to do to
survive here. No monogamy is what's viewed as right, and
so every other way of living is viewed wrong, which
is confusing considering. That's why people will have roommates, that's
why a lot of people are getting into these polyamics

(30:03):
relationships or moving in with partners that they're not ready
to be with because they literally cannot afford to pay
rent by themselves. So we literally live in these I
don't want to call us third world because that would
be a slight to real third world countries. But America
is actually not as great in pristine and advanced as
we are taught to believe.

Speaker 4 (30:23):
Yes, and because I agree with that, and.

Speaker 5 (30:27):
There's a reality that what the poverty line looks like
in other countries, and so I'm not saying that the
median you know, upper middle class person in every country
is it's that it's it's better to.

Speaker 4 (30:41):
Be an American than these other places.

Speaker 5 (30:43):
Just like I said, you know, we can take our
resources as immigrants here make mad bread and how money
goes further. It's like ten to one when you go
to certain countries. But what I'm also saying is there
isn't possible water in certain communities. This Shorty's got to
go to another villa. I mean, we there organizations that
do work that we do behind the scenes about drill
and borhos and certain communities where they have to walk

(31:05):
walk walk walk walk just to get water to drink,
and the bathe and do all these different things. Like
it's much realer than even living in California where we
have a crazy homelessness or on house crisis.

Speaker 3 (31:17):
But can I also can I also say, because but
Alabama's not that different than that, you know what.

Speaker 4 (31:22):
I mean, like Mississippi examples.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
Yeah, so I want to ask you all this because
both of the other are saying something about this idea of
what we've been told or not or the myth or not.
So again with this idea of the American dream hard
work and determination, right, and so who still believes it,
according to the study higher earning americans over fifty, right.
And so my question to y'all is, I think there's

(31:47):
this idea that hard work probably used to do that, right,
and there were blue collar jobs and owning your own
plumbing shop, and so somehow that myth got reconstructed to
this idea of education. And you have people doing like
a philosophy degree that they can't use it now, right,
And so I'm wondering, are these higher earning Americans over
fifty It feels like to me, once they got their lick,

(32:09):
they turned around and they pulled the ladder right. And
so now when we're talking about younger people having to
reimagine the American dream, it's because the older people re
engineered it ahead of them, and so now they have
no choice.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
I don't think they re engineered it as much as oh,
this is gonna sound I just I just the way
my brain works.

Speaker 4 (32:33):
Shut up, Shut up.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
I think that the hard work and determination aspect of
the American dream is gone. I think the entitlement now
is more prevalent than anything. And I think also because
of the economy we're in. People aren't willing to even
do the unpaid internships. People aren't willing to actually do
the work that even I think the millennial was the

(32:56):
last generation that actually even had to experience that. I've
owned my business, I've had people come in with no skills,
still wanting to be paid twenty to twenty five dollars
an hour, not knowing what they're doing. You want me
to pay you to learn?

Speaker 4 (33:10):
Unwilling or unable.

Speaker 5 (33:11):
So I'm not in the case of you, because I'm
sure that you know that's a whole differ situation. But
there are a lot of unpaid internships price a lot
of people out of out of jobs. Yeah, complete, because
I literally take care of mad people in my house,
so I cannot afford to be anywhere else for eight
hours a day and not make money. But the sun
of said CEO can do that unpaid internship because the

(33:34):
rest of his life is financed.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Okay, you got me. Because I don't consider always that
element of it. I mean again, I was deciding between
toilet paper and food at a point. That's why I
still got student loans, because to me, it was I
need to take out these loans, so I'm able to
do that. I mean, I think there's a lot of
risk in doing it, but I think that it's necessary

(33:57):
and needed and to know that also there is the
ability to make money in ways that we didn't have
the opportunity to so making money by using by being
on the internet.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
There's still also a lot of remote.

Speaker 4 (34:12):
Don't do that. Don't do that, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
But I think that. But I think that's some of
the things that the new or like for a millennial,
none of us grew up they want to be.

Speaker 4 (34:25):
Right.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
It's like using the internet to do feed pictures, right,
or using a bandwidth to do like I'm going to
be a YouTuber right, Like yeah, in that and so
I think now that's kind of people trying to determine,
like that's hard work, right because again to your point
of like the bus driver conversation, right, like you could
be a truck driver and you own your truck business

(34:46):
and your fleet the trucks, and you make three hundred thousand,
but somebody may still look down on you because this
person has an accounting degree and they're a call at
the H and R block and they make one hundred thousand.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
I mean, i'll be honest with you, there was definitely
an element of I don't it's not the word privilege,
but I definitely once I obtained my degrees, I felt
better than yeah, and I'm just gonna admit that because
what I do is.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Admit the shit that y'all won't.

Speaker 3 (35:14):
But is that another like step towards the ladder of it?

Speaker 2 (35:16):
But to me it was like, as am I you.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
I'm a first generation college graduate, and so to me
it was praised by my family to do so. It
was something that was deemed as, oh, you're on your
way to being again. I don't want to say better
than or whatever, but to finish a degree came with

(35:39):
some bragging rights, came with something, I'll be honest.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
Now again, they're just on my shelf.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
There's no really bragging rights in having a degree because
I'm sitting on debt that someone that's probably making more
money than me with no degree.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Has, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (35:54):
It used to mean that I would be o to
higher paying job when I have a lot of friends
right now that are looking for jobs right It is
factual that it takes six weeks for a non graduate
to get a job and over three months, over double
the time for someone with a degree to get a job,

(36:17):
because of course your standards are going to be higher.
You're probably going to demand more pay because you have
that degree, and the companies just aren't willing to pay it.
So someone now currently without a degree will get a
job before someone with a degree. That used to not
be the case unless you were working fast food, retail,
all of those level jobs. The fact that now you

(36:37):
could go to corporate, they've almost made the bachelor's degree
and associates.

Speaker 4 (36:41):
Well.

Speaker 5 (36:41):
I think the other thing too, is we we got
fed us with no context. It was it was always
get a degree. It wasn't saying it was a basket weaven.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
You also drink your milk to make your bone strong.
They us the nigga.

Speaker 3 (36:59):
I mean, I'm America, America's one advertising scam. No, no, no, yes,
it's advertising.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
I also thought the eggs were a part of the
dairy category until recently.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
Ghetto, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't you Africa.
Don't bring your African knowledge over.

Speaker 4 (37:19):
No, No, I was gonna say the opposite. I was
today years old.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
You didn't know eggs weren't dairy because they put it
in that dumb ass people.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
They brainwashed this bro. The only thing that the only
thing that they got right was fucking tobacco and that
then that did the woman.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
But that's that's only because that's a lawsuit. They had
to do that.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
You ready, no, no, you ready? And then they just
rebranded it's a hookah.

Speaker 4 (37:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (37:49):
Bit.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
Literally the tobacco industry, the tobacco industry only had to
tell the truth when it was a huge lawsuit that
created the truth campaign that it's not even new tobacco.
They only did that because they got sued into having
to tell the truth. Otherwise, to your point, did they
lie to us?

Speaker 1 (38:06):
But which is insane because so many millennials do not
smoke cigarettes. It's not a thing I don't be out
of people that's an older generation. However, guess what they
can't live without these goddamn bake.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
Pins and hookahs. Same thing just rebranded.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
And so it's literally this idea of an American dream, right,
we know we have the two percenters that are pulling
those ladders up that really don't want us to reach there.
And then unfortunately, within our own communities as we grow,
we don't believe that there's enough for everybody?

Speaker 4 (38:34):
So what do we do? So how do we reimagine
what the new version of.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
Am I want to know what an American dream looks
like for you, for me.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
As someone with a degree, as someone whose first generation,
as someone who's now kind of navigating his own his
own businesses while also still being in.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
Corporate, having moved away from the family you come from. Right,
your roots are in Chicago, and you're not.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
A doctor, you're not a scientist, you're not a lawyer.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
So then what does the American dream as a thirty
five year old black, first generation male look like?

Speaker 4 (39:05):
It's not enough, no matter, no matter what you're doing,
is not enough.

Speaker 5 (39:10):
You can say, I was just having this conversation with
somebody brou You could do something and be so proud
of yourself.

Speaker 4 (39:17):
Right, you got a number in your mind. You could
buy a house. You could do this, and then somebody's
gonna say, yeah, we just moved the gold close.

Speaker 5 (39:25):
It's not enough, This ain't good enough, This ain't good enough,
this ain't So you have to decide in yourself.

Speaker 4 (39:29):
That's why I made the point earlier about contentment.

Speaker 5 (39:32):
So for me, the American dream in a country of excess,
the American dream for me is contentment, happiness, reimagining family
the way I wanted to be peace.

Speaker 4 (39:43):
I don't peace.

Speaker 5 (39:44):
I don't need to check a box and get married
by this point, have a child by this point, by
a home at this point. Living in New York City
helped me to reframe my thinking abound a lot of things.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
The privilege of New York. The privilege is the gift
that keeps giving.

Speaker 4 (39:57):
Then it retrains what you think of about when your
time last.

Speaker 5 (40:02):
Because buy property in New York, Yeah, come on right, yeah,
million dollar condo box Like, I'm not doing it. And
then you know I'm not ready to move to Jersey,
and so you start to think, okay, so my first
home is going to be an investment property in the
city that I come up.

Speaker 4 (40:19):
You can play different.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
You push back when you want to have children metropolitan
city with yeah.

Speaker 5 (40:26):
So you have to reframe what this happening has looked like.
And now you have to change the title around what
happiness looks like? Do you really want going back to
the jobs?

Speaker 4 (40:34):
Right?

Speaker 5 (40:34):
Do you want to make the dollar amount build a
home and be happy or do you want to do it?
And does it only mean something if you are doctor
so and so. If you are doctor UPONO doing these things, you.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
Know what's crazy about you saying that? Or does it
only mean something when you can show up in a
room and say you.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
Have these things.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
That's a thing that I battled with, and it's either
a past episode or upcoming episode. I sat with Ish
and I was talking about purchasing a home, and I
felt like, because I made a certain I'm within a
certain tax bracket, then now fuck, everyone's telling me I
need to buy a home.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
And I almost felt the pressure to buy a home.

Speaker 1 (41:06):
But is it like, do I only want to be
a homeowner to say I'm a homeowner because it comes
with a lot of response, because it comes with.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
A lot of responsibility. Right.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
However, I am in a place where I'm like, wait, nigga,
that house that was two hundred thy and twenty twenty
is now faux fifty and I could be sitting on
that equity and make the money. Like, Okay, I'm thinking
from a different landscape too. But also I'm like, am
I pressured? And I think, to me as a woman,
those pressures of the American dream look a lot different
because it's the pressure of why I don't have a

(41:36):
ring on my finger, why I don't have kids. Me
being a successful person wasn't ever a part of the
American dream as a woman.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
Let's be very clear too, there was two roads.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
But most American dreams for women were to get a husband,
have kids, be a stay at home mom, raise a family,
help build up your husband, help be that person to
drive them.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
That was never it.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
But also because I think you and I are a
product not by our parents, but within the crack epidemic
where we were raised within single parent households. Maybe not you,
but I was, and a lot of my peers were
to where that also shifted what the American dream ascle
looked like from maybe what you thought it was from
growing up in the sixties and seventies to then what

(42:21):
it looked like growing up in the nineties.

Speaker 5 (42:23):
Yes, And what we don't talk off enough about too
is how much environment plays apart. Because you can have
a two parent household within the context of ninety percent
of your friends and everybody around you has a different experience.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
Yep.

Speaker 5 (42:36):
And so there were books in my house that were
conversations about all of that. But when I went outside,
you know, it was a whole different. I had some
challenges that a lot of folks who immigrated here in
different neighborhoods didn't have, Like.

Speaker 4 (42:48):
What just street shit.

Speaker 5 (42:49):
Okay, you know what I'm saying is being growing up
on the South Side Chicago and hanging with these this
group and you don't see it as being involved in
a gang or being involved with this, and that these
are your friends. This is who you're with, right, So
we want to look at ourselves and say, my family
is fine. Forget the neighborhood, forget everybody else. Nah, your
kids are gonna grow up around these people and these

(43:11):
this community. If you're not helping this community, it's gonna
bleed onto your household. So it is on us to
make sure that the whole collective is straight. Because I
don't care how rich you are. I'm telling you, I
don't care how rich you are. All the celebrities we named,
they still got poor cousins. And them cousins are still
in community with us in some way, whether culturally, even

(43:33):
if not in actual proximity.

Speaker 4 (43:35):
And that's why you have who is the.

Speaker 5 (43:38):
Rap of the ball, who's on stage with singing yealow.
That's why you got Jealo Ball talking about you hang
with the real killers and hustlers, and that he from Gino,
that's not even his experience. But our popular culture kind
of deifies poverty and deified struggle and puts it on
a pedestal to where you want to relate to that.

(43:59):
And if we as a collective reimagine what the American
dream looks like for Black America, then you have people
who even are out of their socioeconomic tax bracket. Reverting
back to chase cultural cooling, Yes.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
And no, I want to shake the table. Can I
shake the table a little bit?

Speaker 4 (44:15):
But do you follow what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 (44:16):
I do?

Speaker 1 (44:17):
And now I'm shaking the table from another perspective because
where we all have this quote unquote American dream to
even make it out within our own community, there also
seems to be a huge sense of envy for those
who make it out. So although we strive to climb

(44:39):
ourselves out, it doesn't.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
Also seem like within us that we.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Praise those who are able to make it out, because
we also say they left us.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
People want to keep them there.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
They don't like when someone has made it out, the projects,
has made it out, the hood has made it out
and unfortunately, once we leave, a.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
Lot of us don't come back.

Speaker 4 (45:00):
We don't.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
We don't pour back into the community.

Speaker 5 (45:02):
But you can send resources back without physically being there.
I can throw you a ladder. I ain't gotta be
over there and holding it for you. But I can
go back like we do it. I work with communities
that do it.

Speaker 4 (45:12):
Like.

Speaker 5 (45:12):
You can give back without I don't need to walk
up and down Inglewood physically with my jewelry on to
prove that I'm in the see what.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Happens there from from dog to Nipsy and everything.

Speaker 4 (45:24):
Else, like and now Walker his homie man.

Speaker 5 (45:28):
Yeah, and so like, there are ways to give back,
and Derek Rose does it very well in Chicago.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
Yeah, he does.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
Of the something is it books and roses or something?
He just opened It wasn't a bookstore about the flowers,
the flowers, the flowers, which makes so much sense him
even just creating jobs within his community with by opening businesses.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
I think that's incredible.

Speaker 4 (45:51):
And irock, he's doing something with chess too. He's a
lover of chess as well, or so he.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
Really you need to see that absolutely.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Okay, So producer Jason, where are we going from here.

Speaker 4 (46:06):
Are we gonna do?

Speaker 3 (46:07):
Guess who?

Speaker 2 (46:08):
I love this.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
So we have a segment where normally we like to
pull up like hypocritical tweets sometimes from our guests.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
You well, well, no, no, no. But because because you work for.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
M TV, I'm sure they've had you clear out your
tweets the same way they did mine.

Speaker 4 (46:26):
I don't know they didn't.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
Oh it's because you're safe. I am not.

Speaker 4 (46:30):
I spent two hours my tweet.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
No, they sent me twenty seven pages damn tweets.

Speaker 4 (46:36):
Oh they they didn't run my Twitter dig Now I
came back clean.

Speaker 5 (46:39):
Dynastics. You're gonna say dynastics. Yeah, when he just ran
to do like some computerized.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
The AI will will plug get certain words, and you
know what messed me up? Actually, Drea had a swim
suit line at one point called fine Ass Girls.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
But then with the acronym yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
Baby, they said delete all. They said delete all and
then and then and then. It used to be a
compliment for my friends. I'd be like, like, if a
friend was fine, I'd be like, damn.

Speaker 4 (47:13):
I molest you.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
That is no longer something you say. Like, there were
so many there were so many sweets, like.

Speaker 3 (47:21):
In a diagnostic run Mandy got twenty seven pages.

Speaker 4 (47:24):
Twenty seven pages, that's insane. Got none.

Speaker 3 (47:28):
I just want to say that through the cross talk,
if if anybody didn't peat that.

Speaker 4 (47:36):
You know what. I gotta be honest. It was a
little bit of cat when I was considering the job.
I did. Okay, I use this, I did it. I
was like letting me go.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
So look how lovely it is that twenty seven pages
and none could sit here and.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
Have a conversation, see and agree to disagree, or just
come together.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
With address addressing some discourse. You tell me, Okay, So Jason,
Jason is about to damn.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
I forgot to highlight some of them.

Speaker 4 (48:04):
But yeah, I know.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
So we got this thing called guests who, and we've
been talking about the American Dream, and so I'm gonna
read some quotes about different people who've spoken about the
American Dream.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
The only that we have are there.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
It is not whether they're white, black, rich, poor, but
these are people that you would know, and these are
some of the thoughts that they've had on the American Dream.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
Our job is to guess who said.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
Try and guess them. So I've highlighted three depending how
fun we have let's three. So we've deluded ourselves into
believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of
the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices. That's what
this person said about the American Dream.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
Now the initials are MK. So I'm just gonna go
with Martin Luther King because I don't know another m K.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
But also, this sounds like someone speaking from the sixties,
but it's.

Speaker 5 (48:58):
Missing the al I can't even I can't even see.
Too easy to put that.

Speaker 4 (49:04):
It is easy.

Speaker 5 (49:06):
It's too easy for him, is that he always talked
about Protestants and his speeches even that that's a church
that I.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
Picked this one because he was talking about capitalism to
tie back into what you were saying, because it's a
conversation that's been happening for a long time about the
idea of capitalism torpedoing the American.

Speaker 4 (49:24):
That made me feel good.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Accident that kind of like, So here's another one, because
I was about to say some random Twitter users, so
here's this one. I am the epitome of what the
American Dream basically said. It said, you come from anywhere
and be anything you want in this country.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Initials so that you guys can play along. Is W
G Warren g the American Dream? I would assume that
this is someone.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
It isn't entertainer. I'll say that.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
Because you sadn't want to came from another country?

Speaker 4 (50:01):
You know what?

Speaker 5 (50:02):
To me? Off though, because the G is what? Because
for some reason I read this and Will Smith voice
of what the Dream, and I'm like that you sounded
like it would.

Speaker 4 (50:13):
Have been who it is? You gotta do it. We're
doing what's first?

Speaker 5 (50:23):
Off?

Speaker 1 (50:23):
What that gun is from fucking Buffalo? Can we not
sit here and make it seem like he came from
another country?

Speaker 4 (50:29):
Is Buffalo not another?

Speaker 3 (50:30):
I mean it's basically Buffalo got a wild drug problem
right now?

Speaker 5 (50:34):
Joke?

Speaker 1 (50:35):
Okay, wait, only because I want to hear him do
this voice who said this?

Speaker 3 (50:39):
This is also to when I say, I don't want
you to know what your what y'all think? If you
think that you feel agreed with this person, it's a
whoopy Goldberg. Oh she said she's the epitome.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
It's not like that really, Okay, I just my mind
went super problem and I'm not gonna say what I
just said.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
I was surprised by how patriotic it made her okay,
And do you know.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Why, maybe I wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
I wouldn't have guessed, well, she's kind of is she?
She's not even Magga Jason is she?

Speaker 5 (51:14):
I was gonna say, you know why she's so Actually
she is one of those people that actually didn't like
the term African American because she's like, I'm just American.

Speaker 4 (51:21):
Why do I need a hyphenated so you know, I'm neutral,
and you.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
Know what, I want to say that it makes sense
of her being the epitome of American dream because she
had to work hard, because she had no privilege as
a dark skinned black woman, as a not so attractive woman,
as everything that.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
I'm sorry, I know I didn't have to.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
Say that I was gonna let her fly, but we
still acknowledge whether she she got you know, she'd be outside.

Speaker 5 (51:59):
I'm not on front and and I'm not saying it's
just because just because we PI whatever the cameras in here.
I looked at an old picture of Whoopy Go Bird
in the nineties hairshot, and I said.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
I'd like to see it.

Speaker 4 (52:10):
No, I'm afind that.

Speaker 5 (52:11):
I genuinely was like, I can't believe they convinced us
this woman was unattractive. Now I like the words, even
though this sounds real conventionally unattractive.

Speaker 4 (52:20):
I like that.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
Come on, that's that is a.

Speaker 4 (52:28):
Cigarette.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
Let this champ geddy over.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
Something like that, bro, that is not with a cigarette
in the hand. Look at that.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
Let me say another picture.

Speaker 4 (52:37):
Look but she left them.

Speaker 5 (52:38):
Tell also to the role she played that she she
she knows how to.

Speaker 4 (52:44):
Like what she would have hat she don't look like this.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
Yeah, let me see another picture.

Speaker 5 (52:48):
And she's older, but I saw something.

Speaker 4 (52:52):
Why y'all only because we were making a point. You're
showing her young like all of these. This is a
beautiful woman. Man.

Speaker 5 (52:58):
Let me say, go up again the stereotypes that the
others portray on us and say that she wasn't a
good looking woman.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
No, no, no, no, we're not gonna not.

Speaker 5 (53:08):
That's why that's why I like the term even That's
why I love the term unconventionally attractive, because it says that.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
No, because as men ain't nothing, I ain't never heard
no one being my whole life be like now, whoopy,
I'll test.

Speaker 5 (53:24):
That's because we were taught not to even look at
fine Darskian woe unless it was like Gabrielle Union or
somebody like out the least, have.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Your own goddamn opinion. This is what I'll be talking about,
y'all with selective ignorance.

Speaker 4 (53:34):
Y'all.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
Don't let the motherfucker world tell y'all.

Speaker 4 (53:36):
Who can't exactly I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
I ain't never heard nobody say I want to be
in whoopy over.

Speaker 5 (53:41):
No, I got I got you. But I think a
lot of people I think group think is a thing.

Speaker 4 (53:47):
We know group think is a thing.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
No group think, which is why the Internet hates me.

Speaker 4 (53:50):
Because I don't really think my nigga I was.

Speaker 5 (53:54):
People were calling me African booty scratches and not messing
with Darskian dudes when they were younger.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
That's that's a classic one.

Speaker 4 (54:03):
All of a sudden, I'm attractive.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
You know what's crazy about that too? So growing up
in we knew.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
You had dreads, but that was actually the same thing
that I experienced, believe it or not.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
Growing up in Florida, nobody is actually African American.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
Everyone, especially in my schools, were first generation normally Haitian Jamaican.

Speaker 5 (54:31):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
Even if you were Latina, you were Cuban, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Colombian,
like everyone was from another country essentially. And I remember
when I first told people my dad was Jamaican. Oh,
I got made fun of or they automatically assumed he
had dreads, smoked weed and African booty s Crasher was
still the same thing applied even to Jamaica's back then.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
You want to know when it changed.

Speaker 4 (54:55):
Fucking Shunnedapau.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
Being Jamaican wasn't even a cool thing to be until
it became mainstream and pop culture group.

Speaker 5 (55:06):
But look at Haitians. A lot of Haitians weren't, probably
because they will always say it was Jamaican because of
that stack.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
They were at one point came out and then came out.
You're actually right, at one point.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
A lot of Haitians, even growing up, they aligned or
said that they were Jamaican just because Haitians had a
negative sigma around them.

Speaker 4 (55:27):
And if it was non Caribbean, you wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
Know, you wouldn't know, you wouldn't know.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
And I think that that's the thing that you only
experience if you're from like a melting pot like either
New York like a Brooklyn.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
Or an Orlando, Florida, a Miami.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
Like knowing how you actually viewed different, which is why
we have all of these breakaways into our own black community,
because we all viewed each other as something different.

Speaker 5 (55:50):
Essentially before we could see with guests, who real quick
last thing you said earlier, I never heard nobody sound
want to bend over whoopie. I just want to say,
this was bringing this back is crazy. It was just
one last thought, one last thought. Look at these niggas
baby mamas like we have Wow.

Speaker 4 (56:07):
We being an unrealistic view when you right what you ask.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
The men that I'm saying said that or never said that.
Probably couldn't breathe whoopies farts?

Speaker 2 (56:21):
Okay, Whoopy wouldn't pay him? No, never mind, let's be very.

Speaker 4 (56:24):
We get real judgmental. Were looking at scroller Instagram.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
Guys, Whoopy is the prize? Okay, Whoopy would be the prize.

Speaker 4 (56:32):
Not you.

Speaker 5 (56:32):
She said that her preference is for casual encounters and
lack of focus on long term commitment. She's also been
married three times, so she's been outside. I love that somebody.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
I love that he don't come for me. You don't
call me unconventionally pretty or not pretty. I don't know
what the hell I said, let's do.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
Our last one more, all right, So ready this one,
y'all never gonna give this one. It's PD, But it's
not that p D. I am living proof that the
American dreams still exist. It is still alive. And well,
there's only one trick. You have to be willing to
roll up your sleeves and work very, very hard.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
I thought that was me, p D, someone who is
living proof of the American dream and believes that the
only trick is to roll up your sleeves and get
to work.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
I actually thought this.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Was gonna be kim Ka because she even said, all
you gotta do is get you guys don't work hard enough.

Speaker 4 (57:31):
Pete Davison, oh you gotta pick right right.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
So this is or you guess it to. Pete Davison
is a good one. And I was about to say
he unconventionally pretty too.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
He had to work hard he is he is, but
he even he done bagged him all privileged in his pants.

Speaker 4 (57:50):
That's a bonus episode.

Speaker 2 (57:52):
Bonus episode. I don't know this one.

Speaker 5 (57:55):
I still want to at least put up a guest.
I don't want to take too long thinking American streams.

Speaker 4 (58:00):
Still, it's a woman.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
It is a woman, Okay, Okay, Pauladine.

Speaker 3 (58:05):
Hmmm, Mandy DeSantis got that way, say that, say that.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
Why do y'all do this to me just because I
know a woman with some elbow meat, cooking some collars.

Speaker 3 (58:18):
Okay, yes, But Pauladine Southerner, a food entrepreneur, food big controversy,
like fifteen years ago. Let's let it known that she
lets the N wordfly left and right.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
She does.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
That's why you want don't do that because I don't.
I don't buy any of her cookbooks.

Speaker 4 (58:34):
I don't want her message.

Speaker 3 (58:36):
Don't do that, but both in her belief that all
you have to do is roll up your sleeves and
work hard. She believes in the dream, right, I mean,
she got generations generation and I think, but she.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Is a white woman from the South, cooking like working
hard hard for her is so different from everyone else,
from her, from even from her era.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 (58:58):
Who?

Speaker 1 (58:59):
So I do want to ask you the now, what
do you from this conversation? Clearly you don't believe in
the American dream for people who I like to leave
off with something for anyone who's listening and believing. You
motherfuckers if I work hard, I can achieve anything. Do
you have anything to say to maybe those people who
struggle or do believe in what the American dream looks like?

Speaker 4 (59:22):
Like?

Speaker 2 (59:22):
Where would you leave off with someone you feel?

Speaker 3 (59:25):
Me?

Speaker 5 (59:25):
Well, working hard is the baseline, right, So okay, working
hard and hustling, rolling up your sleeves, being willing, if
you can to take the unpaid internship, making whatever arrangements
you can to sacrifice, that is all us constant. That
just has to happen. That doesn't mean you're gonna achieve
your dream of nothing like that, but that just has
to happen. So if that isn't happening, you definitely want
won't Okay, But the next level beyond that is define

(59:49):
success for yourself, and you don't have to buy into
America's idea of success. It doesn't mean that you hit
this certain dollar amount. It doesn't mean that you have
this type of partner who does this.

Speaker 4 (59:59):
Type of job.

Speaker 5 (01:00:00):
It might don't even mean you have one partner at all,
or you have multip whatever you want to do. But
you have to define what that means for you. And
I think that even parents, you know, the parents of
first gen kids are starting to learn that the American
dream looks different for every household, for every family, for
all of your offspring. You can't put your kids in
a box and force them to do things that God

(01:00:21):
didn't put them on this planet to do, because they
won't even be successful or happy. Even if they do
get that degree. Now that sattled with dead end, they're depressed.
So I would say for anybody out there, hard work
is already that's a non that's not negotiable. But the
next thing is find out what happiness looks like for
you and connect with whatever your spiritual base is and simplify,

(01:00:42):
simplify life and deconstruct this idea of capitalism and happiness
that Americans put on us. And uh, you know, then
you probably find some sort of contentment.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
Dumba.

Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
See that's gonna go viral. You know what the yellow
banner at the top and bottom. Oh, I'm not gonna
lie or I'm gonna put you in black and white
and play.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Strings behind you. And you say that because that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
Was I'm thinking of look post production how much because
that was a bar No, but but valid.

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
I think that that's the important thing. Right again.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
I think even in terms of us living the same
life with the pressures now to purchase a home because
we've reached a certain you know, part of the tier,
or to go now, what's next. There's always a what's next,
like you said, and I do find that to be true.
Like you have to define happiness for yourself, you have
to define success for yourself. And essentially that's why I said,

(01:01:36):
a bitch is just existing. My relationship is defined how
I want it to be my like what how much
money I make and why I want to make this
money is for me, not for anybody else.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
It's for me, which is.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
Why when y'all listen to me, I'll be like, who
the fuck is this bitch and who she talking to?

Speaker 4 (01:01:51):
Not you, bitch, It's for me.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
It's my thoughts. I'm I'm learning to exist in a
world that every which way in turn I thought I
was making the right one, something came and knocked me
off and pushed me ten steps back to where I
had to fucking pivot and figure this out. Like I'm
not in control of the things I thought I was
in control of.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
And this dream is a dream, that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
And so while I'm here, what makes me happy has
to be for me and not anyone else. And I
think when you're able to walk into the room and
again you find that happiness, but you found it within yourself,
and you can walk into the room not as a homeowner,
not as a C suite exec, not as a mother,
not as a wife, but as someone that you're truly
content with.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
That's what. That's all that matters. That's all that fucking matters.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
And y'all could choose to selectively be ignorant if you
fucking want to, motherfucker. Anyway, question for the audience, what's
your idea of the American dream? Still the original mantra
of hard work and determination or is something more philosophical
that has to do with happiness like domity? And myself
said anyways, guys don't see where can they follow?

Speaker 4 (01:03:02):
You?

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Subscribe and hear more of these fucking drops.

Speaker 5 (01:03:05):
Well, man, chestnut checkers, I just started the page the
c n C podcast.

Speaker 4 (01:03:10):
If y'all follow now, y'all will be what like the
hundred first follow us.

Speaker 5 (01:03:13):
So please help you build this platform that we just started,
which I gotta say this, I'm gonna say it on
my show as well. Thank you for your support throughout
the year. People don't even know we're gonna talk on
my show more about this, but how much you invest
and help other people?

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
Thank you?

Speaker 4 (01:03:27):
Yeah, you one of those ones.

Speaker 5 (01:03:28):
We need, we need that to be a bit of conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
Anything, like.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
I appreciate that even being here because I mean, I
come on here like the villain like.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
But it's a bit of its entertainment in the front.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
But I genuinely believe that there is enough for all
of us to eat absolutely enough.

Speaker 5 (01:03:47):
Everyone say that you move like that for real, and
I want people to know that. And yeah, so you
can follow me at DOM T D O N E
T I.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
Uh and uh wait your series series you narrate it right?

Speaker 5 (01:03:59):
I got one more series that I need to shout out.
Candy Man, The True Story behind the Bathroom Mirror Murder. Yes,
it was an episodic, a six part docu podcast that
I hosted and co executive produced with CBS forty eight Hours.
And uh it looked into the true story that inspired
the Candy Man movies. It actually originated with the murder
of a real woman, an African American woman on the

(01:04:22):
in the housing project in Chicago, and they took her story,
gave no credit to her.

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
And oh and I never could say that word in
the mirror.

Speaker 5 (01:04:32):
Yeah, look, seen the movie until I did the podcast.
But it's an enlightening podcast. It's entertaining. I mean we
picked the music, you know, self created the music with
the whole crew.

Speaker 4 (01:04:44):
Shout out to the CBS forty eight hours team.

Speaker 5 (01:04:46):
That was one of my happiest moments in my career
because we debuted at number two on True Crime.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Which is a big deal.

Speaker 4 (01:04:52):
Yeah, True Crime.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Is the number one, the hardest come on period eight,
top eight overall on all Apple podcasts.

Speaker 5 (01:05:03):
Amazon Music voted in one of the Best Podcasts of
twenty twenty four. Spotify I voted one of the best
podcast so, you know, check it out. I'm really proud
of that work, you know, I think you guys enjoyed
and learned a.

Speaker 4 (01:05:15):
Lot from it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Again, follow Domacy everywhere. His all of his information will
be in the description of this episode.

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
Oh not you finding our tagline? Finally, Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
Well, guys, if you want to watch this full video,
make sure you go on over and subscribe. That's patreon
dot com backslash selective ignorance, and I do want to
also leave you with the reason why I do this.
In terms of the American Dreaming where I see myself
it is as a podcaster, which leads to audio first.
So hopefully this audio sounds better than some of my
past episodes. We had technical difficulties over here early on

(01:05:49):
with my projecting voice. However, you already knows fine. Anyways,
because this costs a lot, this is an independent the
way that you can support me is by going over
to the Patreon seeing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
The full video.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
I have ignorant rants over there. I'm starting as well
the kickbacks. I don't know what I want to call it,
but basically you guys can join me once a month
over there, So that's on Patreon.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
Other than that, make sure you subscribe rate five stars,
do all of the things to keep us on the charts.
And you can hate it or you can love it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
Either way, are you choosing to be selectively ignorant or
are you choosing to be educated?

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
See you next.

Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
Week, thanks for tuning in. The Selective Ignorance of Mandy B.
Selective Ignorance. It's executive produced to Buy Mandy B. And
it's a full Court Media studio production with lead producers
Jason Mondriguez. That's me and Aaron A. King Howell Now,
do us a favor and rate, Subscribe, comment and share
wherever you get your favorite podcasts, and be sure to

(01:06:51):
follow Selective Ignorance on Instagram at Selective Underscore Ignorant. And
of course, if you're not following our host Mandy B,
make sure you're following her at full Court Pumps Now.
If you want the full video experience of Selective Ignorance,
make sure you subscribe to the Patreon It's patreon dot
com backslash Selective Ignorance

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EP. 13 | Reimagining The American Dream feat. Dometi Pongo

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}EP. 13 | Reimagining The American Dream feat. Dometi Pongo