Know Dumb Questions
Know Dumb Questions
KNOW DUMB QUESTIONS FT Ernest Crim lll: Exploring the African-American Educational Experience
Do you ever wonder what happens behind the scenes of our education system? Could there be a hidden narrative that we are missing? Join us as we unveil the complexities and systemic intricacies of education in a riveting conversation with our enthusiastic guest, a true advocate for education who hails from a lineage of educators. This episode is a deep dive into his valuable experiences and unravels the factors shaping the education system, especially from a middle school perspective.
We promise to be your guide in traversing the rough terrain of educational disparities and systemic racism. Our guest provides an enlightening perspective on the African-American experience, highlighting how cultural elements and intelligence often get overlooked, thereby impacting educational outcomes. We delve into the achievement gap, a symptom of a system rather than a reflection of individual students, and discuss the importance of explaining these complex issues to young people and their families.
Finally, brace yourself for an eye-opening comparison between the experiences of African-Americans in the United States and Palestinians in Israel. Our guest shares his impassioned experiences and emphasizes the role of media and education in influencing perceptions. We also navigate the significance of collaboration and community growth for achieving successful outcomes. This episode is a blend of education, history, and systemic challenges, delivering an in-depth understanding of the intersection of these facets. Tune in for an episode packed with stimulating discussions and valuable insights.
My man. Hey, what's up, my brother.
Speaker 2:How we do.
Speaker 1:Let me start by I'm having time in my life good brother. I genuinely are, and let me tell you why. Tonight, knowing that your, your what's coming up behind us, moves me. I really need you to understand that. I really need you to understand that those of us in here getting a head split open trying to make sure that brothers like you can exist, can live, can create academic experiences for our children by our people, because a lot of us wonder who's coming next, like who got next, because we can't do this forever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate that man. That means the world.
Speaker 1:It's earned. I have nothing but respect for the work you do. Talk to me about how you got involved in education.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, I come from a household and family of educators. So my mom was an educator in Chicago for 30 something years, a principal to South Side of Chicago. Her aunt was an educator. Her mom, my grandmother was a social worker. My maternal grandmother was an educator.
Speaker 2:I mean, I have uncles in politics, like I come from a family who's involved in service and I always saw my mom like she's a passionate person that's where I get a lot of my fire from and I saw that she would treat her students the same way she treats us. There was no difference. The love we had she had for us was the same love she had for them. And I can recall us just going to after school programs where they focused on the age and the whole community and the family. You know, in the morning when we went to church she would take a detour and pick up her students and I remember one time I think I had to be probably like fourth grade went to Washington DC because she started to fundraise, to raise money for her students from the South Side of Chicago.
Speaker 2:She took like 30 something years for the graduation trip to go there and, with all of that said, it wasn't something she forced on. It wasn't like she said I need you to grow up and continue this and blah, blah, blah. You know she always tells me she was like you know you should be a lawyer and that's just never really crossed my mind. I didn't know what I really wanted to do. You know, like like most young black men, I would do sports and stuff like that, but I was always first, that was paramount in my family. And so what happened was I was at Provide and I almost won't doubt, after my first semester I was majoring in psychology and you know, and a lot of it, I think, was because honestly, looking back, it was a tough transition. But also to the teacher style didn't really fit mine the way like where'd you go to school?
Speaker 1:Where'd you go to school?
Speaker 2:to the University of Illinois or Banna champagne and I, looking back now, if I could take a course on like our psychology, I'd be interested in that. Like Reslam Minifum is one of my favorite authors. He talks about, you know, racial trauma, something like that, but it just wasn't connected back then. So I dropped it because I was on probation and I took a black history course for my second semester. The rest is literally history because I fell in love with it. You know it was one of those things where I started to sit in the front of the class.
Speaker 2:The professor, clarence Lang, was amazing. You know I bought extra books outside of my course to learn because it was to me, brother. It was like it connected the dots. It was like everything that I had a question about growing up that my parents couldn't answer with that my old, outdated world books couldn't answer. They were providing that for me, and for me it was like if I can go back to my community and teach us why things are the way they are, so we know that it's not our fault. These were systems that were created prior to us being here. I felt like that illumination would help us.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that, let's talk about that. You talk about systems. That I think is important, but because I know you've taught in the earlier grades, I need you to talk about systems, as you were talking earlier grades. I don't want to do a college class tonight.
Speaker 2:We're going to get there.
Speaker 1:I am telling you in more ways than you will ever know. These two young men behind me went to my school. They're my sons. I don't think that education is going to be what they do, so they have had a different relationship with school meaning in terms of I was picking the kids up in the yada yada, but I don't know that they always felt in the same way that you did.
Speaker 1:It's cool to hear that you internalize it that way, but I want to hear you so in many ways, as a father, as an educator, with a couple years ahead of you, I am genuinely moved by your existence. It matters to me, it really matters to me. But tonight I need you to do what you do. I need you to teach middle school. Right, we're going to teach middle school and we're going to talk about systems from a middle school perspective, because I would argue that there are very few people who have a college level understanding when you say we are in this system circumstance because of systems, and people will say, yeah, but my elementary school, my son's elementary school teacher, loves him. She's very nice, and so what you talking about, cren? Why are you hating on white teachers? Or why are you hating on public schools? They don't know what you mean when you say systems don't require a personality.
Speaker 1:We're going to break down the system. Do your thing, son. We're going to talk about the system.
Speaker 2:First I got to say this man, when I was getting into education, I got to first give you your flowers because to see you and what you were doing, and I graduated in 2009. I went to grad school right after that to get my teaching degree and I remember going to the library Sorry, I didn't buy the book at the time. I went to the library and got it.
Speaker 2:But it was like that book man gave you like a roadmap in terms of how to do education, how to do mentorship and how to teach our children to. Yeah, you are here, but that's not an excuse for you to stay here. So I don't think a lot of folks realize how much you are a trailblazer man and it's really dope for me to say that. I started my career, like you know, seeing what you did and reading your books and watching your shows, and now we have an accomplishment, but that's just dope to be mad.
Speaker 2:But in terms of the system, like first, if we started from an educational perspective, we have to understand that most of our educators used to be folks from our community and especially in the south Brown versus Board of Education disrupted that flow. So if we talk about education, we're talking first all of the great thinkers and inventors that we had in our community, the great leaders. They were learning based on like a apprenticeship before they would learn from people around them. They would learn on the job before it's public school was mandated. So now, when you have public school be amended, there are people out there doing it. Then that's disrupted and now, by and large, we're learning how to be American citizens, or even we're learning how to be black folks, primarily by white women.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about, say one of the things that you talked about and this is an important point, because we don't go eighth grade on this right. So people here, you say that and thank you, brother, for what you said earlier. It means so much to me, but I'm so excited to talk to you, so forgive me if I went over it.
Speaker 1:It means a lot to me, but you matter, brother, you really do, and so when you talk about there was a time before Brown versus Board of Education that black children had access to black faculty, I think what can be lost is that you're saying that you wish that we went back to the under resourced schools where we didn't even have books and like that. But what are you? What you're saying? I want you to talk about this is that People Be able to teach in what we refer to as traditional schools in our community. We're not even allowed. They weren't even hired to follow the children. So when the black children left those segregated, failed schools, they weren't allowed to like the black teachers who've been teaching them To work in a newly integrated school, because those jobs already taken.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly what it was. So you know, I'm definitely not saying that we should go back in terms of not having that law in place, but I think in terms of that's a premium court decision. I think a lot of us in our community, what we're probably striving more to say we should be able to go where we want. If we want to learn from this school, we should be able to. If you want to go to this school, we should be able to, because sometimes those schools are right near us and we couldn't go to the school that was the George White. But also, too, we wanted an integration of the resources. We were paying taxes and we've already been getting them. So that's what I think, that's the biggest thing we and we have to think about. Who are we even learning about that era from?
Speaker 1:Are you preaching this way? How to get you? Oh man, who has man?
Speaker 2:bro who has created the framework in the curriculum to say that this is the way things work. They were brown versus bored. They were immature. Dr King wrote part Malcolm base came along. He wanted to kill everybody's. What they say. You know he didn't like dr King. They both got assassinated but we got legislation, lbj and everything that.
Speaker 2:That's how we're taught about that. It's way more conflicted than that, because every could put every Montgomery bus boycott you had. You also had a Bus service in North Carolina that was I can't remember the name right now, but there was a bus service created by black folks. So it's like we need both and we should be learning both so that that's what we Like educated, because only we can tell some stories because we live it. There are certain times I Google something, I'm looking for a story that I know. Sometimes, when I find things, man, I just have an inclination that this probably happened. But sometimes you can't find it because that could we're. You know we come from a tradition of real and they not have been. So you have to have that contact with each other.
Speaker 1:But you got to talk about that because that right man you are. This is what I'm talking about. What you're saying is, as a black man who has studied and who lives in the present, I've got to believe that that's not the whole story. I'm suspicious on it. I'm suspicious that our only interface with with mass transit Was the public mass transit. That had to be a hustle man back then we had a over.
Speaker 1:There had to be a brother who, like yo, I get my sister's car. I'll scoop you up, but you're gonna have to put some bread on him. I'm a man, I get had to be another system. But you could only have that if you are someone who grew up in the community. Under those Circumstances, because there's a, there's a latent suspicion that you have, and if you're not allowed to teach, because the teachers unions have created this certification process that only they can be successful at, white females are the ones who are most likely to pass the test, to go through the process of becoming a traditional educator. So they set the system up to make sure that the other ones would keep the job. And then, right, they guess who writes the curriculum. She who wins the battle writes the curriculum, the curriculum telling you what, what was and wasn't. Do you know that? I'm sure you know this. A great book, the strike that changed new york in 1968. Uh, in, in ocean hills, brownsville in new york city, writ large. They took the chapter out.
Speaker 1:Hmm chapter Just was just taken out Racians who lived with this brother, who walked the streets with this brother, who fought with this brother. So we, as african-americans, we don't doubt, for as african-american educators, we don't doubt that somebody might have done that. If I'm a study, when you're teaching, you're thinking If I'm going to study, the bus boycott. There's got to be more to it.
Speaker 2:Gotta be. And also, too, we have to understand that again and I'm not saying that I know what every city did, but we were just getting one, one snapshot of one city, you know. So what was everybody else doing? How do we find ways around? If they will be learned about a dr King or Rosa park, you don't learn about how, for what, how radical it is to boycott something like that, and how subversive, subversive and just really just how powerful that is. But also, too, we have to understand that they had to Molded and to believe in that that could work, because that wasn't what they wanted to do to fight back initially.
Speaker 1:See, we, we, we're and we're, we're, we're saying these talk about that, because that's Because I'm gonna bring you up to president, because you talk a lot about that as well. Talk about the interplay, because we we've romanticized, as dr Martin Luther king, we've romanticized Rosa parks, but that's not way everybody responded to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I gotta say like so this is what I would tell people. Get we talking like you know, uh, middle school, elementary age, right. So my kids came one one day, came home and they went it was around doctor, mainly white female teachers. He was peaceful, blah, blah, blah. And I immediately was kind of taking out, taking back.
Speaker 2:Like dr King was a piece, because, like I think so, I think often and I've used this term Um, it was honestly like peaceful protest or this, like there's no such thing if you really protest and this was something as a non violent protest and I had to explain to my child she was upset that time. Like dr King was not violent but he was not peaceful. He disrupted the peace. That's why he got so and I think that's a this. No, dr King used to have an arsenal of guns at his home through the 50s. Eventually he got to the point where he said I have to live the same. He wanted to live the same way, that he did a protest at the same way in the house. But that was a battle for him. Dr King was someone who demanded universal basic income. He demanded reparations. He was against the vietnam war, you know.
Speaker 1:So we have to break his own people and check his own people. And they from migham prison wasn't to the racist. Give the black passers and other passes like people who would be like yo. Why are you here?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Why are you here messing up our thing? People don't what you, as an african-american educator, do, and that's why I want you to continue to talk about systems, because I don't think people understand that a system Is not a decision that you make. It's decisions that are made for you. You have to unmake the decisions, but people don't understand that someone like king and I want you to talk when you talk about king. But there are others, there's so many others who are unnamed, unknown, who were against this idea that just because I am, doesn't mean I'm gonna be. So take us through how you would talk to your middle school students that help them to understand, and just this notion that king wasn't like kumbaya.
Speaker 2:I love everybody.
Speaker 1:That wasn't this guy. He wasn't this guy. He wasn't the romantic love. It wasn't that thing.
Speaker 2:I think the the the best way to kind of explain and tell them would probably be like I, on the spot, I would probably say you know, if you listen to certain rappers, um, you can get a certain message from them based on their tone, as opposed to, um what the lyrics are actually saying and sometimes I think we get caught up in the poetic, the poetic nature of how dr King speaks.
Speaker 2:We don't understand that when he was oh, good luck, like, he was really talking about we, about the we, about to brush y'all heads better, for Like we're not leaving. Like some people would say that a certain rapper is like better than somebody else just because Because they're raw, raw, whereas a person delivers in a calm, but the screen isn't as good, because I don't feel it, but think. But I would tell you, look at the lyrics though. Look at what they say, like, as I was always a nice guy and some people would say I'm not born. Well, listen, look at what now actually, right, you can be poor risk.
Speaker 1:They don't want a nickname.
Speaker 2:So, and I think that's the things that I would say also, I would be tough by it when we look at About a quake to a gang.
Speaker 1:Right, you could do that. Let's be clear Came up to you and you own the business and they said I'm gonna shut you down. If you were the mayor of a city, he's gonna shut you down. If you are the president of the United States, I'm gonna shut you down. You wouldn't think what a nonviolent fellow.
Speaker 2:I mean even think about this, right. So now what they would say. People who are jacos or whatever, they dress a certain way. Back then we talking alchapone, it was sharp man, even when Malcolm Mets was on the streets. Malcolm Mets always been sharp. So Dr King's we never seen Dr King without a suit. Dr King was sharp, he was the gangster for justice and again it's like he said it was in part.
Speaker 1:What he was also doing is Malcolm Mets. There's no Muslim short set, right you? You out there, you doing your thing, and that was a rage against the machine. We're gonna dress in a way that you don't expect us to dress. We're gonna act in a way because we are going against the system. The system is a set of behaviors and outcomes that are guaranteed over time, regardless of who it is that is in charge. That's the system. And to your point earlier, we African-American children are not the lowest performing kids in the schools because black kids are dumb. That's not why. That's not why it is because the system is designed to guarantee that outcome for ever. You talking one of your videos about the, the illegality of teaching black children to read as a foundation of a system that Persists today.
Speaker 2:To take us through that, yes, so, like I made a video, just some misnomers about black history during the period of the slagman, and you know, I think it's important for people to realize that again, black folks, african-americans, we came here with something. We were stripped of things, but we weren't stripped of our intelligence. I imagine being stripped from your homeland, taking somewhere at the bottom of a ship several months at a time, and Then they, and then they're all talking language that you don't understand. And now you're on in places With people who look like you but you can't even speak the same language and everybody's speaking something. For, like, we have a, I have a hard enough time. Like, if I was speaking Spanish, I go to a different country, I'm gonna expand it, I'm on the app and they they probably looking at me left. So if I was that same log, they were probably say I'm stupid because I can't speak the language they do. So we have to get out of that. This is about it. That's the our language. They are intelligent.
Speaker 2:We should understand that, wouldn't anybody, of course, because we speak our all types of things. So we come here speaking wallah, europe or arabic. We were scholars, come from people who created the greatest civilization, one of the first universes in the world, timbuktu. So we come here if we can't read and write. If we can't read and write, they are like that's important for our kids and our parents to understand. So your child, if they, if they have a you know, if they're underperform or whatever, your child is highly intelligent. Something is just not being Communicated in that classroom the way we want to and it's and I want to say this too in terms of understanding system how I would explain it to kids, the parents of my kids if we look at stats and we have it Disaggregated by, like them, a demographic or whatever, I want you about disaggregated, because that that right there we got a pause there because that is a really big yeah, yeah that is often missed when people have a conversation about educational outcomes.
Speaker 1:I know we got a bunch of PhDs and I know y'all are brilliant and we love you and thank you for joining us tonight and and if this is beneath you, we totally get it, but it's not beneath everybody. Yep, talk about the disaggregation of data and why that's important.
Speaker 2:So if we're looking at data, let's say we say a school has like a 50% Graduation rate we want to look at okay, with everybody performing at that level, or is it just certain groups? Is it based on, you know? Is it is it gender, you know, based on race or ethnicity, whatever? So we're gonna break it down by a category.
Speaker 2:So what we'll see is, let's just I'm throwing out some numbers, I don't have a chart Sure sure sure, sure, but let's just say that I think they look at 25% of the making black kids like adder above great Level of man. Let's say it's like 60% for white kids or whatever which is about right.
Speaker 1:Those are real numbers that you. Those are not assigned to any particular school yeah, but if you are in a school that has black kids and white kids, that's about what we refer to as the achievement gap. Yeah, 65% to 25%, and I think that's what you're saying man, and I'm not saying that in the same building in the same building, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So what we have to do is say, hey, no, kids just ain't need to go. We have to say the system or what they're with there being nurtured under is the reason to go. I'll tell my students when I was in the classroom that the end justifies the beings. It's not just saying, if that's the result we're getting, that's because and nobody is raising the hell about it that's because that's what we intended to get, that's what we wanted to have. Five to ten percent in some school district is insane because like so again, it's not that the flower can't grow. If that's flower, it's not in the right environment. You're trying to plant a flower in the wintertime.
Speaker 1:You need to. You know I'm saying Because this is what you're talking about a system but but one of the things that you're talking about that people don't realize is, very simply, the overwhelming majority of your black sons and daughters are in Elementary classrooms with white teachers. Doesn't make them bad people, just make some white teachers. In the same way that we know that you can't come to cook out With raisins in in the potato salad, there are certain things that we consider cultural more, as they're just certain things that are consistent with the community within that you come. If you know that the majority of the children who are identified as having behavioral problems are selected, by the time they're five years old, by people who don't understand their behavior, if you're aware of the fact that you there is no disincentive for over identification of behavioral issues, but in fact an incentive, an actual financial incentive. The more special needs children you have in your school, the more money you get for those kids. That's just the fact. The more middle class, lousy, white, suburban teachers get to come work in that building. That's just the fact. That's just the way it works. You don't have to like it, it's just the way the system is set up. So the incentive is if you identify these children having behavioral needs, you play into this idea that black boys in particular are bad and white boys misbehave. And if you see what that looks like, then you see the foundation of the system.
Speaker 1:18% of all kindergarteners are African American. 48% of all out of school suspensions are to African Americans. The numbers, the math ain't mapping. You got to suspend the hell out of a bunch of kids like for real to get to that number. This just doesn't work. And so what many people have?
Speaker 1:What happens with a lot of black people in particular is it's like damn, I know somebody's kicking me in my behind, but I don't know who it is because this teacher, she's so nice, and the principal, he's so nice, and my child's making A's Looking at their performance on the state standardized assessments. They're not looking at how much the kids started caring about school. They don't recognize how much time the child has spent in the equivalent of time out. That's the foundation. That's how a system somebody said that's a son school right now. That's the system that over and over, whether Chicago or Tallahassee or Hartford or Sacramento or Austin, you can go everywhere in the United States of America you can find African American parents who have this exact same story tonight, tonight. That's the system. And then here you come, talking about teaching people about their history.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, one of the things that I've learned on my journey, brother, is I can best speak from my lived experience in conjunction with our shared communal history, and I know when I'm in a conversation that I need to sit back and listen to it. So if I was to, let's say if I was subbing for a science class one day, there are certain things I know about keeping the class together that I can do, but in terms of teaching the information there are kids, let's say, if I started subbing now, there are kids who have been taking that course in August, who know more about that subject. I have to take that to the high school so they can teach me. And I'm saying this because when those teachers come in not all, we know that's not all, but we know some come in with this air of whiteness that says that you have to learn how to do things our way, learn our stuff, and if you don't, then something has to be wrong. From that perspective, those teachers can only teach your child how to be what they have accomplished in their life, which means that we will be trying to fit in within that box of whiteness from a female perspective, or we'll be adding that to who we are, which means that if they're not coming in with an understanding of compassion and a perspective of empathy and love, then we can be looking at ourselves from the student's view.
Speaker 2:I'll tell that in alternative school when I first started teaching and this is in the hood of Chicago, in Roseland these kids have been kicked out. You know various offenses. It's their last. Stop right here and we had two white teachers on staff. One was a really white person from South Carolina somewhere who was a teacher for America. Another one was white teacher from Michigan two completely different outcomes. And it was because one knew that's what she wanted to do. She genuinely cared and she tried her best to marry what she was taught in English you know, teacher school to what the kids cared about. She knew she couldn't teach them to be, you know, black men and women, but she can teach them how to gain a love of literature and add that to their terms.
Speaker 1:Well, they're just certain facts.
Speaker 2:I do want to say, I'll say it to you differently.
Speaker 1:I'm a man. I'm a man of my adulthood. I can't unman myself. I'm working in a space like today. I was helping one of our third grade faculty and I have a different tone. I have a different approach than the sister who I was working with today. I lean in to this young man because all four of them decided that gum is not for your mouth, it's for your hands. And so I got four little boys who have fingers webbed in gum right now. I lean into them. Go to the nurse now. Just notice she tried it first.
Speaker 2:It didn't work.
Speaker 1:It doesn't make her bad instructor. It just means that we have a different disposition, and I can't unman myself any more than any woman could man herself. It doesn't mean that one is better than the other. It just means that in that time, in that space, it is what it is. And when we're talking about systems, what we're talking about is the perpetuation of who should be teaching us and what good is, who a good student is, what a good child is, what well-behaved children are.
Speaker 1:And if you look in the hallways of most schools, what you're going to find are little rough light boys who probably play sports all afternoon, all afternoon. And I bet you go to practice, you go to football practice, and they're standing just straight. They ain't bother nobody. They're not plucking anybody. They're not pulling anybody. It's anything, they're not doing anything.
Speaker 1:Coach says stand there, this dude's a volunteer. He might have been in the joint for six years, he may not have been Whatever, but he's not a certified teacher, he's not trained to teach, but he's a dude who's standing in front of 44 boys and he blows that whistle and they're like this, the same kids that I had in class who got webbed fingers from the gum. You want to put my practice now. They're you football league. They're standing just as tight and right as they need to and they didn't forget their belt, like they did when they came in for school today, because I guarantee they got the helmet, they got the mouthpiece, they got the shoulder pads, they got the undershirt, they got the rib pads, they got the pants, they got the boots on and they got the socks. They got the whole uniform. Couldn't remember the school uniform. When we create a system, young men don't have access to that. We, as you said, we were backed to becoming young women to be able to code switch, and it's not sexuality conversations.
Speaker 1:Please, this thing going to be all yours a couple of years, brother, because they had some of this stuff don't make sense to me. But but then parents, politicians, bureaucrats, how can they rewrite this system that is guaranteeing that if you're a black boy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, man. So I think that first, when I'm talking to parents and a lot of my videos I try to direct those towards parents who have kids, who are dealing with these types of things, and I think we have to understand the parents that the school is not, is not providing your child with the first teacher. You know you are the first teacher, you know that like these, these, these pillars of socialization, man, and to break that down is essentially, there are various things in our life that are teaching us and socializing. The school is not. It's not a place of education on. Most of what your kids are learning is how to fit in and to be a member of society. It's socialization.
Speaker 2:I asked my kids how their day went every day and the main thing they talk and they're excited about some class, but it's really mainly about how the teacher was a teacher funny, or my research. I did my handshake with my friends, like it's. So we're learning from our peers at school. Teachers were learning from our parents and family were learning from television or just media, social media. Now we're learning from religion. So like there are various things that we're learning about before we go to the school.
Speaker 2:So I would tell parents, like take that power back, because we can't always control. We know the numbers are. There's one term for black men and it's like when I started it was 1.7, I think about 1.3. Now we we not in there, and I understand why. Because it's really difficult to expect a lot of us to go back to the place where we were traumatized, you know. But let's say that we want to take our power back.
Speaker 2:Then you start having these conversations with your child every day, meaning again, I go into that science class, I don't know everything, but I have the energy to bring the kids together and I have the we're with all the one to learn. So let's go find some resources, let's go find some social media people, let's go into right. And let's also begin to another thing I feel passionate about. I'm on that note to say, because when our kids get to school, they'll know how to question things, because you'll be countered that I do that often because my kids came back to kindergarten talk about the replay and we had a whole conversation about black people screen. Except for how did this white man go forward and free them? You know, these are things we're lucky for, because in my story I'm gonna be the hero, so why would they say?
Speaker 2:that Right so, but but even beyond that, we have to begin to. You know how, grown up, we all wanted to be two birds, especially from the 80s on, when I was born, when Jordan was around man, because that's what we saw. And even now, when I see somebody tall and I've had to coach myself out of this. But you want to say to a brother all day you do this, you play football, whatever, and it's been done to me. Even now, people will assume I, people assume I went to college on a scholarship, basketball scholarship. I'm gonna be 6th school man we have to.
Speaker 1:I'm 5'9 and they thought that I played go to a white school. They go, they like, why are you here? You must play something.
Speaker 2:You know how we will begin to recruit these kids for them and us. They got top ranked corporate whoopers and fifth-ranked like bro. This kid just want to have a good time and play, you know, dog ball.
Speaker 1:I call them puppy mills.
Speaker 2:We need to begin to recruit kids for academic purposes. And saying, you know what? The way you answer that question in class you remind me of a politician, or the way you spoke up reminds me of a you know actor or entrepreneur, or you sound like a lawyer, you sound like this or you sound like a principal. Because when we start to do that, then we can start showing them. People look like them who did that, and then they'll start to do it. But then also, if you want to do athletes, they show them the ones that have had careers after. They show them the ones who are doing big things outside. We don't. Of course they know LeBron, but they know what LeBron does outside of that. Do you know what these folks do outside of that?
Speaker 2:There was a again I'm gonna forget the name, but of course you know Booker T Washington. He had a mentee who this brother ended up founding a Gremlin State University, and this dude this is early 1900s. Of course this brother was 16 300 pounds. I know ABA didn't the one nobody in his ear saying you're going to leave, you're gonna be a old line, you're gonna be this Booker T Washington. He just saw he wanted to go a different route, I think in terms of being a lawyer. He said no, you are one of our best students. I need you to go here in Louisiana and start this school. And he starts that school. And think about how many people's lives have changed because he was a type 10 as being asked you.
Speaker 1:So you talk about something that's really important, brother, and I really do. I hope families and educators hear this. You can speak a truth into the heart of a child who doesn't know what the truth is. We call our teachers illuminators, and the reason why we call our teachers illuminators is because they're not putting information in. They're turning the light on to all the information that's already there.
Speaker 1:Think of it as going into a dark room and cutting the lights on. When you turn the lights on, you didn't put the chairs there, you didn't put the table there, you didn't put the stuff on the wall. All you did was make it easier to see and you can illuminate, illuminate inside a young person what they can be, because they didn't know that such a thing was possible. I didn't know that anyone could open a school. They were.
Speaker 1:It was not a thing like people are, like yo. You know what you should be. You should open a school, because there was no such thing. I didn't even know that you could do it. It happened. It's a part of my illumination with you is, brother, you need to open some schools. We'll talk about that in the meantime. So I want to come to the top man I so much that I want to talk to you about, but you come to the top one of the things that I really respected you doing as of late, as you have found yourself or put yourself in the middle of a very real conversation that's going on overseas between Palestine and Israel. You talk to me about the parallels that you're seeing between the pan-African experience and what's happening there man, you know.
Speaker 2:First off I would have to say that, um, I got Malcolm right here. Yes, you know, brother mouth always spoke out about that and I think you know.
Speaker 1:Actually specifically spoke out again, like it's not, you're not saying this metaphorically. He actually had an open opinion.
Speaker 2:And I think oftentimes again, we cherry pick what speeches and what polky like about people. That's not to say that we mirror every single thing, but to say, come in with a critical lens and I and really figure out what they were talking about and why they work. You know and With that being said, a fast forward to the present day I would always hear about the conflict but I honestly didn't know. I didn't understand. I was so like in on studying and trying to catch up to the stuff I did not know. I do recall one time Lupe fiasco shut out to him he mentioned in the song something about Gaza and I was just like what is you know? What is this like what? I didn't understand. So I tried to do research. I failed short a lot.
Speaker 2:Halfway through teaching I had a co-worker of mine I was the first year teacher and she wanted to help out with the black shooting you know started and I was of course like yeah, and through talking to her I learned a lot, bro.
Speaker 2:I learned a lot about what hurt she and her family has dealt with since 911 and even before this whole situation, like the hate. She would give it some consistent base, whether it be sometimes kids, whether being in her neighborhood of people throwing things out of it like calling her terrorists, why she jogging and stuff like that, and I just began to think like I'm missing out on something. So we had her to talk to me a lot about it. I actually Years in a row and that's when I was like yo, this is deep, this is, this is something that we're not really talking about enough. Then I found out about us giving money, like our tax money, billions of dollars, and I began to differentiate between you know, like a sign is, of course, people who are really practicing Julius, which is the distinction difference, because we hear that term all the time.
Speaker 1:What is Zionism and what is Judaism?
Speaker 2:Zionism would be, to break it down simply, the equivalents of a white person who practices Christianity for the purposes of white supremacy. These will be people who are, who are Reclaim to be Jewish, but they're practicing it because they want white you to be exalted and to have the benefits of white. That's basic what it is, and there are plenty, as we can see here in America with our protest and some people over there in Israel that, who are Jewish but don't subscribe to that. So when this began to happen, man, I just the parallels of not just seeing the similarities in that experience, but also so we get money and then learning that our police, who, who have terrorized us in these communities. I've learned from them, not to say that it started with them, but it was amplified. So but we already have a history of police that dates back to slavery. But somebody's just said you know what? We need to push it up with us, let's go learn. Some folks are really doing.
Speaker 1:Talk about that because I don't think people I don't know that everyone knows that Number of police stations. Glad cuz I think that again we're talking a great tonight.
Speaker 2:You're right, right.
Speaker 1:Not everybody knows that. Talk about that.
Speaker 2:I would say you know if you are heard about. You know, have you heard about Mike Brown? Have you all heard about George Floyd? Well, thousands of officers across the country, and some in Minneapolis, actually went to this country to learn from their police not how to Do restorative justice or incorporate anti-racism racism, but to to be more strict and more violent with them, and this has been happening for years. So there's the, the officers who killed Freddie Gray, tyree nickel, the police chief in that situation. She was over there recently. So there's a direct correlation because, like, if we we're giving money so that how many people can be terrorized and we're also spending our tax dollars to send police over there or to have them come over here Train them to brutalize up. So my thing is, as the Bob, so below as long as this exists, the way it does here, that will exist, and so on and so forth. As long as we continue to support that and it happened it will continue to happen to us, whether it be systemically or whether it be over.
Speaker 1:So we're near the top of our man. We gotta, we gotta do this again. So talk to people about the work that you're doing now. Yeah, what you do, you know obviously. I've seen you on Instagram and really appreciate I. I think passion is a word that's often used, quite frankly, in opposition to intellect, so I'm not gonna do that to you. I See you as a brilliant young brother who is carrying the torch for, for the next generation. When people talk about the people coming behind and saying about that life, I got evidence that the dead-ass wrong. So I see you as a learned, humble Educator. What do you see yourself doing with the talents that you're developing and that God is giving you First again?
Speaker 2:I appreciate that, man, you know. So I talked for 12 years and I actually resigned last year and it's because I, you know we could talk about it another day but there's a lot wrong in the environment I was in. I didn't feel like I was being nurtured correctly and I feel like I had to Minimize so much of what I can truly do, you know, within this system. But I also felt this this year needs to like reach more of our people and I was growing this platform at the same time and I saw the impact and I was traveling, the speed and I have my book and everything and and, and I saw all that to say that when I was teaching, the goal you know what's teach the goal was to get to the end of school. The goal was to like, make it out my head above the water.
Speaker 2:When I started this journey, I had a friend asked about him by man what's your goal? I got it out and I took some time to truly think about it and what I see myself doing primarily what I do with black history, honestly is Altering our subconscious, man, and what I mean by subconscious is the way we are programmed to think about ourselves and our condition. You know I these videos I'm putting out, I want to like, alter our imagination, our image, nation. I want to show us who we truly are. I look at myself as extending or Following in the footsteps of Carter G Woodson today. He didn't have some media he could. He didn't have social media and I'm not. We compare myself to him.
Speaker 1:No, I'm not doing that. You ain't got to do that.
Speaker 1:No no, no, no, no. So let me do. Let me stop you there. Just with all due respect, you are to be compared to Carter G Woodson. You are, because you're doing what he did in your time. He did what he did in his time and you're doing what you're doing in your time. He used the platforms that he had, and it'd be like saying that Cardi G Woodson couldn't hold a candle to David Walker. Well, no, because David Walker was a different man, and so no, and at different times. But it's like saying that who would win in a game? Lebron or Jordan? They didn't play in the same time. They don't play in the same game. It ain't really worth comparing. It's just a dumb thing.
Speaker 1:And so I appreciate the humility, but if you don't acknowledge that you're coming from the cloth that Woodson brought forward, then if anything, it's bastardizing the work that they do. You're not saying you're dope, but he was. But in your time you matter in a way that, quite frankly, he doesn't to some people and you might be the precursor for a lot of people. You might be the introduction when someone says you know what I, brother Krim, do talk about Cardi Woodson. Who's he? Who's he A cornerback for the Steelers? No, no, no, that's Rob Woodson. You get there and you may introduce them to something. So you are from the same family, you are born of the same seed and so you live on the same truth. So you ain't got to do that with me.
Speaker 2:You ain't got to do that with me. I appreciate that. You know it's really about extending it because he knew this was a year long thing. He started with the week. A lot of folks don't even realize that it was just a week. Then it became the month. My mind is I want us to appreciate our history all year around, so it's a lifestyle. My goal is to empower parents so that we can remember that education started in the house.
Speaker 2:I don't look at myself as helping us progress at anything. I look at myself as helping remind us. I feel like I know I will send here to remind us Because the passion I had when I first started taking these courses the same passion I have now and I've done various things since then, but I don't do anybody. I used to rap. I thought I was like man, I'm going to rap. It's like nah Basketball. I feel love watching basketball, but I don't even care that I could. But I care, like if I don't know something about this, I care because I got to give it to somebody. You know what I'm saying, so I need to keep doing that. I will talk to my wife about this. I believe that this what I'm creating here, to the grace of God is what we're going to develop into whatever becomes. Whatever a network is. I don't know what that looks like, because networks don't. I don't want to keep being this.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying it's like wrecking, like this, but something's coming from this and the point where I have ideas. I don't even have the time to feel and I feel myself moving in that direction. I have a lot left and I know maybe within the next five years things will change. But I know when I'm being acknowledged by brothers like you and the other people that I've seen reach out to me, I feel like I'm on the right path and it's just about changing that subconscious. So we know that we are worthy. And I'll close with this.
Speaker 2:I was speaking to a group of kids last week and afterwards I was signing some books and I was asking each kid what their favorite subject was, and a lot of kids might say math and English or whatever. Some of them say they want to be athletes. But I was very intentional about writing in-pat books what they would be. If you're math, you're going to be a math politician. If you're like football, you're going to be a cultural owner or something. You're going to be a businessman.
Speaker 2:And I did that because when I was young, my parents spoke life into me and the thing they spoke life into me is not something I do now. They told me I was going to be the president when I asked them why we didn't have a black president. But I used that story a lot because I knew that if they thought I could do that like you said, shaping our imagination I knew I could do anything. I literally feel like if I want to do something within this realm, I can do it, because I'm doing it for us and I believe so much in us because I've seen what we've done and what we can and will do that I know is going to happen.
Speaker 1:You are doing school without walls, and why not? So my hat goes off to you. Good brother, I am super excited for what you have in store for the world. I can't wait for you to take the work that people like me have done and make it look primitive. You keep on keeping on, and everything that's supposed to open up will, it will, and it's going to look like what it's supposed to look like. And as long as your heart is true and your commitment is real, then what you get, you'll get to keep, and that ain't bad. So I appreciate you, brother. My colleague is going to share my number with you in the event that you get the opportunity to reach out. I'd love to stay in contact with you, hear what you're doing and support you in any way I can, and if ever you want to get back in the building, we got plenty of schools that would love to have you.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'll speak, man, so let's figure it out. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1:I don't window shop, I'm not joking a little bit. I think that one of the problems that happens is the small egos of the people running schools, or the big egos in a small output, doesn't allow for people like you to exist in that space Because they're like well, where's he going? He's going, where's Thomas Taker? Shut up and mind your business, you go where he's going. If you were doing what he was doing. It's like I'll say this out of the closing that we had I went to where I was an undergrad.
Speaker 1:There was his brother. His name's Kenny Green and he played basketball in 6'10" and he was the number one shot blocker in the country and he was over on the bike during practice, riding the bike, riding the stationary, and somebody said to the coach Kenny, I'll always get to ride the bike. He ain't got to practice. The coach said when you become the number one shot blocker in the country, you can get on the bike next to him. So you keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker 1:I definitely would love to find a way to work with you because I think what you're doing is so important and I think that one of our problems as a community. I was starting to hold this conversation. But I'll say this one of our problems as a community is, when we see somebody who we think is doing well, either we fight them or separate ourselves from them, as if Shine takes away from Shine. And I believe that Shine is infinite and I believe that the more people you give love to, the more it reflects back on you. So much love to you, brother, and I look forward to connecting real soon. Thank you so much for coming through. All right, y'all take it easy, always great. Thank you for joining us on no Dumb Questions.