Changing the Narrative of Black Youth Through Education with Matthew Speamer

Ever been curious about the intricate relationship between perception, representation, and the Black experience? You're in for an enlightening ride with my guest Matthew Speamer, a curious mix of a stand-up comedian and dedicated teacher, who takes us through his personal journey. We delve into his evolution towards self-acceptance, and his incredible work in educating young Black and brown children. He gives us some profound insights into changing the negative perceptions associated with Black youth, emphasizing the importance of self-perception and representation.

Have you ever thought about the pervasive influence that media, particularly hip-hop and sports, has on your life? I probe deep into this complex terrain with Matthew, exploring the potential negative impacts of false narratives spread by celebrities and the power of social media in shaping our understanding of success. Reflecting on the past and present societal sensitivities and priorities, Matthew offers an engaging comparison. We also tackle some heavy issues, including generational trauma experienced by Black people, its impact on everyday life, and the powerful concept of Black joy as a form of resilience and resistance.

About Matthew Speamer:
Speamer became the CUE Community Fellow with Homewood Children’s Village in March 2022. He works with the nonprofit to provide educational services and learning support for youth and their families in Homewood. The first project he worked on was Learn and Earn, a summer youth employment initiative. Speamer coordinated with parents and organizations across Pittsburgh’s East End to ensure meaningful experiences for students. “The kids loved it, working a job and learning something they’re interested in,” Speamer said of the Learn and Earn program. “I think the parents would agree that it was a great experience.” Now he is initiating a pilot of the Village Learning Hub, which will provide an equitable support system for families who are homeschooling. Speamer says working with youth is what drives him in his work to improve urban education. “Kids have that light within them, and I think we should nurture and support that,” he says. “If we can do that the right way, generationally speaking, we can make the world a better place.” 

Transcript

Issues Affecting Blackness

Speaker 1 0:00

This is Still Talking Black, a show where we discuss issues affecting blackness from a black point of view. I'm your host, richard Dyes, and, as some of you can see, this is the second time around Still on the camera, still on YouTube, and if you haven't if you haven't checked me out on YouTube, please check us out. You can find it at YouTube, at Still Talking Black, and all of the episodes from season two will be posted on there, as well as the other podcast selections. So Apple Podcasts, spotify, wherever you listen to your podcast, you can listen to it there. But if you want to see my beautiful face, you can find me on YouTube.

Speaker 1 0:34

So on this episode, I'm joined by Matthew Spiemer. He's an educator, he also is a comedian, and we talk about a various amount of things dealing with the black youth how we can help change the perspective of how some people see them, how we can help raise them in a proper way, give them the education that they need in order to succeed in this world, and how some celebrities and sports and music affect the way that people see the black community, as well as the way we see ourselves. So, without further ado, Good evening.

Speaker 2 1:06

My name is Matthew Spiemer, elevator pitch. I am an aspiring stand-up comedian. I do improv once a week amongst the private group and then we go on YouTube once a month. I am in the risk-taking phase of my life and I pride myself on being an educator, specifically with black and brown kids.

Speaker 1 1:32

That's something you said. You're in a risk-taking part of your life. What do you mean by that?

Speaker 2 1:36

Meaning. I feel that my 20s were challenging and it put me in a very reserved space and I didn't want to take any chances. I didn't want to take any risks, just stay in that comfort zone. And then, the older you get, the more it's like oh wait a second, we only have so much time, right. But we should chase what we want, dump that imposter syndrome and go after the things we enjoy, and for me, that's being with my family, that's being with my kids, that's stand-up comedy, it's entertainment, it's the things that I love doing Education, helping kids. It's what I'm doing. It's what I'm doing with this portion of my life, this chapter.

Speaker 1 2:26

So what was growing up like for you? I know we talked about your background a little bit before. What was growing up like for you?

Speaker 2 2:35

I lived in a predominantly white neighborhood. I was raised in a Jewish household. My family was middle class, my father being African-American and my mother being white. There's challenges. I think that I was by racial background. When it was, there was a little bit more of a stigma attached to it compared to now where it's ideal, where we all kind of start to look the same anyways. So there were challenges racially, spiritually, but I by no means had a difficult childhood or anything like that.

Speaker 1 3:18

Was it hard for you finding your identity as a child Like I didn't me, like you know, I grew up in. Both of my parents are black and I feel like I was lost, like especially being in America. Was it hard for you growing up being by racial or how did? You find your identity through life.

Speaker 2 3:39

It changed. Growing up, I would say, through elementary school, I didn't have very many black friends, even though I went to a primary black school. It wasn't until about middle school where it was like, oh snap, like I have a lot in common with these people other than the fact that they just look like me, like we collected the same sneakers, we watched the same stuff on television, we watched wrestling, we called each other about wrestling every night. And as I got older I found more and more that I was connecting with really more on the black side than the white side. But it's not something that I ever really kept track of until college. And when you get to college you really kind of figure out how people are and how you are around them.

Speaker 1 4:31

That's always. That always interests me, just because it took me so long to get comfortable in my own skin. I remember my mom always told me that not to judge a book by color, by its cover, but she always has taught me to make sure that my cover matches the content, because people don't always take the time to read your book. Right? When you talk about being an educator especially the black and brown kids what does it mean? Changing the perception that people like when they see our youth? What does that mean to you?

Speaker 2 5:01

What it means to me is when you see a bunch of black kids, I think society like just running around jumping and playing. I think there's a large portion of society that's going to sit there and tell you the trouble making or they're up to no good or whatever, and it's like they're just doing the same thing any other kid would. Right, and for me, we had some programming this summer called Learn and Earn, where we took 11 students and we brought them into a gaming workspace. We taught them how to design games, both analog and digital.

Speaker 2 5:33

And like I'm not going to front like trying to get a bunch of boys to settle down at one o'clock in the afternoon in the summer is difficult, right, but that's all it is. It's difficult, it doesn't have to be. You know what I mean. It doesn't have to start this great racial divide. So I love it and I love that I can express to these youth that you know, it doesn't matter how they see you, it's how you perceive yourself and how you represent yourself. I think, as long as you're representing yourself with respect, pride, a sense of honor and you're not hurting anybody, I just do you, and that's a big perception issue here in the US.

Speaker 1 6:18

Sometimes I worry that perception is almost as big of a problem as racism, or it might just be two things like intertwined together, just because you treat people differently based on how you perceive them. And so like, if I see a bear, I'm gonna be way more on guard seeing a bear than if I saw like maybe, a German Shepherd, or even like a smaller dog, sure, so what things do you think we can do to help, like, start to change culture? Just because you know Trayvon Martin was in a hoodie, I wonder if he had been not black walking in that same hoodie, will he have been still considered a problem?

Speaker 2 7:04

I think both of us know that it wouldn't be the same conversation and it's as close to a fact as you can be without being a fact. And when it comes to perception, I think we just have to normalize what people classify as troubling behavior and it's not even troubling is not the right word because that makes it sound negative but normalize the behavior of young kids that just happened to be black or brown and once that's normalized, it's like oh wait, a second, they're just like any other kid.

Speaker 2 7:41

Yeah you know what I mean. It's the perception is based on a generation, multi generational mental divide.

Speaker 1 7:52

Yeah, it makes me whenever I think about this kind of perception problem, I always think about like the trope of the angry black woman and it's like I hear people say like what woman doesn't get angry? Why does it have to be an angry black woman, when every woman, every person, period, man, woman, black, white or other they get angry? So it's like trying to shift those perspectives is like such a big thing and I know that like our movies and our music don't always paint the best picture of us. What role do you feel like music and movies play and shaping the perspective and influence in our youth?

Speaker 2 8:31

So growing up, my favorite group was Bone Duds and Harmony because they're very like I feel like I'm very spiritually aligned with what they rap, slash, sing about, and we're living in a time now where a group like the Migos is compared to Bone Duds and Harmony and not to take anything away from that group, but it's kind of like it's such a 180 from speak content-wise and you know there is a lot of content that's put out there that perpetuates stereotypes and that's awful and more often than not there's usually some kind of hate keeper or you know, I hate to say white man or woman on top directing these things and it's probably really difficult to turn down. You know, some $500,000 advance if you need the money, right. But I also think that there is a social responsibility to understand that the content that you're putting out it's sometimes it's not helpful. You know what I mean. We live in a time where there's like people that look up to future and I'm just thinking to myself, just like I just like like yo, when did this?

Speaker 2 9:52

And not to take away from his music, it's not, it's just not for me, but it's just such a negative connotation like no matter how you spend it, so yeah, but you're making millions off of this, so it's like something has to give. But we've reached a time in the industry where it doesn't take a lot of creativity to put music out. I could, if I wanted to. I could open my open on my FL studio and produce something right now and put it out on Spotify. And now I'm a musician.

Speaker 1 10:24

You said FL studio.

Speaker 2 10:26

Right, right, that's exactly I'm aging myself.

Speaker 1 10:31

And it's kind of great to think about one of my favorite rappers like of the past you know, maybe Decade or whatnot is probably gonna be Rick Ross and I've listened to a ton, a ton of his albums and it was one album like. Every time his album comes out I would go and listen to it.

Speaker 1 10:48

Go and listen to it, it got to a point where it was a new album that had came out and I went to listen to it and I mean this is like his 10th album, right? He's been in the game for a while, he's been rich for a while, you know you talk about like his house was the set of coming to America too.

Speaker 2 11:05

Which is not a very good movie, by the way. No, I digress.

Speaker 1 11:11

This might be like that might be an unpopular opinion, but no, I did not like that movie either.

Speaker 2 11:15

I hated every second of that movie.

Media Influence in Hip Hop and Sports

Speaker 1 11:18

Let it rest. Why didn't we just leave it at one? That would have been fine, but anyway, not to the, because I just threw salt on the legacy of the first one. I know we like going off gear a little bit, but but anyway, when we're talking about Rick Ross, he has written, so he's done so many albums, done so much stuff and to get on an album where, like it's like his 10th album, he has money, he has cars, he has houses, that he has achievements and he's still talking about selling drugs and the same type of things that he's been talking about for years and years and years, it's like how many times one can I hear you talk about drugs?

Speaker 1 11:54

And then, two, how many times like he's been caught in so many lies. He was a correctional officer and all of the stuff that he's talking. So it's like I mean for a hip hop, like for me growing up, when you think about hip hop. Hip hop is supposed to be the truth of the people, right? Yeah, so if, if hip hop is the truth and you getting caught on lies, not, not even this and Rick Ross, because he probably ain't even the most like the, the one who's done it the most. There's so many.

Speaker 1 12:20

All of them do it, like all of them do it he's up there but it's like a lot, a lot of them do it, they, they perpetrate this personality, they that they aren't or they aren't anymore, and it's just like I couldn't even listen to the music anymore, just because it just seemed like if you're still really living our lifestyle, I don't know how you're living the other lifestyle that you have going on as well, and it just was so discouraging because it's only so much of that kind of message you can take in as an educated black person.

Speaker 2 12:52

Yeah, and I wonder if it was Teflon Don. I wonder if that's the album you're talking about. But I think Rick Ross is one of those examples where people just accept him as a character, almost like professional wrestling and I think that I think he feeds off of that.

Speaker 2 13:12

Honestly, I think he's well aware of his place within within rap and what's wild is when he first hit the scene, when Porta Miami first hit the scene, I was like yo, this dude's amazing. And he wasn't. He wasn't really talking about selling drugs back then he was talking about having money and all that, but like, not not the drugs so much. But I think it's just accepted that he's a character. It's kind of like how the NBA used to be sports, right but, now it's more like entertainment.

Speaker 2 13:39

Yeah, it's kind of like how hip hop is now. Yeah.

Speaker 1 13:41

I agree, I didn't. I never even thought about it as a character. I think the thing that is discouraging to me when we think about these Adele rappers because you know, like when we were young, like rappers were like in their 30s and now like weird, like once you start getting older than rappers that they're hot, now you kind of look at it like whoa, but you see them. It's like I don't think everybody knows that. All of these rappers talking about murder and killing people and drugs and killing people and murders we're done it. But you know what I mean all these rappers talking about all of this stuff.

Speaker 1 14:14

I don't think that all the kids know that, that a lot of them could be capping. You know what I mean? Like that's not even the truth, that they're being characters, that they're trying to be to fit an image that they never really live up to. And then you have the youth looking up. I mean even like the thing that that was like you talk about sports, like looking at John Moran and like seeing him being at the pinnacle of a basketball career, being on the verge of becoming an icon, and keep getting caught for the same thing and now he's going to miss out on a bunch of money and a bunch of opportunities because of it, and that's the examples that we have over on our youth.

Speaker 2 14:53

You know it's interesting. Um, I'm actually I just decided to purchase a pair of his sneakers, like last week, because I typically refuse to purchase somebody's signature shoe if I disagree with their kind of points of how they live. But I truly think, like I, he has no choice but to turn it around at this juncture.

Speaker 2 15:17

Um, the only thing because, because I'm of the opinion of like yo, all right, first time, stupid second time come on, man, like you can't, like you have to be, even if you're not doing anything illegal, which is what everybody kind of falls on, right?

Speaker 2 15:34

Um, it's still stupid, right, and like yo, I don't make that much money, I'm not, I don't make 200 mil and I'm not, I'm not risking that, uh, for for Instagram. This, this whole social media thing is just, it's wild how it just shapes our lives. But I, I truly believe that Jabara is going to get it together, especially since the NBA is kind of looking for a new face to the league and if he can really turn it around, he's young, speaking of being older than rappers. So I look at these basketball players and I'm like, oh my gosh, like you're only like 22 years old, right, you make 300 million dollars a year and you're complaining because you got to play back to bad games, me, and while I'm like you know, my, my basement is finished, you know what I mean like that's a real world problem. Yeah, um, yeah, I don't know it's.

Speaker 1 16:24

It's all tied to social media, which is probably like the ultimate 2020 in our history yeah, uh, social media is such a thing, because everything that goes on social media so curated and like, sometimes like even thinking about that. That can be very depressing because it shapes the narrative that everybody's living this extraordinary life. And then you're looking at your personal life and it's not matching up, but the only thing that you see is just the highlights, and it's kind of sad yeah, and, and I have to, and I have to apologize, I meant catch 22, not 2020, the social media being the ultimate catch 22.

Speaker 2 17:05

Um, yeah, I'm in the middle of like a weight loss journey myself and I'm not posting anything until maybe the beginning of next year. Nothing, I'm moving to complete silence other than this conversation, um, because I just don't want the influence, either positive or negative, it has to come from me yeah, so why, why, why? Why bring in the more than likely negative external?

Speaker 1 17:32

why? Why even open it up for?

Speaker 2 17:34

criticism right right and and we're living in these very passive, aggressive times where people don't address things anymore. They leave clues, they leave breadcrumbs and then they want you to ask about it. And it's, it's, it's so indirect and it's just like so dishonest to communication, but that that's.

Speaker 1 17:51

We have reached the point where that is the norm and and it's such a, it's such a disservice, and and the world is so connected. Now too, you know what I mean. And it's, and the internet is written. And what did you say? The internet, net is written, it and stone our ink.

Speaker 2 18:08

You can't erase it, the internet, forever.

Speaker 1 18:10

Yeah, so it's things that kids are saying and doing now that could affect them 20 years from now, right? Right and so if we're not careful, we don't, if we don't start to cultivate the youth now, then they could do something now that could be detrimental to their future.

Changing World, Hope for Future

Speaker 2 18:27

I'm very nervous for our future. If I'm being honest with you and myself, I think that, just as human beings, I think our value system has changed so much. You know I don't know if I'm I think I mentioned this when you and I first met. You know, when they, when they discovered water on one of the moons around Titan, like that was like a second page news, but first page news was Kim Kardashian on a cover of a magazine. Yeah, and that's the norm now, like they just declassified all that documentation about UFOs and nobody's talking about it. Um, but that's like those are big scientific things that can maybe push us forward, but we don't.

Speaker 1 19:11

We don't think like that, at least collectively and I think but I think a lot of that has to do with what's going on in the world, like I always think like the world is is huge, right, but like everybody lives in their own world and and there's so many other things, like whenever they're releasing information about like hey guys, we don't know what this flying object is, but it's real, and that's on page seven and people are talking about what about the economy? What about murder hunters? What about COVID? Right about, uh, systemic racism? What about voters? Right, right, it's. It's it's kind of sad that that gets pushed all the way back, but it's so many other, I mean, everything is big like that, especially when you're close to it, everything seems really big and it's like, as I mean, probably 20 years ago you had to say, like aliens, oh my goodness. Like like flying saucers. It would have been a big deal, but, right, I think so many things have happened since then that kind of desensitized us to the to those things, because there's so many real things that are imminent danger, like voters, rights is imminent. You know what I mean. If we don't get the youth educated and and like mount it up to go vote, then, like, our democracy is in danger and that's such a, that's just such a different take than I feel like before even talking.

Speaker 1 20:28

Going back to athletes, I remember Charles Barkley, his big thing. You remember, I don't know you, I don't know if you remember this, and now I'm aging myself, now he's, he had that commercial. I am not your role model, not a role model. Yeah, so it's like even back then, like compared to like what they said about Charles Barkley. Think about, he's a beloved character, basically a character on sports tv now, and like comparing him to like what people are going through now, it's just. It's just like been such. The world has changed so much.

Speaker 2 20:58

I think that that's a. I think that that's a very quality argument to my, my, my want for the science stuff to be bigger. There are. There are problems that we face today that are absolutely more immediate. I think it's the I think it's kind of like the nerd in me that that wants so much to have like the unseen be discovered, like I'm a sucker for that stuff. So you're, you're, you're a thousand percent correct about that. You know. You take what is it? Where is that? Michigan, where there's still no clean drinking water?

Speaker 1 21:32

I'm talking about Flint.

Speaker 2 21:34

Flint right, and you know, I don't even know if they brought that back their municipal services yet, but for a time there were none. And that like I don't know if you've ever seen Robocop, but that basically made Robocop look like a documentary.

Speaker 1 21:46

Right, yeah, I'm from Detroit. Like, oh, I didn't know that. Okay, I have seen Robocop. Ok, so you see Robocop.

Speaker 2 21:53

OK, all right, so so, but that's the reality now and it's not being addressed, or not being addressed sufficiently.

Speaker 1 22:04

I think some of the scariest things is is that it's TV shows that I used to watch during, like you know, 2020. It was TV shows that I was watching about, you know, most political intrigue and different things, that about stuff that's happening like the president's colluding with Russia, and this was TV and it got to a point where the government stuff that was happening in the government in the world was mirroring too closely to stuff that I thought was so far fetched that it could never happen. It was one of the scariest things ever. And it kind of read. It kind of like recontextualizes everything that you think about, because it's like these things that people wrote as fiction and not even just regular fiction. It's like far fetched fiction, this can never happen. And then it happens and it's like wow, like this is mirroring the things that we said can never happen, as far fetched. It makes you just really think about the way you see the world going forward.

Speaker 2 22:57

I think the scariest example of that was a film called Idiocracy.

Speaker 1 23:01

I heard that film. I haven't I haven't seen it though.

Speaker 2 23:03

It's so. It is so close to where we are now and actually the, the other movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, the, the don't look up, but that's more like a satire that it was.

Speaker 1 23:14

So on point.

Speaker 2 23:15

Right Right. There were very few things in that movie where I was like that seems extreme. We, we, you know, we're living that now. And that's what makes me scared for the future, because I don't see it how I pray it does, but I don't see it improving, at least within a generation.

Speaker 1 23:35

Yeah, you want to have hope, I think after. I think like Obama being president for eight years and then not being president anymore. And then what followed was very sobering, because when he ran on hope and he won, it was like wow, things are really different now, things are going to change, we're going to be moving forward. And then we just was like no, just kidding Psych, it is not. We're not moving forward, we're, we're going all the way back. But I mean still, even with Obama, I think it's beautiful, like just recontextualizing on a youth Me even being an adult when he won, it just was like wow, like I can see it now, like a black man being president, that is incredible. It's something that you never thought was. That's like one of those things I mean in the same sense, kind of it's like one of those things that was far fetched. We had seen it on TV, we had seen in movies.

Speaker 1 24:29

Morgan Freeman had been the president before I'm a new Morgan Freeman right, but it's seen in real life, just made it so much real and made it so different. And then, finally, because when we started talking about like you don't have to tell a black person what they can be and what their limitations are, you don't have to verbally say it because the world consistently shows them every day, and so to see that that window broken was beautiful.

Speaker 2 24:55

I think also, I think seeing the Obamas together as a family unit, I think that inspired a lot of hope, even outside of the presidency, because that's something to strive for right. I consider that legitimate, a legitimate example of being a world model. But we were lucky because that was a mainstream example. It took the office of the president for black people to see hope I hate to call it hope but for the world to see oh, wait a sec, we can do this. So when they left office, I think that there was just like this big piece of what we looked up to and what we strive for that was just taken away, taken away from the public eye. And yeah, of course they're still there and of course they're still doing great things, but they're not front and center anymore. So now we kind of revert back to role models more centered around the entertainment industry, which is no good.

Speaker 1 26:05

No, because I mean, like you said, a lot of them are characters, exactly.

Speaker 2 26:13

I'm embarrassed because outside of, like Neil deGrasse Tyson, I can't really think of any, but I'll follow closely.

Speaker 1 26:18

that happens to be black, yeah, that's a fair point, that is a fair point.

Speaker 2 26:24

Or at least let me rephrase outside of my profession, my personal interests are very few Gotcha.

Speaker 1 26:32

I love that you're talking about science, because that's one of the things that I love growing up as a kid and I know you work in several different things. I know you're a part of a nonprofit called Homewood. Homewood's your top.

Speaker 2 26:42

Yes, sir.

Speaker 1 26:44

Yeah, so what are some of the things that you're doing at Homewood? We talked about it before, but not on air.

Speaker 2 26:50

So it was like what's going on there?

Importance of Education and Changing Perceptions

Speaker 2 26:52

So we did the summer programming which was called Learning in there, and that's what I was explaining to you before. That was a gaming work site. Moving into the school year I will be moving into a different position. I'll be a middle school program manager at a high school called Westinghouse, for sixth to eighth grade, and between now and, I think, the end of September, we're being tasked with creating programming to make these kids as academically successful as possible, but also doing so in a very intentional way.

Speaker 2 27:27

The way the state has these guidelines set up is so bare minimum. It's so set up for them to just do just well enough to pass standardized testing so the school can get its funding, and then let's ship the youth somewhere else and let them be somebody else's problem. So I know a lot of my programming is going to be centered around entrepreneurial spirit, just chasing your dreams, and a big, big piece of it if I can design it the right way is getting over that imposter syndrome that I know faces all of us, because we have a society telling us to your point what we can and cannot do.

Speaker 1 28:07

Yeah, we definitely do. Just to put it so far, people are unfamiliar with Homewood. What's the full title?

Speaker 2 28:14

Homewood Children's Village.

Speaker 1 28:16

Can you explain what it is and what this mission is?

Speaker 2 28:19

Sure. So it is a non-profit based in Homewood in Pittsburgh, pennsylvania, and we serve the youth in that immediate area, actually youth families, friends, whoever counterparts. We improve their lives, if it even needs it, educationally speaking, economically speaking, mentally, emotionally. We offer many different services, kind of centered around support.

Speaker 1 28:48

So why do you think it's so important to start with a single neighborhood, to concentrate on one area?

Speaker 2 28:53

Yeah, because you have to start with what's in front of you, like right, to get to the big picture. You still have to take those steps and Homewood, speaking of perception, doesn't have a very good perception, but to me that's BS, because I'm in and out of Homewood every day and I felt nothing but support. You know what I mean. So I take it personal when you know someone says, well, I'm not going through there and of course there's unsafe places everywhere, right, but you know I take that stuff personal, what you know when neighborhoods are seen a specific way. So you know what this is. This is where fate has brought me. I'm in a position where I can, I have some creative freedom over the programming that I do, which is something that I've been striving for for a very long time.

Speaker 1 29:52

Yeah, I kind of think about the way that America has made a lot of other countries feel unsafe and, like you know, kind of like as a as a growing up, you know like nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. This country is bad. Africa as a whole is bad. Like all of all of Africa is bad. It's like no good places in Africa.

Speaker 1 30:11

And you know, before, like the internet really started, you know the game traction, you didn't necessarily know what to believe and now you look at it and it doesn't even make sense for the rest of the world to all be bad, except for America.

Speaker 1 30:24

Right, just because it's like I'm from, I grew up in Detroit and the thing is like, like people think about Detroit, oh, you made it out, how'd you make it out of Detroit safe? Why? Because that's a reputation. But you know, just like any other city like I mean, I can go down to Miami and if I go off the wrong path, like Miami gonna look just like Detroit and be just as dangerous as places in every big city that are dangerous and just like the world. So like whenever you can take a like an area and change it, recontextualize it and say like hey, look at this, it's not what you think it is. I think that's that like that is just the perfect, the perfect. It's just a similar thing. I said like hey, black people, we are, we, we are many things, not just one thing. And like starting a neighborhood, that's beautiful, trying to change the way that people look at that neighborhood.

Speaker 2 31:16

I also enjoy. You know you talk about loving science. I also enjoy coming in from that angle and speaking about that, because it's not, you know, it's not what the cool kids do, I guess, or whatever. But I love coming in talking about comic books, video games, stuff that a lot, of, a lot of young men and men and women don't aren't comfortable talking about because they're scared. They're. You know, there will be seen a specific way, but I come in there all geeked out, all nerd out and I'm like who cares what? Who cares what people think? Follow your passions to like, do the things you love, right. And I think you know, granted, it's home within the beginning, but if it ends up just being home, what I'm good with that because that's what I set out for. You know, pittsburgh is my home. Of course that's not the end goal, but I'm doing good things and I eat. You know I sleep peacefully, you know.

Speaker 1 32:15

That's awesome, so, as education, the way that we help influence the youth and make a better world for them it doesn't start with education or as there are other other factors that we got to add into that too.

Speaker 2 32:29

It starts with education, but it has to be intentional Education. As it stands now, it's very, very scattered and very, very, you know, funding oriented. I even for myself, like I don't even think they didn't even teach me how to balance a checkbook until, like my senior year, high school, you know, none of my teachers sat me down to talk to me about credit, credit management or purchasing properties, things like that, like real world expertise, real world experiences. I honestly also think it should be mandatory that our youth work a retail job at some point in their life. Like I think that is how you learn people skills, what you know, it's sink or swim in that arena, right, and we've all worked jobs we hate.

Speaker 2 33:25

And I look back sometimes and I'm thinking like yo, I took three buses to get here to make 925 an hour. I hated this. And now, whenever I feel like I'm going to fail at something, I think back to that and I remember, like how hard I used to have it and how I'll never allow myself to go back to that. I think that's also why I'm in this in this phase now, because my father passed away when I was 20, oh, 27, 25 or 27, I can't remember, and that kind of just like I'm still real from it. You never really get over that right, and that was the hardest time in my life and now when I'm, when I think I'm going to fail, I think back to that and I think I'll never allow myself to get like that ever again.

Speaker 1 34:18

Ever you use that to give you strength, that if you, if you can survive and get through that situation, you can survive and get through what you're going through now.

Speaker 2 34:26

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1 34:29

That's, that's kind of. That's an amazing thing to take a loss and use it as a strength. I think that's that's beautiful yeah.

Speaker 2 34:38

I appreciate you saying that I am, you know, my mom's still alive lesser heart. My parents put a lot of time, love, effort into into where I am now. I'm not going to eat, you know what I mean. I'd be doing them a disservice to not not do everything I can. I have kids looking up to me, I have. I have people around, like around me. You know that I love and they love me. I'd rather build. Build from that, knowing that I'm making my family proud, making my work, specifically my father, proud.

Speaker 1 35:13

Gotcha. No, that's. That's great. It's something about having that pride to to build on likes. For some people, as women you know are like their mate. You know what I mean. Some people is their parents and I think that I think that's one of the things that's lost. You don't see that as much as like I'm doing this to make my family proud. You know what I mean. Like I feel like part some things like you got to do for yourself, but it's like it always. For me it's always been that extra motivation. It's like I want to make my mom proud or my dad proud or my wife proud. It always gives me that much more motivation and strength to continue on doing what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 35:50

You know it's wild about that concept. One of my closest friends put it to me the best way we try so hard to make our parents proud, but our parents are already proud of us. So why do we do that? Why do we chase that? And I don't, I don't have an answer to that. But if someone asked me well, Matt, what do you do for yourself? I don't know. I don't have a concrete answer, I just don't. I don't know.

Speaker 1 36:16

That's true, that's fair point. This is like thinking and like trying to answer that question, even for myself, is hard, like, probably this is one of the things. This podcast is one of the things I do for myself, but really not at the same time. I mean, like I want to learn more about blackness. I want to spread, like, the word about blackness, have more understanding told about blackness and as we talk, as we continue to talk about the youth, one thing that I thought was important for me is like as seeing how the world has been the last, like you know, last few years, or even the last five, six years, seeing how the world has been, one of the things that's been so important is media and the way that I mean not outside of even movies and television the way that, like in the news, the thing that's supposed to really be impartial, the way that black people are portrayed in the news, even the way that women are portrayed in the news, is such a big difference to the way that someone black is talking about.

Speaker 1 37:15

Like I always say, it's like the black person could be the victim and they'll talk to them like they're the perpetrator and it's like I remember, like an instance where a young man he had got shot and killed in his own home about off duty police officer and they were looking for every anything that they could find to like the, to make it justified that this black man was murdered. It's like, oh, he had weed in the house and it's like, ooh, yeah, right, he should have died because of that. Right now it's just they. It's so unfair. You could almost read a headline, read a crime. Read a headline. Read the first couple sentences. You can tell if that is a black or white person, who is the victim or the perpetrator.

Discussions on History, Trauma, and Comedy

Speaker 2 37:59

Oh, that's, it's easier than that, because it usually says white cop kills black youth or black cop kills white youth. It's never cop kills youth. It's flagged to create clicks and cause further division. It's all intentional and it's sad. It's sad because, again, I am definitely an optimist by nature, but I don't see how this changes as long as we maintain the just kind of like the capitalistic nature of of you know how we are. I mean, you got to figure it hasn't been. I remember when we celebrated Christopher Columbus Day, like in school, right, and it was like a whole. You know, we make turkeys and all this. You know paper turkeys and all that, and now it's like, oh wait, a second, it wasn't, it wasn't so, so, so clean.

Speaker 1 39:02

Honestly celebrate that Right.

Speaker 2 39:05

And that's literally history being rewritten Right.

Speaker 1 39:11

In our lifetimes. In our lifetimes.

Speaker 2 39:13

I never dreamed of that. And we're also living in a time where, you know, people denied a Holocaust, people say slavery was involuntary displacement or something along those lines. You talk about Texas, yeah, yeah, so it's. But this is real. Like bro, like I laugh at stuff like this because like if I, if I, if I was speaking about grandparents right now and I was telling them this, they'd be like no way.

Speaker 1 39:43

No way.

Speaker 2 39:44

But it's. But what the irony is is we have more access to information now than we ever did. Yep, but we're somehow dumber.

Speaker 1 39:54

And I mean but the there are people who are systematically trying to take away the information, right, the truth and the history and trick. They're trying to recontextualize it in a way that all slavery it wasn't that bad and they learned skills and right, I don't know. So do you want to be a slave? Like that would be the question that the people saying that is like all right, so you can be a slave and you can learn some skills for free, if it's so great.

Speaker 2 40:19

I just I feel like if I was in a bar is some dude said that to me. I'm not going to swing on him, I'm not like a, not immediately, but it's like you know that's an argument, yeah, like I'm saying something Like that's that, that opinion is just, it's. It's laughable to me, but it's also kind of like 50% of the country, so it's scary.

Speaker 1 40:47

Yeah, I don't know if it's. I'm hoping it's not 50%, I hope. I hope it's way too close of 50%. Either way it goes.

Speaker 2 40:56

I'm exaggerating, but it's in the 40s, I think.

Speaker 1 40:59

Yeah, I mean, but still that's a crazy amount to think about.

Speaker 2 41:04

Crazy amount of people that believe something.

Speaker 1 41:07

Yeah.

Speaker 2 41:08

Yeah, um gosh man. There's so many beautiful things to talk about in life, but this, just this, hasn't been a good, um good, couple of years. No no, it's been a lot. It's important to protect your peace, yeah.

Speaker 1 41:27

I mean as black people. It's a kind of I forget what you call it, but it's a collective. It's a collective trauma that we all carry and it kind of gets reintroduced with, like movies that come out that talk about slavery, and then all of the news and everything. It's like we're constantly getting beat down as a culture and it's a toll that it takes on us continuously, every day, to have to live through it.

Speaker 2 41:54

Yeah, you're talking about that generational trauma that is almost, almost, it's in our blood.

Speaker 2 42:01

I mean it really is Literally like, literally Literally, yeah, and it's just again. All I can do is help help the people closest to me and the people that want help, and hope that that causes some kind of pay it forward chain and you know, every positive. Just keep building on that and hoping for the best, because if you get bogged down, worrying about the big picture too much which is something that I do, I get anxiety about it a lot You'll find yourself just worrying.

Speaker 1 42:32

Nostop. But I mean I think I think what you're doing, you're doing it the right way, thank you. I mean you are starting at the bottom. It's like like what was it back in our day? It's like the children are our future. That was, that was the song.

Speaker 1 42:45

So, the children are our future. So you're starting with the youth and you, and if you can plant that seed in them, then they can grow up and they can start planting seeds at our own. So I think you're doing it the right way and I think what you're doing is really, really important for the community and the youth as a whole, just because one community can help change the whole world.

Speaker 2 43:05

It's. I appreciate you saying that it's I don't know. I love it. I'm blessed because to me it's not difficult work, because I already like doing it, and I think kids are. Kids are just like man, just like fantastic, because for most of them the world hasn't jaded them to the point where everything's you know so terrible, like they still have hope. Speaking of speaking about Obama and hope like that's kind of just in the kids at this point, like I feel like once you turn like 30, any hope you have, if you still have it, hang on to it.

Speaker 1 43:46

It's like that. That two-pot client that Kendrick Lamar put in one of his songs on his album to Pimple Butterfly talked about how you only have energy till you hit like 30. Like he's talking about black youth, the man only have energy till they hit 30 and then it's over. You saying that made me think about that.

Speaker 2 44:05

It's funny, I'm one of the few that I actually like Mad City a lot better than to Pimple Butterfly.

Speaker 1 44:14

I probably would agree with you on that. I think both of them are good. It took me a while to get into Pimple Butterfly, though.

Speaker 2 44:20

His most recent one I really do enjoy, though I forget what it's called. Mr Morell and the Big Steps, I think yeah, I enjoy that album, but that's kind of like more in my vein. I'm definitely I listen to like Lupe Fiasco.

Speaker 1 44:33

Kendrick.

Speaker 2 44:34

J Cole. I was a real, real big Joe button man until he started podcasting. Now I just kind of go back and listen to all his new music tapes, but I like listening to introspective music.

Speaker 1 44:49

No, I totally get it. I do, like, prefer J Cole. He's probably my favorite of that generation, sure, even over Kendrick. Just because it's hard to listen to Kendrick's music repeatedly sometimes, just because it puts me in a place. I don't want to be J Cole. I feel like he says stuff, but he also says it in a way that it doesn't take you to that dark place sometimes and I feel like Kendrick, like sometimes he's so good at putting you in that mode. It's like I don't feel like I've been political all day. I don't want to listen to music that's going to make me more political, right.

Speaker 2 45:22

Sometimes you just want to listen to something that's going to entertain you.

Speaker 1 45:25

Exactly, and I think that J Cole does a better job of like tipping that balance. He's entertaining but informative and he's getting his message out. Just kind of like you said, you're doing comedy, improv and I always think that comedy is such a great art just because you can speak so much truth in comedy and people laugh and you can make people uncomfortable, and it's like the place where you can make people uncomfortable and laugh but also get a point across and it's okay to say certain things. So like I always respect like comedians and the art, like the ones that are really good.

Speaker 2 45:59

I'm still. I'm definitely growing, but in my mind, like I have to perceive myself as if I walk into a room. I have to be the funniest person in the room and I've certainly gone up there and bombed. I've had jokes that I thought would kill and I would just look down and people are staring at me and you can feel like the sweat and you can feel like your hand getting all sweaty and all that. But my sense of humor is also very like I'm really. I'm really realistic about my life and just kind of like you know what I expect. So I joke about that and that way it's like all right. Well, if you don't think it's funny, I think it's funny, I'm good with it. I'm up here laughing, it's fun. So, yeah, I think my favorite thing in the world, other than my kids, is still laugh.

Speaker 1 46:46

And that's awesome.

Speaker 2 46:48

It's the best. I mean, it's the best feeling honestly. For that, for that moment, and when you're laughing, nothing else matters.

Speaker 1 46:55

A friend of mine who I interviewed. He said on his episode that Black Joy is not. Now I'm going to forget the quote, I can't remember. It's not revolutionary, but something to that point like like joy is something else and, like a lot of times, black Joy starts without laugh. To be able to laugh and to persevere through all of the things that collectively, as a culture, that we have to go through, it's like amazing to still be able to find something to laugh about.

Speaker 2 47:25

It's the mountain that we have to climb just to gain a little bit of an edge. Not even equity or equality, just an edge is exhausting, and to your point. To be able to find joy after all of that, that's a strength, that's damn near a superpower.

Speaker 1 47:51

That's the Black superpower. There we go.

Speaker 2 47:54

Right, exactly, and again, I'm blessed to be in a decent situation financially, so I don't have to. You know I don't. There are people that have it so much worse than I do, but they, man, they find joy, they laugh. They know they got to wake up tomorrow morning at 6am to catch that bus, but they still find joy.

Speaker 1 48:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2 48:19

So I love bro. Like I said, man laughing is my favorite. Childish Gambino was another artist I was thinking of, that, I think does a good job of balancing politics and entertainment.

Speaker 1 48:31

I think he does that. He does a great job and without his music and his comedy and with his movies and television shows he's like, so multifaceted and everything that he does he like.

Speaker 1 48:45

Atlanta is probably one of my all time favorite television shows because, like, especially that last season he got really deep with some of the stuff that he like I had to kind of go back and look at some of the previous episodes. They all kind of tied together. It was kind of crazy how he kind of just tied everything together. So like he is a great creator, somebody that like I feel like we all kind of aspire, aspire to be like him.

Speaker 2 49:08

I feel that same way about Jordan Peele.

Speaker 1 49:10

Oh yeah, jordan Peele, that's another good example.

Speaker 2 49:13

I feel that exact same way because his I've never seen anything from him that I did not like, nothing, never, not a key appeal episode, nope, it's one of my favorite films. Get out, love it, us love it. He just thinks differently and I love that. Like when I'm watching these movies, I just see characters like speaking how you and I are speaking but it calls attention to it, right, like that's the one thing I can't stand in entertainment where, just because somebody speaks with a certain dialect or a certain slang.

Speaker 2 49:46

they always find a reason to call attention to it in film, Whereas if you watch something like across the spider verse like yo, they're just talking back and forth in Spanish English. Whatever they never call it, it's normalized.

Speaker 1 50:01

Right, I get what you're saying.

Speaker 2 50:02

And that's where we need to be, but we're not.

Speaker 1 50:05

Now we got a long way and I think about I think we talked about that before where, like, well, something happens to the first black, the first this, and that I think the reason why we still call it out is just because we have to pay attention to it, because it's been such a big disparity for generations that when it happens we have to say, hey, this is still just the first. You know what I mean. Like I'm, in certain areas it kind of makes sense just because this is the first like wake up America, like wake up, like humanity. This is just the only the first. Of all these people who come through like think about it. The first like when he was running for president, it was the first he's running to be the first back black president. When he won president, he was the first multicultural president. We changed the presentation because he won Right. So there's a lot of that. That's like Tiger Woods, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 50:56

It's like Tiger Woods, it's almost that, it's almost like if you switched. So, for example, if a young black man, I don't know, I don't know any other milestones, but we'll make one up Young black man first person hired a NASA. If you flipped it and said it like literally. The headline says yo, about damn time you know first black black person hired at NASA to show like yo. It's crazy that it's taking this long.

Speaker 1 51:25

Makes sense.

Speaker 2 51:26

I think, then I think it would be, it would almost be more, more impact more of an emphasis on it took this long right, like you, like you guys see how crazy it is right that you ain't never seen nobody with no Tim's on and NASA, you know, I mean like that's, that's crazy. So I think if you, if you switch it, I think that way it's negative.

Speaker 1 51:50

You want to like recontextualize the way. I mean that's a that's a fair point and like if we can make it so that we Control more media or actually have more media outlets, things that we can do like that, then we'll be able to actually contextualize in the way that makes sense to us. Instead of you know, five people own it, like all of the network news television channels and they all say the same thing.

Speaker 1 52:13

You know what I mean. So it's one other thing that I wanted to ask you about that we kind of talked about and I remember I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was a term and I wrote it down and I was like this is an interesting term, but I do not remember what it was. So I wanted to ask you about it. You mentioned a term. It was called a manufactured consent manufactured consent. Can you break that down oh?

Speaker 2 52:35

oh man, I wish we had more time. The idea of manufactured consent is at least how I perceive it is. A group of people are Given this idea that what they're doing is making some kind of impact, mm-hmm, or making some kind of change, when in reality it's just kind of like a misdirection, in a way to keep them busy Thinking that they're making a change while the status quo just continues. I think I think when you and I spoke, the example I used was the NBA bubble and you know these, these guys. They were t-shirts with a message on the back, and that's a good thing, right, but at the end of the day, they had no control over what the message was.

Speaker 2 53:20

It still had to be approved by somebody above and, and if it were me, if I wanted to make actual change, I would say listen, I'm worth $400 million to this franchise. I'm not dribbling another basketball. I will give up my paycheck Until I see X or Y change, right, but that doesn't really happen. So that's why I like when I see a lot of these athletes get compared to like Muhammad Ali or somebody like that. Yeah, it's just like I don't even understand how you can say that I.

Speaker 1 53:54

Think the closest thing I've ever seen to that where somebody actually spoke up, would and protest it, and you see how well that went yeah yeah and and and I have mixed feelings about him.

Speaker 2 54:07

I have the utmost respect for what he did, but he was still. He was still getting a check from Nike on the back end the entire time. So I take a little bit issue with that, but it took guts for what he did. Then. The irony is is the original knee was misinterpreted to begin with. Yeah, like, and he's yo, he looks like me, like yo, I thought. I thought I thought I was like. Ones were supposed to be like less threatening you know what I?

Speaker 2 54:33

mean, that's what they told me. And the only thing I don't like is is that everyone said give him a shot, give him a shot, but he was playing trash before that and nobody talks about that. Everyone says he's blackball, but he wasn't a good quarterback at the time to begin with. So it gave it gave a lot of these owners a really good justification. They didn't have to, they didn't have to say race, even though a lot of it was race. They could just say I mean, he's not playing well.

Speaker 1 55:03

I mean by that time I stopped watching football and I know he had just been to the Super Bowl like not that many seasons ago.

Speaker 2 55:11

I was like three and it'd be fair and it'd be fair.

Speaker 1 55:13

He was a starting quarterback and he actually did win a lawsuit against the NFL for undisclosed amount of money, right for being black ball. So like it's a, it's a little bit. It's a little bit in that too, so it's something. But it takes so much courage. She really speak out. I mean even like, just talking about sports. He's talking about like, like, think about Kyrie Irving and how he was victimized, like they they were, like they talked Christ so much crap about him. All he doesn't want to get the vaccine he would like for him. It was like I don't, I don't remember if it was religious or just the way that he felt. He just basically said, like I'm not doing this and if I got to sit out, I'm gonna sit out. Then you have somebody on the other side and football you have and Rogers and Rogers said that he was.

Speaker 1 56:00

Vaccinated and yeah, and then like the way they responded to him when they because it was protocols, the NFL had protocols. He's like you don't have to be vaccinated, but if you're vaccinated you can do this, this and this, but if you're not, you can't do any of this stuff. You can only do this. And he was participating in things like he was vaccinated. It came out that he was not vaccinated and Everybody's like, okay, yeah, and it's like Kyrie Irving is sitting there and they're like, oh, he's so problematic, he's, he's a troublemaker, he's doing this. And that the way that they Painted the picture of Kyrie Irving versus Aaron Rogers is. It shows how big of a divide that there is between the way that Black whether it's an athlete or just a person in general and white are Portrayed in the media is just incredibly different.

Speaker 2 56:50

Look at breath oh.

Speaker 1 56:52

Yeah, oh yeah, bro, that's.

Speaker 2 56:54

nobody talks about breath bro, I think when all that stuff happened, I think I maybe saw one or two stories on ESPN and that's it.

Speaker 1 57:01

It's like maybe NPR I.

Speaker 2 57:09

Even, even, even though people perceive Kyrie Irving as anti-Semitic, I still don't think he's anti-Semitic. I think he was backed up against the wall and when he was forced to make a declarative statement on whether he was anti-Semitic or not, felt that he didn't. He didn't need to justify, and I'm not mad at him for that. I've got I still buy his sneaks. Well, he doesn't. He. Nike cut him, but I'm. He's still the greatest ball handler in the history of the league to me. He, his whole thing was. I just think that because he already had that stigma attached to him, he didn't stand a chance. Yeah, they're just.

Speaker 1 57:42

Yeah, they're gonna mind up it was just stuff and stuff on stuff, and I mean like stuff like that. He's an easy target and you know, you know well, it's like you can't. You don't have to agree with everything that everybody does, and maybe it's not the right thing, maybe, but but still like I feel like just for that, even just that one specific thing, they treated him completely different than they were somebody else.

Speaker 2 58:03

Yeah, and and into your point. Just to repeat because I think it bears repeating Aaron Rodgers lied and he's straight up people's health at risk because one of those mandates was, if you're not, if you're not back, saying all right, cool, we respect that.

Speaker 2 58:18

But then you got a mask up, hey, mask up. He lied, he put people at risk and I don't think he paid a fine. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure there was a. It was. There was a lot at one point that if you lied about being vaccinated in specific situations, you actually had to face a fine or jail time.

Speaker 1 58:37

Mm-hmm, I Don't remember that.

Speaker 2 58:40

I'll have to get back to you on that, but there's something along those lines.

Speaker 1 58:43

But I don't like he. I don't feel like he faced any consequence. He, like went on a podcast online. I said I didn't say I was. I said I was Immunized like you want to know what you like you alluded to the fact that you were vaccinated and you did things To show that you were in the vaccinated group right.

Speaker 2 59:02

That's a lie.

Speaker 1 59:05

It's a straight line We'll just call. Like, if they won't call it what it is, we'll call it what is? He lied.

Speaker 2 59:09

He lied We'll keep it 100.

Speaker 1 59:11

That's it. He lied. So we we come into the end of the interview. Is there anything, anything, you want to add, anything you'd like to say, anything like to talk about?

Speaker 2 59:21

I you know what, honestly, I just talk about. You know, live, laugh, love. That's it. Stay positive, even if that negative creeps in, just keep pushing. I've been on a real motivational kick lately. I Replace a lot of the BS content and I replace it with motivational, positive content. In slowly but surely it changes your mindset and I encourage everybody else to do the same.

Speaker 1 59:42

That's awesome, man. Well, I think it's been a great conversation. I appreciate you coming on the show.

Speaker 2 59:47

I appreciate you, thank you.

Speaker 1 59:49

Again, I'd like to thank Matthew for coming on the show. If you'd like to learn more about Matthew, you can find that information in the show notes. Still talking black is a crown culture media LLC production. You can find out more about it at still talking black calm. New episodes on season two will be available on YouTube and your regular podcast sources, so that's Apple podcast, spotify or whatever else you use. Season one is still up and available. You can find it on all streaming platforms. It's not on YouTube yet, but you can find it everywhere else. So please come back next week. We'll have a brand new guest and a brand new topic, but until then, keep talking.