Southern University: Hip-Hop & Politics

Echoes of Inequality: America's Perpetual Struggle with Racism

• Eugene • Season 1 • Episode 6

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The shadow of America's past looms large over the present, its tendrils entwined with the very fabric of our society. Join us on a poignant journey through history as we trace the lineage of racism in the U.S., starting from the abominable transatlantic slave trade to the stark inequalities still evident today. Dr. Johnson offers his expert insights on how the echoes of Jim Crow laws persist in modern systemic racism and the chilling parallels between the overseers of old and today's law enforcement tactics. Our dialogue is a tribute to the resilience of the African American community and an unflinching look at the continuous battle for true equality.

A saga that riveted a nation, the O.J. Simpson trial becomes a lens through which we examine the intricate tapestry of race, justice, and media. The episode peels back layers of the trial, delving into how the racial tensions of the time, amplified by incidents like the Rodney King beating, influenced the courtroom proceedings and the nation's consciousness. We navigate personal encounters with discrimination, from subtleties to overt racial profiling, emphasizing the consequential role of movements like Black Lives Matter and the activism of young, impassioned voices fighting for a just world.

As our conversation unfolds, we confront the uncomfortable truths within politics and education, where the veneer of Christian values often belies a resistance to change and inclusivity. We reveal how the resurgence of overt racism and the contentious debate over Confederate statues at political rallies lay bare the deep societal rifts that challenge America. We share our experiences and perspectives on voting, the slow pace of societal change, and the importance of community involvement. Dr. Johnson, our esteemed guest, joins us in a call for unity and reflection, inspiring listeners to consider their role in the arduous yet vital march toward a society that genuinely upholds the ideals upon which it was founded.

Kam:

What's going on, y'all it's.

Rylon:

Cameron, and this is Rylan. And today this is Season 1, Episode 6, History of American Racism. So I just want to start with where did? American racism stem from, in your opinion, with?

Kam:

American racism. You have to keep in mind that American racism has spanned across three different eras. And those eras being slavery, Jim Crow crow and the systemic racism that we endure today so going back to slavery, according to the uh gilderman living institute of american history they said, over the period of the atlantic slave trade from approximately 1526 to 1867, some 12.5 million captured men, women and children were put to ships in africa and 10.7 million arrived in the Americas.

Kam:

So we see that you know, even before 1619, because we know we have the 1619 project that exists even almost 100 years before that, slaves were getting transported from Africa to the Americas and being forced to work in these horrible conditions and so you have to understand that, before America was even made a country, the racism was already being set into the very foundings of how america will operate for at least 100 years after its founding yeah, I think a lot of people don't understand, like you know, they think that slavery is the end all be all of where racism started.

Rylon:

However it's, it's important to see that um, racism started from people's ideals, people's um way of living, way of thinking about black people and etc. Because even white people are slaves as well. All right, I mean, white people were slaves, excuse me. Um, so when we talk about the second bullet point as far as jim crow era, how do do we kind of put that together with slavery? How did we go from slavery to Jim Crow when we were evolving as a country?

Kam:

With the Civil War. We know that President Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which basically freed the slaves. But you have to read more in depth into it because basically slaves were only freed from from certain slave states but there were still slaves in free and quote-unquote free states that were not free, and so you have to understand, like why it was made so slavery was only slavery was only emancipated because abraham lincoln used it as a military strategic advantage to win the civil war and it did help him.

Kam:

But with Jim Crow, we know that after Reconstruction ended.

Kam:

Because of the presidency of Rutherford B Hayes, basically ending Reconstruction, jim Crow was able to go across the South in enormous fashion. I mean, we saw black codes being established, we saw the restrictions of black men being able to vote, because black men had the ability to vote, with the 13, 14 and 15 amendments being passed, but black women did not. And so with Jim Crow being established, we basically went back to just slavery times. We were just allowed to coexist with each other, but we were still held under these same restrictions that sometimes we still endure to today, I think, you know, not even just white people, but our people, just like stem.

Rylon:

They come from the mindset of like slavery is slavery. Slavery is being beaten, slavery is being, you know, um in the fields picking cotton. However, there's, there's still like up-to-date racism where you, where you're talking about jim crow, you're talking about that era we remember, or we have, you know, videos where you know we're getting hosed and constantly being beaten and it's like it's the same thing. It's just an updated, you know, form of racism, excuse me, form of slavery when it comes to.

Rylon:

American racism. So in that point I want to get into systemic racism. So police brutality, how do you, how do you justify?

Kam:

that.

Rylon:

That is American racism.

Kam:

Well, american racism. We saw that police brutality really came to the forefront during the Civil Rights Movement. We saw kids protesting, we saw men and women protesting and we saw, specifically in Birmingham, alabama, with the Bull Connor. He released the dogs, he released the hoses, the fireman hoses, on these protesters. That was being 100% peaceful.

Kam:

They was protesting their God-given rights because, as we know, america, as a quote from Dr King, he said always say to America, be true to what you said on paper. And in those founding documents they said that all men are created equal and that America was not living up to their principles. And so our ancestors are basically asking for what they've been denied for hundreds of years.

Rylon:

And so, with the police, brutality, we saw with the Selma to Montgomery.

Kam:

March and that police brutality is the same lineage as overseers punishing slaves. And so with the Selma to Montgomery March we saw that these people was headed towards Montgomery to get their voting rights and that the state police had blocked them from getting across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Rylon:

And then we saw the actions of what happened after that. People were bludgeoned People had to go to the hospital, people had concussions. Some people died from that. That's not talked about enough.

Kam:

A lot of at least three people died from the blood of Sunday March after the effects of their condition, because they did not receive the correct help, because the condition of their injury, the extremity of their injury.

Rylon:

the extremity of their injury, it was so bad that they had to go to a really sophisticated hospital to get healed from those injuries, with the police brutality I mean we saw Malcolm X, dr King, megan Evers they all experienced these types of police brutality.

Kam:

It never helped the issue. It only made the issue worse. This is just the American racism being on full display because we saw that, going back to the settlement, to montgomery march with bloody sunday this was 70 million people witnessed that live because it was broadcast on national television and so everybody, including the world, saw how bad the american racism was, and even hitler. Even hitler used the american racism ideology of the police and used that to use his on his ideology and not to Germany.

Rylon:

Yeah, when you talk about the historical aspect of police brutality coming from the Jim Crow era and coming from the civil rights movement, you see that these are things that have been embedded into our, our culture in a sense. Like you think about even further down with Rodney King. You think about even further into our time with Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin, like we are conditioned to have to. You know, understand that. Excuse me, we are taught to how to when we have encounters with the police.

Rylon:

How to do it? How to, you know, keep your hands on the wheel, you know, don't look them in the eyes, yes, sir, no sir, you know, just to make sure that they're not um threatened by us and it's just like by the color of our skin. We're automatically experiencing that american racism and it's hard to see that nothing has changed since then like we literally can get pulled over and still experience what malcolm and martin and all of the others were experiencing 50, 60 years ago.

Rylon:

All right, and that shouldn't be so now I want to ask get back into the 90s um the oj trial how do you feel like that trial was race involved. Let's start there.

Kam:

Well, I mean when you have a famous athlete, or a famous retired athlete as in OJ Simpson. He had retired from the NFL, had a great NFL career. He had moved into advertising and commercialing. He was in ads, he was in movies. He was in movies. He was a successful businessman at the time and so he had a at the time. You know him and his wife Nicole was divorced and you know, we've seen that, you know through the documentaries that we've seen from watching the courts, from watching the courts we've seen that the police basically assumed that OJ Simpson was a suspect because of the quote-unquote evidence that they found in his home.

Rylon:

It was the crooked policeman, I can't remember. Yeah, mark Furman. Yeah, mark Furman, mark Furman.

Kam:

And you have to give a shout-out to O, to OJ Simpson team, because they were able to show that whether or not it was true what Mark Furman did these things have to be called into question because Mark Furman had a history of saying the N-word, and you know, when it comes to court and trial and everything, it's all about perception, and so you have to appeal to the jury to show whether or not did OJ Simpson commit this crime. Did he or did he not? And so you got to give a big shout out to them.

Kam:

And then, going back to the DNA, you know DNA was still new around the time, you know, with DNA testing involved in crime scenes, and so they was able to call all of that into question and so we saw the tear down of a successful black man at the time, and so a lot of people say that race was brought into the tribe.

Kam:

Well, that's not true, because we live in the United States of America. Race was already in it, exactly, race was already in it from the very beginning, when they realized that um nicole brown simpson and oj simpson was married and you have a successful black man like that race was immediately brought into the trial and there was no way you could um escape from it, because that's just the very nature of america and so um through the trial we saw um oj simpson team tear down basically the prosecutor's evidence and we saw that with that evidence um they was able to show um that this that we do not know if OJ Simpson actually committed this crime and that, as we know, the prosecutor team.

Rylon:

They only brought OJ.

Kam:

Simpson on trial. They never brought anybody else, they never suspected anybody else and we see that this ties back to the racism.

Rylon:

Because they never they never suspected any other witnesses.

Kam:

The team, the team of detectives that was on that arrived on the scene of the Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman murder. After looking at the evidence on the scene and then going to quote unquote, alert OJ Simpson that his wife had died, they immediately made him the number one suspect and it was just on from there.

Rylon:

Yeah, I think it's so hard for you not to see that there's race in this trial. I think it's so hard for you not to see that there's race in this trial when you know of course we weren't around, but we could see that it separated black and white.

Kam:

Right.

Rylon:

A hundred percent. You know black people wanted a black man to get off. However, you know the angry white people was like no, he should be, you know, prosecuted for what he did. And they? It was not proven. And so I do want to ask do you think the verdict had anything to do with Rodney King Like him being? You know?

Kam:

him being acquitted. Well, you have to understand that Rodney King was beaten and Latasha Harlins was murdered 13 days apart which led to the. La riots in 92, which took place three years before the OJ Simpson trial, and so that.

Kam:

We see that it was basically this powder keg waiting to be lit. And if OJ Simpson was found guilty of this murder, whether or not it was true or not, it would have made LA riots part two in 1995 and 1996. And we see that from the reports and from the documentaries and from just the everything that we've seen. The police wanted to avoid la riots happening again and basically we see that, um, the prosecution team kind of dropped the ball because they brought mark firman back to the cake, but back back to court. And then the defense team just went, uh, just went on him and said have you ever said the n-word before? Because in the beginning they said he, uh, mark firman said that he had not and they basically found him.

Kam:

They basically found him in perjury and, as you said he played the field and that basically gave the defense team honestly to me it gave them the win right there, because that was an important key, because mark firman was one of the first detectives on scene and he found the majority of the evidence that was used in that trial.

Rylon:

Yeah, and they, they, you know, marcia clark, that whole team.

Rylon:

They tried to kind of um bypass that and it was like that was the most important thing, because if he's the head prosecutor, if he found the glove, if he found all of this evidence, there has to be some type of racism in that, because why would you not want to get a black man in jail? I mean, that's just another one, right? It's not like OJ's not black at the end of the day. He thinks he's not, but at the end of the day he came from a black mom and dad, right, and so you have to with that.

Kam:

Going back to those riots, you have to understand a quote from Dr King. He said a riot is the language of the unheard and what is the unheard that you may ask? The unheard is the summers and winters of delay that America has not helped black people.

Rylon:

And basically you have to understand that for anybody, not just black, people.

Kam:

We can only take so much for so long, until we just erupt. And you have to be a person that's emotionally understanding to be able to see that. And we see that with the racism, people do not care about that.

Rylon:

They only care about you know advancing themselves or their race, definitely. So now I want to get into violence and discrimination. So I first want to ask, ask have you ever been discriminated against? Um, not that I know of.

Kam:

Well, I'm gonna say it like this, not something that I have visibly seen, not have. I looked back on experience and say, well, maybe, yes, so like with me um serving in the military. As we know, the united states military has a history of segregating soldiers we saw that the United States military was not integrated until like mid-World War II, basically after World War II, and we saw these soldiers on the front lines and they was important to basically every war that America has been involved in basically every war that America has been involved in and so, like, in my military experience so far I've been in since 2020, I have seen, you know, little bits in there of discrimination, but nothing that I can say that has like impacted my life so far.

Rylon:

Yeah, I think for me, like it's a little subtle stuff, like you know. I walk into a store. It's like you know, I see people following me. I'm like what's going on? You know, I walk in with three of my other friends, you know, and we were black. You know what I mean and you know. This may be, you know, a Korean store, this may be, you know, a store owned by white people, and all of a sudden, you know it's like oh, let's, let's keep an eye on them, see if they are going to steal something or something like that. I that, but not, you know, to my face, you know, because it's never, it's never.

Kam:

Well, it it's, it's a thing now, but as far as, like us growing up, I don't think I've ever dealt with it face to face and I I wonder how you would react if you had that interaction or discrimination face to face well, um, with me being a you know great learner of history and politics, politics and how we got to where we are, and when you watch the videos and the documentaries and just even the movies even though it's Hollywood they do show the true sometimes true depiction of what was being said during those times, and that's what I was getting into about the violence.

Rylon:

I remember Minister Society when she was following him around the store in the beginning and bro bro got upset and shot her. I mean that's, that's literally what happens day to day, right? So like with that, like you know, I've like, I've seen the videos of my about ancestors getting called in where like I've seen them getting hosed down and so like that takes, it takes an effect on you at first because, like sometimes, you're like wow like this really happened. But after watching it so long you kind of become numb to it?

Kam:

Yes, Well, I have at least. And so, like, if it happened to me, like face to face, I would just take it on the chin and keep moving Because, like, I know what I'm capable of and I know, you know, what God has in store for me in life.

Rylon:

And know what god has in store for me in life, and so I'm not gonna let. I'm a racist person, you know. Tell me, hey, you're not gonna do this. So if with you, you know, wanting to have a successful future, do you view being silent as a um, good thing rather than a bad thing?

Kam:

well, it depends on where you're being silent on sometimes you know, like our parents tell us when we grow up, it's best to keep your mouth closed you got nothing good to say yeah but sometimes you have to open your mouth because sometimes when you just see wrong, it eats you up inside if you don't say anything.

Rylon:

Yeah, you know. So like we saw, like doing um, um the 2020 black lives. Uh, black lives matter movement.

Kam:

Yeah, with george floyd, brianna taylor and mart arbor, like we saw people that we've never heard, you know, come out, because like that has, just been building up inside of them and sometimes it takes multiple events for somebody to say something sometimes it just takes that one event and so like being silent.

Kam:

Depending on the situation, you can be complicit in continuing the actions and so like that goes back to like um back then during the civil rights movement even before then, like the people that was not saying anything and just living like life was normal and it was not you was being segregated you was being um.

Rylon:

You was the victim of redlining and a number of other things. Yeah, I think you, you also, like you said, I agree wholeheartedly picking battles, but also you know understand where to fight your grounds with. Uh, racism, like you know dr johnson was telling us. You know he, he fights it, you know, the most in the classroom because he believes, you know, we're the future. He instills that in us.

Kam:

So I think you know, based on, based up of our career fields, like it's important that you, you take someone to shame but you also stand up for what you believe in, um, when it comes to racism because, like, if not, we're just gonna get you know ran over right, and we are um a generation of speaking our minds right and with this generation coming up, you know, with jay and z, I always say that jay and z is gonna be that generation that's gonna really challenge the status quo here in america, and not just amer but around the world. And we see, with that challenging, we see here in America, we saw after the overturn of the Roe v Wade, we saw minority and black people, you know, coming out in support because that does affect us.

Kam:

And then we see now, with the pro-Palestinian encampments that's going around universities around the nation today. We're seeing that Gen Z is really challenging the status quo and they're not going to go silent. And we see that the history of the racism of America, we see that this xenophobia that is spreading across you know our universities and that people do not feel welcome at these universities now because of you know the racism that has been perpetrated with this situation that's going on in palestine and it's and it's interesting to see like people's viewpoints on these, on these uh subjects, because it's like when you don't feel it one-on-one, like you're not going to really care or anything, but it's just like there's's there's opinionated things, and then there's right or wrong things, right, and so with the xenophobia it's on every college campus.

Rylon:

It's what you see every day. You just don't. Some people just literally don't want to see it, and I think that's the problem.

Kam:

But also this could be a solution in the near future for Gen Z Um.

Rylon:

So now I want to get into racial inequality. So I just want to ask have you experienced racial inequality?

Kam:

Well, I would say not to me personally, but in the community that I've been a part of. So talk a little bit about that Growing up in Woodville, Mississippi. It's a small town, it's like 45 minutes away from. Southern University. I grew up in the bottom portion of the Mississippi, economic wise, did not have a lot of economic opportunities. We had a grocery store, we had like one fast food restaurant but our public school was very highly underfunded and so our test scores didn't come out good.

Kam:

We wasn't able to keep teachers full time and everything, and you know, with how Mississippi is set up we see, like Mississippi has a long history of discrimination.

Kam:

I would say that it has probably the worst history of discrimination, just because of, like what Mississippi has done, history of discrimination, just because of like what mississippi has done. Yeah, and so, like I see like the discrimination, the inequality, because, um, we have a private school not too far from us, um, right up the road, and they have their population is 90 90 90 to 95 percent white and the only uh minority kids that go to that school play football you know, and so they only go to play sports.

Rylon:

But they're, you know, they. And so they only go to play sports.

Kam:

But they're, you know, they're not just regular students, and so like the funding that you get from the Department of Education from Mississippi, like it's not going towards us because like we don't provide them economic powers for the state of Mississippi. You made a great point, like just about you know the fact that if they are black, they're there for a reason.

Rylon:

They're either shooting a ball or they're running with a ball. And I think in our career field, specifically mine, I have about seven or eight internships that I have applied for and then I got interviewed for it and it was just like my white counterparts, because I'm going to tell you a little bit about me. I'm trying to, you know, go into uh, sports and entertainment law, and it's so whitely ran that it's like it's kind of it's so hard to break in.

Rylon:

I think 4.5 percent of agents are black, you know, and and that number honestly needs to go up, but as far as my experience with racial inequality hasn't been, of course, like face to face, but I can clearly see it, you know. Um, I can't ignore it, and so I feel as though excuse me that a change need to come. So how do we, in our workplaces, how do we change the racial inequality?

Kam:

because, there's.

Rylon:

There's some stuff like in the nfl where they have to you know um, they have to interview black coaches, etc. So how do you feel like they're? At least they're trying but how do you feel like this can be fixed? There's a solution to it well and here's the bad thing about this okay, some things take time to be fixed you.

Kam:

You know, everything is not you know, one month, two months. Some stuff takes years, generations. As we see like going back, like with the United States of America being founded in 1775, and we're here in 2024, and we see that the racism is still prevalent, and so like to fix this issue is going to take generations and generations and generations to change the mindset basically of how America thinks and operates and we see that you know. There have been advances that we've had, but to me I feel as though with the Voting.

Kam:

Rights Act of 1965 getting passed, with us finally getting our full rights to vote, with the Civil Rights Act of 1968, 1972, like with these acts getting passed, I feel like black people are just getting started in America.

Rylon:

So, like all those times before, like yeah, we was here.

Kam:

We was barely even counting. Yeah, we coming now. We coming now, though, and so, like with us, I say black people. Real start in America was 1968. After 1968, you can count how long we've been here, and from 1968 to now, we see that that is 56 years, and to now, we see that it's 56 years, and so, with my father, who will be turning 65 this year in November, like he has been here basically, like I said, since, I feel as though America truly started counting black people and, like you said, we coming Most definitely.

Rylon:

So I now want to get into a little bit of racial profiling. So what is your opinion on racial profiling?

Kam:

It happens. It happens all throughout our lives. Like you said, we get racially profiled. Even when we go in the store and just walk around, we get racially profiled. Me and you could both speak to this. We get racially profiled when we go to those debate tournaments that we do.

Rylon:

Because the majority of the people that are there, do not look like us, and so you know. They look at us as though, like what are you doing here?

Kam:

And so, like, again, like you said, said earlier, we don't have to hear it, but we can see it, yeah, and so, like, sometimes, you know, when I see it, sometimes it gets me down because I'd be like dang.

Rylon:

We've come all this way as a nation and yet, um, our ancestors still cannot see that our generation has fully escaped from what they endured, and it's and it's not everybody, I think you've made a great point with the debate tournament, but also you know we have to break it down when we when we discuss police brutality, excuse me, racial profiling, you know, it's not just you know when you're in the car and you get pulled over by by police. It's not you know just in the debate tournaments.

Rylon:

It it's literally when you walk into the store like we're in bad rules, louisiana we, you know, when we go on the lsu side, it's a whole different ball game than where we are over here, you know, and so you know it makes me feel some type of way as well, only because, like I'm from atlanta, like it's, we are very, very populated, but it's black population, so it's. I don't see a lot of white people, unless you grew up in your community yeah, I did so.

Rylon:

It's just like when we go to mississippi, when we, when I go on the other side, um, to the usher side, it's, it's a different ball game, because I know that no matter what I'm wearing, no matter who I'm with.

Rylon:

No matter how I'm talking something, someone is going to look at me differently and I think you know it goes back to Martin. You know he's saying like it doesn't matter about my color of skin, it matters about what's. You know what I say, what's in my head, how I'm, how I think Me as a person. You know not me as how I dress, how I talk, how my culture is, because you know there's black people and then there's black people, and then there's black people.

Rylon:

It's two different people and I got a good head on my shoulder, so I don't think that anybody should ever be boxed in, and I think racially profiling someone doesn't stop with black people. Let's not put that out there. There's other races that are racially profiled as well. There's a lot of racial profiling on college campuses. That doesn't get talked about enough either. We have white people on our campus and it's just like what are you doing here?

Kam:

It goes both ways.

Rylon:

I can also say on the LSU campus with anybody other than the white people, like Asians, indian descent. You can go on and on. It always happens. How do you think we can fix this issue?

Kam:

Fixing the issue of American racism, like I said earlier, would take time. As a person that you know wants to run for office when I get older you know, I've done my research on like the bills that would ideally be needed to get passed, and I do know that these bills will come with a lot of backlash because, as we know, a lot of people are not ready for change, even though this is necessarily not change. This is what's been denied.

Rylon:

I think that's the crazy part about it.

Kam:

It's like you know they don't want change because they want to stick to the norm.

Rylon:

They want to stick to these, you know, ideals that they've been, that have been instilled in their head and most of them are prejudiced. They are racist.

Kam:

Right, the norm that you say, the norm is morally wrong. Because how can you justify denying another person that bleeds the same color blood as you do, denying them their basic human rights, whether that be to food, water, the access to voting, a decent education?

Rylon:

and etc and so um, and it's, and it's not. Like I said earlier, it's not everybody. So how so do you believe that it's more of the older generation trying not to have change, rather than the newer generation? Well, it's passed down, it's passed down. So uh, we know that you know you're not born a racist. You know as a baby, because you don't know, no better.

Kam:

And then, as you grow older and your parents talk to you and your grandparents talk to you, your aunties, uncles and cousins, they tell you these things from what they've seen in their lives and they tell you hey you don't want to talk to that black guy? You don't want to talk to that black woman and those things pass down from generation to generation, and so even with the social media age, now we see that it's not even face to face they go in the comment section and they don't even they don't even have to say the n-word, they just say things that are attached to black people, whether that be um fried chicken or grape soda and like.

Kam:

You see, these things and this is passed down.

Rylon:

This is learned from their parents and their grandparents and stuff that they've seen even the television that they watch, everything that you interact with is passed down.

Kam:

And so, like I said, to fix this issue you have to, like, try to open people's minds and tell them hey, this is morally wrong. Um, if for the people that claim to be Christian, you cannot claim to be a Christian when you deny people of the things that are basic rights here in America, now you can say what you want about.

Kam:

Jesus would have did this. Jesus would have did that. Jesus cared about everybody. He tried to help the lowest person. And so to say you're a Christian and you deny these people of their basic rights, I just feel as though you're a hypocrite.

Rylon:

You're probably the biggest hypocrite to ever exist in this world. Yeah, and I think you know I watched a couple of TikTok videos of you know a guy you know going to the Trump rallies and they're talking as if you know they're not, they're contradicting everything they're saying.

Rylon:

You know constantly and I think, uh, you know, a right mind is a changed mind, in my opinion, like, if you really are, can say that you care about this country, then you should have an open mind. You should have, you should want change. And I think fixing the issue starts with our generation like I, that the older generation. They're so washed down with everything that's been going on, like they're used to the racist uh, remarks, racist stuff but then you also, you know, discuss social media like that is a big one, that like right, that we don't even realize and we saw and we saw like um.

Kam:

Going back to the 2020 presidential election, I would say that's like when Gen Z first broke out, as to say, hey, we're not going to be um like the previous generation. We're going to come out and we're going to vote, and we're going to vote you in office and we're going to vote you out of office. And we saw that. You know, with these court cases, that the former president tried to get these states overturned. We saw that the areas that they was contesting was areas of largely black communities. We saw that in Michigan, they tried to contest the results of Detroit. In Georgia, it was Atlanta. In Pennsylvania, it was Philadelphia.

Kam:

They tried to contest these areas that was heavily black and that ties back to the history of American racism, because they feel as though we should not vote. Honestly, that is what they feel, as though our vote does not count. And so we see that going into the 2024 presidential election, we see people at these Trump rallies that have shirts on they say blacks for Trump, and they're not even black, they're not even mixed, they're not even mixed, they're straight white and they have these shirts on that says Blacks for Trumps, and that lets you know how these people feel about us, and not just Trump, but it goes back to every political party we have here in the United States.

Rylon:

I'm not just calling out Trump, but his is more out there and you have to call it out because us being silent would just be complicit literally and it's, it's a, it's a global thing and, like I said, you know, being home, you know, in atlanta, coming from dekalb county, like I can say, when I finally got the chance to vote, they were freezing the polls and I was just like in awe because it was like this is my first time voting right and I wanted to be first time voting for a presidential election Let me put that in there and I want it to be.

Rylon:

you know the good right experience. You know my privilege to vote. I finally have this. I'm of age now and it's like all of a sudden, whoa, you can't do this. You got it. You got to go way over here. You know, like that should never be, and they normalize these things because they've been doing it for so long. And then now you know they had a president to where he really put a battery in the back of some of these racist people.

Kam:

Right. We saw when he came down the escalator in 2015 and he said those things about Mexican people. He said they're bringing drugs, they're bringing rapists, they're criminals. And he said some, some are Mexican people. He said they're bringing drugs they're bringing rapists. They're criminals.

Kam:

And he said some some are good people and so, like you have to look at it, Like Nazism came back during his run, and you cannot deny that for a fact, because even they admitted it. Even the people that was committing these atrocious acts admitted that. Hey, People that was committing these atrocious acts admitted that. Hey, Trump allowed us to be out in the open again. We saw what happened in Charlottesville. That was peak American racism. They was defending a statue of a man that betrayed the nation that they so, that they so love. How can you that's being a hypocrite how can you defend the statue of a man that betrayed the United States of America and went and became the general of another quote-unquote nation that lasted shorter than the Obama presidency and I know that pisses him off right there?

Rylon:

I think it's about change, man. These people don't want to see change. They want to continue the racism that was bestowed upon them when they were born. You know, like, oh, like you said, you shouldn't hang out with that little black boy.

Rylon:

No, he's no good you know, and it's just like on the flip side, we're taught to love everybody, no matter what like, and that is the disconnect that I, that I see, and in in our generation. You know some, some, um, non-moron groups, you know they, they understand that that's not right. Right, but it's like the older generation, they want to be stuck in 1965, not even 1965, 1925, oh, even worse, they want to go that far back. They don't even want us to be able to go to the same school as them.

Kam:

Oh man that's why these remember, you got to understand why HBCUs exist, because we wasn't um able to go to these um ivy league and pwi institutions that are available today. And we see that um with the ending of affirmative action, again that ties back to american racism because, like they can deny these people now based off the color of their skin. We saw that um with duke duke is cutting their scholarships for minority groups, and so like.

Rylon:

This is immediately after the effects of of the ending of the affirmative action so you make a great point um with the hbcus and how they came about from racism. So do you believe being at hbU you can experience racism? I'm talking teachers, I'm talking, you know, scholarships, etc.

Kam:

Yes, because some decent amount of HBCUs are state institutions. You know they receive their funding from the state. You know some are private. But the majority of them are not so, like with study integration, for example a report came out that we have been heavily defunded, and the Department of Education released that we're $2 billion, if I'm not mistaken underfunded and we owe that from what the 1990s to now. That's the discrimination that we have endured at HBCU, because that affects being able to hire good quality professors, being able to fix campus dorms being able to fix academic buildings and etc.

Kam:

Because when your campus basically disintegrates and decomposes over time, nobody's going to want to come to university.

Rylon:

Yeah, it's hard to ignore it, and then, when we don't ignore it, we're pointing the finger at the wrong people right, right. We're pointing the finger at you know the dean, you know, etc. And it's like this literally stems from what we're talking about american racism. Like it doesn't get any more, um, condensed, like you have to understand that everything's bigger than what you see right and in front of you you know, like, so, like you said, this could bring it without this racism on this hbcu campus.

Rylon:

It could bring um more teachers, um better dorms. Like bro, we, we went on mississippi state campus. It looked right, 10. Like it was Southern on 10. Right.

Kam:

Literally Like not even just going all the way to Mississippi, like we see just a down the road. 10-minute drive to LSU.

Rylon:

Like we see the difference.

Kam:

And so, like you have to understand, that. American racism is tied into everything that we do, whether that come down to the water that comes out of our faucet, to the clothes that we can buy, to the stores that are in our communities because, like we know, um going back to the 70s and 80s, the crack epidemic, like we didn't have the resources to make these stores appear, these corner stores appear, oh man and so these were placed by, you know, the american government to destroy our community.

Rylon:

That's a good one, because I it's funny were placed by, you know, the american government to destroy our community.

Kam:

That's a good one because I it's funny because I read you know something uh, they was like some.

Rylon:

Somebody said they've never seen a chinese food commercial and they always got chinese food spots in black communities, exactly right, right next to a barbershop, exactly right next to, you know, in my right next to the liquor store.

Kam:

Yep, and so, like we see that, you know, after the civil rights movement, you know, the American government realized that, hey, we have to stop this from happening again. You know, to stop their progress. And so we saw that in 1970s, you know, and the president Richard Nixon, you know, and the president Richard Nixon, you know, the quote unquote war on crime, you know. And so the black community was deindustrialized. You know, they're taking these vocational schools and such from the black community.

Rylon:

Now, some still exist today, but they're not as funded.

Kam:

And so they don't have a lot of resources to give these minority people their certifications. And so we saw from the war on crime and the war on drugs. We saw from President Richard Nixon, and then we saw going into the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Rylon:

We see that it was exacerbated.

Kam:

And we know that with the AIDS epidemic that happened during his administration, it affected minority communities and he did not touch it until it started affecting his community, and so that was like a three-year where it was left undone, and so, and then that goes into the 1994 crime bill which was passed during the Bill Clinton presidency, and so you have to understand that a lot of people was for this bill.

Kam:

Even black people, even black leaders was for this bill because they felt as though it would help solve the crime issue. But once the bill was implemented, the racism in that bill it affected the black community because it took black men out.

Rylon:

The household.

Kam:

We saw that when this bill was passed the prison population in the United States times 10.

Rylon:

You know it went from 1 million to 2 million after like two years and it was majority black men arrested for these little charges that they did not deserve to go to prison for, and I think they know exactly what they're doing to our communities. I mean, we go back way before we even talking about this. You know tulsa race massacre, where they they burnt down black wall street right, we actually wanted to have something to ourselves and we couldn't because they weren't in control, and I think you know it's important to see if they are in control.

Rylon:

They are in control of our minds. They are in control of what we eat. They're in control of what we wear, etc.

Kam:

And that makes you think, though, because we had tulsa and they never had it, but they don't want us to integrate with them too. So what they want us to do, what they want us to do, and then they may say oh well, go back to africa. That's not necessarily easy, because, like dr johnson told us one time, africa has a number of tribes and countries. We would not be able to see exactly where we come from, and, honestly, if we do our dna test, the majority of us was here in america, so this is where we're from yeah, and honestly, america is nothing without us exactly like um culture exactly you know the united states, like washington dC itself, was built on the backs of our ancestors.

Kam:

Like we see the White House today the Capitol building, like basically the very essence of our nation's government, was built off the back of our ancestors and, like you cannot deny that. Like, oh yeah, it may get remodeled and painted by people today that's of all races but it would have not gotten there if we did not build it.

Rylon:

And so just to wrap this whole thing up, man, as black individuals in this country. How where do we go from here?

Kam:

so from here, um, in my opinion and I know that we as black people disagree on a lot of things, but I can just speak to speak to my experiences of how I've done it From here, I say that basically what I would do. I was just going to keep living.

Rylon:

You know if I see it if I see the racism.

Kam:

I just take it on a chin, unless it start affecting me personally, whether it be with a job or progressing through my career. But I'm just gonna, if it's just words, I'm just gonna take it on the chin because I know that what this the united states of america is capable of and you know, I believe in the united states of america, that's where I'm from I'm not, I'm not going to another country.

Kam:

So I know that this nation can be great and you know, live out the true principles of what they put on those founding documents, the potential Right. And so all I'm going to say is just keep living and be active in your community, whether that be working at the polls, because you know I worked at the polls before doing voting. And it's a great experience, and so you learn a lot, whether that be helping out your community or going back to your high school and helping out them.

Rylon:

If it's a disadvantaged high school. There's many ways for sure. I want all our listeners, black or white, to understand and realize Take a second look in the mirror and see what you can do to make change. I want to give a big thank you to Dr Johnson for giving us the voice and the space to express this subject for sure and God bless.