 I was spiraling this week, really something real terribly, just getting in my own head about my business, personal, all kinds of stuff. And Lee automatically called me. It's like, you good? And I'm like, yeah, but no. That was going on. And then once he listened to me, get it out, and tell what my plan was, he literally just broke it down for me, plain talk, what was going to work, what probably wasn't going to work, but not just telling me that was what yes and no, but what you can do instead. So I feel like when it comes to direction from men, they take the emotion out of it a lot of times, because I'm always going to cry. When I'm talking about my life and what's going on, I'm going to cry. And my homegirls I can go to, they're going to empathize. They're going to want to hug and talk about it. Lee is straight to the point. And then afterwards, all right, I love you. Have a good night. My brother, same way. He's going to listen objectively. But then once I'm done, he's going to be like, all right, you good? I feel for you, but this is where you messed up. This is what's wrong. This is what you may need to do. So I just feel like, but I surround myself with men that I respect. If I can't respect what you do in your life, I can't respect your opinion or your thought process. So it helps me to understand and know that there are great men in this world. And none of them are perfect, but I know the work that they have done and are continuing to do. And I know that when they're speaking to me or anyone else, they're doing it from a place of love. They don't always get it right, but I know the efforts behind the scenes to be an impact to me, their wives, their children, their sisters, their brothers, what have you. So that's why I have hope for conversations like this and know that there is a shift happening, but everyone doesn't think like me. Everyone doesn't surround themselves with influential, positive, uplifting men like I do. So where my view is this way, not everyone has the ability to have that same viewpoint. Yeah. And that's one of the things I appreciate about you because you have a space, even though it might be difficult at first, you have a space in your heart to hear men. And despite the fact that we communicate differently, you are still willing to listen. And unfortunately, I don't know if that's reflective of the female delegation because when I'm having conversations with women or even I'm seeing conversations on social media or even in the comment sections of some of our videos, they default to the lowest possible type of dude that they could think of. They don't think of Lee. They don't think of John. They don't think of me. They think of... Earl that did them wrong back in 90s. Which kind of ties into what we were talking about and you brought this up off camera about how women are literally creating or incentivizing the behavior that they later on complain about. So have you thought about that differently since our conversation? Like what power do you think women actually have when it comes to dictating the type of man we see? Don't beat me up too bad, girl. I'm still all forever women, but these conversations are not easy sometimes. It's easy to talk and give your opinion, but it's not easy when I have 33 years of experience working against me from a woman standpoint. But I feel like from sitting and talking to y'all and then going back and reflecting and understanding where you're coming from and not just putting me personally into it, but the masses, I feel like we have the power. Like women are able to shape, reshape, cultivate and create how the man is going to behave, respond, act and treat you. And I'll use myself for an example. Back when I was dating, sometimes I'm a natural nurturer. So like I said, I'm gonna feed you, I'm gonna make you feel comfortable, I'm gonna invite you into my space if I feel like you can come there. And it's the thing I do naturally, but if you're not, for me, you're a man that's not used to it and you're like, oh, I like this. She cooks, her house is clean. She let me chill, and you wanna do it more. So you're gonna be whatever I need you to be in that instance. And I can think of two or three different guys who I knew from gate I should not have continued on with. But because of the way that I treated them so quickly and so early on, trying to be that friend, that good listener, just kind of that nurturer, help you through your whatever you got going on. I'm looking at what you could be, again, that potential. All these things that, again, we as women do, instead of looking at the reality of you, I've taught you how to love me. I think you said something like that last time, like women teach men how to treat them or how do we let the fuckboy be a fuckboy and we allow it until we no longer want it anymore. I'm guilty of doing that. And I understand that if we withhold things like the cookie pie and demand more from them, from the beginning and not get hope to that potential of what we think could be, what they may be, while still giving them a chance to grow, because there's a thin line between holding on to hope for potential and dealing with the reality of someone where they are right now and understanding that they can be better and they're working towards being better. So there's a fine line there because sometimes it is just a fuckboy, sometimes it's just somebody that has not been able to have the break they needed. It's someone that is still trying to become better, but they haven't gotten there yet. So learning to differentiate between those two and then understanding how to behave for your own sanity to either one. If you're gonna go towards the fuckboy, don't be mad when his fuckboyness continues on six months down the line, you're down the line when you're ready for him to change to be something different. If you're gonna go towards the man that has potential and you see the work in him, don't fault him if he's faltering. You have to be able to help guide him and also understand in helping him that you're helping yourself because relationships are journeys. They ain't just, okay, you start off one way and then you're gonna be that way forever. So understanding that when you're going through this journey with this person, you have to be ready for the ups and downs, the heels and valleys of all of that. But again, you have to make sure you're being true to yourself and all of it because if you're not, you're gonna fall in one of those dips and it's gonna all fall apart for you because you did not deal with the reality of who they were. So what you're saying is that women today, they automatically see a certain default in a man. Like they default to looking at us a certain way versus being good leaders. They have this outlook. I'll take it a step further and say, and also to address your point. Yes, I think women default to thinking we are, you know, in the matters of it called Pookie and Ray Ray, right? Not Pookie and Ray Ray. And whenever like in public forums, women are talking about men and all the things men can do differently. They're talking about those men. But to your point, because you said, one of the things women can do is like withhold the cookie pie and different things like that. My hesitation with that is, I know some dudes that are willing to wait for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, have them any days you come up with a Steve Harvey told you to. Oh. And once they hit, they out or they'll show you who they really are. So I would actually say what women should spend more time doing is investigating why it is that they are so attracted to toxicity. Right, like why is it that, especially our women in our community, they mistake certain counterproductive aspects of a man's personality as charisma, right? They think oh, a man who's unpredictable is sexy without thinking about what is an unpredictable father going to be like to my kids, right? Like a lot of the things that we prioritize as a community in general, but as women particularly is excitement. And excitement doesn't translate to sustainability. It doesn't translate to long term and a productive relationship that's gonna cultivate something better. And I think the reason why so many women look over good dudes for toxic dudes, as we say, is really because they associate those good dudes with boring and they associate those toxic dudes with exciting. So I think that's what we need to focus on instead of, why is this your idea of exciting and why is this your idea of boring? Oh, I'm old and boring. I don't know, that's not a me question because I like boring, I like unknown, but I think for one thing that I can say is going towards it is, it's what's glamorized. It's what's thrown in our face more. Like, and people have an obsession now with being in the limelight and being seen. So however you can do that and get that, you're gonna go towards it. And usually you're not in the limelight for a great reason. Like, even like the people, the rappers and the actors of today, they're not that great at actually actual rapping and acting. It's the frenzy they call, it's the things they do outside of their actual careers that are like, oh my God, I would just love to live that life and be in this. And then we get like that little snapshot view of somebody's life for 10 seconds. And oh, that's what I want. That's what I'm going towards. That's what I see all the time. I want to be my man, my man, my man. But you're not... That's the delusion factor. I saw a TikTok that said, being the Lulu is the new solulu. And I have never connected with something more because people would rather live in their delusion than face the reality of their life and or whatever situation they're in and go forward. But delusion is the new reality, I feel like. There's this guy on Instagram, this white dude. He's a computer programmer, developer. And he created this app where it uses AI to fake as if you're live. You're like doing a lot, Instagram live. And you have a lot more viewers than you would actually have. So he set up the AI in a way where like, it'll automatically add dummy comments based on what it sees in the background. Wow. Right? So that's dope. That's cool. But also at the top, it'll show like 20,000 people watching or 50,000 people watching. And he set it up in the club and had like women walk by and they would see this and they would now be interested in him. And be told? Just because they ask, who are you? I'm like, who are you? You know what I'm saying? Just because the clout. The clout. And now like somebody, they might have walked by, you know, on a regular day. Now they stop in. One girl is trying to kiss him in the mouth and things like that. Just because they associate him with clout, even though it's just an app thing, it's just an app. So I say that to say until your point, might be controversial, I don't know. But the only reason the baby is famous because he shot somebody at Walmart. Yeah. Because he beat up somebody at the mall. It's not because of his music. Same thing with Sexy Resh, same thing with Sukiana. We are so preoccupied. I think generally and more specifically, male-female dynamic with the circus as opposed to the substance. Yeah, for sure. Without a doubt. Circus versus the substance. Great. That's a great end. Man, that's it right there. But sure. Just having that, because I come from a school of thought where each one teach one, right? That's how it was brought up. You know what I'm saying? So we had accountability. And the interesting conversation is as young black men growing up in the inner city in the ghetto, in the hood, we actually was on the street corner teaching that the black man was God, right? We had those conversations. It was never about the black man being less than who he was. Because we was always looked at as less than. And the black woman, she was always the mother earth to the seed, right? So her responsibility to the seed was to raise the seed with the information that the black man was giving her. So we had more leadership as young black men. We held each other accountable. We had what you would consider to be ciphers. So when we stood in that cipher, you had to show and prove that you was living right in the sack. See, that's the school of thought I came from. See, now you don't have that. You don't have the accountability with black men, communicate with black men, asking them, hey, what's today's mathematics, right? And even though those mathematics equated to how man was walking and talking and living his life, it was more about, now, what's the best rap lyric you got that could be very devouring to your character? See, we never lived that way. So I came up underneath that school of thought, each one teach one. So if I learned something of great value, I brought it to the next black man. And I taught him what his value was, which still is with me today. So anytime I see a black man, I teach him, do you know the essence of who you are, right? It's not a mystery of what you are. You was taught that the mystery is something that you need to serve. But when you look at yourself and equate yourself to have that power, then you deal with accountability to change the reality of your situation. See, now we don't have that. Only conversations that we're having is, how can we compete with one another, right? To where as though my value is better than yours and you're less than me and I get more respect because I do have 100,000 followers or a million followers, right? So that's how we equate respect now, where it was me as a brother on the street corner, just like you, even though we was trapped in those environments, we was teaching the black man, you don't eat pork, no pork on your fork, you know what I'm saying? Because we understood that the swine, right, was poisonous to the system. So as we was educating each other on that, every black man knew that he had to live in a certain likeness, right? A reflection of one another. And we called each other A-likes, right? And that was the beautiful dynamic because if I seen a black man such as myself, it was respect, it was value. There's no value system today. So we don't know how to respect and treat one another. We scaled each other based on how much social media content we're putting out, right? How many followers we have for producing music, like you said, such as the baby. There's no value in it, but we're still entertained by it, right? So the ball has been dropped years ago, but we have to learn how to figure out a way to communicate with each other's value system because our value system is completely lost. And the way I assess it is, if a woman's value system is lost, then a man value system is definitely lost, right? Because if a woman is dressed and half-naked, right, and she knows that's gonna get her attention to get the mel that she desires, then that man is gonna fit the spectrum of that. You feel me? But if she cleans it up, then that man has to change the dynamics and how he approaches her, right? I think it segues perfectly into the whole pick me versus skip me phenomenon, right? Because for me, I think the whole kind of idea is that, as a man, there are certain things that I value in women, and if women can conform to those things that I value, I'm more enthusiastic about joining with them. As a woman, there are certain things I value, and if men can conform to that, then I'm more enthusiastic about. But these days, it seems like it's a negative thing to be enthusiastic about conforming yourself in some way, shape, or form to men's desires. As a woman, how would you explain that to make sense for us? I'm trying to process that. Because at first, I used to understand the term pick me. It's like, when I thought of a pick me, I thought of that dude who he wasn't trying to play fight until women came around, right? He wasn't trying to drone and joke on you until women came around to make himself look better. That's what I thought it was, but for the female delegation, these days, if you say, do smell good, you'll pick me. If you say, he got a good point, you'll pick me. If you say anything positive or affirming about men is deemed as negative amongst women, and why is that? I didn't know that was a thing, because I'm all about light and uplifting. For me, I think of a pick me as someone who is going to jump onto a male side or perspective negating their own when it's not really, I guess, not how you truly feel. It's not your true perspective. So I'll put, I'll use an example, like this is probably not the best example, but it's only when it comes to mine immediately. Oh, episode 11 hip hop. There was this one woman that was on there, like she had just got on the season and she was like, I said, new and trying to make her, I guess, make her name for herself. But in doing so, she decided to tear down every woman that came her way. And I know a lot of that can be production and editing, but it's like, no matter who the woman was, it was something negative. You're, bitch, I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to move you forward, trying to get you where you want to be. But then when it came to the dudes, oh, that's my brother. I've been riding with him for 10 plus years. That's my guy. He just trying to help your ass. Oh, that's my guy's woman. What are you doing over here? You flirting though. I'm just talking to this person. So to me, that's a pick me. When all you have for the female delegation is smoke, but when it comes to the men, you all flowers and roses and shit. So I don't experience a bunch of pick me women, but I know they exist in that capacity or the ones like you said, where you're out and you don't start talking about, oh my God, her hair is not done. She don't want to make like, she came out looking like that. Yeah, girl, because that's what she wanted to wear. She didn't want to come out here, but ass naked. So, but I don't really see that a lot in my world. And I think honestly now in girl world, girls compete. How do I say it to where it doesn't sound terrible? Say it where it sounds terrible. I don't want to sound awful. Because it is just the truth. You got time to explain. Girls compete so heavily with each other now from what I've seen to where it's like, they don't even have friends. You just hook up with a bunch of people that are aesthetically pleasing for you. You are good, you think about- Like my club friends. Yes. Or my, okay, my brunch girl. Brunch, gotcha, gotcha. But it's not like, okay, my home girls, we're actually going to eat brunch and it's something we're doing. We talk about problems. You know, if we're going to this brunch with a good hooker, what are dudes are going to be looking real good on the rooftops, I can get my good pictures because pictures are more important to living in the moment. You know, I feel like friendships are aesthetics now and not really holding through the values of what they used to be. Do you feel like it's difficult for women to accept accountability from other women? Like if a woman is making another woman, you know, like, do you feel like that's a tough one? Because I know it's difficult for us. But when a woman brings something to a woman, do you feel like it's the same pushback? Yes. And I think that's because we're more, for us, we're more emotional. And unless you truly trust this person or you have an intimate relationship with them, a woman's going to say, oh, that's just my, it's a hater. She's not really somebody that's looking out for me. She's looking, she's trying to compete with me. She's trying to do all my shine. I just thought about how women have moved the man out of their space, right? Like if the man is trying to inform them about certain behaviors and they don't want to accept the accountability, they have even moved the woman out of that space. So there's no accountability. So it's just regurgitating confirmation. Yeah. And now everything is under the guys of letting somebody be themselves and be you, nothing wrong with you. We've forgotten that it's okay to be who you are, but all of who you are is not okay. Some of that shit needs work. That's what's up. I know, I know it's good. I know it's good. Yeah. I know, I know. Say it again for the first time. It is okay to be who you are, but all of who you are is not okay. That's right. And that's what women need to hear from women. That's, I appreciate that space on that. I was saying that, remember like my school thought growing up, we held each other accountable as men, right? So women, it's difficult for them to digest what we're saying to them. Cause it comes off as we're trying to control the situation. But you know, men don't hold men accountable either. Yeah, that's true. Y'all don't, y'all don't tell, that's one thing, cause you talk about early, men do not tell their homeboys when they're messing up. But men can't hold men accountable. Yeah. That is a lie because I saw a TikTok where this young man was sitting in his car eating his lunch, talking about how his homeboy was at the club, trying to talk to his female. And he straight up told him, Jack in the box was like, bro, I paid $200 for this tux. You don't make me call this girl my sister. And I'll be damned if I'm gonna let you mess up. That's not what I meant. No, no, no. Like brothers can hold brothers accountable, but men can't hold men accountable. So, so like I hear women say a lot, like, you know, black men need to call black men out more on our toxicity or whatever the case may be. The only thing that holds men accountable is consequences. Yeah. Men, like this idea, and it kind of goes to this whole brick gate situation, right? Her whole thing was that a bunch of men were standing around while she got hit with a brick. And my take on the thing is like, because one of the dudes in the video said, what did you expect us to do? Number one, the lady is known to be a fire starter. She's known, she has a certain reputation. Number two, some things apparently transpired leading up to that. And maybe those men were, you know, they were witnesses to that. And they decided, oh, this ain't, because, and I've been saying this, protection happens under guidance. Like, I can only protect you if you're under my jurisdiction. But this idea that we have now that men should all be Batman and we should all be stepping in to random men and random women situation, even if the woman doesn't look like the damsel in distress and like stopping it regardless of the consequences, it doesn't make sense. So like, what's your take on the brick gate situation? So as someone who has a brother that they love dearly, I feel like if it's not your business, it's not your business. Because people are so quick to shoot and ask questions later. And as I said, my brother is a black man. I know that he could be a hashtag in the blink of an eye. If it ain't your business, you don't need to be minding it. And I feel my mama always told him, if a woman puts her hands on you, either shake the shit out of her or hit her one good time so that she knows not to do it again if you need to. And I understand that, but it was always never put your hands on a woman first. It's 100%, you never put your hands on a woman. But if one jumps up and puts their hands on you, you do what you need to do to protect yourself. So for me, I don't expect nobody to put themselves in a position that's gonna cause them any type of undue harm, undue stress. If you have knowledge that this is the way you started this out and you knew it could have gone there. Because one thing people don't think about when they're getting into it with somebody is, you know your level of anger and where you think you could go. But you have no idea what's brewing in somebody else's mind. You don't know what traumas they're holding. You don't, that man could probably could have just, he could have lost his child or something. He could have lost a custody battle. Somebody could have died. He could have lost his job. Or he could just be straight up crazy. He could be schizophrenic. He could have all kinds of shit going on. So you never know. What I find interesting is how all the women ran to her defense without fully understanding. 100%. What took place. And that's the question I was gonna throw to both of y'all. Like how do we reconcile what you're saying with the hashtag protect black women? Like what does protect black women mean? Because to the people who are critical, protect black women means that black men should be on some black pantieship patrolling the streets for women in distress even if those women put themselves in that distress. So what does protect black women mean to you and then to you? Protect black women means if somebody's down in your, one of your sisters, you know they have no reason to be doing it. Like for if that woman had been in a situation where she was walking the street and some guys were harassing her. Just cat calling all this shit and maybe start touching and getting handsy, protect her because she's not causing any kind of problems or stress. Maybe you're at a grocery store but I've actually been in this situation before, you're at a grocery store and you're trying to get something, you're trying to get an item, you're trying to pay for it. Man don't like what you got on. Look what that bitch got on. Literally been in a situation before it was a white man, look what that bitch got on. And then you just start making comments y'all. You're talking loud enough for us to hear what you're not really saying it directly. Protect black women. Cause I'm gonna speak up. But if random black man, I'm like don't really know, he comes in, hold on, hold on bro. What you got against her? Why you talking about her like that? You want hands with somebody that can handle you? Those people quiet down real fast. So protect them means to, if you see them in a situation where harm could come to them and there's no cause on their end, protect them, teach them, guide them. You have young ladies that you know, father up, uncle's up, make sure they're straight. Teach them the ways of the world. Couple of people I know have lost fathers young. Their best friends stepped up in that role. I know I can't take its place, but I can be here for your daughter. I can be here for your son. That's protecting black women. Giving them a positive male influence to go towards showing the strength. And sometimes that strength is quiet. But showing them the strength of a black man so that my trust can be there. So in your opinion, what's the confusion? Because I've seen a lot of people come out with videos saying that this particular situation is such a great example of how black women aren't protected. But then you see the other side come out and say that protection that you're expecting of us number one, it's at our discretion. And then number two, it happens under certain circumstances. The other side is saying it doesn't matter. It don't matter if she was the, it don't matter what happened, protect black women. So what's the... So to me, the balance is in, okay, if I do this thing to protect this woman, am I gonna feel like I have done something that's notable? Do I feel like I've been shielded or do I feel like I've just been had? So for me, if those men would have jumped into the situation, trying to beat this dude up, it gives that woman the feeling that what she did was right. And I'm not okay with that. You can't save bad behavior because it continues the cycle of that bad behavior. Don't put yourself in a man's position and then cry wolf when that man shows you that he's a man and reminds you of your womanhood. And I said it to say, I've been one who I fought dues before, but I knew my capacity. And I knew when I was getting those situations that I wasn't gonna be looking for nobody to save me. So to me, the difference in both of them is if the man feels like what he's doing, and this again, it's up to his discretion because at the end of the day, you're responsible for yourself. You and you alone are responsible for you. So I 100% believe it's at the man's discretion. But if the man feels like, okay, this situation is getting out of hand, this can go wrong and I need to protect, you're protected if anything kicks in, then the man should go in and do it. But if we as women are out here behaving badly, putting ourselves in situations that could have been avoided had we thought first. And again, I understand that sometimes, even when you think things go awry, but you know the difference between something that could have been avoided and some shit you started yourself. And if you're the aggressor, I guess I'll say in the situations, you're the one that the antagonist, you're making it go on and you're pushing and you're pushing, you cannot be mad and blame anyone else about the foul out when they push back. But that's all about accountability. On a, I guess, philosophical level, I don't think that protection and absolute freedom can coexist. No, no way. Because when you think about, for instance, the government, it sucks that they listen to all our phone calls. However, they listen to all our phone calls to hear certain key words, somebody say bomb or whatever the case may be, because they don't know if you're the terrorist or you're the terrorist. So we have to assume everybody's a terrorist, which means that in order for us to enjoy that protection of that vigilance and that scanning that happens, we have to give up some of our privacy. Similarly, for women who are asking for protection, you have to submit yourself under the jurisdiction, under the guidance, under the tutelage of a man in a way. For sure. But I think why this conversation is so difficult nowadays is because this neo-feminism is pushing female absolute freedom. It doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't, kind of like you said, you're perfect, just the way you are, however you come, whatever your attitude is like, and the people who can't handle it are the problem, right? But then still expecting some of the benefits and some of the privileges, because protection is a privilege, it's not a right. And the person who chooses to use themselves as a shield, because that's really what it is, they need to go through some kind of process of vetting. This person is worth potentially taking a bullet for, potentially stepping in the middle of love. I've heard stories of dudes they stepped on somebody's shoes and the person followed them home and shot them point blank on their lawn, right? So like things escalate and men think about those things. But I think what's frustrating, especially with this Brickgate situation, it's like the same women who are saying niggas ain't shit and we're not a word for them, we don't do nothing for them, are the same ones complaining that black men don't protect them. Have you ever heard of the saying wisdom is your guardian angel? So women use wisdom in every situation, they would always protect themselves. We would be no need for us to step in unless there was a situation, but those situations typically don't happen when you're safe going. Like they say, if you really think about it, wisdom safeguards every person, right? So if you're using the wisdom in which you look at the environment that you're in, the circumstances that you're faced with, and you know not to react a certain way that is called self-protection because you're guarded by your wisdom. Now if you choose to ignore the fact of your wisdom, then it's not my obligation to protect you because your wisdom is there to protect you, right? So everyone has that through life experiences. So if I'm walking and talking the way that I, if I find myself in a situation, me as a person, I know that I wasn't using wisdom as my guardian, right? So I wasn't using my life experiences to protect me. So if I go in the club, right, and I just start bucking off and talking this and I get shot in the head, and somebody said, hey, you should protect my man. Right. We don't use that same logic for men. We don't use that. So what I'm saying is dig, I'm like his ass should have knew better, right? So we get that all day long, we should have knew better. He'd bring that on himself. But when it comes down to the female delegation, it's not, they shouldn't know better. So the thing is that the reason why the conversation is so tough to have, is because women do not like to deal with the responsibility, the responsibility of protecting themselves. Like they say, even in their household, if you are trying to be led by your man or your male figure in the house, and you're over talking him constantly, right? He may be giving you the greatest protection. If he tells you don't go out the house with your ass halfway hanging out because you're gonna get disrespected, and then you get disrespected, and then you're expecting to run to your aid, and he say, you shouldn't run out with your ass hanging out. Now you're gonna look at him as somebody that don't love you, don't respect you. And you know, the thing about it, the thing about it is, what's actually happening is, if you for instance, your man say, don't go out with your ass hanging out, if you agree to that, you're actually protecting him. Exactly. Because here's what annoys me sometimes, like you'll hear a lot of people, especially feminists, they say that nobody protects black men like black women. We're on the front lines during protests. That's usually the main thing they use. We're on the front lines during protests. And my point has always been, that's not how you protect black men. That is show, that is pageantry, that is pomp and circumstance. You protect black men primarily in the kitchen. For sure. Just like we talked about last time, primarily in the kitchen, but also by your actions, not putting him in situations where he has to potentially risk his life for his freedom. For sure. See that part we don't talk about, right? That part we don't talk about, because just like you said, you go out looking a certain way because of that you invite a certain type of attention, or going to a certain environment at a certain time, and you invite a certain attention. And now your boyfriend, your man, your husband, your father, your brothers, now they have to be captain save you. And even if they're completely in the right, potentially risk their lives or their freedom. So I think where we can involve is instead of thinking about men's requests as some kind of suppression, some kind of patriarchal binding of my rights in my hands, no, you're actually protecting him. You're protecting him from a system that wants to use him and wants him in the dirt. For sure. Because his actions, whether jumping to your defense, whether the anger that might happen in a situation where he has to defend you, whatever the case may be, whether he loses, whether he wins, he can still lose. For sure. You know what I'm saying? But I don't think enough of our sisters have that much of a foresight. Because what the- Great word, foresight, for sure. Because the person that Erica Lachey, they were calling her a pick me with this whole Brickgate situation. And her whole point was, I'm not going to put my dad or my brothers in a situation where they have to come save me. So I'm not going to be there. I'm not going to be arduous. If I'm calling my dad or my brothers, it's because there is no way out. My life is in danger. Instead, we're seeing a lot of women use men as pit bulls. Come here, boy, sick. Yeah, sick of them, yeah. For sure. Yeah. Wait till I tell my man on you. Right. Yeah. And like you said, creating a situation versus allowing a situation not to even exist in the first place. So that's why I said wisdom is your guardian angel. So if you don't use your life experiences to protect you, then you're at fault. Right. And it's not my duty to save you from that. We can tell the difference between a damsel in distress and an unruly woman. We can tell the difference. Because there's a clear difference out there too. Like, because in the story, she was detailing when she had a lump on her head. She was detailing how the dude. You had to talk about, you had to say the lump on. She was like, he had the brick in his hand and nobody did anything. I'm like, a full grown man has a brick in his hand and you standing there talking to him? Yeah, exactly. Why weren't you running away, going back to the club, trying to get behind somebody? Yeah. Something ain't right here. Something ain't right, yeah. And again, it goes back, I think, to this audacity that I think feminism has created in women and just the modern world of women not really having to face the reality of men's physical superiority. Yeah. We see all these movies, Scarlett Johansson beat up three six foot five, 250 pound dudes and Wonder Woman just threw a dude across the room and it's like this idea that, oh, this is how it goes. Because I'm Colombian in my head. You see what I'm saying? This is how it goes. And it's like, no, we know. Even if you're a grown man and you can actually fight, things can go like, the last people to fight are professional fighters. Because they know things could go left. They could kill, or I can be killed. For sure. You know what I'm saying? It could be just a lucky day. My mom told me a story back in the day in Nigeria. She said these two dudes got off the bus and they were arguing. And they were about to fight. One dude punched the other dude in the face, he died. And then you fast forward. Now you understand some people walk around with, I think it's called an embolism or something in their brain, like a bubble in their brain, and just the right type of force at the right time. Just like the football player who collapsed last year. Brother with the heart. Just the right type of force at the right time. So I think a lot of times we frame it as somebody is scared of what might happen to them. No, I'm also scared of what might happen to somebody else. And now something that could have been avoided, or maybe she'd be called me fat or whatever the case may be, now I just killed a man. When you look at ancient wisdom, a warrior or a true warrior was never one who took advantage of someone who was weaker than them. A true warrior always looked at the weaknesses with inside of himself and conquered those weaknesses. So if you look at just like I can say ancient wisdom, where a man was being a leader. And the only way he can be a leader is by showing that he was able to dominate certain situations in certain circumstances. Without physical. Without violence. Without physical suffice, yeah. Right? Well, let's go back and let's talk about the Martin Luther King aspect and the Malcolm X. See, Malcolm X was by any means necessary. Martin Luther King was by dominating, by due love. But that was a hard concept for most people to grasp because they're like, you can't change the reality of the world through love. Malcolm X was like, nah, they come at me, I'm coming at them. Right? So a true warrior is one that understands that if I can kill you without killing you, I'm always going to be greater. I'm always going to be superior. I'll say this too. And this doesn't just go for violence, but it goes for things in general. I think the advantage that the white delegation has, compared to us, is they understand how to operate with stealth. They understand how to be unassuming. Just behind closed doors. Behind closed doors and do so much damn damage. You don't know. You don't know. With us, we're going to air it out everywhere. We are so like, I'm starting a company to end. We are so, and by the time we try to get things moving, we're already taking out. And similarly, on a small scale, you walking around here, acting like you Rambo over your girl. You're the first one who gets taken out. First one. But the white dude with the t-shirt or the little hunting jacket, you don't know he got a 45 in his waist. But he, nice to everybody. And it's like, I wish the big thing that will come out of this is for our women and for our men, maybe we need to reconsider how we move. And instead of being so loud and ostentatious and colorful and bright and all this good stuff that we celebrate, we need to think about being more stealthy, being more meek, being more unassuming. One of my mentors, he calls it hiding in plain sight. Brother's a millionaire. He drives a 2002 Honda Civic. You don't need to know that for him. You don't need to know what's in my bank account. You see what I'm saying? But I think the kind of agreed upon paradigm with black folks is I need to, I got my mortgage on my neck. I got a card note on my wrist. And it's like you're making yourself a target. And similarly, we make ourselves targets with our behavior. Without a doubt. With our disposition, being round, round, all that stuff when really it's about it's the dude who don't say much that you need to be hurt. That's the one you need to be worried about. Yeah. And that's the one I can teach you the most. Facts. I think we're at a disadvantage though, because we're newbies. We're new vorice when it comes to coming into money. We're new at this. The white delegation has had a whole lot of years to learn how to be quiet with their money, with their wealth, with their power. They've learned how to move in the backgrounds. We're still in our infancy, honestly, with that. Here, now, here, we're in our infancy. So for us, we want everybody to see it, because in our community to have it, that means you're up there. That's your statue. Like we were talking about earlier Florida and how everybody there got Maybachs and all that and really got a 28% interest rate on the vehicle. 200 credit score. You know, and probably four payments behind. And they came to buy a happy meal. So for us, we, as black people, feel like you have to see our wealth, because we're so new at it. We want you to know we've got it. We're not like those people that live on the south side of whatever city and state you're in that are struggling. We're not on government assistance, even though you're probably buying stamps from somebody. You know what I'm saying? So I give us that grace and understanding I don't agree with it, but I understand that for us, we're still, like I said, in our infancy with having these things, being able to be in a place where we can buy and afford more things. I just want to give us grace and understanding. And I understand that, and that's a fantastic point. For me, it goes beyond just the economic part. It's also like how we move as far as safety. Just like I'm saying, with men and women, like the whole my boyfriend going to pull up this thing, that's kind of the same energy as showing that your fancy car or your fancy purse, it makes you a target. I've seen, I could name five sitcoms that have been, had like a spoof on, they're in a line somewhere and a man disrespect the woman and she's like, oh, my boyfriend will kick your ass. Get him, baby. And then the man's like, oh man, I got to fight this six two dude. Or I got to, or the manager shows up randomly in this big muscle cock bound. I just got out of prison. I want Jamie Foxx shows done it. Parkers have done it. Girlfriends have done it. I can think all these shows, the exact scenes where they've done that. So we have reinforced it in ourselves. So it's reality imitating art. Kind of like that backwards. To be fair, I think that's what's happening. I think now we're modeling our lives after art. Whereas art used to model itself after life. That's right, that's right. Because even this idea of the dude who's gonna, the gorilla and he's gonna protect me, he's gonna throw this dude over there and punch this dude in the face and pull out a full five that he didn't have out of nowhere. You might be a gentle giant. You see what I'm saying? It comes from, and that's kind of what I've been saying about what happens in scarcity. Boys tend to escape to video games. Girls tend to escape to novels and movies. And it shapes our perception of reality. And unfortunately, this kind of ties in too. We talk a lot about black men having Peter Pan syndrome, like dudes never growing up. Women have Peter Pan syndrome as well. Women in our community have Peter Pan syndrome. I'm talking about all from the ones who have a Hello Kitty tattoo and they 45 years old. First of all, did you not, first of all, don't let... All the way to the women who are still holding us to these pseudo masculine, unrealistic expectations and not being willing to not reserve themselves. That's the wrong word, but muffle themselves sometimes to avoid certain situations. Because a lot of times it's not even that deep. Muffle was a bad word. I couldn't think of the other word I wanted to hear. Sensor. Think before you add something. Sensor. The thing with me is like sometimes looking weak is actually the intelligent thing to do. Just like you said, the meekness, speak softly, carry a big stick. But it's like our community in particular, because of that self-esteem deficit, we are so adamant about people thinking we're strong, not knowing that it actually makes us. But do you know the internal intelligence of a human being is to know that if someone is not boisterous, that they're a threat. So if I'm in a club and you see me by myself and I'm just chilling and you see all these other dudes right here throwing bottles and everything at each other, the last person that's gonna be a target is me. Because the innate nature of a person is to prepare for war. You can't prepare for war if no one's giving you war. So that means a person has to look at you and say this person is a threat to me and able to prepare for war. It's like if we go on a war with a country, if the country did something to us first, then that allows us to prepare for war, right? Now we don't know somebody been disliking us the whole time. We don't know they coming from behind, right? So that's the same analogy with a person who carries themselves that way. If you carry yourselves in a way where you're not a target and you don't make yourself accessible, then how does a person know how to deal with you? They don't. So one of the greatest lines I wrote read in a book, it was by John C. Maxwell, and he was talking about Adolf Hitler. And Hitler said, great is it that man do not think if, just that one line, because he was able to control and manipulate, right? Just do that principle. And when you live, when you dealing with American and Western culture, right? That's how we have been taken advantage of, right? Because we was influenced by the curriculum, right? In social schools. And we studied their history as our own. Now, like you said, we're new to the money. The money's been old, right? The riches has been old to us. We've come from a lineage of that, but we don't know that because the history was stripping from us. The teacher's our value, right? We know who Mansa Musa was, the richest man, right? But when you learn that as a black woman and black man, now you have a different perspective and your shift towards money, because now you start to understand your value and where you come from. But when you dealing with the Western hemisphere and curriculum, you're the most devalue-less thing that can exist on a planet, which is why you're the most targeted, right? So if you look at why you're the most targeted, as a black man and black woman, now we have to get into why is the black woman have less respect for the black man? Because she has been given, right? The opportunity to be, right? Because she was allowed to not need him, right? So we're gonna give you this five, $600 worth of food stamps a month. We're gonna give you this section of the house, but the man can't be in it, right? So why is that whole circumstance, the situation against us, right? Which allows us to have a system to where as though we can't operate and communicate with one another. So when a black woman see a black man, she already see him as valueless, right off the back. Like you said, a default. You go to look at him as he ain't, I ain't, you ain't even worth listening to, right? When he could be the one that's really the one you should be listening to. Or even if he don't have all his shit together financially, but he could be smart, he could be really brilliant. You think you're gonna take advice from him? You're only gonna take advice from him if he comes together with a certain package, right? Well, you can even put your ear to him. Oh, he got his shit together financially so I can listen to him, right? Which won't listen to him if he don't have that particular situation together. Cause now his value goes down even more, right? So if you're in a relationship with him the whole time, he trying to help you raise yourself out of circumstance and situation, but you're not willing to listen, right? And that brings a war in our community, which allows us to be in a circumstance and situation that we're in. And the only way out for us is to what? Devalue ourselves. Devaluing ourselves by promoting music that we know, right? Is not going to allow us to elevate. There's no way that you gonna listen and we'll be listening to and elevate. The frequency is just saying it's not gonna allow you to change the vibration. Your energy is gonna be of that. So if you listen to a woman tell you all day that you a bad bitch, right? That's what you gonna feel like you are. I'm a boss bitch, right? And if you hear that all day, every day and you carry yourself in that manner, then when you do meet a man with value and you come to him and say, look, I'm a bad bitch, I'm a boss bitch, right? How's he gonna look at you? I think that's what, I think sometimes that's what kind of makes me feel hopeless in a way about us because we're very, we're very flamboyant people. We're very colorful people. We're very, Animated? Yeah, for instance, I was listening to a lecture by, what's his name? It'll come to me. Haley, Haley, hey, Alex Haley. Alex Haley. And he was talking about how he went to, he retraced his lineage to a village in Senegal, I believe. And they were talking about how all the history of that village was kept by pretty much one dude, Agriot, right? And the Agriot was in charge of knowing and being able to recite all the history of that clan or the different clans of things that have happened over the years. And he also made the joke that, Western world has made us lazy and not be able to use our brains full capabilities. And I thought to myself in that moment that damn, that's so inefficient. Like to expect one person to retain all that information and regurgitate it in a way that's succinct and consistent for decades to the end of their life and then transfer it to somebody else. And as opposed to libraries and writing the stuff down. So I say that to say it and people fight me on this. I think a lot of, and I'm African, obviously, there are a lot of aspects of our culture and our traditions that are counterproductive. And I think we need to be honest about that and say that they're counterproductive. And for instance, why are we so influenced by music? Influenced by music. Hispanic people, I think you can make an argument for that as well, but we're one of the only people when it's time for intellectuals to come out, we're pushing rappers and models and frigging reality stars to come speak for us because we're so moved by the flamboyant and the colorful and we want Kanye to be articulate and succinct in his thought process. Because we think those are the ones that are living the life we want to live. We think in our minds, they're the people that are successful. That is success. They have all the money, all the fame, all the notoriety, that's what we're conditioned to believe. When in reality, then folks can be just, look at TOC, they don't have nothing because they got screwed over. But for us, the bigger you are, the more color and the more fanfare you have, the more esteem we put on you. And I think to your point about how one man had a lineage is because we haven't been taught our true history. We don't have a sense of pride about like music. You can say, oh, I'm proud to be black all day long, but to me, there's pride in knowing where you came from. So for example, one of my best friends, when she and her husband got married, they went to visit his family or whatever and they had put their marriage in their book of their family history. All we got in my family is some dusty picture that's got yellowing and browning around the sides. I don't know anyone past my grandma, my grandpa. But the other side, they take the time to write down to note tomorrow, so that you can look, they can sit down with their children, look back, look at all we've come from, what we've accomplished. We've got, to your point, Western culture and they put it how they wanted to put it to not make us understand that we were kings and queens, emphers and empherses, you know? We were the top. But see, that's how I look at it. That's what helps me to understand my culture. This is, I think my core point here is kind of like I'm getting so much backlash about that clip that I was criticizing mothers, right? One of the things that I hate about us is black people. And when I say black people, I want to be clear. I'm not just, I'm not talking about African-Americans, I'm talking about the diaspora, I'm talking about Nigerians, I'm talking about African-Americans. Black people across the world, we are unwilling to critique ourselves honestly. For sure. And because we're unwilling to critique ourselves honestly, we jump to either really positive extremes or really negative extremes. And that's the issue that I have. So, one of the negative extremes is that, you know, we focus so much on entertainment and you put on a good beat and you can basically hypnotize black folks. The other extreme is we were kings and queens. No, they were kings and queens, but we weren't kings. We weren't all kings. So I know we weren't, well, duh. I'm not saying, but some people have that mentality and it instills in them some narcissism even. Okay. That sense of I'm beyond reproach. You can't tell me shit. I'm a goddess. I'm a king. I'm a queen. And it's like because of these polar extremes that we're operating, we can move forward to do things like document our history and also introspect and go back and say, oh, this was, I tell people all the time, you know, people think for instance, it's nice that I'm Nigerian and I know my lineage and things like that. One of the things we don't talk about about my people, ebos, we used to kill twins because we thought they were evil. We used to kill i-binos because we thought they were evil. Like there are some aspects of our culture that is uniquely us, but it's bullshit. Female circumcision, it's bullshit. Yeah, that's great. You see what I'm saying? But we shouldn't wait until white people tell us it's bullshit for us to make that change for ourselves, but very often, it's not until even some of the stuff I say, if a white dude said it, that nigga will have Ted Talks and be all over it. But we can't, whether it's men critiquing women, black people critiquing black people, we don't know how to accept wrestle with in Iraq, withhold critique. And I think part of it is that self-esteem, part of it is that flamboyantness that's just baked into all of us from Africans to African-Americans to UK to, and we need to start having real conversations about redefining a version of black moving into the future that's not going to continue to be exploited and is going to insist on defining and regulating itself. Yeah, because see, the great example I can use in a situation like what you're talking about is to look at the chess board, right? You need not to play chess. So we look at the chess board, you ever play chess? No, I've watched. Okay, so in chess you have the king, queen, you got all the powerful pieces in the background. And then you have the pawns, right? So in life, that's always going to be the order, right? You always going to have someone who has the mind to be in a position of power, someone who's able to delegate and control people. And you're always going to have the pawns. The reality is every pawn wants to be a king, right? So when you move a pawn forward on the chess board, what you're doing is, as the dictators, you're telling that pawn to sacrifice your life if you want to be in a position such as myself, right? So as the pawn is moving forward to attack the other person's property, that pawn alleviates itself off the board. Why the king and queen or the other powerful pieces remain in power to be able to say, you know, I'm protected by those who are willing to sacrifice their lives for me, right? So it's the same in wars, the same when you're dealing with government, right? We've been playing this game since humanity has been in existence, right? It's always been someone who has chosen to be the powerful piece. Now the reality is, how do you become the most powerful piece on the board, right? We have to understand the game. If you don't understand the game, that means you get pushed out there as the pawn, right? So we've been pushed out there as pawns, right? Our history has been pushed out there as pawn, as a pawn. So when you look at your history, you say, okay, well, what lineage do we come from, right? And you say, okay, well, we all have been kings and queens, right? There's always been slavery, right? So we go, we focus on Western civilization of slavery, but we don't look at self-enslavement. How we took advantage of one another's weaknesses to control the dynamics of economics. So now if we look at this and we say, okay, well, why do we continue to play this same game of rulership? Why do people have to be led? Do you feel like people have to be led or do you think they have the power to lead themselves? Which is why we continue to vote, right? Every four to eight years for someone who tells us the same story, right? But we never learn from our history because we're too fascinated with thinking that if we just believe in the history, it'll ultimately change itself one day. I think also like in addition to that, I think as black people, I think sometimes we have our heads in the clouds, right? So on a small scale, we talk about how women don't think that they need to be under the guidance of a man or they don't think they need to dress a certain way or act a certain way to be respected or protected. And the reality is not that. Similarly, I think as black folks, we don't think there are certain sacrifices and certain inconveniences that are necessary for us to actually be successful as a community, right? We think everybody can be a leader. So we don't wanna follow nobody's leadership and then nothing gets done. We think that life exists in the utopia. There's enough for everybody and it's like the reality is not that unfortunate. I wish it were, it should be whatever the case may be. And I think part of that is because we come from an environment where in your neighborhood, you pretty much have everything you need. You got the water, natural resource, the whole night in mind. So this is my kingdom, that's your kingdom. White people come from a different environment where they had to conquer, they had to invade and things like that. And I think we still have that mindset of I have everything I need, everybody else has everything. So we're not vigilant enough to prepare for the rest of the world that's operating under a different set of rules. And because of that, we'll continuously be exploited. Now it's with the music and the culture and things like that. And I think until we start thinking ahead and understanding that shit is not sweet, you know what I'm saying, this is, the world is not Africa anymore. And it means that we have to evolve ourselves in how we present ourselves and how we anticipate the presentation of the world, right? But let's- It was interesting, I want to say one last thing. What's interesting is, you ever heard of the saying that God couldn't civilize the devil? I haven't heard that. So in our culture as black men, we've always equated the white man as the devil because of his acts, right? His acts has always been uncivilized. The black man and black woman has always been civilized, right? We've cultivated history, culture. We create everything that you possibly can imagine that enriches society, right? The white man comes and he's attracted from that. He takes away from, right? He creates these evil deeds. So the saying is God could not civilize the devil, but in our pursuit of this mentality that we can do that, instead of leaving the devil off the board, we continue to allow the devil to play the game, right? So even if you look at biblical context, right? On how the devil was even allowed to pursue, right? The woman, as they would say, right? As the weaker vessel, and God allowed that to take place, why didn't God just end the game? We can have a conversation about God, but that's gonna take a while. No, I'm just saying that, but that brings us back to how everything continues to transpire between us because the only way to alleviate the problems in which we're dealing with is we have to learn to look at that existing within the side of the human being, right? So if you say that, how do I become the master player of the game, back to what I was talking about earlier, is to understand the war that exists within side of you, right? Which is God and devil, if you look at it that way, right? Civilized and uncivilized. And if we look at what we do as a community, right? A lot of our acts are uncivilized, but we're trying to figure out a way to have those civilized impacts so that we can change the dynamics between the conversations between black men and black women. When we stop looking at each other as competition and start being companions, I feel like that's where the shift will happen. That's where the shift will happen. Because with black men and women, all that, we are in competition with each other. But if we were companions and we explored that relationship to its fullest, we'd be unstoppable. We're gonna pause it right there. We're gonna come back to that. Episode four, coming soon. Appreciate y'all. Thank y'all. Yes, sir. Of course. Great convo. Absolutely.