 And what a journey it is today. We are going to rewind the clock 400 years, how about that? And we are going to talk to a lovely, lovely lady. And just to be sure that you know, I am talking to my cousin, my first cousin, or that is, yeah, one of my first cousins. And she is in New York City. And she is, she broadcasts on, she's going to have to tell me, but it's public radio in New Jersey. And this is Sheila Anderson. And we have, we're going to talk about racism in America because we come from a long line of Black people, mixed people in America. So, and then she's got the protest going. And then we first tuned in. It was seven o'clock in New York time. And they were banging outside for the first responders. So there's a lot to get to. So, Sheila? Well, hello, hello, hello, my dear cousin. How are you? Aloha. I am so glad that you agreed to do this. Well, thanks for, thanks for asking me. And I've really been, since we had the conversation and since the invitation, you know, I've really, I've been given us a lot of thoughts. And, you know, oh, you were saying I'm on jazz radio. Yes, I'm on WBGO. It's in Newark, Newark Public Radio, Public Radio station, the jazz station. And, you know, we've been talking about it, about how do we as a station sort of address the situation that we're in now with the protests. And, you know, there's so much, so much jazz was born out of protest. And when you fast-forward to during the cabaret laws and how that, how it impacted jazz in a negative way, you had that cabaret card to perform. They wouldn't allow saxophones and certain instruments so musicians couldn't play in clubs. And they could have you, they could take, they took away your cabaret card for the minor of infractions. And including Thelonious Monk, excuse me, Thelonious Monk for one, Billie Holiday, and others. So you look at, and then going fast-forward to the 60s and all the music that was, oh my goodness. Now all of a sudden I get, I get a dry throat. And, oh my, this is embarrassing. It's like, okay. And then you look at the 60s and the protest music that came out of the 60s, the Freedom Now Suite. Max Roach and Abby Lincoln, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane wrote Alabama after the bombing of the girls in the church in Birmingham. And then you have songs like Fables for Favis that Mingus wrote in reaction to Favis, that racist governor, and I think it was Georgia. So you, so, you know, fast-forward, you know, it's like, you know, you have the younger musicians writing about, you know, Trayvon Martin and writing songs in response to what they're experiencing racially. So it doesn't end, and nor does, obviously. But if you want to go back, the gospel songs were in response to slavery. You know, swing low, sweet chariot. Well, she's singing, coming for to carry me home. That was instructions on how, where to go. All of our music has been tied to from slavery up to today. And I've been glued to the television for a week now, which is something I don't usually do. Yes. Me too. Me too. And I heard all kind of music across the country in response, because Sweet Honey in the Rock, what's her name? Oh, Bernie's. Bernie's. Yes, Bernie's. And we were part of SNCC 100 years ago. And she says that that is the music that comes from us. That's who we are as Black people. That is our very being. And so it expresses through all of the stages of our last 400 years of being here. And it's, thank God, we have that. And it's forever. It lasts forever. You know, I thought I had a conversation with some friends a couple of years ago. And we're talking about that and how when slaves came from different countries, I mean, spoke different languages, had different religions and all of that. And then they took away the drum, because they had drums to communicate. But what they couldn't take away is our voice. And I was saying when you, I can sit around with a bunch of Black people. And we could have a nonverbal conversation just with a grunt. Or we know exactly. I mean, we could have a whole conversation without saying a word. And I think music song. You saw that these last week, across the country, you could see that no one had to tell them do this, do this. They knew instinctively, instinctively how to do that. Let me roll way back here, just to give our audience. Incidentally, you can send in your questions. And there's a link down here for anybody that wants to participate. Now, for Sheila and me, if you go way back, one of our early grandfathers, at least as far as we can go. Are you ready for this audience? Was Civil War Confederate Civil War General John Belhooth, which is why we have a maiden name, Hood, to this day. He sired two slave children, took them away from their mother, gave them to his sister, so that she raised them as households, which is how they got this great education. And like I said, to this day, we still have that name, Hood, John Belhooth. Now, for anybody that's watching, don't get me wrong. This is not intended to be racist. And I don't mind that we have a white general on the line. But why did we have to have the stupid one? I mean, all the men in the world, he's a general, and he loses his whole tribe. Why? And then their name was the Ford after him. Here, why? Right, right, right. And then we have the American story, the Black American history. We are living history, absolutely. And we have a grandmother, one of the many great, great grandmothers, who was Native American. And she was taken in by the hoods by this time they had their own family. And to take her off the trail of tears. And if you look at the ancestry.com, she has an American name. But Uncle Ernest, little dolly's father, Uncle Ernest used to tell me stories about her. And he said, oh, he was crazy about his grandmother because she had hiding places. And little children love hiding places. It was only maybe four or five years ago that I discovered what that meant. And when they took her off the trail of tears, the bounty hunters were looked for so that the family, the hoods, had created hiding places for her. And needless to say, Uncle Ernest was thrilled because little children like hiding places. And so when you look at all of these things, and Andrew Jackson was at a real ass to create bounty hunters and to move all those Native Americans off the land that he wanted. When you look at where we've come and you feel it inside, there is still a hurt. There's nothing we can say, nothing we can do. And that is why you see all of those people all over the world protesting. Because there's a hole, there's a hole there. Yes. And the thing is, I mean, I've been talking race all my life and having gone to, I went to boarding school and Catholic school and private school. And so I went to school with mostly whites. And there was always the question or assumptions. Like, I was not on Scout. I mean, I wasn't. I mean, my parents had to pay. So I wasn't. I didn't have to do work study. So like, so I find out my father's a lawyer, my mother's a teacher. It's like, well, I don't come from the ghetto because they didn't really understand. So you hear things like, I hear things like, oh, you're the whitest black person I know. And all that ignorant stuff. So I've had to have these conversations for so long. But when people, white people say, well, I'm not racist and I, people weren't slave owners and all that. So it doesn't matter because the DNA, it just gets passed down and passed down and passed down. And when you think about America, when it started, it was some white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who pretty much said, look, this is for us. If you couldn't vote if you didn't own land, look at how they come up with the senators. And the reason why there's two in each state, they weren't even elected. They weren't elected. They weren't elected. They were appointed. That was their afterthought, yeah. And you could buy them. If you had wealth, you bought yourself a senator, yeah. Right. And so you had slaves counted as property because, I mean, as people, three fifths of a person because the number of senators were based on, because there were fewer people than cattle and like Montana, you know? So they said, well, that's not gonna work. So we've got it. So let's count the slaves. And then therefore, that's how the population, so that's why somebody like South Dakota has two senators and California has two senators. It doesn't make any sense in modern day, but it wasn't meant for everyone to vote. No, it wasn't meant to, no. And then when you have the Irish come over, they were shanty Irish. Then the Italians come over and they're the Waps. So the Chinese are the Chicks. And then all of a sudden, all these people coming over here, ethnics, they were ethnics and looked down on, but then when they saw that these ethnics were like banding together with black folks, they said, oh, wait a minute, now this thing won't work. So y'all gonna be white and they're gonna be black. And we're gonna take the Irish and we're going to make them the cops. We're gonna be, they're gonna be the ones who were the slave catchers. You know, it's a system, this is what racism is. It is a system that is built to keep people subjugated. It's not, you know, and so people don't understand, you know, and everyone throws around the word racist. Oh, you're racist or you're a reverse racism. That doesn't even exist. You can be a bigot, you can be prejudice, but we can't be, what is reverse racism? We're not in control of the system. If we were, those cops wouldn't be killing black folks every week. If we were, I mean, you know, I mean, they're there to keep the system intact, which is to keep the minorities, the black folks down and keep the white folks up. It's built into the system. You know, the mayor, you elect the mayor, yeah, you elect the mayor and the police department is under the mayor, most of the time, anyway. In Hawaii, in Hawaii, when it became a state, they created the police department and the board of water supply were not under the mayor because they thought what it's written, that they thought, oh, well, if there's a rogue mayor, they can turn off the water and turn out the police. So each of them are separate and they have a commission, but the mayor still gets to put his hands in the tilt. You know, they get to play the game. Now, the idea of creating them separate was a great idea, but after, you know, a hundred years, it's kind of morphed into something else. But the idea was good. Yeah, well, when you look at, you know, I just found out the other day that there are 38,000 cops in New York. Yes. The largest in the country. I didn't know it was a 38,000, but the people are really reacting to a couple of things that the police has morphed into, you know, that they're given police, they're making cops military and the union is very strong. That's why it's hard to convict these cops when they're killing folks. There's, you know, they get part of the funding, you know, that could be going to communities, but they get funding, federal funding, state funding for what, to buy more military tanks and I mean, they're dressed like they're literally going to war. No more, you know, men and women in blue, they're in, you know, black and damn their khakis. And that is again part of the system that needs to be corrected. It needs to be adjusted or corrected or thrown out, make them go back to walking the beat. The blue shirt gang, as they are called. Yes, yes. The blue shirt gang. And that it is the system, you know, I hate to say that so-and-so is a racist or so-and-so other than the orange man in the White House, I don't mind saying that much racist, but anyway, somebody's in trouble. The helicopter's right overhead and we're only half a mile from the ocean. So when you hear the helicopter like that, somebody's in trouble out there. That's too bad. It's a beautiful day, so it's a great day to be out. What was I getting there to tell you? You're talking about- The fact that all the folks, they lose it. No, you're talking about the system and how it's basically, the system is what keeps them, you know, getting stronger. I mean, it's true. And the thing, I'll never forget when de Blasio first got elected and he had made a comment because he has biracial children and that I forgot what the incident was, but a black person either got beaten or killed something happened and he said how he has to give a talk to a son, you know, about how to behave, you know, like when you black fathers give to their black sons even though the blouse is white. And the reason why I mentioned it is because when he was inaugurated, the police turned their backs on him because they were so upset that he would say something like that about them, which is basically, you know, yeah, the cops are, you know, beaten up, you know, black guys from the black kids for no reason and they literally turned their back on him. I mean, that was unbelievable, unbelievable. So he's had a problem with the cops from the very beginning and the union is so strong. I mean, the rumor is people say, well, you know, they probably threatened him. Actually his daughter was arrested on Saturday night at the protest, but it's the culture, it's the culture. And then people have finally, I mean, there had been protests after every, you know, Amdou Diallo, there was a protest. Abner Laouema, Eric Garner, a protest, this is New York city, I mean. But nothing was ever done, really. I mean, until now, so I think it's just between the pandemic and the murder of George, it's like a perfect storm and now everybody's had enough. It's like, we have to use, and then of course the orange one, as you say, perpetuating more violence and more, you know, when he said to, I forget which police force, oh yeah, I wanna see more of that, rough him up, rough him up, throw him in the car. So he's basically telling them to the cops, yeah, go ahead, rough him up, make it hurt. One of his first town hall or whatever those rallies are, he has, and the chief of police from Minneapolis from Minneapolis was one of the speakers and he was thrilled to death, do it, do it. Oh, Minneapolis, okay, I thought that's what I thought. Yeah, I think he's been replaced, but the point is that- Well, I think it was recent, I think it was after the murder because- Yeah. Yeah, because they also found him, you know, in like Nazi garb with something like that at one of Trump's rallies or something like that. So, you know, he's gone, but look at how long it took. And it took something like this to make, so the fact that, and even when you think about the cop who, well, all four of them are now arrested, but the main one, Chevin or Shava, however you say his name, he had already had things of citations against him. He had already, for years, they were new. Yes. And they let him stay on the force. And the guy, Tutao, whatever, I think that's his name, he too was suspended for like two years because of, I think, some civil suits against him. But they let them stay. They let these people stay. The one, I think, Abner, Luima or one of them, one of the cops that roughed him up, he had also had citations against. Now, I think for the civil, I'm just saying they allow them. Yes. I think the difference in what happened last Memorial Day and any other day is this magic little thing that everybody has in their pocket. This little thing called magic, this phone. And everybody was out taking pictures. And that is why that made a difference that the whole world got to see. All of those names that you mentioned, nobody got to see. So the police- Well, Eric Gardner, they did. They did. Eric Gardner, that was the one, I can't breathe, you know, in Sad Mama. No, we did watch that one. But check this out. The guy who took the video, he's in jail. They arrested him. They arrested him for something. He's in jail for four years. And he's the one that took the video. Yes. And so that's why people were worried about the young lady that took the- I'm still worried about her. Because, you know, cops will retaliate. Yes. And she won't even know what happened. And there's a lot of people that took pictures. So I heard an interview with one man, and he took some pictures. And then he said he stopped, because he was in a car, he stopped and went in another direction, because he was afraid for himself, that he had this ammunition, you know, and then he had to drive somewhere else because he was afraid for himself. But you know, the thing that really blows my mind is how the fact that not only the young lady, but other people videotaping, and how casual, how casual they were, to just continue to kill it. They were posing. Yeah. And so because the confidence and the arrogance that nothing would happen to them. That's the mentality. Everyone says, oh, you know, they're not all bad cops. And you know, there's some, you know, bad apples. Well, the bad apples are ruining the whole force, because again, it comes from the top. They felt very comfortable sitting there, just killing the guy, and it was okay. Yeah, it's kind of like I dare you, videotaping. Nothing's gonna happen to me. And it's the whole system. You know, the original prosecutor came down with some, oh, we need more evidence. And then the, what do you call it? When they autopsy, even that was screwy, that there was no evidence in the original autopsy. And so the whole thing is, comes together, and it makes a big difference. Look at Aubrey in Georgia, the one who was jogging and shot, the original prosecutor was friends with the guy apparently. So it's like, but again, if they hadn't, the thing is about that one, which is interesting, is they're hadn't the video, the lawyer for the guy that took the video, put the video out because he thought it was going to prove the case that they had not done anything wrong by shooting them, by shooting them. Like, so if we hadn't seen that video, we wouldn't have known. And but these are the guys that took the video, may or may not have been in cahoots with these guys, but yet to think, now that's arrogant. It's like, well, look, here's the video. He was running because he was a thief. And so we killed him because he, Yes, certainly. He was a thief in an empty house. In an empty house, right? Racism is a disease. I personally think that they were looking to have some fun that day, just like they, lynching folks from trees back in the day. And they said, oh, well, we see that there's, oh, there goes somebody black. That was pre-meditated. My mother was in the 30s, and in Fisk University in Tennessee. And she says that every weekend, there was a lynching just outside of town, and it was a festive occasion. Every weekend. And that was Nashville in the 30s. Yeah. Yeah. Now we're down to two minutes. Really? Yes, too fast, right? Goodness, what? Yeah, we ought to do it again. And, but let's talk about, in his last two minutes, what has, where do we go from here? I listened to Obama, who was beautiful as always. But where do we go from here? What can we look forward to? What can we do? Now, for most of us, there's an election. Well, all of us in the United States is an election. But, now for me, I think we need to look all the way down the valley. Okay, so we've got two people at the top. But if we don't elect the sheriff, and the mayor, and the city council, and the dog catchers, and all the way down, we are, we're not gonna make change. So, give me your thoughts in the last minute. Well, I think I've been watching a lot of young people talking. And I think we have to bring back social engagement. And, cause I knew when I was born, there were two things I had to do in life. I had to vote, and I had to go to college. That I knew that. I was going to college, I had to vote. That was just, that was a thing you just knew because your parents had done it. Yes, and then it was a, it was priority. And I think now people at lead understand, you're right, it's not just the top, it's now valid. Oh my goodness. So that's what we have to do is engage young people into the process again. Oh my goodness. That's not good. Yeah, and like speaking of down ballots, I couldn't resist this one. Congressman Stephen, what's his name, King? Oh yeah. That's wrapped himself up in his white sheet and go to bed nine. I was so happy. Everybody's happy about that. So you know what? One at a time, knock them down one at a time. One at a time, yeah. That was a good one. So naturally get engaged. We got to get engaged and join the NAACP and these other organizations. Oh, the NAACP has a call coming up in a half hour. And if you can get on to the call, it's in a half hour. Absolutely. So that's what I think going forward. And I mean, I think people are pretty much awake now. Especially young people say, well, we don't have to take this anymore. I mean, we're gonna get involved. I think now that it's kind of like the 60s again. Young folks just like, okay, we don't have to take this anymore, we're gonna get engaged and we're gonna learn and we're gonna march and we're gonna run for office. And I think that it'll be a better world. At least for maybe another 30 years. But I'm trying to be positive, trying to be positive. But I think, I am actually hopeful. These young folks are really on the ball, so. I, yeah. And what I was impressed with. Now, I talked to a friend yesterday and we were 15 when we started out in this march. Me too. And we were so glad to see, because at times we felt like we were alone and to see this movement of people of all colors, all races to be out there. And around the world, the support around the world. Everybody sees how messed up America is. It's like, oh my God. Yeah, oh, totally. It's, it was heartwarming. So I'm feeling hopeful. And I'm going to go back to being glued to my TV for another day or so and then I have to get to work. Well, you know, my husband is a black man. And we have five black sons and four boys men who are grandsons. And now one great-grandson and it's scary watching it. Now, of course, being cut in this cocoon here, I didn't see all of going on in America. But when this happened, I thought of all of those men, all of my children and grandchildren. And that's scary because only one, okay, one lives here and all the rest of them are on the mainland. And that really scared me to death. And that's, I think that's how our grandparents felt, you know, in Indiana wondering if their sons or even daughters would come back alive when they get snatched up or they'd be lynched. Okay. And just to close, speaking of which, my father, your uncle, was murdered in March 1964 and on the Eastern Shore of Maryland by a white sheriff. And it was hard for me to deal with it and I still have watching this, all of that came up again. And of course, nothing happened, nothing happened. And they kept his, and I know the sheriff did it because the sheriff kept the body and when they finally found him, it was all deteriorated. I meant, and the man, the sheriff knew him, knew him. And then when he couldn't hide any longer when the insurance company and everybody else came looking for him, that's when he finally surrendered, but nothing happened. Nothing. That's sad, it's sad, it's sad, but yeah, it's sad. Okay. All right, they're telling me I've got to stop, so. All right, thank you. Aloha, love you, love you. Aloha.