Emmanuel Acho

Welcome, welcome, welcome to this beautiful bonus episode of armchair expert. I'm deck Shepherd. I'm joined by my come house. Hello.

Hello. Very happy to be here on this bonus episode. Oh, I love bony episodes. Me too.

For the grace. Now today we have a manual acho. A manual acho is a former linebacker who played in the NFL for the Cleveland Browns and the Philadelphia Eagles and is currently working as an analyst for Fox Sports one. I encourage everyone to go to uncomfortable combos.com, which is where Emmanuel has some really hard conversations and those videos are entitled uncomfortable conversations with a black man and he has a new book of the same title, uncomfortable conversations with a black man.

I encourage everyone to search it out. We had a great time talking with a manual, so we hope you enjoy manual acho on these bonus episodes. We love to support some of our favorite black owned businesses. So today I'd like to tell you about a place called soap distillery.

Soap distillery is a small company founded by Danielle Martin in 2012 after teaching herself the ins and outs of soap making and cosmetic science. Danielle began making her own soap while drinking an old fashioned during a conversation about sense. She came up with the idea to send her products like cocktails today. They sell soap, lip, on body oils, body scrubs, beard and hair care products, candles and more support.

Soap, distillery at their website, soap distillery.com. That's S O A P D I S T I L L E R Y dot com. Who are you supporting today, Monica? So it's the holidays as you know, and it is a good opportunity to support some black owned businesses and buying holiday gifts, which is what I'm going to do.

I'm going to go to post 21, which is a comprehensive marketplace that focuses on modern and designed for products from black owned businesses and mother daughter duo started it is awesome. So you can just go to their website post 21 shop.com. That's P O S T two one S H O P dot com and curate exactly. It's kind of a one step shop.

Love it. He's in our church party time. Let's go. What's up, people?

Well, we're not normally early recorders. So I think this is only out of 260 some interviews that we've done before 11 AM. So get your expectations nice and nice. Yeah, I feel you.

I'm not really an early anything, but duty calls. Yeah. Yeah. So what's your schedule like right now?

You're obviously you're busy with football. Yeah, man. Every day I host a daily show from 12 to two out here. And so every morning got a production call from like seven to nine AM to whole show rundown, then you do the show and then, you know, zoom calls, talking to companies and just craziness.

Yeah. So a manual just right out of the gates. I saw something interesting about your background, both parents immigrated here. Yeah.

Yeah, both from Nigeria and how old were they when they came over here? So mom and pops, they would have been roughly like 29 and like 25 pops came over because he was a preacher. And so like these American evangelists saw him in Nigeria and were like, Oh, come to America and start preaching. So he comes over and mom comes over two years later.

But when you come to the States, all your schooling is essentially Nolan Voigt in America. Right. So mom like had to go back to get her nurse practitioner's degree. Dad had to go back to get his PhD in a rest his history.

Yeah, I've had a lot of cab rides from Russian guys who told me they were on colleges or dentists back in Russia. And then they may or may not be true. I'm not sure. There's no way for me to know.

And they are not true. And did you guys go straight to Texas? So my parents went to Liberty in Virginia and they had my older sister. She was born in Virginia and then they moved to Dallas.

And so the rest of the three siblings, me, my brother, my other sister, we're all from Dallas. so I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. Which has a very specific culture if I'm to believe Friday night lights. Yes, I would say that Texas in general football and the Bible bill and big hair.

Like that's what you're going to get from Texas. Yeah. How did your parents feel about you pursuing football? I have to imagine it's so complicated.

A you're aware of the odds I imagine if you're a parent, you're maybe fearful of the safety, although not like we would be today. How supportive were they? Well, so in Nigeria, football is that black and white object that you kick right? It's what we are in America called soccer.

And then also you have to remember Nigerian culture. Nigerian culture. You must be a doctor. You must be a lawyer.

You must be an engineer. Yeah. I went to this affluent all white high school, private school from grades five through 12, a slower school, middle school, and upper school. You're supposed to be like a national mayor at scholars.

A person in the class above me won ESPN's National Spelling Bee. Oh, yeah. There was like there's a kid named Saeh Ginteri who went to my school who won that in like eighth grade. I'm a kid in my class got a perfect on the SAT and ACT.

So I'm like under a cheaper galore. Yeah. All boys like college prep school, but I ended up being six, two, two hundred, forty pounds. I was like, you know what?

I guess I'll play football. Well, look, you're talking to Monica, whose first generation Indian. So, you know, she too with her 4.0 is a major. Oh, yeah.

You're under a cheaper. Five in your class. You're a big loser. And the notion that she's pursued acting instead of medicine.

What a twist. What a shame. No. So my parents, they have to kind of like come on board with this whole athlete thing.

You're not, you know, there's no NFL in Nigeria. There's, you know, the Nigerian football team, but there's no professional sports league. So my parents were all just kind of like going along for the ride with their two sons. So my older brother, he played in the league for nine years as well.

Yeah. It's not a part of the conventional American dream. The conventional American dreams, I'm going to come here. I'm going to give my children this great educational opportunity.

And that's how they will rise. So yeah, I just can't imagine it was ever something they even considered. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you got to think like they really were just trying to put us in the best educational position to succeed.

My older sister went to a school called Hockaday. Oh, girl school, she was there from grade like seven to 12. Then me and my brother go to this super expensive private school. So my parents were all education, education, education.

Like my mom went back and got her doctorate at age like 52. No, which is why I'm like, I can't underachieve. I'm allowed to. What were the doctorate saying?

If you don't mind my asking. So my dad has his PhD in psychology and my mom has her doctorate nurse practice. OK, they're all mental health physical. Yeah, I can't imagine anything more pleasurable to see than if they did get infected with Texas football and them being at the game and going to Zirk while you're playing.

I just feel like that would be something I'd want to witness. There is nothing better than a hyped up Nigerian father. Well, son, you got to. There's nothing better than that.

I was able to have one of those football rattles, the soccer rattles. Man, there's nothing like my dad only missed one football game while I was at Texas, home or away. So out of probably 54 games, he only ever missed one. And I know he only ever missed one because he only ever missed one.

Yeah, right, right. It's crazy how committed and dedicated my parents were to now just like seeing us, seeing me and my brother succeeded something else. They're like, OK, it's not academia. Fine.

It's it's the NFL. OK, so just really quickly, my father came to one game of mine. And I stole the ball basketball and I ran down court and I was in a full panic around half court because it was just a cleanest breakaway imaginable. And then I laid it up from about six feet and didn't even hit the rim.

I'm shocked I hit the back court. And that was the one game. So I think in his defense, he's like, I'm coming back to see this. No, I'm bad luck and I shouldn't.

That's right. I was just doing your favor. I was just like, oh my God, he's here. He's watching.

There's no fucking way I can make this layup all by myself. Dude, but honestly, sometimes nothing is worse than a breakaway layup by yourself. Oh, the plays that are too easy. The hardest to make.

Yeah, I would have rather tried to fucking throw it in from half court. I just want to add. So Monica, similarly, your day got really in a cheer, right? Yeah, I was a cheerleader in high school.

Two times a day. Yeah, yeah, NBD. And there's some images of us winning that are really. They're they're sweet.

They're really sweet. He's in all the gear. He's holding a pom pom, I think. Well, I just want to try to compare it to like, I don't know, I tried to think of myself moving somewhere where there'd be a ton of culture shock, right?

So I'm just trying to think of some crazy sport. I could like move my family to China and then watch my daughters do something good. That's, you know, it would be like if you moved to India and they got into cricket. Yeah, yeah, I would even know what a good play was.

But if I saw everyone cheering, I'd be like, how the fuck my kid figured this out. This is also weird. Now I'm curious because we're going to talk about and I'm putting this in quote, race is a term that I generally reject from my schooling. I have to imagine you have like a two layer experience with being black in this country, one being the fact that your parents were immigrants.

And I have to imagine that there's a lot of ways that could go, but they could be extra delicate and really feel like we're visitors and we want to mind our piece and cues. They might even explain some racism by it being xenophobia. Like I just have to imagine it was maybe a complicated education on race in America, in Dallas, Texas. Yeah, man, people realize this and I haven't talked a lot about this publicly, but we have to understand there's a huge difference between color and culture.

You can be black skin and not be black culture. You can be white skin and not be white culture. I grew up black, obviously, but my whole life black, but I grew up Nigerian culture. So I was eating goat meat.

I was eating rice and stew. We were going to Nigerian small groups. I was listening to Nigerian gospel music growing up. My culture through and through was Nigerian.

It was not black culture. Then I go to this white high school in middle school and so I'm all white culture. So now I'm a combination of Nigerian culture and white culture. Those still black.

I'm white culture, Nigerian culture. Well, now my dad starts pastoring at a church in inner city Dallas, Texas, Loki and a hood. And so now I'm immersed in black culture on Wednesdays and Sundays. Then I go play football at Texas and in the NFL and immersed in black culture again.

So first off, black people aren't one sort of like monolithic group, which is all group think. But my experience particularly was tri-lingual, tri-culture, because it was Nigerian and it was black culture and it was white culture. Yeah, I also would imagine you get hit with quote, black culture increasingly when you go to college. But then once you get to the NFL, I have to imagine now this is yet its own microcosm.

Yeah, man, the NFL is different because in college, you have several different types of black culture, my experience. It's Texas. You got black dudes from the country, black dudes from the hood, black dudes from the city. And then black dudes like me from the car.

You got the car on the long types, like cowboy hats and black? Yeah, you got all types and taxes. But then you got to the NFL and now it's black culture with money. And so for me, a lot of it was a learning process too.

Because of the first generation of Americans, my parents never talked to me about racism. Why would they have to? Racism doesn't exist in Nigeria. Right?

Like everybody's black there. So you come to America and you're like, wait a second. Why am I being treated differently? Is it because of my accent?

Is it because I'm black? Oh, now it's because of both. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, it seems like it'd be hard to pinpoint why you were getting attitude from somebody.

Correct. So now it's because I talk funny and quotes and then also because I'm black. So my parents actually never talked to me about race and racism. I have to learn on fly.

Now, I've already got different issues, but like race is not one of the issues they got in Nigeria. So classism, I would imagine. I'm just trying to imagine what your parents were calling us in of transcending as they got here. Classism, yes.

I think classism transcends the world at large. Mm-hmm. There's so many things involved when one says classism, right? Because classism typically dictates education, which also typically dictates stereotypes of how one dresses and whatnot.

So classism in and of itself is because what does classism mean? You know, what does classism have implications on? Well, that's why the book cast is so great as it distinguishes between that is like classism is something you can theoretically migrate out of or into, you know, and a cast you can't migrate. Exactly right.

Okay, so you got to be from UT, by the way, Austin's our favorite city in the world. Hey. I'm so jealous that you got to matriculate there if you can call it that. How often were you at Barton Springs?

Dude, I wasn't really a big water guy. A little dance muscular. I got a big water guy. I probably went to Barton Springs five times in my 10 years living in Austin for though Barton Springs, I guess like it stays at like 65 degrees.

So I'm definitely not a big cold water guy. Sure. But the grassy banks, there's a lot of great people watching. Yes.

So now, dude, in my like later Austin years, I would ride around town lake and I'd go on like the bike trails, like the 10 mile bike trails. And I'm like, me and water. Yeah, we just this kind of like oil and water. Right.

It does seem like you had some awareness to have aspirations that would either begin or simultaneous to your football career. Were you conscious of it while you were pursuing football? Like at best case, this is a 15 year experience. I got to have a backup plan or I was just interest driven.

Dude, that's a great question. I was never conscious of like, I got over the NFL. Well, I went to this school where you're literally supposed to go to Yale and Harvard. You don't even go D1 for my high school.

So now I'm doing that. And then I'm at Texas by my sophomore year, everybody's like, oh, yeah, you're going to go to the league. You're going to go to the league. I'm like, okay, then I realized, okay, I'm one of the NFL.

Before that realization, what did you have your sights set on? Obviously, you've ended up getting a master's in psychology. So I'm young for my grade. So my sophomore year in college, I would have been 18.

When you're 18, you're just kind of like, I'm just going. I don't know. You know, you're not planning ahead. You're just going with the flow, like any other 18 year olds.

I'm just trying to make good grades. They have trouble. I get my degree in sports management and play football. Like do this football thing.

But I'm not cognizant of like a five year or 10 year plan. Sure. Did your parents pass on a healthy fear of failure? Like were you operating at all with like, oh, I got to make sure?

You know what's funny? When I played for the Philadelphia Eagles, my coach said, and I think this is a Navy Seal slogan, don't operate from a fear of failure, but rather desire to excel. Uh huh. That's the dream.

That doesn't mean we all. Jesus. So I never really operated out of a fear of failure. I'm just a type of like, I got to be great.

I got to be great. I got to be whatever the heck it is. If I'm going to do it, I'm going to try to do it excellently. It was really just if you're going to play football, be the best.

You want to write a book? Be the best. Whatever the heck you're going to do, be the best. Yeah.

So you play in the NFL. Was it enjoyable? Did you like it? I liked the camaraderie of it.

I didn't love the league. So people don't get about the NFL. Unless you are the star quarterback, unless you're the star receiving star running back, it's really not that glamorous. There are 53 people on a roster.

If you were anywhere from like 30 to 53, your job could be gone in a moments notice. If I were like this, I got cut five times before I was 25. I got traded from the Cleveland Browns to the Philadelphia Eagles at the age of 22. So put that in working terms for those listening.

I got hired till I got drafted by the Browns. Then I got transferred because I got traded to the Eagles. Then I got fired five times before I was 25. Like imagine me moving from Austin, Texas to Cleveland by myself.

No, no, anybody. And then you get traded to Philly. And then you also don't know anybody. And then you get cut five times.

It's not a glamorous life. I similarly got told no until I was 29, his first time they hired me to act. So yeah, I know it's like the move somewhere in fucking shit the bed for a decade. That's brutal.

Exactly. So it's tough. So I liked it. I did it and it led me to where I am.

Yeah. And made good money, good platform, met a lot of cool people. But dude, I also got hurt seven out of eight years, four years college, four years pro. So like I do the math.

I'm like, OK, there's an 83% chance I'm going to get hurt if I play again. You know what? I'm going to stop. So my fourth year in the NFL, I realized, OK, wait a second.

You just broke your thumb. You might be done. After four years of the NFL, your vested pension annuity. You have all the benefits.

So I started texting my producer in Austin, Longhorn Network, it's like a subsidiary of ESPN. Hey, this offseason, can I do some work for you? Hey, I've left a do shining day. I left a do spring game.

I did it for free. Again, people work for free. It's not a bad thing. Work for free at times.

So I did it for free. And at the end of that little four month run, she offered me a job. That's when I was like, oh, do I want to go back and play in the NFL? And I finally made the decision like, no, I'm good.

And I just moved into commentating. That's got me a hard decision now. The hardest. Yeah.

Hardest. I said this, I would play for three teams. The Dallas Cowboys from from Dallas, the Philadelphia Eagles, because that's where I was playing, or the Chicago Bears, because my brother played in Chicago. So again, true story.

It's August. I got a text from the Cowboys. Hey, Emmanuel, can you come to Oxnard, California? We want to work you out.

I'm sick. I'm literally like mentally sick. I'm like, I don't want to play football anymore, but this is one of the three teams I said I would play for. So I text my aides and I was like, my broadcast agent.

I said, I don't know what I do if they try to sign me. I go to the workout and I walked into the cafeteria six a.m. Before my workout. And I see on their whiteboard in the cafeteria, wake up by 30 a.m.

Breakfast six a.m. Offensive meeting six 30 a.m. So I go to the workout. Thankfully, I don't get signed.

Two weeks later, I get a text at 11 30 p.m. from the Buffalo Bills. Emmanuel, this is so and so with the Buffalo Bills. We want to bring you in for a workout.

I don't respond to the text. You text me again. Hey, I need your driver's license, social security number. We want to book your flight.

I don't respond to the text. I text my agent. Hey, I'm done. Stay tuned for more.

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That's z-e-n-desk.com.com. Now you launch on a very successful career as a broadcaster. You're at ESPN for a while. You're at Now Fox currently.

At what point do you decide I'm going to start talking about racial injustice? I'm going to start what you have started, which is uncomfortable conversations with a Black Man, which I've watched several of. By the way, people can go to uncomfortablecomvos.com and check it out. How did you decide you wanted to also be doing that?

I am action and solution-oriented. What I've realized in life is I don't like complaining about things without doing something to fix them. If I feel like I'm out of shape, my abs ain't popping like they used to. I'm going to go do some abs and I'm going to start eating some salads and lay off these desserts.

Right? If I feel like, I don't like the way I look, I'm going to go with a haircut. I'm going to go like, I'm going to go workout. I'm going to fix my problem, not just complain about it.

So in 2016, Colin Kaepernick starts taking a knee. There was so much unrest, so much. I said, you know what? I'm going to gather the cops in Austin, Texas, the chief of police, our dossiabato.

And I'm going to gather like four influential figures in Austin. I got an Olympic athlete, an NFL player, and myself. I didn't know what was happening in this round hall. This was in 2016.

This was prior to George Floyd, but this was after Trayvon Martin, etc. And was the topic specifically taking a knee in Capernet? Yes. The topic was like, why is what's happening in our world happening in our world?

Because I said this, it's my job to influence my domain. I've been in Austin. Let me handle Austin. The influential figures in LA, y'all handle LA.

Influential figures in Chicago, y'all handle Chicago. I'm going to handle mine. That was 2016. I didn't really do anything again until 2020, until after George Floyd was murdered.

And what I've realized is that this was my form of grief. I, like so many other people, particularly black people, were distraught. Like I was pacing around my house not knowing what to do. I was like, I don't know if I want to cry.

I don't know if I want to scream. I don't know what to do. So I said, okay, Ocho, what the heck is the problem? What is the problem in our society?

And I realized, what is that? I know white people and I know black people. And the problem is there is a communication barrier. Black people are saying something and white people aren't understanding it.

And white people are saying something and black people aren't understanding it. What do I mean? I went to Mexico in 2018 and I was running through the grocery store in Mexico and I was looking for some hamburgers. And I was yelling like hamburgers, hamburgers.

Can you know how you find hamburgers? I'm yelling at the attempt to court. And then finally, they're looking at me confused. I'm like hamburgers, I'm starting to get louder.

They're looking at me confused. I'm like, I probably should have. So finally, I get serviced on my phone and I type in English to Spanish translation, hamburger. And I see that the word is hamburger.

And so the second I say, I guess I'm like, oh, I will for. And in our society, that's the same problem we have because you have Black brothers and sisters trying out oppression and racial injustice, systematic injustice, inequality. And it's like, what do you mean? And so we're talking louder, oppression, racism, systemic injustice, we're being discriminated against.

You got some white people? So I'm like, wait a second. There is a communication barrier. Just like the same communication barrier I had in the grocery store in Mexico, there's one right now.

I have to do something. My voice is my sword. Yeah. So in episode nine, you sit down with a ton of police officers.

I don't know, there's got to be 30 plus in the room. And something I love that you pointed out, I happen to be into a sport which is heavily populated with the Blue Lives Matter flags. And one of the officers kind of asks what you're feeling about Blue Lives Matter flags were. And that was something maybe I felt viscerally, but I wouldn't have been able to articulate.

Would you, I don't want to steal your good point from you. When anyone says Blue Lives Matter in response to Black Lives Matter, it makes me feel as though we're missing the point. To say that one life matters is to assert that historically that life hadn't mattered. Right.

To say that Blue Lives Matter is to assert that historically we don't think cop's lives matter. When we have never treated historically in this country, cop's lives as if they don't matter. That would be to historically assert is that we haven't treated cops as if they're lives matter. But in America, we have historically literally treated Black people's lives as if they don't matter.

Three-fistles of a person, slavery. All men are created equal. But when we said all men were created equal, we were not talking about Black men. We were not talking about Black women.

We were not talking about women. So historically in this country, we have said that Black people's lives do not matter. So when we say that Black lives matter, all we are doing is making sure you were talking about us. Because when we said all men are created equal, you aren't talking about us.

So when you say all lives matter, are you talking about us or not? So let's just make sure that we leave no room for error. So when I hear Blue Lives Matter in response to that, I just think that it is kind of a naive or ignorant state. Yeah, I agree.

In my experience on Planet Earth, everyone takes the death of a police officer very seriously. And they seem to be investigated very, very thoroughly. I think the conviction rate and prosecution rate for someone who kills a police officer is quite high. I think obviously you have history of like, you know, in Compton, they're being a serial killer that prays on young Black women and no one even recognizes as a serial killer.

So yeah, historically, they're really not comparable. Now you're ready for my critique? Talk to me. Because I think they were in an interesting position.

They're under the spotlight. They're also public officials. Their jobs depend on how they present themselves in public. So they're not really unhandcuffed as I would be in maybe really getting some of the harder topics out there, which is clearly the goal of your show, uncomfortable conversations.

I think you have the very admirable goal of creating a safe space where we can actually ask these hard questions that people are afraid to ask in public. But I guess one thing I thought of is you compared, you know, that if a surgeon commits malpractice, they'll lose their license, but I would say these cops in America have been asked to deal with at the very end of the river are hardest problems to solve. So they're dealing with mental illness. They're dealing with homelessness.

They're dealing with addiction. They're dealing with domestic violence against women. These are all societal problems that we have not solved. And we ask them to go out there and deal with all the horrendous outcome of that.

I think that first it has to be acknowledged that they're being asked to do way too much. Exactly what one of the officers said, they show up to a call. There's a naked woman. There's a man holding a baseball bat.

They get a lot of really complicated decisions to make in about five seconds. Yeah, I think I would say a couple things. The issue with hand-backs, I think, is really the lack of prosecution and the lack of punishment fitting the crime. It's not that errors occur because, as you said, as you heard with the cops and as I know, is we know errors are going to occur.

There's human error. There are human issues. But it's when errors do occur, does a punishment fit the crime? And far too often, the punishment does not fit the crime, which is why I love talking to those officers.

Again, you all can watch the episode on my YouTube. But one of the officers was like, no, I honestly, I don't think that there is a enough accountability in police force. The other thing is we have to be real. There's a time for everything.

There's a time to mourn. There's a time to celebrate. There's a time to rejoice. There's a time to cry.

Now is not the time in our climate to look for excuses in the midst of this murder. That's the real issue. Now, if I have to address the situation, I'm like, okay, wait a second. People are being killed unjustly.

Yes, cops are human. I'm going to get to this humanity. But I'm also going to try to get to the root of, is there accountability for people being killed unjustly? Are cops being asked to do a lot?

Yes. Which is why I defund the police, which actually doesn't mean defund the police. It actually means reallocate the funds of the police. Yeah.

Which is why that's actually wise. But I think there's a time for everything. And my platform is really just the time of, let me try to find solutions. Everything you're saying I agree with.

Cops are human. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess what I'm saying is I agree with you. There's this huge communication barrier.

And in my experience, both in relationships and just in life is the better you can present what they're going through to start there. Like, hey, you know what I recognize? I'm not the one being asked to show up to the fucking lottery when I walk through the door of someone's house. I don't know if there's going to be three guns in there.

I don't know. So let me just start by saying you guys are being asked to deal with shit that no human unplanted earth is really qualified to do it. Also, there's just a ton of statistics. You guys are prosecuting more.

The sentences are longer. You're pulling over. You know, like I know what you're going through. And also now we got to confront this really lopsided bit of statistics that are not on everyone's side.

So this is how I approach it. I try to get the listener to hear what you're saying without me telling them. I asked the cops during the episode. I said, are you scared when you pull up to the scene of the crime?

Like, I want the listener to understand their humanity. I asked the cops. So do you lose your humanity when you put on the badge? We had a retired officer on set and I asked him, how do you feel now that you're no longer in the force?

His response was crazy. I can finally sleep at night. I get to work out again. Like, when you listen to that, Dax, now you understand, oh, they're human too.

Because sure, I can tell the listener or the cop could tell the listener. But it hits harder when a cop who's retired is like, yeah, I finally can sleep again. I can finally work out. I'm healthy again.

Yeah, when we do pull up to the scene, there are things that go through our head. Like, I asked him, I said, are you more worried about getting some calls than others? And he's like, yeah, we're listening to the radio and we hear some call come through. We're like, oh, like here we go.

I hope it's closer to this scene. Exactly. Or even my favorite part was when he said, he said, look, the neurosurgeon can practice. He said, but we go through training for one situation.

Then we pull up to the scene. The woman is naked and the man is holding a baseball bat. You can't train for that. Yeah, we hit roleplay that one.

Exactly. So that's how I try to approach it. I try to let the listener infer the cop's humanity. Because I think that's a better way for them to digest it.

The most saddening and troubling thing to me is just to your earlier point, just how both sides just cannot hear one another and are convinced that each side has complete contempt for one another. And those factions certainly exist. Maybe I'm optimistic. I think the more general population of us doesn't have contempt for one another or doesn't desire to have contempt for one another.

And I think we also, we have to do a better job, I think, of trying to let our emotion that times after a while subside and let's take a step back and look at things. The George Floyd situation, I said this from day one. I don't think it was exclusively racially motivated. George Floyd's murder.

I think it was power and I think it was race. I believe that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely. So I don't think it was just like, okay, he is a black man, George Floyd is, I'm going to kneel on his neck. I think it was a combination of I have power and absolute power and therefore it has led to corruption.

And I think it is also so, so, , I view him as less than and in these surroundings, there are black people who I also view as less than telling me to get off. You're not going to tell me the authoritative figure what to do. So I think there are several factors at play. Race definitely involved.

Power also involved. We have to understand all factors that are currently a play in our society, but it's hard to understand them if you don't understand the culture. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, I'm with you.

I bring this up often. I think the people on my side of the political spectrum, which is the left, do a very bad job of branding. So defund the police is the most triggering, scary concept for people to just be told two words or three, whereas allocate money for specialists, preventative measures, provide opportunities so the crime rate goes down. You know, these are all wonderful concepts.

And I just feel like we fucked up with what we branded it. Well, you got to remember, bro, in this day and age, what's the coolest hashtag? Right? Hashtag, reallocate funds for the police does not sound as good.

It just doesn't have the same ring to it. But we also, I think in general, as people were lazy. I think we use lazy attitudes. I think we're lazy with our word choice.

And we're lazy with how we digest information. Right? I heard defund the police and I was like, huh? Then I was like, let me start googling.

Oh, wait a second. Right. Right. If we're in the police doesn't actually mean like abolish the police.

That's not what's being said. Right. And that's why when I asked the cops about defund the police, he was like, yeah, I love it. He was like, if you can have somebody else do some of the stuff we have to do, I'd be ecstatic.

He said that the problem is the social worker can't show up to the scene if there's a nice there. We got to show up to the scene. So he's like, if you can have somebody, you can get the social worker or somebody else to do it, by all means. Yeah.

And even more importantly, let's go a little upstream and think of some ways we could prevent anyone having to arrive in these situations, you know? Dude, I said this man, and also prevention is better than a pound of cure. Yeah. We have to do a better job being proactive instead of reactive.

If we did a better job of verbally disarming, then we wouldn't have to discharge the weapons. Yeah. I mean, well, the outcome we have is terrible. And to just hope on a prayer that it'll change without some drastic change on our side is just a little naive.

By the way, I adore you in love your show. I feel compelled to say that first. And I plot everything you're about. Do you think you gave a fair answer to the cops saying, when we pull people over now, the first thing we hear is you're only pulling us over because we're black.

And so they're starting in a situation where it's like they may have a very legitimate thing to pull the person over from. And now both parties have taken on this huge weighty context of what's happening in life. It's not fair to either of the parties. What do we do about that part?

As far as a fair answer, I think I gave, I would say I gave an honest answer. Fair, I think would be subjective. If I can, our society at this point, there's a fracture between black people and police officers, particularly white police officers. So just like in any relationship, if there was a fracture between the significant others and their infidelity, then yeah, when you leave to go hang out with your boys, you might get questioned a little bit harder than if there was no fracture in the relationship.

And so now, because there's a fracture between black people and officers, if a cop shows up, there's going to be a visceral reaction. Well, it's a very justified fear. Yeah. Exactly.

Because of what currently exists. So my response was knowledge is power. So it behooves officers to understand why this response is existing and that this response is existing so that the cop can now best navigate the situation as well. Because that's why I love talking to the cops.

For those of those, again, it happens in the episode. I talked to Piedaluma police officers, Piedaluma, the population of 60,000 in California, plus the 1% black. The first question I asked the officers, when's the last time you sat down with a group of black people? The resounding answer was, I don't know that I ever have.

Or had someone over for dinner, yeah. Or had someone over for dinner? Yeah, it was my favorite quote here, is that you said. Yeah, I said proximity breeds care and distance breeds fear.

So if you never sat down with a group of black people or a black person, and your first interaction with a black person is when you're pulling them over, how you think that's going to go? Yeah. You're not just like, you're just sat, y'all are both set up for failure. It'd be like having a blind date and a port-potty.

No, like let's start this as bad as we can. How do you expect it to go? And again, although we both speak English, it's different. I'll tell y'all this, I went to an all boys' middle school in high school.

When I went to college, yes men and women both speak English, yes boys and girls both speak English, but you have to relate to a woman differently than you do a man. You act differently around them. And in all boys' school, I don't care what I smell like, what I'm like, what I dress like. I don't care how aggressive I am, it doesn't matter.

But so if you have to relate to different people differently, and you're cognizant about that in life, how then can you think you can maximally do your job as an officer? If you're relating to somebody you've never, a group of people, you've never even talked to. So that's really just how I try to have that conversation. I think I accumulated a couple of criticisms from Maximus Mouse here in my questioning.

Did I, do you want to, do you want to, no? I think he got it. Okay. Okay.

And I can feel that our biochemistry was interacting a little bit. That's the most question and I can feel it. Well, there's just some like big elephants in the room on this topic that no one's really talking about peacefully and respectfully on both sides. I'm kind of forced to be in the position where I'm going to have to give, basically not even my opinion.

But you know, one of the things that I hear from folks that are more conservative or I don't know what group we did arbitrarily put them in, but you know, there's a lot of people living in very high crime, right? Areas that desperately want the police to be getting rid of guns. They want them to be getting rid of theft and profiling is very problematic. So you get this really incredibly hard.

It's not one side super right and the other's blatantly wrong. It's like, well, this is a very complicated situation. How do we deal with a very high crime, right? Area with the goal of reducing crime and also not profiling?

Well, you know, what's interesting is that our society has told us that a certain group commits crimes at a higher rate, but I like drawing parallels to relationships because everybody can understand relationships. If you look for something, you go find it. And other white people commit less crimes than black people is that white people are less police than black people. Big time, yeah.

Like big time, by my opinion. And I've also had conversations with chiefs of police who were saying, well, we try to serve this neighborhood more. So we send more officers to that neighborhood. Oh, wait a second.

You're just saying that you're over-police in this neighborhood. And then again, I elaborate on that in my book. It's like black people are just more over-police. And so because you're more over-police and now what's more talking about in the media, now our world has left us to believe that, oh, black people are more likely to commit crimes.

When, in all honesty, all high-violent crimes are intra-racial. Blacks kill blacks. Whites kill whites. Hispanics kill Hispanics.

But that's not what the world tells us. Well, in any time there is zero opportunity crime rate goes up. It's also a very much part of the extreme income inequality in this country. You know, I'm from an area in Michigan that had a very distinct people below the poverty line.

White, those were always the people you saw on the side of the road getting pulled over. Those were always where the cop cars were patrolling those neighborhoods. You know, they were very much focusing on the low-income people that, by their estimation, whether it was right or wrong, more crime was happening. So I think opportunity is a huge aspect.

I don't think for one second any ethnicity has a monopoly on crime. I think all things being equal where there's not opportunity, where there's mass addiction rates, you see a lot of crime. But it still leaves us with the problem. So from my armchair expert position, prevention's the thing we've not explored with the full weight of this government or the full will of the people.

That's the thing that I think I would most like to see implemented. And then you can almost have the conversation. Okay, well, we've done everything on the prevention side. Let's look at the equation where we at.

What results are we producing? Now we have to figure out something to further perfect it. And if you're using your equation and opportunity or lack thereof equals crime, then it's all about growing opportunities because I agree with you. So now it's, are we growing opportunities?

But if we don't acknowledge in this country that there is an inequality around opportunities, then we can never get to the root. That's where the pain is. If we're looking and saying, what's the crime issue? What's at the root of the crime issue?

And if the root of the crime issue is opportunity, then we have to allow for more opportunities for everyone. But some people think that there's not an opportunity issue. Yeah, that's the problem. Very frustrating.

Yes. Yeah, it's a treating the symptom and not the sources. Exactly. Exactly.

Exactly. I totally agree. And that brings me to your Chelsea episode, which I enjoyed a lot as well. And I liked Chelsea Handler.

Chelsea Handler, sorry, sorry, sorry. Episode 10, Chelsea Handler, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man. Uncomfortable combos.com. You know, you guys draw a distinction between being not racist and being anti-racist.