Tell them to tell you dot com the podcast about pop culture black history and spirituality It's about to be a great part I'm gonna take it away. Tell them to tell you Hey, yeah, thank you for joining me for another edition of tell them to tell you the podcast where I share with you All my musings about black history black culture and black spirituality today. I want to talk to y'all about These guys prices Well, I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on that. I just want to know I'm also bothered by that We're gonna talk about why we should be a lot more vocal about Britney grinder I want to talk about the crown act a little bit and then I want to finish up with what happened with Ryan coogler and talk about black perceptions of self So you ready?
Let's just jump right in So y'all these guys prices finna see a girl to the car not Gonna get me an electric vehicle because this is not sustainable for most of us. It's not sustainable And here's the thing right, you know, we joke a lot about Al Gore But do you know how I'm trying not to you know, you're living the past you get a little depressed I get so bothered by it, but these are the consequences when we see this enfranchisement happen, right? If Al Gore had not had the election taken from him This man 20 something years ago was telling us to have alternative fuel sources and look at where we are now Look at where we are when you are sent a message Let this be a micro level lesson to when we are sent a message of what we need what we need to be doing And you act like you've got forever to do it. You end up with five dollar gallon gas prices Not based on a lack of supply But based on corporate greed because we've let rampant run rampant to this idea of excessive capitalism You know materialism has run rampant and so you've got people just greedy like there was an oil executive who talked about You know his responsibility was to the shareholder to the stockholders not to the everyday driver Y'all this is some little shiggy Some bull shiggy especially when you understand that as fuel prices rise So does everything else because transportation is tried to a lot of the stuff the United States infrastructure still does not include really sustainable high Speed rail so if you live in a town like mine, there is no public transportation There's no trying to take everything is too spread out.
I can't bike to work You know those kinds of things we have not created a sustainable living environment or sustainable economic System for most working-class people and it's unsustainable I think what one of the most dangerous things we can do right now is resign ourselves to the fact This is just how much gas is going to put to cost I have no I have no quick fix I'm just limiting at this moment. I have no quick fix, but I will say I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the US government I'm becoming increasingly frustrated because the Democrats just signed this 13.9 billion dollar bill to send money to Ukraine Listen, it's 100 people right here on my street in my communities There are homeless people that we pass by everyday driving to work. I do it really you couldn't you can't cancel to the laws But you can send 13.9 billion dollars to Ukraine Where people who look like me are being mistreated currently really that's okay, okay? Okay, that's one of the few things y'all can agree on you can't agree on protecting my voting rights in this country where I pay taxes But you can send my money elsewhere.
Okay, right? Yeah So I'm gonna remind us, you know, there are certain people who were reminded of the founding documents of this country I will remind all of us that the founding documents say at what point does the US government? Becomes no longer good for the people the people should replace it. I'm just saying Okay, you don't believe me.
Go look it up. It is there and this gas price name and halfway related to the gas prices thing is you know I see a lot of people Yeah, I'm happy to so let me before I say it that way. Let me say I am happy that federal bill 216 HR 2 1 1 6 the crown act has passed the US House of Representatives So now it goes to the Senate. Let me say this well first Let me give the backstory I'm assuming that we all know the crown act is the act that protects people from being discriminated against because of their natural hair Listen to that again.
We need a law to Protects people how the good Lord grows their hair out of their head naturally You see the undercurrent in that? All right, it passed the House of Representatives, but here's the I'm aggravated part 235 to 189 that means a hundred eighty nine people voted against the crown act 189 people y'all 189 people somebody was even calling it the bad hair bill, okay? 189 people think it is okay to discriminate against primarily black folk because let's be real That's what the crown act is about because of how we choose to wear our hair as it naturally grows from our heads Does that tell you that should tell you something that should tell you something about how they see you and the lack of humanity they assigned to you Do you understand that there are so many of us aspiring to sit at the table with these people who don't even see it? Why would you want to sit at a table with them?
Why? That's a conviction that is coursing through my veins right now. Why and I'm not saying all these are all white people I'm not first of all my skin folk ain't my info either I'm saying white people who have a problem with how the Lord grows my hair from my head Why would I want to be at a table with them? I think it's time for the US worker to understand that We should be choosing who we choose who we give our labor to Right, I tell my students all the time when you go to a job interview be interviewing the company do your You're not just doing research on the company so that you can sound impressive during the interview You should also be doing research to understand is this some place you're gonna feel comfortable Do you want to work somewhere like this right somewhere where they have to reschedule your your interview three or four times before they actually speak to you Because that might tell you something about how they value people's time Do you want to be somewhere like that where you find out someone was offered ten thousand I was more than you were and you have superior credentials Do you really want to be somewhere like that right as my friend?
Villain says we all hoes. It's just that some of us have a higher price Right, do we really want to be in these places? Do I want to work somewhere where the crown act becomes essential to my employment? So protect me do I want to anyway the bad hair bill y'all it passed the house.
So we'll see what happens in the Senate hopefully But you do see if 189 people vote against protecting our labor rights in this way Are you surprised at what is happening to our voters rights and why the John Lewis voting rights? That hasn't passed yet? Are you surprised by that? I hope not because it's saying people just said thirteen point nine billion dollars to a white country when they're perpetual anyway Palestine anyone I sometimes I left to keep from crying that was not a sincere laugh.
That was an unfresed lady. I would be clear on that That's the fool. Oh my gosh. That's foolishness foolishness, but let's go back to this whole getting them to recognize our humanity Let me tell you what happens if you are socialized by people who don't see your humanity You won't see it either So that's my segue to the Ryan Coogler thing y'all So you've heard by now because I'm like a week late with this story Ryan Coogler was at a bank in Atlanta Bank of America branch in Atlanta, Georgia attempting to withdraw $12,000 from his account with his ID his pin number and the bank card the teller Says he was acting quote-unquote weird tells the manager they decided caught a police even a dispatcher at the police station was like Did he give you his IDs?
Yes, but he's just acting weird. All right, the teller was black This is important to my little soapbox. I'm gonna get on the tunnel is black. All right, and he was acting quote-unquote weird now Weird must be wearing a mask in a little of a panoronium Because he had on a mask in some shades because he's a celebrity in a city where he Made a blockbuster movie Why wouldn't anyway, so that's acting weird.
Hey, here's what I really want to get at this was a relatively young black girl All right She is encountering a black man with all of his credentials seeking to access an account and your only thing because now people trying to clean It up and say it was his account was flagged. That's not what she said to the police Okay, so you can try to rewrite the narrative which is what you know happens all the time of black history You can try to rewrite the narrative, but she said we all heard her say He's acting weird. Okay, because he wrote a note to her Yeah, he's trying to withdraw to a thousand eyes cash You don't understand being discreet like maybe many of us aren't familiar with Atlanta The way some of us are you don't want people in Atlanta know you walk my foot I like it's home with a hustler, baby not just people who will you know hit you over the head and take it from you But other people they just hustled like why would you want everybody to know you take a 12,000 eyes cash out? I refuse to believe that if a white man had come in there with a very same outfit on a road to know it would have been An issue especially if he provided his ID bank card and pin number This is the point I want to get to why do we think the worst about us when we interact with us Here's my hypothesis We are socialized by the same system that socializes the police that murdered Brianna Taylor That murdered Sandra Bland allegedly that murdered George Floyd that attacked same same system that socialized them into attack Trayvon Same system that socialized the man killed Ahmad Arbery Do you understand why I'm going with this?
We are socialized by the same system and most of us went through the same public school system Meaning the same system that teaches them not to recognize our humanity is sometimes teaching our own children not to recognize our humanity How can you look at another black man? And had your hand on your pistol and he didn't even write y'all did you see the video? I would have been cutting up so hard so harshly every four-letter word I know I would have made some up y'all talk about compound where I would have made some up, okay Then they went to another and you got your hand on your pistol. What are you seeing in him?
What was she seeing in him that was quote-unquote weird? discretion a black man with that much money with discretion Because certainly those aren't the images that we're fed about black well not in this country So maybe it is weird for her to see a man with that much money a black younger black man with that much money Who's not flashy? When got on the Avi's Versace print you know what I mean? Like how are we seeing each other when we encounter each other and where does that image or perception come from?
I don't know that we're spending enough time in quiet reflection about this Somebody need to get old girl and I don't mean get violently I mean somebody needs to sit her down and have a real conversation come to Jesus moment about what did you see and why did you think it was strange? Now I've also seen people say well why did he write the note? There was nothing aggressive in the note out of you saw the note It was nothing in there aggressive Again, he's in the land hustlers trying to take out two thousand I was cash I wouldn't want people around me to hear either Right Somebody said well why did he go into one of the bank make it a point me going to one of the back offices number one? I don't know if he's just running you know between errands you just run into the bank So maybe that's why he didn't again discretion if you go into the back there everybody in there's like well Who is he you know what I mean?
We're not gonna make excuses. We're not gonna make excuses for why these predominantly black folk in this bank Act of the way they did about another black man Let me tell you my hypothesis. So let me finish the first one and I'm gonna tell you my second one The first one is because we are socialized by that same system we too can be perpetuated to white supremacy Particularly if we have bought into the narrative that black people are innately criminal and innately deficient There are far too many of us that believe that let me tell you what happened to me yesterday on tiktok I posted something about how fragility gets taught intergenerationally, right? If you follow me on Instagram or tiktok you saw me talk about it in two different ways, right?
There's short for me longer form Here's the thing there were black people who instantly jumped into my comment there is to tell me that's not fragility. That's manipulation Did you listen to what I said? In the case I described The performed fragility is manipulative Why did you jump into my three assuming that I didn't know what the hell I was talking about? That's the same kind of assumption his girl was making about kugler being quote unquote weird Right some of us are so conditioned for black deficiency that we don't even wait to see if it's there or not You follow me?
Do you understand I'm saying that when you encounter another black person you are waiting for the failure and the victory surprises That's why y'all still celebrate the first black so-and-so. I saw something the other day said she is the first black Survey methodologist And I was like black people being used in surveys as a methodology for what do you mean? She's first y'all just making up the first Right, what is it about this ordinal rank that is moving you except that you expect failure? So when you see non-fail you like oh let's celebrate like what no No, why are we conditioned to expect the deficiency in each other?
We're socialized to do it. I was telling my class the other day You know, I grew up in a predominantly white school system at the time it was predominantly white. It's not that anymore Predominantly white schools Predominantly white classrooms because I was in the advanced math and I took extracurriculars like psychology So, you know, I'm in predominantly white rooms and I remember being explicitly taught by told by some of my teachers You're smarter than them Right, you're different from them. I remember my psychology teacher my 12th grade year at Northside High School in one of our Georgia This woman said to me she asked me where I had plans to go to college and I told her I was going to fam you and she said You're too smart to limit yourself by going to HBCU see this is how we end up with black folk who expect deficiency and other black people We're socialized along the way and no black people because I'm not just gonna blame the white folk No, black person has stepped in to shake you to say a that ain't cool Why do we assume like I'm not saying you can't critique blackness.
Y'all know I do it all day every day I'm not saying you can't critique it when it's wrong, but why are you going into the situation believing in the wrongness? I just where does it? I want you to stop if you automatically go into a live look at a common thread Interact with somebody in a different social economic class than you why I want you if you automatically expect deficiency I want you to stop Go home ashes of what what about me in this moment is making me expect deficiency? Where did that come from?
I'm willing to better than come from you. You got other people stuff in your head That's not yours. It's time to let it go. That's not our stuff I don't expect deficiency Some of the most brilliant children.
I've taught children some of those brilliant youth. I've taught at HBCU I don't expect deficiency for effect. It can cause a lot of disruption in my classes because they want me to expect deficiency Now I'm gonna hold you to a high standard. I don't expect failure.
I don't expect raggedy I don't expect wrongness if you are wrong We're gonna correct it, but I'm not going into it looking for the wrong and a lot of us are engaging with each other looking for the wrong We go to somebody's page the first thing we she thinks she all that what oh, can we why did you go there? What just moved you there? Let's do that. Let me add the literacy piece onto this because I'm trying to get back into my passion Which is black literacy listen y'all he passed the notes Black folks still ain't supposed to read.
Y'all know that they still don't want you to think we read me while your favorite social media influencers got books out Best selling books somebody's reading somebody's reading but they're convincing Some of our young people that we don't I was in class the other day and I was fussing about If you don't know I teach future teachers. I'm a teacher educator So I was telling them how anti-homework I am. I'm against giving homework K12 I don't it doesn't serve a purpose. I think often can have a negative impact on student achievement So I think it's just surveillance and a lot of teachers haven't even thought about it.
They just doing what they've seen done, right? So I was on that soapbox and this boy says to me a young man. I won't say a boy this young man says to me You give us homework. Well number one you not K12 anymore.
This is not the 1314 15 or 16th grade So I don't really give you homework so much as I can do research projects That's not the same thing. He said what you expect us to read you give us reading assignments Yeah, I'm sure my face dropped So you're telling me you think it's punitive that I'm giving you readings to do about the field you've elected to pursue So I asked him if I don't give you these things to read how will you learn them? Here's response was you will tell me Okay, so first I had to thank him. I'm glad you trust me that much I'm glad you trust me to tell you the truth.
Do you trust all your professors like that? No his answer was easy. No So how do you know you can trust me? I just you know you cool.
Okay, but I can be cool con artists now All con artists are flaky some of them are really good, right? So how you know, I'm just not even conning you Okay, but if I don't give you so you're telling me if I don't tell you something you'll never know it cuz you're not You know, there's something that's happening with black literacy in these schools and we have got to get to the heart of it Now I got some ideas about what I think it is But listen to the story I'm telling you and listen to what happened to Ryan Coogler. There is an expectation that something weird is happening when black people reading and writing Think about your favorite move black movie your favorite with the exception of best man You got a writer in there, but your favorite black movie your favorite black TV sitcom queen latifah head flavor magazine in living single But those are older Because most of the shows on TV now cop shows that's a whole nother propaganda piece that we could have a conversation about who's writing Often you see a favorite black character writing and reading especially for pleasure or to be basically communicative to someone else Right, we don't see it a lot and Compiled with myths that we don't read That's why you can think it's strange or weird for a black man to give a teller a note When you're pulling 12,000 out of the bank because you're not expecting it to be written Especially by a black man dressed this way Yeah, we got a lot of stuff to unpack as a culture and as a community And I think this is part of what Toni Morrison is getting to when she says racism is a distraction Like we can't always be looking at No, let me rewind because that was gonna come out wrong. We should always be looking at structures and systems Okay, we should always be doing that But we can't be so distracted that we're not looking at how the systems and structures affect us and how we are behaving as a result of that Right, I can't be so outward focused that I miss the thing that it created among us This expected efficiency All right, I'm sorry because I'm rambling because I'm this is one thing y'all It took me a week to put over a week to put this together because I don't know where to go with it Like I'm devastated by what is happening and it's happening quickly.
I started Teacher education in 2014 I have said seen a steady decline in the proficiency literacy proficiency of my students They are functionally literate. All right, meaning they can decode the words for me If I put a sentence on the board, they can read the sentence to me when I say what does that mean? Cricut Again, it's not their fault. I'm not blaming this generation.
I'm saying we got those of us who do understand comprehension We got step up to the plate There's some things happening that we have to be careful and I want to say this let me say this Oh, hear me when I say Stop telling black people who can't get a job anywhere else to teach hbc use. Okay, I said it it's too many It's too many It is too many Black folk who just want a doctorate for the title It's too many of them There are too many of them and too many of them end up at our schools teaching these babies And then we wonder why the babies can't read. Okay, I said it Got a problem in email me doctor tip at telenteptulgy.com. I understand it's a frustrating thing to hear and it's not just hbc It's just some pwa's like that too, which I'll if there's an educator that don't want to be educated don't see your babies to know Let's just say it.
All right. I'm all over the place now. I got the episode done. I got it done I get listen can we start expecting the worst of that people?
I don't know how to say that except. Hey, y'all. I love you I got some things happening if you're hearing this today on Monday March 21st I got a live happening one Zoom tonight. So send me an email and get the link That's that all right y'all make it a good one.
So I'm so sorry Yeah, I can't believe I did what I was about to complain people do and that is We cannot forget about what's happening with Brittany grander I wanted to make sure we said her name that we speak her name that we uplift her name that those of us who believe in prayer Who can tend to some pots knock on some graves that we do what we need to do to get sister home safe and sound I think Russia made a profound mistake in thinking that she could be used as a pawn We know that here Black woman life Particularly black queer woman life It's just don't mean the same thing to the powers that be anyway, but they damn show matter to us So let's send good positive energy for sister and keep her name out there if they don't speak her name, we will Make it going