Tillontiptoldyou.com The podcast about pop culture, black history, and spirituality. It's about to be a great vibe. Doctor Tim, gonna take it away. Tillontiptoldyou.
Hey y'all, hey, thank you for joining me for season three of Tillontiptold you. I've been kind of ghost for a little while. It has some things going on. We'll talk about that over the course of the next few episodes.
But I just want to, you know, I've got a lot I want to talk to you about today. So I'm just going to jump right in. Here's my list. I want to talk about what it means to turn completely inward because there's been some foolishness going on in a lot of schools, lately, public and private.
And I think we need as a community to address those things. I also want to talk to you about hope. This week, August 21st happened, and there are some things we need to remember on August 24th, 21st, sorry, that put me in a kind of mood. I think some people were feeling it, not just me.
And so I think it's important for us to deal with that thing. So let me just jump right in and talk to us. So if you've been paying attention to the news, there have been a couple of incidents of black students, young black students in private schools being turned their appearance. Now I'm going to go there in just a second, but let's start with public schools.
Here in Choo-Net County, but not Pradegoo-Net County Schools. Now, Beaufort, Georgia is in Gwynette County, but it has its own school system. So I don't want you to get mad at Gwynette County School System. That's something different.
So if you Google it, it's Beaufort Schools in Beaufort, Georgia. They have, so there was this paraprofessional who worked at one of the schools as a paraprofessional who is suing the school superintendent. And it's part of the school that the, from a college system, on the website, things like that. And so you have this woman with institutional memory.
Now I'm coming back to that because institutional memory is important. This woman with institutional memory, who knew why the goal was there, basically confronted them and asked, you know, why are we taking this out? There was an agreement in place. The agreement has been there for X number of years.
I think it's Ron's employee wants retelling students to smile when they got off the bus. Something she was known for. And so, and he's upset because the laborers, according to him, he doesn't use that where he just says, you know, that they weren't listening, and they talked back and that kind of on that. Thumbs to wear eight terms.
And I mean, whoever he's talking to isn't like, you know, oh my God, I can't believe you said that. The other person's like, yeah, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So this is obviously, if that is him on the phone call, it is obviously commonplace for him to use that word because nobody's active school board, people who serve on school boards in the state of Georgia don't even have to have any training and education. Yet they're making policy related, curricular related decisions.
And that's problematic, but that's the whole nother story for another day. But you've got the school board who has, you know, is not as diverse as the community. And when they were confronted with these, they're not even to say, hey, an investigation is undergoing. We don't support the use of those kinds of words, which is what you would expect from a school board to say.
Although we can't comment on personnel issues, we can say that this school board supports diversity and we are against, you know, racism and sexism and whatever. You would expect that, but they don't do that. They just say they're not going to talk about it, which is incredibly problematic. Right.
And then the attorney for, I can't remember if it's the attorney for the school system or for the superintendent himself says that we don't, we might him. Well, according to the prosecuting attorney or the law, the attorney who filed a law suit, yes, it is him. They have had access to the state to authenticate and they have done so. So they don't know why they're saying that in the media because that's not an issue.
There was so much of a watch was happening in Newford. But it's not unusual. A lot of these people who are in places of power, particularly over our children, don't like our children. I've said it before.
I'm going to say it again. Ulysses S. Bias, who was the first black school superintendent in the state of Georgia. I heard him speak once towards the end of his life.
And he said his fear about integration was that we had put the Fox in charge of the hen house. We had set our most precious and prized possessions into a place that didn't really have their best interests at heart. And I can't help but to look at this case in Beaufort and wonder if that's true. You got a superintendent of a system allegedly, right?
Cause whatever. I want to know the lawsuits. I believe it was him, but I'm going to say allegedly. Um, make using these racial epithets in a school system that is very diverse.
Right. If you don't know, let me say this about the Browning of America. Right now under the age of five white children are the minority. So diverse school districts are on the rise.
I also think that's why we're going to see the death of public education in my lifetime, but that's another thing for another episode. But in the meantime, while our children are in these public schools, they often are under the purview of people who don't care about them. And we have to do something about that. We have to do something about that.
So that's public schools. Now, people will say, some people will say, well, that's the problem with public schools. That's why I support private schools. That's why I support charters.
That's why I support homeschooling. All right, listen, I do think we need more community control of schooling. But as long as the vast majority of our children are in public schools, whether or not you support charters or vouchers or pro choice, whatever you are about that, I'm going to need you to also advocate for public schools. Cause that's where the babies are.
Right. This whole, I'm not going to go into this because I'm having a personal issue with one of my colleagues on campus who don't get this issue. It doesn't, that does not understand. When we advocate for choice, when it comes to education, what we're advocating for is to leave most of our children behind.
Because most public school children don't have access to quality charter schools, nor quality private schools because they just can't afford it. And so even though I want more community control of schools, until we are in a position to have community funded schools that represent the ideals and values of the community, I have to advocate for both. I cannot leave public school children behind. I can't say I love children and not want to take care of the ones who are in public schools.
I'm off my sub box because that's a completely different conversation, but I got to put it there. We do have students who's parents can't afford to send them to private schools, but let's start talking about how that is not the peaceful setting that our children deserve either. So I'm going to bring up the two cases that are going on. I'm not going to call the schools names.
You can go to the bottom line. There was one young boy on the first day of school. He's got locks. His father has to withdraw from school because the school won't permit him with children like their hair.
And if you see the video, what comes across in that video is the cold callousness of these white women policy as if the, see, this is the thing that, that, uh, oh, it makes my teeth itch. I don't even know what to call it. But when folks invoke policy, like humans don't create policy, I have a problem. So these two women are standing in the office giving him the handbook, talking about the school policy, giving him the paperwork to withdraw his student as if policy exists somehow out of the blue.
Like they didn't have a word in that policy or they can't resist that policy or whatever, but the policy is all overarching and no human has control of it. That kind of, I'm going to hide my white supremacy. I'm going to hide my racism behind the word policy. That's a bullshiggy.
And let's just call it what it is. Right. So when you see the video, it's heartbreaking because the one baby looks just wide and shocked that he's witnessing this young baby, right? You've got the father extremely emotional.
He's trying to, you know, all the myths and narratives about black fathers. And you got this daddy trying to enroll his child. And I'm sure what he thinks is a better school than the public and can't get a baby. And then you've got these two white women in the office.
I promise I want to go through the computer screen. So Google that way and look at that video. And then you've got a second video where a young lady is put out of school because she has weave in her hair. Now, let me say this.
It ain't blonde. It ain't red. It ain't purple. It ain't pink.
It ain't yellow hair color. It ain't to her waist. It ain't long dresses and candy curls and frieze or something that, you know, that they could say is distracting. It was none of that.
It was none of that. And yet, and still they hide behind this policy. Children can't have weaves and extensions. Who, who primarily wears that?
In the case of a little boy, who primarily wears locks? Those policies are written full of racial bias. And yet we talk about them like they're neutral objectives. They're not in human beings.
Set those policies, usually school boards. And remember, I said school, I didn't say this part. So let me say, not only do school boards not have to have any background education, they ain't got to have a whole lot of racial diversity training either. And third, because it takes money to run for school board systems, school boards typically don't look like the areas that they serve.
Now that's the problem with the public setting, private schools, because they're private, they can set whatever policies they have, but they want to for the most part. All that means is our babies aren't safe anywhere until we control the school systems. There has to be a complete turning inward until we do. We're going to continue to hear stories like this.
Until we have our own institutions. Season three is going to be all about turning inward because that's why I'm right now at this point in my life. I see that as what we need to do. We're looking at these nail salons, right?
In New York and they beat women over the head with brooms and all this kind of stuff. And you you begin to see more black nail technicians advertising their services, things like that. We have got to establish our own stuff. At what point do we say to ourselves, you don't want me there?
Bet. I mean, all black people stoke that inner fire of petty. You don't want me there. Bet.
I got you. I ain't got to go there. I'm going to turn this turn inward. I really want us to see this now in reaction to the video of these young children's hair.
Well, not in reaction, but something that I'm starting to bring together with that is this current boom and etiquette workshops. I don't want to sound like I'm critiquing that because I myself, I was a deputy time when I was in high school. And my mom made sure we had etiquette workshops. I was exposed.
I know the proper, you know, I know what the salad fork is. I know what the butter knife looks like. I know what to do with my utensils in between. I know the tear off chunks of bread and not put the whole roll up to I know all of that, right?
I know the scoop my stoop outward, not inward. I got it. But here's the issue post slavery. One of the ways that some black people tried to assert their humanity was to master Western social grace as an etiquette because they believed, if I can prove that I know all of these rules, the rules of Western culture to you, maybe you could recognize my humanity.
I didn't, it's respectability politics. It was women in particular, they were pursuing this cut of true white woman who, you know, I'm trying to aspire to anyway. I'm not getting there. That's hindsight.
hindsight is always 20. I don't want to judge these people who in that moment were trying to figure out the best ways to assert their humanity. I don't know what I would have been like. Let me say that.
But it's interesting to me that in this current political climate, in this current racialized climate, I am seeing more and more black women holding etiquette workshops. And in some of the comments in response to the videos of these children being put out of school for their hair, I'm seeing natural hair attacked. Black folk is trying out for that because what you need to understand is King regularly wore suit and they still killed him. Malcolm X readily wore suit.
They still killed him. It won't save you. It might open some doors for you. I don't know if you want those doors open because if someone wants you only because you can approximate to their culture, I don't know how comfortable you are feeling that setting.
That might not be the best space for you to grow. But I want us to be more critical about how we judge other black folk. You should not have to know the difference between a dinner fork and a salad fork to be treated well. I don't want us to judge each other like, yeah, we got to be really careful.
Now, again, I am an advocate for students knowing social graces and etiquette because it will open some doors. If they go on an interview and the interviewer says, let's go to lunch. I need for you to be able to present yourself a certain kind of way so that you have the option of taking the job or not. Right?
But at the same time, I'm not going to say that all your civil rights, liberties and the ability to be human should be affected by that. So we have to be very careful as black folk and we can't judge about another based on exposure because all that shit is exposure. Just because you know how to conduct yourself in a five course meal does not mean that you are somehow more worthy of respect than someone who does not. All right, I just had to throw that out there.
But here's I'm going to go back to the turning inward. As we turn inward, one of the things I want us to do is to not only support entrepreneurship, I see that growing. You know, I thought it was Sam super down in New Orleans, the owner and CEO of the crayon case, cosmetics. I love her.
And if you follow if you follow her on Instagram yesterday, she and the real BB Judy who owns Colitis Scott, a scope. I don't know what the rest of the company name is, Colitis scope, but she does the miracle drops her hair, right? The two of them along with the car, I think it was one other business owner, any one is a two because it was two guys in picture. But they went around the wall in yesterday and visited Black owned businesses and basically did free publicity for these businesses.
You know, they ate dinner here and they showed a picture of them eating dinner and they wrote about how good it was and that kind of thing. I feel I'm already a fan of hers because she's one. She's funny one. Cooker as well.
It looked like good food. And I love her business advice about being real and authentic and still being successful in business. So if you're not already following her, make sure you follow her. But yesterday, I was like, I was in love with that.
The concept that I'm going to take the attention that's on me right now. I'm a big up the black business is in my seat. More of us can be doing that. More of us should intention.
Let's start a hashtag. Somebody send me an email suggestion of a hashtag. Let's start a hashtag where we do that. We go into a black business, we get good service, we take pictures of what we have experienced and what we see.
And let's hashtag it. Let's let's, you know, let's do some stuff with that. Um, the other way I want us to turn in work is through think tanks. I think we need to intentionally have some think tanks going.
Now, I'm not talking about these huge, expensive, elite organizations. I'm saying in every community, you need a group of individuals dedicated to the liberation of black folk, to the creation of a more just and equitable society for all people. You need your thinkers, your deepest thinkers. You need your politicians who are dedicated to that, not just politicians trying to get elected politicians dedicated to that.
You need educators dedicated to that. And you need to meet regularly to discuss policy and to create innovative solutions for the problems facing our communities. I really want to see these think tanks develop. Again, I'm not talking about those big money, uh, where they have direct impact on policy.
We need those. Yes, but we don't have to wait for that. We can start small because a lot of things happen at the local level and we can have some local think tanks develop. So I just want us to think through how we can turn inward.
We have got to develop our own, um, educative institutions. We have got to have our own institutions that run like us. Stacy Pack, and I love her, um, had a post yesterday on Facebook about how her HBCU is trying to model a PWI in some decisions they're making. And she points out that they're trying to model a school that is nothing like them.
It happens at my HBCU where decisions are being made based on PWI models of schools that are four times as big as us with a budget, probably five times as big as our budget. And it doesn't make sense. That is not how HBCs have sustained themselves historically because sustained themselves by doing things their way. So when we establish these institutions, these institutions should not look like, should not try to mirror white institutions.
They should be established based on our own community values and needs. I'm off that. All right. I want to go to the second part of what I want to talk to you about because all that shit I just said is talking about, that's heavy and it's heavy work to do.
But let me tell you this, August 21st happened this week. I'm according today, August 23rd, 2018, um, but August 21st was a couple of days ago. And I was all in my feelings because let me tell you what happened on August 21st. You got Nat Turner's Rebellion started on that day and the Haitian Revolution started on August 21st in the boy economy and ceremony.
Do you know how much hope you have to have? See, we talk about, um, the spirit of rebellion, the spirit of resistance and what it means to be a warrior. I think we think about that. But we forget the power of hope.
I don't think Nat Turner, but I don't want to put, I don't want to put thoughts in his head. Let me say it like this. I don't know if any enslaved or free black person trying to enslavery believe that their singular act would do it. I'm not sure.
You know, John Brown, white man, I don't know that John Brown believed that his resistance was singularly, single handedly in US plantocracy. I don't know that. I don't know that Harriet Tubney believed that her missions into the south to liberate enslaved people. I don't know that she believed that that was enslaved.
But I do believe that they all had hope. I believe that they knew those incremental things that their personal me putting my hair down doing what I know I am called to do. I think they knew that it would have an impact on the end of, of slavery. Any United States.
I think they did know. I think they had hope. I can't imagine what it was like to meet in the woods and hate and decide we are about to liberate ourselves from what is known as the world's greatest army at the time, the polling time. Can you imagine how much hope you got ahead?
Now that hope was informed by their spirituality in that Turner's case and in Hade's case. There is a blueprint there that we can follow and we ain't scared of our own shit. But I just want to talk to you about the power of hope. Neither Hade wouldn't be free today if somebody didn't have the faith, have the hope that it was possible.
And while Nat Turner's rebellion did not directly in slavery, it had an impact. It had an impact. Hade had an impact on that. Or even how slavery happened here.
Inslaid Africans resistance in the great dismal small area, modernized in Brazil, the Maroons and Jamaica, all of them had an impact separately, right? We that's how systems work. We don't all have to be doing the same. We don't all have to be building the same institutions.
We don't all have to be resisting the same way. So I get frustrated when black people try to judge your activism because it don't look like theirs. Resist in whatever way you resist. Now I want us to network.
I want us to be informed by other movements throughout the diaspora. See, that's the other part. Let's not forget that some of these resistance movements were mirroring what happened in other parts of the African world. They were paying attention to what was happening globally without the internet, without smartphones, without a laptop.
And we don't do it anymore connected supposedly to the African world through technology. We got work to do. We've got work to do. But I want us to remember just as those brothers and sisters in the boycott men words, remember that together armed with our own culture and our own spirituality, we can liberate ourselves.
Haiti is evident today. And let us understand even though by some accounts, Nat Turner's rebellion was a failure because of brotherless hanging, let's not forget the impact that he sacrificed had on our current liberation. I'm not saying we free yet. I'm saying we are held up a lot closer than if you had not acted at all.
One more thing before I let you go, did you see Mickey Minaj try to bring Harry up in her mouth? Listen, one of my very mature, probably much more mature sisters than me said to me, she thought it was satire that I should be upset. Maybe for some things, I don't think you played it. And my my hair is moving.
I don't know what's going on with that particular artist. I don't want to call her name, but most of us know. I don't know what's going on with that particular artist. I know she needs to be surrounded with people who love her because something is obviously going on.
I want somebody to pull her good and strong and put a bug in her and bring up that name no more in that kind of way. Please and thank you. All right, y'all. I've enjoyed talking to you this morning.
I'm recording in the morning. I'm going to try to make mornings my new recording time because then maybe I won't make as many excuses. Y'all have. Oh, I wanted to point out a couple things.
So one, if you are following me on Facebook at Tellum Tip told you, you know, I go live on Tuesday nights. So if you missed the podcast and sometimes I'm missing from the podcast, pop over to Tellum Tip told you on Facebook Tuesday nights around 9 15ish and I'm live in doing the same thing I do on these podcasts. But you missed me there. Catch me there.
Right. The other thing is the still juke life crew. Sorry, the juke life crew is one of our Instagram handles. We are starting a book club.
So if you want to be a part of that, let me know. Our first book is American Marriage by Tayari Jones. We start reading on September 1st. If you want to be part of that, send me an email at dr tip at tellum tip told you dot com and I'll hook you up with information and details.
Again, I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful day. Take care. Bye.