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Amala Ekpunobi

I Have So Much to Say About This Debate…

Jubilee brought together a group of black men and women of various skin tones to discuss their experiences and ideas about colorism and how skin tone affects black people’s lives. Let’s watch and react.

Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a1LuxEGl9o&t=24s 

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Duration:
2h 19m
Broadcast on:
12 Aug 2024
Audio Format:
mp3
(upbeat music) - Hi everybody and welcome to the show. Or should I say welcome back to the show? It's been a minute. It's been like a whole week or a week and a half. And it's because I first went to Hungary to do a little panel in Estergon for all my Hungarians who are listening right now. I went from there to Budapest 'cause if I'm gonna go all the way to Hungary, you know, I'm gonna bounce around a little bit, check out the sites, meet some people, then I went from there to Croatia, and from Croatia to London and Taylor himself, who is in Nashville now, woo, was also, he was also in Europe. - Yeah, I went to Edinburgh and then London and then Paris for Beach volleyball in the Olympics, which Team USA did not do that well in, but we did well across the board in all the other things. And so there can exceptionalism flex on him, but you know, good times, yeah, but very happy to be back. And on today's topic, which is absolutely begging for the presence of a white male. Here we go, back into it, coming in hot. - Sure thing, if we're gonna come back, you know, we gotta come back right. We're gonna do a Jubilee middle ground. It's titled "Light Skin and Dark Skin." We're bringing it together. Light skin and dark skin black people, presumably to have a conversation about skin tone, about race, about colorism, and about the different things we experience. I am a light skinned half black person. I didn't get invited on this episode. Jubilee, what happens? Okay, I should have been there. Because it does seem like there was maybe a bunch of very left-leaning people on this episode, but we're gonna find out for sure as we watch and go through the motions here. And it's actually going to bring up a lot of different topics. And some of those topics revolve around travel. I did a little bit of traveling recently. We'll talk about the idea of colorism and how it impacts people outside of the United States. So without further ado, whether you are white, black, yellow, purple, green, we can watch light skin and dark skins. Do get out on Jubilee, middle ground. Let's go ahead and watch. Being light skinned in that sense, sometimes you feel like you don't necessarily have a home. I'm trying to be with my people, but then it's like, oh, well, you're not really black enough. Within a justice. That's so funny, I recognize that guy because he used to be like the bouncer or like the person who checks IDs for a bar that I go to in LA. But I can't say which bar. It's this one. We're typically penalized more harshly than light skinned. People are just on average. I'm just curious if you've ever been close to skin lightening beauty. - Yeah. - You've always did? - Yeah. - I don't feel comfortable being labeled by my skin tone. If you agree, please step forward. - Interesting question. I don't feel comfortable being labeled by my skin tone. I don't know that I feel particularly uncomfortable with anything. If somebody wanted to label me as black or light skinned or whatever, it just is what it is. And I would correct people if they labeled me incorrectly. I don't go into the world labeling myself with my skin tone anymore I used to. When I was younger, I'm like, I'm black, even though it's half black and half white. And then I went through this whole political journey and I'm like, I'm a half black conservative. And then it's just like, okay, why does that even matter in the first place? Just be who it is that you are and let go of labels in general, let alone labels that have to do with your skin tone because your skin tone doesn't really mean much at all. So even through like political progression, at least I would label it as progression, I still had some sort of like deep connection to my skin tone that was just like pounded into me for something, for some reason. And letting that go is a liberating thing. You don't have to be held to your skin tone. In fact, it doesn't mean much about you at all. Taylor, do you feel comfortable being labeled by your skin tone, Whitey McWhiterson? - Oh my gosh, I don't have a good answer to this. I mean, on principle, I'm just gonna say no, but as we know these prompts in this discussion are designed for a conversation within the black community, but I'm still gonna put these prompts in the chat like we normally do. So you guys can say whether you agree or disagree, but I'll add a show results if you feel like these questions are necessarily geared toward you in the context of a specific discussion. - Perfect, good idea. The reason I feel like I don't like being labeled is because I don't like when people say that light skin women are so, oh, you're submissive, you're this because I know ultimately what they're trying to say when they say that. It's saying something and then also not saying something really harmful about darker skin women. And it upsets me. Number one, don't put me in a box. And you put me in a box that also negatively impacts another group of women and I don't like that. My opinion, sure, I don't see anything particularly wrong with that. I wouldn't label any person of a specific skin color to be submissive or dominant 'cause we just know it's not the case. So yeah, I can see what she's saying. - On the whole colorism issue in general is that we're black. So I don't wanna be a light skinned black woman. I am black. I am Sabrina, I am a black woman and I'm a own woman and I don't associate with the stereotypical light skin woman and what they do and what they portray. So I'd rather just be considered a black woman just like a darker skinned black woman as well. Do you think in a sense that people can maybe think that you're saying, well, I don't see color? So that is kind of my opinion. And it is kind of like what white people say when they don't wanna be racist, I don't want to color. And my own own family primarily are all dark skin. So growing up, I didn't. I saw beautiful people. I saw my family. I saw my dark siblings and that's just what it was. Until recently, the conversation has really come up to the point where I'm starting to ask them. Like, what was your experience? And they too say that they didn't have a negative experience for real. I literally see black people. I see white people. I see Mexican people and that's what it is for me. Can we have? - Fair enough. And it's kind of its own iteration of like of race neutrality, at least what she's speaking about so far of that, you know, for the most part. Yeah, sure, there's a gradient as far as our skin tones, but I'm black, you're black. You know, that's fine. I don't know that we need to go much deeper than those feelings. But people will tell you, no, there's, you know, this intersectional idea that not only do we experience racism as black people, but within the black race there is colorism, meaning darker skinned black people have a different experience than lighter skinned black people. And for some that may be true, but not for all. So I like this idea that she's saying, I'll ask you about your personal experience and you can tell me if you've experienced anything different than what I've experienced. But if you're not coming to me saying that there's some sort of difference in your experience, I'm not going to assume that. I'm not going to insinuate that that's already happening based off of my own prejudices or my own judgment about race and colorism. And that's really the way you should be. Assume nothing's going on unless somebody tells you there's something going on. - Have the disagreeor step forward. - Grab yours. - Can I just say one thing to you first off, I've dated a couple of like skinned girls. They know what I said they were submissive first off. (laughing) The reason why I didn't step forward is because dark skin, like everybody's starting to find out the science is starting to agree. Dark skin is where it started baby. And the reason why I think that I'm okay with being called dark skin and why I love the fact that there are light skin is because we have to realize that all of these people came from this prototype. Like I look at these beautiful dark skin people over here and I always love the darkest people 'cause they have no pimples, no nothing. It's just pure perfection. - Beautiful skin. - And excuse me, you know, this is not an extremist view but we all know that dark is dominant and light is recessive and I don't think that it's a negative thing to be called dark. I think the media wants us to think that but I don't think it's a negative thing to be called dark, it's a call for the originals. - Does the media want you to think it's a negative thing to be called dark? And he says that what he's saying is not extreme and I think specifically he was referencing, you know, darkness being dominant and lightness being sort of recessive or less dominant than darkness. But some of the things he's saying before that were pretty extreme, you know, like I super love people who are extra dark, their skin doesn't have like pimples or blemishes as if that's a value that we place on the people based on the way that they look. It's a very negative way of thinking although he's portraying it as a positive way of the viewing other people. There's a few red flags in that little speech he just gave. - That's great. - I acknowledge that we should not have to have these divisions and these terms. One term that illustrates that to me is brown skin. You know, the black people who are kind in the middle. How ridiculous does that sound when we're all variations of brown? You understand, right? However, I didn't step forward because I'm not offended by being called dark skin. I will say there is a dehumanization that does occur with this labeling like for instance on social media. A light skin, A dark skin, that drives me insane. Now I just wanted to address just a couple things you said. First, I want to say I'm very glad that your family members have not felt the impact of colorism. I'm so happy to hear that. I wish that was the dominant reality for dark skin girls. Unfortunately, it is not. We have to remember colorism is not just socially systemic as well. Even if they haven't necessarily felt the way that dark skin is perceived in society, that doesn't mean that they may not one day feel that. - I don't really understand. And that one thing I think that-- - I want to hear her substantiate the systemic remark, but maybe we'll get that a little bit further. What does she mean by colorism is systemic. And hopefully I think she's specifically referencing America. I would love to hear more about that. - Ads to it though is how you're raised. My dark skin siblings are my step siblings. So my mother is light skinned. My mother never mentioned our color, you know what I mean? Whereas some parents will prep you for the conversation. It was just never a conversation. - We all got prepped, do you guys want to get prepped? - Yeah, and so that's what I'm saying. Even when I plan on having kids, I date a dark skin man. - Yeah. - Potentially I can have a dark skin child. I'm not going to go around just prepping them for the worst. I want them to just know that they're black and they're beautiful, whatever tone they come out. I have to say, honestly, we're all black and all lives matter are the same to me. In the sense that both statements are true, but neither do anything to address the issue at hand, so they're meaning this. - Right. - Yes, we're all black. However, some black people are further marginalized because they are dark skinned. And I understand what you're saying about not wanting to beat your children down with the idea of oppression, but not talking about it is not going to make it go away. My mother was extremely affirming to me as a dark, scant little girl because she understood that if she didn't do it at home when I child and I get out into the world. - Exactly. But that's not always the case is the thing. So why would you go function with the assumption that the worst possible reality is what is going to befall your child and tell your child of that worst possible reality before they've experienced an ounce of it? So you have a light skin, a lighter skinned woman who's saying, yes, I'm black. I grew up in a black household, but my mom never felt the need to tell me things about my race. And I went off into the world and didn't experience all that much on behalf of my people or my skin tone or because of my skin tone. So had her mother sat down and said, the police are going to do this, white people are going to do that, people are going to look at you like this. Well, now you're instilling a sense of anxiety in somebody who may go out into the world and not even experience an ounce of that. So why would you do that as a parent? Instead of tackling situations as they arise for your child, if we calculated the worst possible scenario that our children could fall into at any given moment and sit there and prep our child for the scenarios, you are instilling them with a sense of anxiety. And that's not to say you never have any conversations or you never warn your child about anything. It's just to say that shouldn't be your first reaction in having a black child that you need to sort of safety proof them for the horrible things that happen in the world. There are better ways, I think, to go about that. And instead of opening the fire hose, maybe have it like a dripping faucet, where as things come up, you tackle them with your child and as they're old enough to understand these things or even experience these things, you can talk to them about it. - No, we ain't in Kansas, no mo. - Completely understand, but it's also when I say we're all black is like, if we were to get pulled over tomorrow, I'm black to a white man to a white cop. What my point is more so is that we are dividing ourselves with this conversation as well. And I don't want that for us. I want us to just be on the same page 'cause that way we can move forward in life. - My immediate reaction was no, solely because I am a light-skinned person, you know what I'm saying? But then you kind of brought up how what's tied to it are the stereotypes that come with being a light person, light-skinned person or a dark-skinned person. And those can be detrimental to a light-skinned person or a dark-skinned person. - Yeah, right. - I think that those stereotypes are majority true though. Whether they're true or not is kind of irrelevant. The fact that they're detrimental to people, I think that's the problem itself. - So when I first heard the prompt, I think when I was younger and I was growing up, like being dark-skinned was something I would like try to run away from because of the negativity surrounding that term. But like as I grow up now and I'm like living in a time where I see like models like I'm like, yeah, I'm like all these people looking comfortable. - And you flawless girl. (indistinct chatter) - And like being more confident in myself, I'm like, yeah, dark-skinned, what about it? - Maybe this is just me and maybe I have psychological problems. If I was saying something like that and like the whole group around me started to just like collectively height me up. And that way something about it feels very performative. Like you really don't have to do that. I know who I am. I know what I look like. And if you all collectively come at me with like, oh my God, but you don't even talk. You know, you're just as beautiful as Enoch Yai. I don't know if you guys have seen Enoch Yai, but she is super, super, super, super, super model with really gorgeous dark-skinned or whatever. You don't have to hype me up like that. You can just let me say what I'm saying because I don't feel any type of way about it. But you reacting in that way makes me feel some type of way about it. Makes me feel like I'm not attractive. You have to come at me that hard to affirm me in something that I wasn't even saying. Yeah, I don't know. That might just be me, but that's what I felt. I also like it because I think when it comes to the black community, we're not a monolith. So I think it is good to like display that we are a diverse group, even though we are pretty large. On the other side, I do see how people nitpick a bit too much and pay like way too much attention to the details. So sometimes I'm like, no, I'm just black. I'm really interested in this conversation, but for me, my perspective is totally different. I was born in Africa, Ghana. And so with the West part, many of us are dark. Then you get to north of the light. You get to the east and west, many shades. I never knew there was a such thing as colorism till I came to the United States. It's just like you said, you're gonna be black at the end. It does not matter when it goes down. Especially in this country. Exactly, it doesn't, you could be the lightest one sitting out of here, but you're black when it comes down to it. Thank you. I have experienced colorism from within the community. Oh yeah, there's a lot of colorism within the black community with people saying, oh, lighter skin is better or some guys saying, I specifically want to date a dark skin queen and like keep our skin tone moving forward or they'll say lighter skin women are more exotic, they're bad or whatever. There are stereotypes about light skin men and dark skin men and all these different things within the black community. And I'm curious if other races have that experience. Like I can't imagine white people coming up with different stereotypes for like a tanner white person than a super pale white person. But maybe that, maybe y'all are doing that as well (laughs) within Hispanic cultures. I'm sure there's probably some form of colorism. You see a lot of colorism in Asian cultures where typically light skin is seen as more beautiful. I'm thinking of like Korea, Japan, for example, where you have people bleaching their skin and mothers saying to their daughters, you know, I wish you turned out lighter all these different things. There's a lot of colorism, if that's the term that we're gonna use, just all over the place and all different races get impacted by it. So it's an interesting thing to talk about 'cause I think it's in America at least. It's so often talked about through the lens of blackness and it impacts way more people than just the people within the black community. - Okay. Walking up, walking up. - There's kind of like this opinion that light skin people can't experience colorism. Dating my current boyfriend, this is a dark skin family. I was whitewashed, immediately I was bougie, immediately I was uppity, immediately. And this is before getting to know me. - I think it was second grade. I vividly remember I was on the playground and this guy had told me like your skin is blacker than dog (beep) and that was like the first time like I had been like, oh, so I am different from everyone. Most of the comments like I got about my color were almost always people within the black community but then on top of that it was always boys. Sure some girls maybe from time to time but it was usually always like black guys and they'll always come. - And boys do have that disposition. I feel like when they're younger, like you can meet some mean ass little girls. Don't get me wrong. And just kids in general are just very like honest. They'll just say the first thing that comes in your head but little boys, oh my gosh, just hit tough to be out there. You know in school girls would be like, oh, you're like Oreo. You know, you're black, you're mixed with white or whatever boys will come up with the nastiest thing that they can say to you just to say it to you and it will happen to white girls too. They'll come up to little white girls and say, oh, you're as white as this piece of paper, blah, blah. And you just, of course you hear that as a little kid and I don't think we, of course little kids don't recognize this but even adults don't recognize how impactful words are on little children. It could be a passing comment that you make about a six year old who's in your kids class or something. That comment that will be nothing to you as an adult or a teenager will go on to impact that little child for decades to come. It will be something that they will never forget. It is a very formative memory for them just in the same way that this young girl is saying, oh yeah, somebody compared my skin tone to dog poop. And now that's something that she carries with her for the rest of her life. So if we can, you know, instill in our children to keep these comments to ourselves, we all have intrusive thoughts. We all think these things sometimes and not all negative thoughts need to be spoken out loud and shared with everybody around them because what's a passing thought for you is a sticking thought for the person that you give that to. And yeah, you know, little kids are rough. They're rough to deal with. - Yeah, and just on the flip side of that conversation, there is also the reality that bullying is something that is basically a universal human experience. It happens across cultures, across genders, across races. It's just a real thing that you are likely to encounter more than likely to encounter at some point in your life, almost no matter who you are. So there is room for the discussion of the idea of resilience and the idea of not allowing the opinions of others to define you. So yes, we need to, you know, to encourage young people and try to nurture them and direct them in a way where they are not participating and inbullying and we need to create an environment whereas little of that is happening as possible and that's stigmatized and so on. But we also need to train young people and as parents, as teachers, as community, to be resilient. And, you know, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. And that attitude seems to be lost on this newer generations, I would say, and you know, Jonathan Heights written extensively about this in his book, "The Calling of the American Mind." And they've actually shown through, you know, social psychology and research that there is more of a fragility just across the board when it comes to our sense of agency, our sense of being grounded in something that is deeper than that can stand up to some kind of bullying or the things that are just basically common experiences to everybody that used to be expected and now it's like the end of the world. I understand there's different dynamics that play specifically in, you know, when you enter into race and colorism and whatnot, but I just felt like that also needed to be said. - That's so true. I think everybody jumps to like these catastrophic measures to fix these things now and like, I feel like back in the day, if a kid made a comment like that to you be like, okay, that's mean, you'd maybe say something back to them or it'd be like water off a duck's back and your parents would fortify you with this idea that, okay, not everything needs to be such a big deal. Now it's like, we need to go to the principal's office and I'm gonna sit down with their parents and we're gonna unpack their racism and see if it came from their parents and how they view black people and this and that. When we're off and then I feel like it's just a kid making a comment and it's something that popped into their mind. And unless it's like a chronic issue where this kid is constantly coming after your daughter and creating like an unsafe environment for her to go to school in, it's really not that big of a deal if you get like one comment in school over something like this and we need to train kids to be tougher. - Excuse me, 'cause I'm like, you probably have like a mom or sister who looks like me. Like how could you say that? - Yeah, I relate to your story so much, both of my biological mom that had a gun in. So that's why I get my very darkness, well, but my-- - I have to pause on him. What happened to just saying your mom? (laughing) We need to bring back your mom because she just said, you know, you're black too, what do you mean? Your mom, your sister, you're telling me, I look like dog poop, what do you, your mom? But now you can't do that anymore because we're all PC or whatever and the walls need to be cushioned and we can't say like mean shit to people anymore. I would just be like, your mom and we'll all go away. We used to make your mama jokes all the time in school and you can't do that anymore. So that's a no-no. - Two brothers and sister are alike because their mom is from Kenya. Their whole life was so different than mine and I noticed in America, when we came, everyone was befriending my brother. But when, you know, we'd have to be in circles and even if the whole guy has this second grade, all the kids would like hold me like this with their finger and then wipe themselves off and all those names, they would come in and just, you know, say the worst things to me. And I'm in second grade wondering like, what's going on? Why doesn't my brother get any of this? I was just so confused because like you said, my whole head is, I'm thinking, wow, all of you guys, if you go back to our continent, you really look like us. What is this? I was extremely confused in the black population and, you know, I had to say for years, I really disliked African Americans at their, not my cup of tea. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - No, yeah, yeah. - I think, and you, there's lots of studies on this where how kids make certain associations with certain colors and they sad down kids and show them cartoons of different human beings on a gradient of colors from, ranging from white to very dark skin black, like this guy is, and ask them, you know, which color do you associate with goodness and the kids of all different races and backgrounds would pick white and say that they associate that with goodness, which do you associate with bad? They'd pick dark and the study was largely used to substantiate that children are racist and they learn and internalize racism from a really young age. But I'm just thinking like it's basic pattern recognition. Kids aren't scared of what's light. They're scared of what's in the dark. If you're asked to make this association, that's the association you're gonna make. Kids do jokes like this where they're saying, "Oh, they held my hand and then, you know, white did off on themselves." And it's not necessarily because those kids like hate black people. It's because patterns and associations that they've taken on that manifest in really unhealthy ways because they're children, okay? So we have to teach children how to be normal human beings. People are not born selfless. They are not necessarily born caring. They're not necessarily born compassionate. They're born with me, me, me. And this is my world and I'm a child. And oh, you're dark. I'm gonna rub that off on a towel and oh my gosh, you look like dog poop and all this different stuff. You have to train kids to be compassionate and to know that words can hurt people, that violence can hurt people and train them throughout the world. But instead we're like talking about their internalized racism and patriarchy when all of this stuff is very much natural. And yeah, it's just the hard truth of it. Nobody wants to, I guess, accept that that is the truth. But it is, especially with children. We hate ourselves. I think already being like African, there's already kind of like divide between Africans and African Americans. But then with most of the bullying that I went through being perpetrated by African Americans, I just like really started to dislike them. And I was like, I don't wanna be in their spaces. I don't care to. And this is a sign up. This is why I'm here 'cause you guys are educating me. I didn't know that it was African Americans. I was talking shit. So it was like this. - And that's not necessarily all the conversations. - But that's not all the time. - Also some parents are like kind of sad. - And that's what I was gonna say too, because you guys are mentioning and you guys are in second grade and stuff. And it's like, even my niece already is like, I want straight hair. And it's like, where are you getting this from? Like already? - 'Cause she's looking at you though. I was gonna say that about the lot. - No, well, I mean. - Yeah. (laughing) - I'm a good girl. - I became aware of colorism during childhood, early childhood, at that. Y'all, they was in, what, second grade running around the playground. They had a chant. If you're black, stay back. If you're brown, stay around. If you're light, you're just right. I remember hearing that sound on the playground from me being six, seven years old. I knew, okay, I don't have a problem with my skin tone, but society does. - And that's what I'm saying, like where does, where do they even get that from? Like the parents, like where are they getting this? - They get it from one little bad-ass kid that starts singing this song, and then they wanna fit in with that little kid. So then they start chanting it, and yeah, they'll do it with things like color, they'll do it, you know, boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider, you know, all this different stuff that kids say. They do it with fat kids and skinny kids and talk about what you're eating at lunch. Oh, you're eating Twinkies, and she's eating an apple. Kids recognize patterns, and then they start to associate patterns with good and bad and all these different things. And teachers and parents are supposed to teach kids that this is not the way that we view the world, even though through your little peanut brain, these are the things that you're putting together right now, and it's so fun to get a reaction out of people and to make yourself feel cool and to establish a sort of hierarchy at school based on things like color and skininess and boys versus girls, that's not the way things work in the real world. Like I said, we are not born a compassionate and empathetic. These things have to be, you know, taught to us, and we need to learn them. That's right. - That's what we're saying. - And doubling down on the narrative of racial differences and, you know, interpreting those experiences as supporting the narratives that I am oppressed because of that, it actually is counterproductive to teaching kids that empathy that they need. We learn that empathy by understanding the humanity of the other children around us. And even though they might wear glasses or have freckles or be tall or be short or be fat or be skinny or be of a different race, going through experiences together in a way where they can relate to one another as human beings is a way to develop that empathy naturally. And when you deprive children of that by giving them this story, that if you experience this, if someone wants to touch your hair, it's because they're racist, it's a microaggression. And if you have a kid internalized that, that's gonna build a put up walls and make it much more difficult to foster the type of empathy and the type of community that is this sort of melting pot that makes a diverse society actually function. So ironically, it undercuts the effort toward diversity and equality by reinforcing this narrative that we are defined by our differences. And that's what I think is so backwards about a lot of thinking around this, unfortunately. - Yeah. And a lot of you are also adding in the comments down below, you know, it's parents, it's parents, they're getting this from parents. That's true too. Kids just absorb everything like a sponge. So they might hear these things from parents and they'll take it home to school. The amount of kids, like during election time, come to school and they're just spouting, they're five years old and they're spouting off. You know, Donald Trump's gonna do this. Joe Biden has dementia or whatever. And you're like, you're five years old. You have no idea what you're saying right now. Of course, they're picking up things from their parents as well, which is why you need to be very, very mindful of what you say, very mindful, very demure about what you say around your kids. So we all know what I'll talk about. Of course. So I have a sister and she's your guys' beautiful complexion. And I remember when we were younger, we would put our arms together and I'd go, ha ha, I'm gonna make it. And this is when I was a lot, a lot or two. - Look at the problem, too. No, I'm just kidding. - What? - I'm gonna say, I'm gonna fast forward again. I'm out of Europe doing my thing music or whatever. And I go to my sister and I'm like, Z, I don't know, it just came out. I was like, Z, I'm always sorry that I did this and I'm sorry that I never told you you were beautiful. I'm your brother, I need you here. Don't leave me, I'm going crazy. And at that moment, I realize I'm free from this colorism thing. - The interesting thing about it is is that in my own family, there are varying shades. I noticed how sometimes that my brother, who is a little bit darker, would get treated versus how I might get treated. But then I also sometimes noticed how my younger brother, who is a little bit more lighter skin would get treated compared to me or my older sister or whatever. There were girls that I liked. Beautiful black girls growing up that I liked that were like, oh, well, you know, you're not maybe like as dark, you're not like that dude. Or people will look at you and be like, oh, you got all this education? Yeah, you're just a white kid. You don't talk like a black kid. I'm like, what does that even mean, right? Because all of us are wanting to get opportunities to be more educated so we can do bigger things in the world. We should be aiming for that. So when I would get made fun of sometimes some of the black girls I'd be trying to talk to, those experiences were even kind of turning me against my own people, you know what I mean? And so being light skinned in that sense, sometimes you feel like you don't necessarily have a home because you're like, okay, I'm not trying to be white, but I got white people kind of like relating to me and give me a little pat on the back. But then I'm not, I'm trying to be with my people, but then it's like, oh, well, you're not really black enough. All right, you know, a lot of these people are talking about like childhood experience, teenage experiences. If we all held ourselves in the oppression that we felt from our teenage experiences, we would never stand up. We are at our most selfish, at our most prejudice, at our most judgmental through our youth and our teenage years. And if we held ourselves to the things that people said to us back then, you would see no progress. Just think about like people who would have been so rude to you as teenagers and then you meet them as adults and they're a totally different person and we're all totally different people. Some of the prejudices and judgments that we held as teenagers, we look back now and go, oh my goodness. I'm glad I didn't have Twitter back then. I'm glad I didn't have like a YouTube channel where I was able to say these things out loud. Some of the like Brooke Schofield drama that's happening right now where she's getting canceled from a podcast called Cancelled which is absolutely insane and we don't need to go into that right now. But it's just like, yeah, duh. I'm so glad that there were moments in my life where I was able to be crazy and have just absolutely dog shit ideas and just not have them be in public or hopefully not have them set to another person that was going to be impacted negatively by the things I say. We are not our teenage selves and I hope that none of these people are still internalizing things that they experienced as children and that we give grace not only to ourselves but to the people who said those things to us because we hope fingers crossed, they've grown. And if they haven't grown from who they were at 13 when they said that your skin looks like dog poop, then you shouldn't feel anger towards them. You should feel pity. This is how the emotions should switch. - Can we have the disagree a step forward? - We are stressing that maybe out. (laughing) - I don't feel like light-skinned people can experience colorism. However, I do feel like their experience is that light-skinned people can have that a negative 'cause I've had people tell me, oh, you know, you're not black, you damn near white. It bothers me, but that's all. You know what I'm saying? That's it. I'm not gonna say y'all are being colorist toward me 'cause y'all are talking about my skin. It is annoying, but it's like, I feel like that's insulting for me to say, well, this is reverse colorism because none of anything that I will ever go through will ever touch what I know y'all have gone through. You know what? - Who's to say that? - What I'm saying? - Yeah. - Can I just cut it really quick? - I'm not gonna say it's like offensive, it's just a bit reductive, you know what I'm saying? Y'all gonna make me be the insufferable woken. - No, no, no, say what you gotta say. - Say what you gotta say. - I know we talked about earlier the opinion that light-skinned people don't experience colorism for me. That's not an opinion, right? I don't want it to be where light-skinned people can never share their experiences, especially when it comes to the invalidation of blackness. You understand? I claim y'all, y'all are just as black as I am. So you should have the space to discuss these experiences, especially if they traumatized you. I just wanna say your experience doesn't have to be colorism, to be valid. I'm probably just gonna-- - Oh wow, this is very interesting that we must distinguish that the experience for dark-skinned people is worse and it is not colorism for light-skinned people because there must be something that is just wholly shared by dark-skinned black people and not experienced by light-skinned black people. The fact of the matter is, if you are being judged based off the color of your skin and there are prejudices being placed upon you, standards being placed upon you, people expecting you to be something that you may or may not be, you are experiencing colorism. Now we're going even further into like these isms and phobias and all this different stuff that I don't inherently agree with in today's society, but nonetheless, if you can experience colorism, she can experience colorism. - I've heard of you too 'cause I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I mean isms the same, like just how there is no reverse racism, there is no reverse colorism. Like we don't experience colorism. We experience prejudice based off of our skin color, but it's not the same thing. - Wow, we experience prejudice based off of our skin color, but it is not the same as colorism. And the same thing for racism, they're saying that you cannot experience racism in the reverse. This is a conversation, I don't even know how I would maintain my part in being that I disagree with a very framework of everything that is being discussed. - Man, we're relating to color, right? - Yeah, I think I agree with that. - That's my experience 'cause that's why I was saying earlier that I know that colorism can't necessarily be placed on this, but there's the word. (laughing) - I know you found the term for me. - Just to clarify and I understand where you're coming from. For me, I'm not talking about it in the sense of I'm gonna experience the same level of disadvantage. What I think a lot of light skinned people our experiences are more internal. It has to do with identity. It has to do with feeling like we have a space within the community when it comes to these issues, because I do feel like we're locked in when it comes to stuff where we're going that way, right? But then sometimes as we start stepping back a little bit closer to home, we need to be like, oh, wait a minute, are you really one of us? Are you really with? And then it becomes negative, so that can impact how we stand together as a unified front. - I mean, it can come in every direction. Just in the same way for a darker skin person, colorism can come in every direction. I don't know what the debate is here. If you're a light skin, there are lighter people than you that are saying, you're dark, you're dark. There are darker people than you that are saying, you're not really black because you're a light skin. There are people who fetishize you because you're a light skin just in the same way there are people who fetishize people who are dark skin. I don't know how it's up for debate, whether or not anybody of any color can experience colorism, especially when we step out of the landscape of the United States and go to other countries where there are different sets of standards spent and just wasted on skin color where we're having these just ridiculous discussions about what it is best to look like. - Got them on my point. - And I honor that. - Okay. - Before we continue the discussion-- - No, no, no, we don't do that. - Smart and monthly. - I'm sorry. - On circuit. - Okay. - I've benefited from colorism. - I've benefited from colorism. - Sure, I want to think about this. Scholarships for black people, loans for black people, job opportunities for black people, that is a form of colorism at the end of the day. And for some, you could argue that the darker you are, the better your chances are in many such cases, these days. I guess you could say being a lighter skinned black woman than a dark skinned black woman, maybe you get a little bit more male attention, you're fetishized a little bit more, is that a benefit? Because you have more options of male suitors or isn't a negative because you're getting unwanted male attention. I don't know how you parse these things out. We all have benefits that maybe come with our skin color and negative cons that come with our skin color as well. - I can say the way I've benefited from it, has not been by much, but has been extravagant and way. Number one, I've been to places that you would consider the hood and nobody ever messes with me. And I've come to find out that it's like, even in Mexican neighborhoods, black neighborhoods, everything, it's more of an interest, like you're not from around here. And I'll make my accent even a little thicker. (laughing) The second part of the beneficial benefiting from it is I look very, very, very different. And coming into California, I was at a bookstore and I was casted by I produced to be in national commercials and TV just because I was very dark. They approached me and they said, "Wow, where are you from?" "You have a very unique look." You know, I feel like the benefit for me is that there's more of a harder shell. You don't really know what to think. When you see a person as dark as me, you know, is he wild? Is he crazy? Is he just chill? - Right. It almost feels like sometimes the benefits of it don't really feel like benefits in a sense because they come almost with their own kind of tiered disadvantages, right? So if, you know, at being a light-skinned man, right, my mom is Caribbean. My mom's from the Bahamas and my dad is Creole from New Orleans. My dad is like really light-skinned and my mom is like more dark kind of somewhere in the middle. Being a Caribbean American, it's kind of weird in the sense because you have people looking at you being like, "Oh, okay." Like, you look a little bit different. You got more of an exotic look as some people might say. In that benefit, that doesn't really feel like a benefit to me because I see how my other brothers and sisters are being treated that are dark skin or might be a little darker than me. So I don't really see that as an advantage. - Do you believe colorism affects us more within our community or without, with the outside of our community? - To be quite honest with you, I think in some ways, it does affect us a little bit more inside the community. - Inside our community? - I think so. - I can say not in terms of economics, not in terms of opportunity per se, I think that's more outside. I'm just talking about the way we see each other. - The way we treat each other. - That's crazy. - The way we converse with each other. - I don't see. - Is that crazy? I love when people ask a question and they ask it as if they're ready to hear your real opinion and then you give your real opinion and they're like, "That's crazy, you're wrong about that." Well, why'd you ask the question then? If you really wanted to make the statement that it's worse without, with outside of the community, then just make the statement that you think it's worse outside of the community. Don't like team me up with a question that you're already gonna give your preconceived opinion to, but all right, I guess. I will say, as far as colorism goes, I've got in comments about my skin color from within the black community, from outside the black community. I happen to be within two different communities. I guess the white and the black. From white people, the main thing that I would get is like, oh my gosh, your babies are gonna be so cute. You're gonna have mixed babies. They're gonna be so cute. I want my own mixed babies. And you're like, okay, that's a little strange that you want babies of a particular skin color, but it's not necessarily a negative thing to say. From black people, it's either like, oh, you have a nice skin tone, or it's like, you're literally not black. We do not claim you as black. You have a white experience. You are acting white. This, that, that, that, that, that. So when he says, I feel like I've experienced more colors from within the community than from outside of the community, there are very valid points to be made there. But for each person, they're gonna have their own unique experiences, both within and on the outside. - Be the whole, oh, it's, it might be a passing joke every now and again, like, oh, bro, your shoes are whacked. You know, oh, your light skin. But it's not like a thing where it's oppressing us. There's a lot of, especially in the conversations, for example, light skin. There is a, there is an aspect of our masculinity that gets questioned. When it comes to whether it's being tough, being more emotional, like society and culture shows black men to be, you gotta be tough. You gotta be strong. That's what you're seeing in music videos. - Dark sand black men in the normal. - Exactly, that's what you're seeing more in culture, being presented to you. This is like what blackness looks like, right? For the most part. So then now, people be pulling your card all the time, trying to see if you're really about it. They be trying to see, oh, you're gonna be soft. And that happens inside of our community. - I mean, I can't speak to that experience, but I can imagine there's a lot, just within maleness, there's a lot of like testing and competitiveness and trying to, you know, take somebody down a peg and see how masculine they really are. And maybe that does happen on the basis of skin color. And I could see darker-skinned black guys maybe wanting to test the light-skinned guy out of competitiveness, probably out of a little bit of intimidation, because there's this general idea that light-skinned men get more women, that women are more attracted to light-skinned men, and that's who they go towards. So maybe within the black community, light-skinned guys are getting a little bit of heat and experiencing a little bit of competitiveness and having their masculinity tested in a ways. And maybe that ends up being based on skin color on some sort of subconscious level. You guys will have to let me know whether or not that's true. Any light-skinned or dark-skinned men who are listening right now? - I would say I've benefited because my previous job to what I'm working now, we had a darker-skinned woman and myself and the darker-skinned woman quit. And then I was literally late to work about two hours for about two years, and I never got fired. And I know it's because the one black person quit, the other one is still here. We can't just fire our last black person. - Wow. - So I know I've benefited from that just being black because I was once again, a diversity number, and it's gonna look bad on the company if you fire your last black person. - That's true. I remember I was-- - That's probably way more true now than it's ever been in history (laughs) because the amount of lawsuits that people are finding themselves in for firing black employees or all these different things, yeah, I mean, they just might've been doing that. - In sixth grade, and there was one of the kids, one of the black kids, 'cause I grew up in Arcadia, California, and it's predominantly Asian and white. For some reason, I'm not gonna tell the teacher's name because she's probably dead by now. - Damn, that's crazy. - She like just constantly picked on him, like constantly. Just going out of her way to pick on him. And she didn't pick on me the way she picked on him. Even as young as sixth grade, I realized like there's a difference in how you're treated based on your skin color. - When I was younger, I didn't realize that the privilege was there because the conversation of colorism never happened in my home. There was a, okay, well, I don't know what exists. I don't experience it. Ain't nobody talking about it. It's so I didn't know. And so it's like as I became more socially aware, and I actually seen what the reality of it is. It's like, it's not just mean and nasty remarks. Within the system, it is life or death. - Being like your teacher being nice. - Yeah, it can literally go from somebody just saying something nasty, something colorless to treating a lighter-skinned person better to a darker-skinned person dying. And I know good, good, and God damn well, I experience a privilege, and I know that it's there. So that's how I feel about it. - So yeah, interesting here you're saying that because in West Africa, most of y'all may know that there's a big problem with skin lightening. We're seeing it in across the continents. Now they're having a fight and making it illegal, but it's becoming so much that people are saying, well, I'm not gonna get any type of opportunity unless I'm a little bit lighter. - Wow. - And to think that you have to go to that point to feel that you get an opportunity. - To survival though, they see it in terms of survival. - Right, exactly. - So I'll just let him speak. Let him say what he wanted to say. Y'all have to cut him off. But yeah, if you think colorism is bad in the United States, step out of the United States for like two seconds. Just go virtually anywhere else and see what you think about colorism when you come back to the United States. It's very interesting because during the Olympics now, Brittany Kreiner was playing and everything and the National Anthem came on and she's crying during the National Anthem and you're like, "Oh, okay." 'Cause she was the one who used to kneel during the National Anthem and said it shouldn't be played at basketball games and then she gets arrested in Russia and detained and all these different things. She comes back to the United States and suddenly everything is, something new has been unlocked in her. And I don't wanna bring her down for that or laugh at her for that. It's a very interesting perspective and it's a very interesting way to have had your perspective changed. And I do just implore people if you feel that like America is this like horrible, racist, colorist country, step out of it and go somewhere. Go to a few different countries and check it out and see what you experienced there and then come back to the United States and think about like microaggressions in the United States compared to what you experience in other countries because we are not bad about color in comparison to virtually any other place in the world. - True, sure, we got a couple of comments from light-skinned black guys. So I wanted to read them before we get back into it. Shadow Man said many light-skinned guys like me get so ditched by dark-skinned brothers that we just go for the white girls or Latinas. And M Short says I am a light-skinned black man in college, I had a non-black woke girl literally telling me to my face that I'm not black enough to identify as a black man. - Yeah, that's crazy. I think there's not necessarily a shared identity crisis but for a lot of light-skinned people there is this sort of fork in the road that you meet up with, what am I? Like what do I identify as? And you get like papers in school and they're asking you to like put black or white and you can only fill one box or all these different things. And then the kids at school or like I said, calling you an Oreo or saying you're not black enough or what is it, Earl Sweatcher has this lyric where he says to a white for the black kids but too black for the white and you experience that and it can be a tough thing. But then you recognize as you get older it's like just a handful of people who like believe these things and you don't have to take everything so much to harm but also eff those people for feeling the need to just instill that into your life when you may or may not have even been worrying about that in the first place. It's just so, it's so BS once you get a little older and mature and you get separated from it all. So I'm sad that you had to experience that and I'm sad that all these men aren't testing you because you're light-skinned. It's just so strange to put this much value either consciously or subconsciously into somebody's skin color. - The experience of like being the only dark-skinned person in my school like was just horrible and being Senegalese, although like in Africa it's like you're not experiencing the racism you do here 'cause everyone's black. I did notice there was an issue with skin lighting. Like I knew my aunt's who had products, my cousins, like it's very rampant there. - Were you ever close? I'm just curious if you've ever been close to skin lighting, bleaching. - Yeah. - You almost did? - Yeah. - Thank you. - You're gorgeous. - Right. - Please stop. Stop patronizing me. Please stop patronizing me. I feel it for her. Let me stop, am I protecting? Just stop. Like let, I hate when people, when somebody shares something like vulnerable or whatever and they're just like being normal. They're just being vulnerable and then all of a sudden you come at them and it's just, I'm saying this for the second time, but chill, chill. I'm not a cop. I'm not a cop. I'm just sharing a normal story. - Oh, I've been out figuring out what a twisted thing, like the sun was made for you. Like the greatest source of life was made for you and because of media, I'm sorry, excuse me. - The sun was made for you. Just because people fare better in the sun because their certain skin color does not mean that the sun was made for them. - We allow ourselves, well, that's a trip to me. - Have I ever benefited from colorism? Of course not is designed for me not to benefit from it. I also found it interesting that the two dark-skinned black men stepped forward for benefiting and we stayed behind because research actually does reflect that at least socially dark-skinned women do face deeper implications of colorism. So when I saw them step forward and not us, I was like, okay, that's familiar to me. - I do wonder how that is researched. - Only reason that us as black men stepped forward, especially me being from America is because yeah, we get more opportunities in the film and the music and all that, but then what are they putting it? They're putting a gun in our hand or they're putting us in a dress or they're putting, they're not, show me a positive example that you have of a brother that looks like me on the screen. All I'm saying is is- - Whoa, show one positive example of a black person on screen. I just look at any like major black actor and they're playing a variety of different roles from doctors to lawyers to people with PhDs. I mean, like look at Octavia Spencer, Viola Davis, Denzel Washington, Mahershala Ali. There's a million different black actors and I'm talking dark skin black actors. I didn't mention anybody who's particularly light skin in that short list. And they're playing a multitude of different characters and then people of different backgrounds. So I don't know, like we are in peak black representation in film and TV right now. And if you're saying that there's not a single good example that you can come up with, then maybe we're not existing in the same reality right now. - That opportunity that we have, it's an illusion of opportunity. So when you say that the statistics said that black women actually suffer more from colorism, I don't believe that that's true. - That's not what I said. Actually, what I said, the social implications are deeper. I didn't say that dark skin. You don't have to believe it. They're a resource. - It's not because you can find- - Hold on, hold on, lastly, you can find positive images of black women on television. - Oh, of course. - You cannot have black men. - I understand there's an illusion of opportunity. - I just don't know where that's coming from. I don't know how to respond to that other than giving more examples of just positive examples you can see everywhere. I don't know. You've all watched some sort of like medical drama that has a black doctor. That's about all you need for just one simple single example of something positive, a positive depiction of black people in film. If anything, that's just like we're at peak positive representation of black people in television. And also, if you're a black person who doesn't want to take a negative role, don't take the negative role. We're really glossing over the active part that black people play in their own representation in film and TV. And some people were taught, oh, well, if we didn't take these negative roles, we wouldn't work at all. Okay, that's sometimes what needs to be done. The sacrifice that needs to be made in the name of progress. So if it was actually the case that black people are not being represented positively, which it is not the case, that is in fact a lie. But if it weren't the case, maybe you should wait until there is positive representation or rally for positive representation. Trinity, 'cause even how you say it, like when you walk into the hood, you're safe. That's based on the perception of you being aggressive as a dark skin man. That can quickly flip, for instance, within a justice system. We're typically penalized more harshly than light skin, people just on average. So I would never deny the experiences of colorism. For dark skin men, the implications are just deeper. Socially and beauty standards, especially- - Beauty standards, yes. - Typically do affect women more harshly. So I just wanted to be very, very clear about that. And the last thing is there's a lot of, I feel, I didn't feel this in my experience. So this system doesn't exist. This oppression doesn't exist. And I want to be careful of that. Because like I said, when personal lived experience is not enough, we got to go to data. And some facts data support and some facts data does not. - I do agree with her to a certain extent, you know, just like anecdotal experience cannot be the band-aid that covers up the situation, that covers up the wound that you guys are talking about, but also in a lot of the things that she mentioned, saying beauty standards more deeply impact black women than they do black men. Well beauty standards probably more deeply impact women than men in any sense of the word and any race ever, because women are more deeply impacted by this idea of beauty and they're held to different standards. Not to say that men aren't. So there's something there. The justice system is a whole different can of words to unpack and we can talk about the difference thing in sentencing between, you know, lighter skinned and darker skinned people. But we can also talk about the rate of crime based on the color of your skin and look through FBI stats of different races and the rate at which they commit certain types of crime and particularly black men, young black men, if we really wanna boil it down to its essence. So is that necessarily racism? Of course there are racist judges that exist. There are sexist judges that exist. There are all these different people with different prejudices who take it to their occupation and their workplace, but does that speak to a systemic issue on behalf of the criminal justice system? I don't know. The entertainment industry prefers light skinned black people. I don't know. I'd have to look. You'd have to actually just like pull up numbers on that. I kind of wanna lean towards maybe, yes, like maybe it's more palatable to be lighter skinned in a bit or maybe it's more like representative of our population that the population is becoming more and more mixed, but there's plenty of very dark skinned actors out there who are gaining a lot of success. And again, in the entertainment industry, more now than ever, there are actual diversity quotas for virtually every single major corporate project that's coming out these days. Disney has a specific, what should we call them, metrics for how diverse your cast has to be. And this is on the basis of gender, sexuality, orientation of any kind, plus race. The Oscars won't even consider certain films if you don't meet certain metrics for representation and that includes representation of black people. So whether or not within that forced representation, we are pivoting towards lighter skinned or dark skinned people, I don't know, because I can come up with many light skinned black actors and many dark skinned black actors. - Statistically, like dark skinned black men fill more acting roles, but again, when you talked about that earlier, that's usually where thugs or pimps or gangsters or whatever, and especially women. I think this is definitely one of the areas that women suffer from the most, and that goes back to the first black woman to win an Oscar. And the thing that bothers me the most is not only does that happen, but then we have what? It was like a run where we had Django, 12 years of slave, the help, the butler. - That was a lot of time, here was a run. - But the problem is, is that's what they want to continue to see us as, is the mammies and the black people that are scared of the ghost. - Whoa, oh, oh, oh wait a minute. Okay, the help, 12 years of slave, Django, you know, the color purple, roots, all these different projects or whatever, do you not think that was born out of black people saying we mustn't forget slavery, we must talk about slavery. In fact, we must make it a law that everybody is taught about American slavery and all these different things as we have in many other states. Of course, in that era where we're having these conversations and deeming these conversations to be pivotal and saying that, you know, you can't separate the black experience from the experience of slavery. That is what a lot of woke black people would say. Of course they're making movies like the help and Django and Jane, and 12 years of slave. And if anything, these movies would be really great for teaching people, not Django and change. It's not a very educational film. But for teaching people who are maybe unaware of these more harsher realities of the American history, having that be in front of their eyes and black people, again, were active participants in both producing and acting in these films. So how exactly is that the fault of the entertainment industry and why are we demonizing the entertainment industry for creating these films that were quite, you know, pivotal in nature for that era of media? I don't know. I feel like everything gets turned into like a victim narrative somehow, even if it's a good thing. - It's giving that that Ibram Kennedy adage. Like it's not whether racism occurred. It's how did it occur. It's like it's racist not to tell the stories because then you're erasing history and it's racist to tell the stories because now you're portraying black people in this way. It's like the problem might be with how you're interpreting the world rather than the actual world that's happening out there, what's happening in the entertainment industry. - Right, I don't know. - All of this, that's all, that's not gonna change. - But also like just a positive light of a black family. It's always light skin, like you had fresh prints, they changed out on a bit. You have Martin and so much of light skin. You know what I'm saying? - Blackish. - Yeah, blackish. It's always light skin, even fresh prints, except for the dad, it's all, the new fresh prints, it's all light skin. You know what I'm saying? - Yeah. And I feel like I remember watching family matters as a kid. Officer Carl is a dark skinned black man who's also a police officer. So I don't know and that's what I watched a lot of the time growing up. - Light of skin people in the industry are allowed to be so mediocre and bland because people think, oh yeah, this is what looks good. So I feel like light skin people are allowed to just kind of be like flat and dull and still get these big opportunities and be in these spaces where they're able to get so much and it's kind of like me. - You guys are all speaking complete facts, nothing to disagree with there. There have been light skinned actresses, Bandy Newton, Zendaya, Amanda Steinberg, who have opened up and said, yes, we do benefit from colorism, Zendaya. I believe even said she turns down roles where she feels like she's being used to kind of exactly tokenize or to replace a role that should or you can say should have went to a dark skin. I just want to highlight that. There are things that can be done and it's a simple acknowledgement of privilege that goes along. - Can we not pass by off of this without Zoey Zaldana? - Oh, yeah. - She playing Nina Simone. - Oh my goodness, we can't get-- - Interesting, I'll pause and say I agree with that. If you're going to have somebody play Nina Simone, you probably want somebody to match Nina Simone's skin color and make her look as best you can like Nina Simone. That being said, can we get the same sort of energy for like the Queen Charlottes or the people playing Cleopatra or all the different white people that we've switched out for black people in these historical retellings through a modern lens of American history or British history or anything? Because now I see the upset over a dark skin person being played by a lighter skin black person which arguably is still a black person playing that role and I guess arguably to them. But when we see actual white characters who shown up in history who are documented as being white and they get switched with black people, it's crickets. It's nothing. But I guess it's because white people don't experience reverse racism or reverse colorism and these things don't exist. I just want to hear the same energy, okay. - That's that, we can go without. - What I definitely notice is when we look at the media side of it, lately dark skin people will play more of these rolls of thugs and you know, anything that can scare you from us and then when it comes to the light skin man, you guys do see that they're making a little bit more sensitive, there's this like, oh wow, dreamy, he's so sensitive. - That's the thing, that's the thing, that's the thing. - That's the thing man, that's the thing. - Exactly, that's the truth. - When you go to the women, let's look on the entertainment side what is sad is see that you can have the light skin women rap about the same thing and as soon as the dark skin women come in, you know, I wanna she's dirty and whatever, and they can rap the same thing and you cannot find the beauty and the dark skin went over the light, else? - I don't know that I've ever heard somebody say, like, maybe I have, I don't know, you guys let me know if you've heard this. Like, if I'm comparing eyespice to sexy red and they're both rapping about shaking their ass and the dudes they're sleeping with and all this stuff, it's equally as disturbing to me as it is listening to anybody who say those things and I'm not distinguishing and saying, oh, eyespice is cool because she's light skin but when Meg the stallion or sexy red does it, I'm against that, are there people that you know that are accepting people who are saying the exact same thing just because they're lighter skin? - To find that lately, a lot of the black driven shows here in America seem very, they got the women looking a little more. Now, look at accent, that and also a little ratchet and I don't want to use the wrong terms but ratchet, they're not. - My bisexual. - Did you have the bail? - I think it's also a point when you look into black media and what we as a culture consume, I think, when I think of like Tyler Perry and like what he's done with Madea and I just hate it or just like this just network and it doesn't paint black people in a positive light. - I notice with baddies, it is like the women are so-- - You talking about the show? - Yeah, yeah, like the-- - I'm like, is there a lot of regular everything? - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. - On the show, like, I feel like they do things outside of, you know, fighting each other and drinking. You know, I'm like, these are beautiful women, they're talented, they have a way of bringing people in and it's kind of like the way that baddies paints them is like, a baddy, baddy shot of clocks and y'all gonna, you know, give each other a knuckle sandwiches and shit. And I'm like, come on, like, you know, it's like, I would watch it if they were giving business advice, if they were talking about something, but I know they won't, you know what I'm saying. I know they won't, but it's like, that representation is like, ah, I'm tired of-- - Whatever I think of our representation, and especially with the examples that they're giving, I think baddies is like for Bad Girls Club, you guys will correct me if I'm wrong on that and if baddies is a whole separate show, but it's probably very similar to what's going on, on that show. Tyler Perry movies were brought up as an example. These products do not just like just, they're not just created out of nowhere. There's a market for them and people are watching those movies and watching these TV shows. And if you look at the demographic of people who are watching it, it is black people watching the shows. So if the black community is creating the demand for these negative depictions of blackness and then consuming the product that is created based off of that demand, who's really to be blamed for that, except the community itself, because I'm not meeting many white people who are watching Tyler Perry movies. I gotta be honest. Anybody who I've ever met is watching Tyler Perry movie has been black, so, including myself. So if the community itself is creating the demand, then we can't really be upset when the market meets that demand and it is a negative depiction of black people. - Of us, and still uplift all black queens, whatever, but I'm done with us only uplifting the hairstylists that we know, that's what every black girl wants to do now, is be a singer or a hairstylist. We need to, what about the black scientists and the black lawyers or doctors? Like that's where we are kind of messing up in our media, not gonna talk to along the side and say about that. - The reason I disagree is because it depends on the role. So like if we have a movie like Boys in the Hood, or we have a movie like Don't Be a Menace, it is gonna be dark skinned back, unfortunately. - Can I ask the ladies one question? Do you guys consume media such as like the Bad Girls Club and listen to Sexy Red and stuff like that? Like do you guys listen to that kind of stuff and watch that kind of stuff? - Honestly, I watch Bad East and it's entertaining to me. - I have here in there. - Yeah. - If it comes on, hey, okay. (laughing) - No, I don't, I don't listen to it at all my long. - Do you believe that these things reinforce negative stereotypes of the black woman? - I haven't asked her for that. - You go. - What I like knowledge that representation matters, I also don't really jive well with the respectability of politics and I feel like in these conversations, that's where we veer tourists. I would like to see more balance in the industry at large, specifically the music industry, because let's be clear, every woman in a rap game was Lorne Hill, I still wouldn't like it, 'cause every black woman is not Lorne Hill. This hypersexual image is just da-da-da, everybody. - Every one of the ones that are getting selected. - Those are the ones who are being placed in the mainstream, I understand why that's problematic. I feel like a reason that black women gravitate tourists, this type of content, of course it can be entertainment, whatever, but I think there's a freedom that black women feel sometimes. Black women are very heavily policed in society, right? But telling black people behave because you're making them think they already thought that. - Exactly. - They already thought that, I don't like it, hold on, I don't like giving white supremacists a pass, and I feel like that's what we love to do, respectability of politics. Oh, that's the way they view us that way. No, it's not, they did not go to Africa in the bottom centuries ago and enslave us because some people say they pass and twerk. - I'm not talking. - Oh my goodness, there's so much being said there. First of all, the white colonizers didn't just show up to Africa and then say, oh, we're gonna enslave these people. They were already being enslaved and they were bought from other black people. So black people were enslaving black people. So she's talking about respectability politics and how white people are already making assumptions about black people, whether or not you're like twerking Megan the Stallion, Cardi B, Nicki Minaj, black person or not. No, they're not, okay? I've never been perceived like that from another person. And if I have in a handful of instances where somebody was just straight up ignorant, it's just their ignorance. It's not a general consensus that white people have come to about black women. If you show up in a respectable manner in society, more often than not, you are gonna be treated with respect. If you show up and you're twerking and talking like sexy red and showing your boobs for everybody who wants to see them, I don't think you're gonna be treated with the same amount of respect. So it is on the people who are consuming that, but also I wanna say, you can consume that stuff and not lead a life that is representative of the media that you consume. So it's not to say that we need to get rid of all the sexy reds and the Meg The Stallions and the Tyler Perry movies. These things exist in the realm in which they exist. Some people are entertained by them. I've watched Tyler Perry movies. I've listened to Meg The Stallion. I listened to Cardi B, Nicki Minaj, all these different people. I don't use them as role models. I don't take the Nicki Minaj lens and look at my life through that. I view that as entertainment and it stays in the realm of entertainment and it doesn't exist in my life outside of that. So these are just choices that you can make. And if you make the choice that you're going to allow that to be your role model or that's gonna be the life that you take on, you can't be shocked when you receive judgment based off of your actual actions. And I don't think that most white people are going around and assuming that if you're black, you're twerking and you're trashy and you're ghetto, you kind of have to show that to people for them to make that judgment about you. - Thinking about how they look at us. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about our community. I'm talking about what these, I'm saying look out. I don't know what your guys' algorithms are looking like on your social media, but look out and see what these little girl. I remember there's this one-- - Oh, is that true? - There's this one video of this girl. I saw she's a ballet teacher and she was like crying 'cause she was like, your girls wanna listen to sexy red and all this stuff. No, but that's what's happening. And I don't believe that having a balance of the sexy reds and the Lorne Hills is gonna be a net positive for our community. - I think you can talk about respectability and palatability and all these things and get into the politics of, oh, whether we should have to deal with that because other races don't have to deal with that. I don't think that's conducive or helpful because I think black people in black culture aren't a unique position where we do kind of need to look out for ourselves a bit more. - Black kids grew up saying, oh, I wanna be an NBA star, all of these things where it's just like, maybe like not even 1% make it. - We're far less than 1%. - As you go to other communities, kids are like, I wanna be an engineer. I wanna be a doctor. I wanna be a lawyer and like, we do need more of that. And I think it's okay to acknowledge that our culture does have a lot of work to do. - Oh yeah, absolutely. - Oh, well, white people don't have to deal with this. I think it's just white supremacy to like-- - Or to even put that in the conversation period, or not about them. - Okay, before they get into something that I feel like it's gonna turn negative in a sec, in a second because they're saying them, them, them, and I can only imagine that's gonna go in a negative direction. What she just said is very true. Take accountability for yourselves, for your community, for your culture rather than pivoting and pushing it all on white people because this is a sort of idea that some of them are sharing of like, the industry chooses the sexy reds and the ice spices and the megan, the stallions, and there's some evil white man behind it all. And you know what? If you do look at the hierarchy of the music industry, sometimes I can see how you could give into that idea and maybe people are being strategic about the things that they place within certain cultures while safeguarding their culture, but it doesn't exist if there's no demand for it. If nobody wants to listen to sexy red, if nobody wants to listen to Cardi B, if nobody wants to listen to Nicki Minaj, they do not exist. They in fact fade into thin air. And there are plenty of female rappers right now that are much more resemblance of, say, a Lauren Hill than they are Cardi B. I mean, right up the top of my head, there's a brilliant rapper by the name of no name and I don't agree with her politically and the things that she puts in her raps, but she is fantastic and super talented and she doesn't play into the sort of stereotype that we see of blackness these days. And is she at the same demand as a Cardi B or Nicki Minaj? No, because the culture is not uplifting those things and looking for those type of people at the moment. Being pro black is not being anti-white. We need to stop even talking about them. We need to start talking about what is good for us because we are under attack. We can all at least agree that we are under attack. There is a-- Can we agree on that? Where, who, where? It's done, but we can beat it. A lot of beating it comes with boy cotton coming together, though, and saying we're gonna worry about our own. Aye, at this point, really don't look to pop culture for representation as a black woman. We gonna start there. My representation is not in the rap. There you go. It's not in the rap game. It's Audrey Lord. That's my representation as a black feminist, an intersectional feminist, a black woman. People take me more seriously when I alter my hair. I don't think so. I think I pretty much get treated the same. One time I was on a Zoom call with my manager and I had a curly wig on. And she's like, you know, no response. The next day, I have a straight one. She's like, oh my God, what is she doing? You look so cute, what the heck? And I'm like, all I did was change my hair. Previous jobs, I literally, I never wear my hair. Every single day, is that your hair? Is that your hair? Is that your hair? Is that your hair? My last day. She's like, I thought you were gonna wear your hair? It's your last day. It's just crazy that, why does it matter? And then I've heard it before too. Like even black women going out shopping, if they have a fro, they're treated differently compared to when the hair is straight. Okay. Since I have both white and black in my background, we can go ahead and do some explaining here. I think black people are one of the few races that have like utter versatility with the hair that they can create on their heads and you know, the different styles they can put together. I could show up to you right now looking like this, braids in my hair, curly at the end, come tomorrow with a bob that's made out of braids. The next day I could have an afro. The next day I could have it in a puff. The next day I have twisted my hair. All these different things can change on a dime with a lot of time and a lot of effort. If you're a white person or a person from any other culture who has simply not experienced that or seen that before, or had somebody show up to you looking like this and then tomorrow they have an afro in their hair, you're gonna be like, what the hell happened to your hair? How would you do that? How long does it take to get your braids done? Can I touch your hair? I've never seen hair like yours. The amount of questions that I've gotten about my hair in a lifetime, if I got a dollar for every time I had one, I'd be rich, okay, I'd be living in a mansion because just people are not used to these things and they're curious because for one thing, it's something that we get to unlock and we get to be very versatile in our looks whereas other people don't necessarily have the versatility to do that with their hair. So it makes sense that there's questions popping up. I get that it can be annoying if somebody's constantly remarking on your hair and it's constantly changing or they're asking you, is your hair real? Is it fake? How long did it take you to do it? But most, more often than not, it's out of curiosity and out of just like a sheer shock that you can change your entire look on the turn of a corner like that. - We got some mental work to do. - Yeah, that's what I was about to say is everything, all of that matters, all of your skin tone your hair but you go back to like the 60s, 70s when the Black Panthers were coming and all the women were wearing it natural. I do that, I wear these, I like to wear these for like more of, I don't have to do my hair every day, I don't want to worry about whatever but when I pull this thing out and it's I make sure I look at everybody like a little serious 'cause I'm like, yeah, you know the power that comes with it and we need to just start reinforcing especially with our next generations how beautiful our natural is. - And I will say, you know, there's another thing, when we talk about colorism or texturism is now the word for the experiencing prejudice on the basis of your hair, a lot of that happens within the Black community too. You'll hear a lot of Black men saying, I am not dating a woman who doesn't have a weave in, I am not dating a woman who doesn't have a brazen, I don't want no bald-headed girl, I don't want somebody with no hair, I don't want somebody wearing an afro and there's a lot within the Black community of hatred towards natural hair. Now a lot of people will say, oh it's internalized racism, that came from white people and now we're just pushing that and projecting that out into our own community but if you want other people to accept you and to accept your hair to his points, you have to accept you and accept your hair and you have to accept all the different iterations of your hair that show up within your community if that's the framework through which you are looking at the world. - I'm a political science major so I'm not part of the school of business but all my friends in the school of business, every time summer comes around, they're about to get into a ship, they get the big chop 'cause they know as soon as they get in their jobs if they do not have short hair, they're not gonna be taken seriously, they might not even be let in the door, you know what I'm saying? - Yeah, colorism has a little raggedy cousin, her name is Texturism, that's what we're discussing now. - I hadn't even heard of that one. - Yeah, Texturism, that's why Black people still have to fight to wear natural styles and corporate spaces. I don't know if you guys heard about the story of a young beautiful Black boy with locks who hasn't been to school in like over 180 days because they are trying to force him to cut his locks to return to school. I didn't walk forward because, I mean, I just don't, I've pretty much always been some variation of natural. Now, I will tell you, it was a bit of a shock to realize that Texturism is still a thing in the lock community, right? 'Cause I thought, okay, we're all working with our natural styles, that's the point of locks, we don't have to deal with this. So I do get, I don't really get treated differently because I have one hairstyle, but it's the, oh, you don't wanna slick down your edges or you need a retweets? No, no, I didn't get one for this. - Right. - Oh, no, it's good. Bam, my hair. - It's beautiful, it's good. - Thank you, so does yours. My hair shouldn't have to be neat and perfectly twisted for me to be palatable or accepted, but that is a very, even with newborns, the damn placenta perm, the baby coming out, the mama, I've seen Facebook posts, my baby's hair, look at this good hair on my baby from a newborn. - Hate that term. - Can't even hold the neck up. - And that's so that you're already having to deal with that type of situation. - Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I did hear the story of that kid who couldn't go to school because he was wearing dreadlocks and the school was like, "This is not a hair that falls within our policy." I think that is absolutely ridiculous. Where that comes from, as far as their policy, I don't know, you have heard of isolated incidents of this happening. And I wouldn't argue that it's a systemic issue in really any way. I think most people can wear whatever hairstyle they like and go about their business. But it is interesting to hear those stories and to just think like, why? And I do think for some people, there is this attitude that maybe dreads or having a big fro is seen as unkempt or unprofessional and they will throw that at people who have those hairstyles. And of course, that's not always the case. You can have dreads and be extremely hygienic. You can have an afro and just because your hair is out and it's big does not mean that you are unkempt. - Times where I'm like, oh, well, if I'm going to this meeting or if I'm trying to get this job, I'm not gonna be able to wear this. Those are things that you have to think about in terms of the standard that is set and presenting yourself to the world. - Working at Six Flags at one point. - And I will say there's a standard for men as well. If you're a white man and you have like real long shoulder length hair, a lot of people are gonna say that's super unprofessional. If you're gonna come and work at a corporate job and you're gonna be a lawyer or something, cut your hair, come on in. We don't want some like surfer dude coming in speaking to clients or headed to golf to play with some of our executives. You need to get your hair buzzed and maybe within like the corporate realm, there's this idea of like uniformity and having this like sort of specific professional look much like in the military, this like militaristic view of just like, if you're a woman, the hair is like back. If you're a man, you're getting the buzz. Maybe there's just a little bit of that still in culture and there's just certain things that we view to be more professional than others. - Dreds were not allowed or like locks were not allowed which you would have to bring. - You know that? - Yeah, I know, locks were not allowed and you had to bring in a note from your spiritual advisor as to why you have-- - We all flinched a little bit like that. - Yeah, but you know what the hell? No, that goes back to the topic at hand. This is a theme park. How serious do they need to be taking? - Right. - And here I am, a black woman having to tell people like, oh, you have to cut your hair. You're a locks that you just go for years, you have to cut them off or not get a job. Like that is crazy to me. A lot of the dudes I know and myself I like natural. It's just period and I think women in general get berated by media and culture, by beauty standards. I think black women, y'all get slammed even harder in terms of that. So I believe that us as black men in the community need to encourage like what you have naturally is beautiful. And I think the more that we do that from a young age, now they're gonna have that standard in the home which is really where the strength of blackness came from. You have your choice. If you want to wear your hair however you want, if you want to get a weave, if you want, cool. But don't do it because there's a level of insecurity or lack of pride in who you are and how you represent. - That's easier said than done. - No, no, it is, but here's my thing though. I think this is the thing. There's a lot of things in our community that's easier said than done and the problem is this. - We've got to get to the ugly work of grabbing the shovel and digging in the dirt. And we may not finish the work. Our kids and our great grandkids might be the ones that are building the platforms and the levels of us climbing the rings of society. - You're a good politician. - You gotta bear it well. - No, no, no, you're a good politician. But look at the statistics of what's happening is all I'm saying. - No, you're talking to a poly-side person that understands statistics. What I'm saying is this. Statistics, if we don't do anything about it, will not change. - But that's what I was about to say 'cause you're not gonna do something. - You're saying our kids and our grandchildren are doing this. - We could do it. - No, I'm saying they can't. - We gotta do the work though. - We gotta get out there and start the work. - I hope, I love that. Like, I love a good limiting mindset where you tell somebody that something positive is possible and they just say absolutely not, you know, easier said than done, easier said than done. Well yeah, with that attitude, nothing is ever gonna change. So yeah, let's keep it up. I don't know like what you want at that point. If that's your mindset towards the world that we're incapable of making change or it could happen and you have to put that emphasis on could to instill that it won't. My kids are the same skin tone as me. - I hope my kids are the same skin tone as me. I'm not walking forward for that. I don't care what skin tone my child turns out to be as my child. I don't know. It's like very strange whenever I hear people of any race ever say that they want like a certain skin tone for their baby or like as I said earlier on, people say they want mixed kids. I just wanna hopefully help each child. Doesn't really matter what their skin tone is. And I can understand maybe this biological drive that we have to want a child that looks like us a sort of miniature version of ourselves. But even in dating within your race, that's not a guarantee. There's like dominant and recessive traits and different genetics that pass through from each parent and you could have a child that ends up looking wholly like the woman that you have the child with. And there's never any guarantee in that. I just can't help but think that if you truly want a child who's like a mini version of you, it might be a little bit ego driven. Like you want this sort of extension of yourself. And that's not, in my opinion, what a child is. - Come on, black man, save it. - Come here, bro, come here. - I don't mind what tone my kids would end up but I've always had this, you know, imagination in my mind of seeing a little, me. - Yeah. (laughing) - Because, you know, for what I went through and being such a lonely kid when I go back to Ghana, I sometimes go by the orphanages where the children are and I see the kids just as dark as me. And then for me, I remember, wow, you guys have no idea what's going on in America but you guys are enjoying your skin and your pride. The most interesting thing about this is when I was here in America and dating, the black girls would literally tell me they didn't want their kids as dark as me. - They didn't want them. - So I had to have time dating 'cause I would hear that, you know, from the sneaker at all. I don't want my kids that black, ugh, no, no, no. And so, you know, they came to a point in my life where I just thought, I don't think I'm gonna see a mini-me ever and I take it as you know. - It doesn't need to be a mini you. Like, what he's saying sounds very sweet. Like, I had all this loneliness and heartache because of my skin color growing up and people have said this and that to me and I want to be able to have a kid who looks like me so I can put them down a different path but it's just ego that is telling him that he wants those things. He wants to remedy his own experiences through the lens of a child and that's not what your children are for. - Do you want by the same time at this point, you know? - Kind of laugh at that thing. - Yeah, you laugh at it and say, wow, it'd be kinda cool to have that little one that's dark as me and just be like, yo, this is what it's gonna be like but you're not gonna scar. You're not gonna get bruised and enjoy it. - Now that I am so secure with who I am and I know the science of how beautiful we are, I'm like, oh man, I just pray that when we have our few kids that at least one of them or two of them or hopefully all of them look like me because I know so much about my history and the science of black and beauty that I just want to instill that in them because I feel like that's what the world needs more of is people like you who are gorgeous, man, like we're gores, the sun, I'm sorry. - Again, an ego-driven narcissistic choice that is driving his hope for kids that look like him. It's never really like, oh, I just want to see if my child looks like me. Like people say that and that's like the phrase that we all use because I think it's more palatable to say things like that but I feel like if you dig deeper into why you want your kid to look like you, there's other psychological things going on in him just like the other guy. He wants to like remedy something that he felt like he didn't have access to as a child by having a child who looks like him or is darker than him and I gotta say, it's kind of strange. Like, and if you at the same way as like people who want a particular gender and they're like, if I don't get a boy, I'm gonna be so upset or if I don't get a girl, I'm gonna be so upset. Like, you know, you know, like it's the flip of a coin for what you get for each of these. My camera just moved but that's okay. You guys know that it's the flip of a coin. So if you're uncomfortable with a certain gender coming out of your hoo-ha or you want to like get a specific gender, that's not the way that kids work and maybe we should unpack that feeling and dig a little deeper as to why that's happening. - Just keep saying that, but the sun was made for us. That's the most beautiful gift that God could have given us is that we don't burn in the sun and they're psychologically trying to. - The most beautiful gift that God could have given you is that you don't burn in the sun. Okay. - I can make that such an ugly thing and kids are the ones that suffer from it the most and I hope that you have kids as black as you. And I hope I have kids as black as you. Any black person I've ever seen that looks like you perfect, pure skin. - Okay, imagine a white person saying that. I hope I have white kids that look like you. I hope my white kids look like you because they have perfect, pure, white skin. You sound a little crazy. God blessed us with this white skin and it crisps in the sun because to be tainted by the sun is a horrible thing or something like that. Like imagine anybody saying that, but you could say it because you can say it about the black race these days. That's normal. - That's very strange. - And also just over doing it like he was with the dark skin girl earlier. Just like this effusiveness. It's almost like you don't really believe what you're saying or something. You feel this extra need to just be a little extra here and it just undercuts the sincerity of what you're saying. - Yeah, it's very, very strange. I don't know. I wouldn't say that like I hope like obviously if they're the same skin tone as me like that's fine. Like I'd love you if you were any skin tone, but I think I'd kind of just take the chance. Like if they turned out as me to take the chance to like raise them the way I would have wanted to be loved more and kind of just show them that no matter like what goes on outside, just know that none of that matters to your character that matters and kind of just bring them up with that like confidence that I didn't get. - Well, I just don't plan on having children. (laughing) - I mean, I don't know what kind of feels icky for me to say. I would prefer a child be a certain color, a child is not a resource, it's a human being. - Right. - Fall in love with somebody or you don't. - I just don't do it. - Yeah, I like what she said about like the child is not a resource, it's a human being. It's not, a child is not a vessel through which like you can solve the traumas that were bestowed upon you as a child and a lot of people view children in that way of now this is a little extension of me and all the places that I got her in childhood, I can heal them. And I do like the sort of measured way that I forget the girl's name, but she said, I do wanna love my child in ways that I felt like maybe we're missing when I was a kid. And you'll take the good things that your parents did as a child and maybe places where they were lacking and you'll level it all out and hopefully give that love to your child and then your child will go on to have their own children and love them in the same way that you love them but also adjusting for the things that maybe you missed and then the cycle goes on and this is how we progress and become better as a society in the way that we treat our children. But to say I want a child who looks like me so I can warn them of all the perils that I didn't get warned of when I was a child or that I can help them with all the things that I disliked about myself, it makes the child more about you than it is about the actual child's experiences and you're already sort of pre-planning these experiences that your child may or may not have because of what you went through as a kid. - Like if you're darker than me, lighter than me, that's cool, you're still my daughter, son or they then, whatever, it doesn't matter. I'm still gonna love you no matter what, so yeah. - Yeah. - Doesn't matter. - That's my mentality too, you're my seed. And at that point, I think that obviously boils down into whatever the mom is gonna bring into the picture and I think that at the end of the day, a child hopefully would be an expression of love. I'm gonna raise you to know that yours will be confident and who your identity is as a human being, a black man as someone is supposed to contribute to the world. - If your seed comes out like this color, they come to you like that, all of this stuff is being said to me, the cops are treating me this way, are you afraid that you won't have the war with all to teach them how to go through that? No, being black is not, even though there are aspects of it, skin tone, things like that, it is an experience that we all in some way have had experiences we can relate to it. I know what it's like to be pulled over by the police and almost put in cuffs over doing absolutely nothing, right? - And so almost putting cuffs or putting cuffs? - That's almost being because I've been putting cuffs and doing nothing. - This is so awful. It's so awful to invalidate the experience of a parent because their child has a different skin color than them and it's very, or may have a different skin color than them. We don't even know what his child's gonna look like, he doesn't have children. It reminds me of, I think love is blind season six and I forget what the black girl's name was in that season but there was an interracial couple and it was a white woman and a black guy and she walks up to this black guy and while they're at a party and is saying like, are you sure like, do you think as a white woman she's gonna be able to understand your black experience? What if you have kids, is she gonna know how to rear black children and to really prepare them with the world? And she just instills this sense of doom in this guy that this woman is not going to be able to handle the racial dynamics that she has now brought into their relationship. And to say that to somebody is just awful. It's just awful. You have no idea what people are capable of. People are gonna show up in all different forms of families now with all different skin colors. We're in a large moment of racial mixing and adoption and all of these different things that are happening with modern families. And to insinuate that a person who loves this child is not going to be ready to deal with their problems because the child is a different skin color is very sinister, but it's packaged as being compassionate. I'm really worried about your child and I'm worried about what it is that you can handle. It's not compassionate to say something like that to somebody who is a parent, is going to be a parent, wants to be a parent, not helpful. - Got you on that. But we don't all have, as black people across the board we don't all have the same experiences. But if my son came to me or my daughter came to me at some point in life and they're like, I'm going through this. I know what it feels like just from a black man's perspective but also because that's someone I love and I care about, that's something that I'm also going to be even more so able to share in 'cause that's also my seat. - I don't care about what complexion my kids are. And the thing is that me saying I don't care is not like a, I'm tossing things out the way 'cause we gonna have them conversations. - Absolutely. - We gonna sit down and we gonna talk. You know what I'm saying? And if there is a point that I can't, where I just can't because it's just something I think I don't experience things I don't understand, I know like we have a village. It's always a village around. So if it's not the baby pappin, if it ain't as pappin, it can be close people that are trusted that know. So I feel like there's always going to be somebody around that is gonna be able to aid in conversations I might not be able to have or even somebody else that just might not be able to have. But I'm gonna love my cheering down. (all laughing) - I like what you said, it takes a village. And I'm saying that I would outsource my parenting, so. (all laughing) - I have darker skin cousins on my mom's side, and my uncles are darker skinned. You feel me? Whether it's like asking them to talk to my children or just asking them to educate me on this stuff, I don't know because I'm not a dark skinned person. - Right. - Colorism is one of the determining factors for power structure of the world. - Colorism is one of the determining factors for the power structure of the world. I don't know, I'm not in this day and age in my opinion, but it's so hard. It's different countries, different cultures have different aspects of colorism at play. So I don't know. I don't know that it's up there as far as determining factors for the world. There are many, many things that I would place above colorism. It falls so far down the list that I don't know that we could call it determining. - Also, what the hell is the power structure of the world? - Right, exactly, it's all different. - You know, nefarious thing that is governing how, you know, who gets privilege and who doesn't in society, I think, that betrays. And the word salad, that is this question, also betrays, just a philosophical outlook that sounds kind of, you know, marks this postmodern, hyper-intellectualized that I think is just incongruent with reality. And it's not helpful to view the world through these terms. And so I am interested to see where this goes, but I think it's kind of a silly prompt. - Yeah, agreed. - All I like to say is I just know a dude, like I can't even explain it. He just do, like, it's kind of, it just do, it's one of the things where there's so many, like, isms and phobics, yeah, thrown into a pot. And I know it's in there, I can't explain it, but I know. - That was speaking from the heart. - That's not, there you go. (laughing) - When I think of this topic, I immediately go to, like, caste systems. So, like, when I think of, like, India, for example, it's terrible, like, if you're darker, then you're on the bottom of the totem pole and so on. So, I think in terms of, like, opportunity and social mobility for people, I'd say it's a bigger issue outside of the U.S. and, like, develop countries, I'd say. - It's a bigger issue outside of the United States? - Yes, yes, yes, yes. - Because I'm not gonna lie, like, when she said the prompt, it's like, I wasn't just thinking, "us, here." I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, you know, I'm thinking globally, 'cause it's like, I definitely have seen that. - Yeah, so, you know, economic status. - I believe it's every place, but I think it... (laughing) - Now you're gonna start, you gotta finish now, bro. - It's not every place, and, yes, go travel outside of the U.S. and check out how colorism is working in other regions. It is far, far, far worse than anything you experience in the U.S. The fact that, like, we're talking about, like, micro-aggressions in the U.S. is just, like, you wanna feel real aggression. (laughs) Go out of the U.S. as a different skin color, and I'm not saying that everywhere you go, it's like this. There's just gonna be different experience in different places. I was recently, as I said, in Hungary, Croatia, and the U.K. in London. In London, it's a melting pot at this point. There's all different people of different races, but they're experiencing, like, I guess, we can call it racialized issues right now with, like, riots and stuff that are coming on that might be being made to be bigger than they actually are in the media. But there's stuff happening, like, on the issues of immigration, and with Muslim people versus, like, native-born white people in the U.K., and that's an element there. In Croatia, it felt like nothing. It's just, like, people of all different races, backgrounds, walking around, whatever. When I was in Hungary, in different experiences in different cities, I was staying in this place called Esterbaum, and I hope I'm pronouncing that right. A smaller town that's outside of Budapest in Hungary, and I felt like I was being looked at everywhere I went. Now, did I internalize that as, like, a racist thing that was happening to me? No, I recognized that I was the only black person in this whole place. So I imagine that you're gonna look. You're gonna be like, "Oh, wow, there's like a black girl "right there, or like a half black girl or whatever. "She's a darker skin tone than anything that's here." I also have tattoos, and I was dressed in a way that I would think clearly made me stand out as an American, so you're getting, like, looked at. But the looks were serious, y'all. They walk right past you, they will look you as dead in the eyes, as your straight face, and keep staring at you until you're out of their line of sight, and they don't care that you're seeing them directly staring at them, and it's just a different, just a whole different cultural experience. But I don't take my, like, Americanized view of race and then project that onto other places. I don't know exactly what those stairs were coming from. If you're in Hungarian watching right now, you let me know, based on your cultural background, where that was coming from, 'cause I can't go and assume what was happening. But there, I feel like I experienced, like, more stairs and people looking at me like this than any of the other places that I visited, then you go to Budapest and it's a much larger, major city, metropolitan area. A lot of people have different races, going by, having their businesses and everything, and the stairs were less frequent. But you just experience different things in different regions, and I think a lot of people are speaking from an American perspective, and if they travel outside of America, we'll find that things are way different. And you'll start to gain a little bit of gratitude for the place that you live in. - The reason why I was kind of like, it was hard for me to come up here first was, 'cause I view, like, a lot of the isms as, like, how they maintain the current hierarchical system, you feel me, or cat's system. You feel me? - Come on, you feel me? - So, like, yeah, I guess, determining factor, but I don't think it's, like, the main-- - Yeah, like, it's definitely there. - I think it's what continues to the main factor. - Yeah, it's going on. - Yeah, it's going on. - Yeah, it's going on. - Yeah, it's going on. - What's going on in multiplayer, for you to talk about colorism, you have to talk about racism, and you have to talk about-- - Are you gonna talk to everybody? - I know, it's true, because the selling of slaves to be profitable to even then create a system of race, in which you that were subjugated, and it's not only associated where you come from, it's associated with your skin. 'Cause what we forget is, when it comes to colorism, all over the world, if you worked out in the fields, I mean, I'm talking about people that if they had red skin, right, if you worked out in the fields, that was a sign that you were, by someone just looking at you, that you were not part of the nobility. These people will walk around with umbrellas and things like that. So in America, it was pretty much the only place where we're gonna say, "Wait a minute." Not only is this something that signifies your place in society, but we're gonna associate it with you at birth, and we're gonna create a whole system of that, and that's why, to me-- - That's not only here, though. - I think, they're not the only, but, you know, I think racism, as far as I'm concerned, is probably the biggest topic that affects us, because think about this. Before all this stuff happened, none of us were conscious about, "Oh, well, you're lighter, you're better," all this other stuff. And now, these things that we were not thinking about affects us internally at home, even while we're still trying to fight it out there. - That's why I didn't automatically come up, 'cause I went for, I just went past it, I went-- - Racism. - Yeah, I just went there, because when it comes down to, like, who runs the US and all this stuff, I don't feel like we're ever gonna get there. The closest we got was having the black president, and even that was like-- - He was not really a black president. - And that's what I'm thinking about, even it was like that. - You guys might hate me. - I don't know what you mean by the closest we got, it's having a black president. That is huge, it's like a huge thing. That like 50% of the population thought that a person of color should be the representative, the figurehead of the United States of America, the figurehead of the free world. I don't know what, like, 'cause phrasing it as the closest we've gotten really minimizes how much of a very large thing that is. - Hate me for this, but I actually don't think racism is the determining factor. I think it is the main determining factor that upholds the system of capitalism. I don't think once we figure out racism or something, everything's gonna know it. I think racism just maintains the class system. Like, that's all I think. - Yeah, pressure works on the axes. Of course, I would agree with this. That's kind of what we've been delving into this whole time. And I think the prompt definitely said one of, correct? Colorism does determine certain power dynamics. I'm so glad you brought up the term caste system. You talked about in other nations where, like I said, there are entire socio-economic statuses developed out of colorism. Even within the U.S. historically, most of the affluent black families, Reconstruction era and post-then were lighter-skinned. A lot of them kept their bloodlines lighter-skinned on purpose because of the affluence they came with that. These things are generational, though. - I'd have to look up the reading at which that is true. - As affluent black families who had the resources to give their kids more than others, they passed it down, they passed it down, they passed it down. What can you pass down when you have nothing? - Nothing, I like when MLK said it the best he said, they keep telling us to pull up ourselves up our bootstraps and we have no boots. I love that. - Yeah, yeah. (all laughing) - I don't know what I've been trying to say, yeah? - Yeah, I mean, I understand that statement. You go through the history of slavery, the Jim Crow South, the Reconstruction era after slavery, and there's a lot to catch up on as black people in general, let alone the deviation between light skin and dark skin. So there's gonna be a certain piece of the pie of just a generational setback that happens based on that history. How big of a piece of the pie is it, though? Because it doesn't seem that large right now. And as far as picking yourself up by the bootstraps, we all have boots now. So there's really not a big excuse that you can use for a lack of like cultural cohesion, cultural progress, and a lack of doing better in today's society. There's not much to lean on anymore. - There were documents that were re-earthed from the 20th century where black people who were applying for jobs, post-lavery, they included being fair-skinned on the application above their actual skills because it would guarantee them better employment. So I think it's definitely one of the things that determines the distribution of power. - I wanted to say this to the light skin people too, because in my mind, when we was about to do this, when we was about to do this, I had a whole different thought. I had a whole different thought of the light skin people that can be here. You guys are so earth, you're so grounded. And that's why it's like, don't forget the history of what's going on to your darker brother sisters. I know you won't. - Look at the patronizing way in which he's talking to the light skin people. And have you heard the light skin people talk to the dark skin people in that patronizing way? If I had a whole different prejudice of the type of light skin people that we're gonna be here, but you guys are so earthed. You guys are so grounded. That's very, very telling what he's saying. - Oh, but it's time for us to gather together and for us to fight it together because yeah, we can talk about what happened. And you see these people on the social medias and stuff talking all the time. A lot of people are complaining, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's time for us to have a new TOSA and say now we made it. - Right. - 'Cause now the cameras are on everywhere. - And it's so interesting because if you look at them, like wait till the camera pans out a little bit. He's not that dark, like in comparison to the other dark people who are with him. - They bomb us now, we can go now look. - Okay, look at that. Look at the stark difference between the two of them, but he's like considered in this category. I don't know how we've come to that. Look at the light woman next to him. I feel like he's closer to the woman next to him in skin color or the guy in the maroon outfit than he is to the dark skin people who are sitting next to him, but maybe it's just lighting. I don't know, y'all. Talking about before today now and not just this black person over here or this one over here, but all of us came together. We did this and you guys did it again. Now what? And then we know we're at war. - And yeah, and I think to what you're saying, there's a distrust in our own community of one another when it comes to buying and supporting what we own. And I think if we wanna have industry in anything, if we want something to grow, we need to build something just like we did back in the 20s and like we did in the 50s where the black community was the center of commerce. We had the most educated. We had the most sophisticated. And of course they were bomb. There were seven other black wall streets in this country. - Oh yeah, very much. - That doesn't get talked about because Tulsa was the biggest one. If you want to see something change, we gotta start supporting the people that are, they're working on the clothing brands. They're working on the businesses. They wanna start the banks. They wanna come together. - That's how it works. - Or we could just be functioning members of society in the melting pot that is the United States. And if people wanna like segregate and create a black wall street or a black business bureau or all these different things, that's not an American value. I don't know like where we're going down this path of segregating things and black people supporting black businesses and da da da da. No, we're a melting pot. We should support each other, support people who share our values and who are worthy of supporting in that sense has nothing to do with skin color and trying to build like just a black version of the things that we value within society. - We're going to build a community and then we can pass something on that they can keep building upon for the future. 'Cause until we do that, all we're doing is preaching to the choir and complaining. - But that starts with the family, that starts at the family. - I agree with 100%. - It was very nice to hear you guys' opinions and experiences and those also to, great to share our experiences as well, just so we can all see through the eyes of each other and just move forward. Like that's all I wanna do when I'm saying like, we're all black is just figuring out how to move forward. - And it's beautiful to have a platform to show us. Black people can get together and talk about something popular. - Yeah, and it'll not be like all negative. - We gotta love each other. - We gotta love on each other. - That's true. - I love on each other. - That's true. - I just love black people. I just love seeing y'all. (laughing) - Okay, y'all, we made it. We made it through that, Jubilee. That was very interesting. We learned some things. We had some interesting discussions. We're gonna get into your super chats and hear from you guys before we close out today's show. - It's fascinating. - It was an interesting discussion and it was less contentious than a lot of the Jubilee's that we've seen as far as like not a lot of like bad blood arguments, but I'm not sure like where we ended up as far as like solutions or a vision for the future. I guess it's this, you know, like you were saying, it's segregated, let's make our own new black Wall Street and that'll be the way that, but like you said, it doesn't seem to be, that's not gonna give way to a flourishing society that, you know, you know, the melting pot that we once thought was, you know, where we wanted to be, but I digress. - Yeah, I don't know. - I'll let you from you guys. Soul Spirit is our first super chatter today. Actually, it's Timothy W. God forbid I give the wrong person credit for first super chat. He says, welcome back you two. Hope y'all are great. Are y'all gonna react to the gun middle ground Jubilee made today? I watched it and thought it was very good. - I don't know. I'm gonna have to check it out and see if it's worth responding to. I think we have done a gun Jubilee in the past on this channel at some point. So we'll see if we wanna revisit that topic. Yeah. - Soul Spirit says, hey, Amla, I was wondering, where is the best place to contact you? I have an idea for your channel. I've been contacting other YouTubers about this as well and I want you to get involved. - You can DM me on Instagram or on X. That's your best chance. - There you go. Alex Slusher says, how was your trip? - It was good. Y'all, I learned a lot. I was telling Taylor all about it and I was like, trying to, you get, you're in these places for a few days and you're just trying to get a grasp in all the different places. Croatia was my favorite. Everybody was just like so happy. The beaches were beautiful. It's just like good sense of community there. Everybody was really nice. I was in Slovakia for like two seconds. Very interesting country. We asked this girl like, is there anywhere to eat in Slovakia? She's like, nope, there's really no restaurants. Like there's nothing going on in Slovakia. So if this is incorrect, we only went through a very small portion but there was not much going on but the people were very nice. In Hungary, interesting spectrum of either super, super nice people or super, super rude people. And I don't know what was going on there. I don't know if it's because I'm a weird American 'cause I was there with, it was me, my boyfriend and my best friend, Risa. So a good wide spectrum of America and the three of us. And there were some who were so mean and so rude. It was like unbelievable. Hadn't experienced anything like that. And it was happening at such a rate that I thought we were being pumped by how many people were being rude to us. And maybe it's just like the American accent is a dead giveaway and maybe they don't like Americans or I have no idea what was going on. But there are people in Hungary who are like so beautiful, nice, you know, would invite you in for tea. And then other ones who was just like anything you said, they were going to have a negative reaction to. And I'll have to play. I don't have the video with me right now, but we were at a table and Risa was just taking a video. Mind you, the waiter did not know this video was being taken. So if I show this video, he will be blurred. We're not gonna show his identity or anything like that, but he was being rude to us through the whole service and we're being nothing but nice to this guy. And he comes up to like ask if we're done with the food and we're like, yeah, and he starts stacking plates. So Risa starts just stacking plates to get them ready for him. And he rolls his eyes and goes like, Jesus Christ. And we were like, what is going on? And you'll see me in this video as he walks away. I'm like, did he just say, Jesus Christ? And Risa's like telling him, oh yeah, take your time. Like, don't worry about it. You know, whenever you're ready. And he's like, oh yeah, I have time. He was not happy with us whatsoever. And we were walking around and just giving people, sorry, good energy, smiling. Maybe a little too happy? Is that something? Can you be too happy and then people are rude to you? You guys will have to let me know in the chat. I was thinking maybe at baseline, it's just like Hungary is a very homogenous country. So like any sort of like foreigner activity is probably not going to be celebrated. So maybe, maybe it was that. But let me know all of you Hungarians listening because I know you're listening. - I view right now in the chat says, Hungarians are just like that. It's not an American thing. I have been four times. It's a mixed bag. - Okay, perfect. I'm like, damn, are y'all, we were coming up with all these theories. I'm like, is there just like a general unhappiness going on? Are the people not paid enough? Do they have qualms with their government? Do they hate Americans? Because the energy that we were getting was so cold. It was icy. But the ones who were nice were so nice. I cannot express that enough. And there were many, many nice people as well. - Yeah, well, it's good. You got a little above. You never, it's like going to a restaurant and you have, you know, bad services. Like, well, was the server just having a bad day? Or is that representative of how this restaurant runs and it's managed and the whole chain is corrupt? And similarly, you know, you're experiencing a country. You have a bad interaction. It could sour the whole thing, but you had a little, a little about. - Yeah, I will say we were there for four days. And my boyfriend made the remark of like, if I go back to America for a year and I tally all the negative experiences that I have with like service people or random people on the street. He's like, it would not amount to the negative experiences that I've experienced in the few days that I've been here. And I thought about it and I'm like, that's actually true. So what is going, maybe it's just just a cultural difference in the way that people talk to one another. And again, it is not to label all the people of Hungary, obviously. There are so many extremely nice people. But that was just so interesting. So interesting. Let me know. - For me, interesting. Nicodemus 1984 says, welcome back. Aaronic, how people, especially those on the left, can be so fluid in identifying their gender, able to change it multiple times a day, yet be so rigid when it comes to skin color. - Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of people are very rigid. It's like, yeah, with the whole Rachel Dola's Al thing, how she wanted to like be black and act like she's black or whatever. And everybody was like, no, you cannot be transracial. But as soon as it's like transgender or your non-binary or gender non-conforming, it's like, oh yeah, what are your new pronouns? Very interesting. The lines we draw. - Yeah, and when sex is more of a biological reality than race, it's so funny. Same with the W again, says there's a bit of colorism in Hispanic cultures, especially between Europeans and Africans or indigenous peoples, similar to America in some Spanish countries. - Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like there's just a lot of places that experience that. I'm trying to think of a country that views lighter as being worse. And I was trying to think of one and I'm like, I don't know if I can think of one off the top of my head. - I was thinking about how like white girls try to tan themselves. I'm like, I don't know how that fits in. - Right, right. Maybe in America. Maybe in America, white people are constantly trying to tan themselves and get rid of the paleness. Even though, I don't know, I think a pale complexion could be quite beautiful. But yeah, I'm trying to think, I feel like every other one is just like, dark is worse. Bleak your skin, stay out of the sun. Yeah. - Yeah, it does. Laura Susan Sunman says my eight year old son has a light brown complexion. My son is very obsessed with his race. He always compares his skin to mine and my husband, I don't know what to say. - Aw, just say, you know, you're different to us in skin color and that's okay. I'm beautiful, you're beautiful, your dad's beautiful. - We're all chillin' 'cause humans look different. - There's gotta be a Mr. Rogers episode about that. - There has to be, there has to be. - Ryan Little Eagle, Native American, says when will they do a DACA/ undocumented versus legal Latino immigrants? Why is nine out of 10 race issues and topics just about the black community and being black? - Yeah, I mean, that's interesting. I think that would be a great idea to do a legal versus legal. I don't know that they could get people who are in this country illegally to out themselves like that, but maybe at this point, 'cause of what's gonna happen at this point, at this point, anybody can come in this country, so maybe they would be open about their status in that sense. - Andres says, "Hi, Amala, long time no see. "Here in Uruguay, most people of color "go to live in Brazil since here are unusually high "discriminated and end up in poverty, "doing crime or prostitution, "where in Brazil there are doctors that will give you "the tiligo to get white skin like Michael Jackson, "quite sick." - Oh, wait, it's doctors that will give you vitiligo? Is that even possible? I know you can bleach your skin or whatever, but specifically vitiligo, can you give somebody vitiligo? This is a question that I have, but that is interesting. I always learn something new about Uruguay. I don't know how reliable the sourcing is, but I'm always hearing a new perspective. (laughs) - This is from Andres. - Yes. - Hannah Dee says, "Amala, please do a video "about the Brooks Go Field Tweets. "Curious to hear your take or your content." - Oh my gosh, I do have a big take on this one. And maybe I will do a video on this, for those of you who don't know, Tana Mojo, who's a very famous influencer who has a podcast called "Canceled" that was co-hosted by her best friend Brooke. Brooks, like old Tweets came out where she said, "If Trayvon Martin was white, "we wouldn't be having this conversation right now." We're like, "Old Tweets," where she said things of a racial nature or I think insinuated support for Republicans or I don't know, these old Tweets resurfaced. And now everybody's trying to cancel her. And Tana Mojo's podcast that she hosts with Brooke is called "Canceled." It is the "Canceled" podcast because Tana Mojo has had this crazy past on the internet and has been, had her own character called into question on several of the times. And in several cancellation attempts of her, the witch she is with standard. But she now is not having Brooke on the show. For who knows how long, maybe Brooke will be back. So Brooke has been canceled, at least for the time being, off the canceled podcast because of old Tweets that she doesn't stand by anymore. Make that make sense. And Brooke has outwardly said, you know, I've done a lot of work as far as like a racial reckoning and unlearning my racism and all this stuff that you say when you've been caught in something. And seemingly she's not a racist individual from what I've seen of her, from what I've heard of her. But now she's being thrown under the bus because goodness gracious, you tweet something controversial five years ago, it has to come up in the current day and ruin whatever life that you've built for yourself now. And to the people who are just like ardently defending this, I just gotta ask, have you never had an unpopular thought or opinion in your life or even something disgraceful or distasteful? Have you never thought any of those things in your life? And if you can admit that you have, imagine having posted those things on Twitter or X and having somebody bring them up five years after you've moved on from that thought in the person that you caught in a second moment of tweeting it out onto the internet. It's just ridiculous to me. And I'm maybe on the more extreme end of this that I truly don't care like exactly how heinous the comment is. You would have to say something truly dehumanizing and awful for me to say this should impact you in your daily life now, especially if you're admitting to having grown out of the previous thought. But I'll, I need to read through the rest of her tweets and because people are constantly bringing up more stuff. If you guys want a video about it, I'm happy to make a video about it. But the fact that she's been taken off the canceled podcast is just so hilarious. And speaks to Tana's character as a best friend. We put that in air quotes because my goodness, if you have a best friend like that, you don't need an enemy. - So you wanted an almost take, I think you got-- - There you go. There's my take. - There's my take. - If I need to put that in a video, you let me know. - John T. 555 says, "Hey, Amalah, love your show. Have a great day. Racism in Eastern Asian countries is a big problem. The people who cry racism in the States should go live there and see how racist the US is." - Yeah, I mean, like they go ham on like trying to keep your skin out of the sun because if you get darker, you're unattractive. It's going to affect and impact you on so many different societal levels and affects your, like marriage outlook, your job prospects, all these different things. I know multiple men who are here in the United States, who are people of color, who are dating East Asian women, and the dynamic that is immediately ushered into the relationship of you cannot meet my parents because my parents will disown me for having dated you or being interested in you or my parents are not going to approve of our marriage is a lot, a lot. And we so often just push this onto white people and say that they're the racist ones and that stuff is not happening nearly as much as is happening within other cultures. It's a very real thing. - No, there was a commercial that went viral a while ago. I think from China, I think, and it was like, for laundry detergent or something, you remember this? And it was like, they washed the clothes and then it came out and the Chinese woman's husband was like a black man wearing the clothes and it was like, "Oh, I didn't clean it properly." And then they washed it again and he was like, "Oh my gosh." It's like, "No, super racist." And I can say, my parents lived in Beijing for a few years and actually passed her to church and they had a lot of expats there and people from out of the country and a lot of African students who were studying for PhDs and stuff as part of their congregation. And it was just a well-known fact that the Chinese nationals will hire them to tutor their kids to learn English, but they will pay them a fraction of what they'd be willing to pay a white person to teach their kids English. And like, when I went over there and visited them, they're like, "Yeah, you can be making all this money "if you just came over here just because you're white." So there's much more pronounced racism in any states and countries and all across the world, really, that makes a lot of the things that we ring our hands about and the U.S. seems so silly, quite embarrassing, but I digress. - And don't even get started on like the fat phobia and how like these cultures will just straight up tell you, you know, you are fat and you'll be like a size, a size six in the U.S. in like a U.S. dress or whatever. Yeah, I don't even know. - Hi. - Why y'all? John Jackson Griger says, "Hi Taylor, I'm in Nashville right now. "What's a good food spot thinking a sunset dinner "for dinner, a sunset diner for dinner?" I don't, what is a sunset diner? Do I even know if that is like a late night spot? - I don't know what a sunset diner is. I just think it's a nice place to go for dinner, a sunset diner, a sunset diner, so I would be. - Okay, I would recommend my, one of my favorite spots is once upon a time in France. It's like a really authentic French restaurant in East Nashville. So if you're going for a nice dinner, that's where I would recommend. Also, there's a Instagram account run by my friend called explore-in-ashville-X-B-L-R, Nash, and check that out for a lot of recommendations. Matthew Strong says, "Let's be honest. "Mixed race is attractive, just good reading. "Color has nothing to do with it, getting offended "if someone isn't the right shade, WTF." - I didn't get the first part, but-- - Yeah, that's why I like while it's for a second, I'm like, "Good reading, what are we talking about?" - Good reading, what are you reading? (laughing) - But yeah, I don't think-- - But I agree with the colors. I think you do at the getting offended if someone isn't at the right shade. I mean, yeah, that's fair. - Yeah, yeah, people have their preferences and all these different things. Now, I might have criticism for the preference, but it is what it is, I don't have to defend it. - Heather Freelink says, "It bugs me "when they say white people are not stereotyped. "Name a red-headed character who's not a spunky kid, fiery. (laughing) Nerd, M, nerdy male, over-sexualized female." - Oh, there you go, I've never thought about that. I've never thought about the, what is the ginger? The ginger conundrum in media and entertainment. Aren't they replacing all the gingers with black people? Isn't that what's happening? (laughing) I know somebody made a graph of all the redheads that are being replaced by black characters. That's so funny. It starts to, once you see it, you're like, this is kind of looking like an actual theory here. It's looking like you've got some basis for this statement. (laughing) - It's like that, the white bear shipping kids and cabinets and mattress firm is a front for nefarious activity, but redhead, the erasure of redheads is a real one. - It's real sus. (laughing) Let's see, Quazakule says, "Hi, Amla and Taylor, been a while. Identity crisis can be both delulu and genuine, and the end don't make your skin color be who you are based Quazie out." - 100% agree with you, Quazakule. We do not need to make our skin color more important than it is, and it's really not important at all. - Yeah, they're talking about like being reductive and I'm like, man, it's reductive to just put people in these categories based on this. And if you want to talk about hierarchy, let's not do it in terms of like skin gradient, but like what is most relevant and most profoundly saying something about who you really are, and we should put more weight on that quote unquote hierarchy in things like your character, your creativity, your passions, your work ethic, things like that. And the stuff about gender and sex and race should be much further at the bottom, but we have that inverted society, unfortunately. That we do. - Kelty Blacksmith says, "I'm glad you two are back, "but y'all got to stop messing with my abandonment issues. "My therapist says you're making his job impossible." - Whoa, whoa, guys, we're sorry. We do go on vacation sometimes, but we're back, and we're back for a very, very long time, so. - Never leave you again. I mean, it's like a one week often, I don't know how long, for everything, so. - And we come back with stories, okay? We come back with new experiences to color our commentary. All right, positive spin on that. - Go, buddy. - Nicodemus to get us. If they watched movies other than what they're fed, they wouldn't talk as if Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Danny Glover, Eddie Murphy, Denzel Washington, and Wesley Snipes never existed. - Yeah, yeah, there's been just so much, so much black representation and so many different realms in so many different ways. That statement that there's never been positive black male representation in film is just so audacious and so deluloo that you have to be walking around with your eyes closed to even think that. - Right after we moved on from that point in the video, it popped in my head that Morgan Freeman was literally cast as God in Bruce Almighty. - There you go. - It's supposed to be worried about black male representation. I mean, how much more positive can you be? You've literally got GOD. - That's true. (laughs) - And yeah, you got Queen Charlotte on the other side and so. - Yeah, there's so many, so many. - Oh Lord. Chicken pork adobo side is colorism, classism, and the other ism is big year in the east, south and south, east Asia. You automatically look beautiful if you have lighter skin. - Oh yeah, absolutely. It's emphasized like crazy. Like all the skincare products that are like overwhelming, like a billion dollar industries, the sunblock, the hats and the umbrellas, and it's just everything that people are like, don't let the sun touch me. I don't want to become darker. It's very real. - Feeling dangerous says way behind, but white people absolutely come up with stereotypes about other types of white people in, of white people, the Southern Europeans versus Northern versus Slavs is real. - Okay, that's very interesting to know. Yeah, that makes sense. - Yo Bear says this conversation makes me uncomfortable, just like the conversation I was in at a local LGBT group. People were arguing how tea should be first, all opinions and less facts. We look like clowns. - Yeah, there's, we're having a ton of crazy conversations these days, they're just wild. Absolutely wild that I like having them. I'm always interested by them. - Yeah, our Modi says my Hungarian friend refused to refer to me as black when I tried to Google is Hungary racist. It seemed illegal even to have searched it. - Refused to refer to you as black, what were they, why was the race coming into conversation and what were they referring to you as instead? It's the question. I need more context for this. - And why were you Googling is Hungary racist? - Yeah. (laughing) - It's what's going on. - It's so many questions. - Yo, if I was more woke, I would have been like, these people are being racist towards me with how we were being treated, but I was with a white person and an Asian person, a half Asian person. So there's hard to tell on that one. I just think it was a little bit of foreign or phobia. Foreign or phobia? Is that a thing? Can we call it that? - Foreign, xenophobia. - Yeah, xenophobia in Hungary. (laughing) I don't know that that's true. This is not a confirmed statement. The Hungarians will let me know in the chat down below what was really going on. Nefertiti Kimigawa says, I don't know that guy's story, but I know my grandpa didn't finish school. My father joined the Air Force and became an engineer. And I work in software and make more than my father in three generations. We greatly improved our family wealth. - There you go. And I'm assuming you're a black family and that's why you're leaving that comment down below. Yeah, there's such a limiting mindset to because this happened in the past. This is going to impact me for God knows how long into the future and we're constantly functioning on a leg down on the ladder, whatever. And I mean, you can feel that way, but just know that it's going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. And if you feel like you're limited in that way, you're going to be limited in that way. And then there's going to be several black people who have the same history as you, who were set back generationally, who excel because they're not choosing to dwell. And that doesn't mean that you don't acknowledge it. You can acknowledge it and succeed despite those challenges. - Yeah, and that reminds me of the quoting of MLK that we saw in the video that we don't, you haven't given us any boots. And like at the time in which MLK said that and about whatever he was talking about was probably a very salient and true point, but the list of examples of people like you and your family who have used their agency and their work ethic and creativity and intelligence to pull themselves up from nothing and to become, make something of themselves. That's a growing list and it becomes a weaker and weaker argument in my mind, more time passes. - Yep. - Gabe Morgan says, "Welcome back, A&T. "I'm not going to lie, I didn't realize how much "I depend on you for entertainment." This last week was lame af without you. - Aw, we won't leave you guys hanging again until next vacation. And maybe then we'll have some videos to post in the meantime. - Y'all really like that Kamala Harris video, the Blacksen video, we gotta do more content like that 'cause you guys were cracking up at that one. I was getting all your story posts and all that fun stuff. (laughing) - Yeah, I guess more Kamala content. - I guess so. - Show 'em who's the true mamala. - Oh, gosh. (laughing) Let's see, actually I love all these comments that are like, we miss y'all this week. So, I know you guys are so nice. - That's oddly affirming, so. (laughing) - That's what people love. Precision Joker says, it's so sad. I just don't understand why people want to move backwards. - Yeah, me neither, but we are, we are. Support black businesses. We need another black Wall Street, no, we don't. Just be normal, please, please. (laughing) Yeah, yeah. - Danny Yukic says, I hope you had a good time in Croatia, Amala. I think these conversations invoke sympathy, which is, which I think is important, but not as a source of strength. - Yes, okay, I 100% agree with that, yeah. And by the way, Croatia was awesome. So cool, everybody there was so nice and happy and having a good time and the beaches were beautiful and they were very accommodating. And yeah, lovely. - Lovely. - Lovely. - Tuva says, caught the end and wanted to say hello from Norway. I love hearing your opinions on topics, especially as I'm a socialist and on the quote-unquote opposite side. - Oh, very interesting. Love to hear that and from Norway. So it's got to have a whole different sort of definition. - I was gonna say, I wonder why it constitutes being a socialist in Norway. - Right, it's got to be very different. - More homogenous and might be more feasible there to support some of those things. - Yeah, yeah, so that'd be interesting. I'd love to, I need to look into that more. I'm not too well versed. The only thing I've looked into quite a bit when it comes to Norway is just the whole immigration crisis that's happening, yeah. - Yeah, they are all dealing with that. - Yeah, at least. - Are we all? - Tragikistan. - "Stethoscopes and study guides" says, "I was bored last week, difficult finding a good podcast to watch that and listen to last week. Your podcast was definitely missed." - Aw, well we're back, guys. We're never gonna leave you again. (laughing) - Timothy W says, "I just started the coddling of the American mine and I love it. I'm also reading another amazing book that is similar but more psychology-driven message called the courage to be disliked. Great read. - Oh, I've heard about that book. I've never read it though and I haven't read the coddling of the American mine, although I do understand the basic sentiment 'cause a lot of heights work just watched him speak a lot. - Right, "Stethoscopes again" says, "I have not one racist bone in my body. I'm a white American in a long-term relationship with a black man." There you go. And that's just how the world is for the most part. I mean, people are, there's gonna be a time later, at least scientists predict that most people are gonna be looking like me as far as like skin color, I color all these different things. So who's gonna complain about racism? Then you have nothing to say. You will have nothing to say. - A couple more here. Kelsey Blacksmith says, "Aamala, now that you're home, you can settle in, chill, maybe kick back with some nice relaxing PO box paperwork." - You know what? You just run to be in that. - I'm so bad. I am so sorry, guys. I am the worst procrastinator of all procrastinators that have ever lived. I do need to get a PO box still. And now it's just becoming an ongoing joke that has been going on for months. - I don't know about opening this PO box. - I might be over the earmark on that one, but-- - Might be over the earmark on the PO box. Oh my gosh. - A lot more from "Stethoscopes" says, "I just have issues with people and common sense." - Yeah. - Don't we all? (laughs) - This is a safe space for you. We like common sense here. - Yeah. - And last one I'm seeing, "Kidjoy." His first ever super chat says, "What's the favorite place you've traveled, Hamala?" - Oh my gosh. My favorite place I've ever been, Croatia, but it's probably way, way up there. Now after that, it's a really great place. I'd go there again. I spent one day in Paris, and it was such a fun day that I will just put Paris on the top of the list as well, although I've never didn't get a real great grasp of Paris. Just was there with my boyfriend and his best friends and stuff like that. So yeah, that's up there. But I will say, every time I travel, I realize how spoiled I am as an American with like the food, the service, the hospitality, just the experience of living in America, like the different landscapes and the all-encompassing nature that is America that like, you get back home and you're like, "Oh, it's always good to be, but you're never, you're never like back home being like, "Oh man, it sucks to be back home." You're like, "This is awesome." - Yeah, we were joking before, like I was like, I was so glad when I got back on the flight back from Paris to the US, it was on a JetBlue flight, but they had plastic utensils on the plane and I was like, "Ah, this is how it's supposed to be." I cannot stand those wooden utensils that they have in all of these European countries now. But it gives that, you know how some people get the nails on the chalkboard and gives you the PBGBs, like wooden stuff in my fingers and on my tongue, I just can't take it. - I just can't take it. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah. - It's like bottles that you can take the top all the way off. - Dude. - Just little things. - I was almost radicalized by the water bottle situation in Europe. I don't, if you guys have not been to Europe, if you open a water bottle, the cap stays on the water bottle with like these little pieces of plastic that connect the cap, so it's just a capping off. Of course you could rip it off if you really wanted to, but I was like, something in that just really made me short circuit. (laughing) - That's the American in us, man, which is like, and I want to be free to take off the damn top of the water bottle and do whatever I want. - Yep. - I want the freedom of having my water bottle cap in my hands. (laughing) Oh my gosh, and okay, first of all, to you Europeans, how are you staying hydrated and why don't you use ice? I just don't understand what's going on. Like if you ask for water and the water comes out and it's like this tiny, and you ask for a drink, they don't put ice in the drink. And then if you ask for ice, you're like, oh, can I get a glass of ice? They look at you, like you just ask to slap their mama. By asking, and then they'll bring you a cup of ice in the cup of ice. - There's like two cubes in it. - Two cubes of ice. (laughing) I'm so spoiled by being in America with ice and water and you know, all these different things and bottle caps that come off the bottle. It's very fascinating to visit elsewhere. - Your was great, well, we were-- - No, but it's great, it's great. It's just these little things that you're like, what is going on? - No. - Anyway, now that we're done crapping on, he's about, I think that was all our super chance to-- - Oh my gosh. - We keep going, I guess. - Yeah, if you want us to keep going, oh, there's one more from Timothy, I think. - Oh, okay, if you see, oh, I see it. I keep waiting for 4 p.m. to hit, and then it hit me, LOLOL. - There we go, because we're here. 4 p.m. is when we go live. Thank you, Timothy. We are right here to see you. - I feel like I have to close out with saying something good, a small good thing about the European experience. I mean, think, when you order a Coke, okay, it always comes with a lemon. That's cool. In America, they don't do that. They don't give you a Coke with a little lemon slice on it. I feel like that's pretty nice and cool. When you're paying for your bill at the restaurant, they don't walk away with your credit card. They just stay at the table, and they let you pay right in front of them, so everything is square, and you don't gotta worry about no funny business. - And you don't have to tip most of the time, which is nice. - Yeah, and it's pretty safe, depending on where you are. London, not so much. Everywhere else, pretty safe. You're not really worried. You can walk around at like two in the morning, and for the most part, everything's gonna be pretty good. - I was worried, 'cause I was watching on social media, all these clips of like the rioting, and craziness, and stuff, but everywhere we went, and London on this trip was actually really clean, and really chill, and no major complaints there. The touristy spots were like really busy, and that was a little annoying, but I guess it comes to the territory, but I had pretty good experience over all in London. People were really nice, too. - Yeah, just keep your eye on your bag. Lots of pickpockets in London, but other than that, it's great to see. - It's bloody pickpockets. - Pickpockets, yeah. Okay, guys, that's the end of our show. - I'm gonna get out of here before we offend some more Europeans. - You guys are gonna boycott us and unsubscribe. Guys, thank you so much for watching the show. I hope you like it. If you like it, like, subscribe. Click the notification bell to be notified every single time we're live this Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and we won't let you down by going to Europe ever again. (laughs) At 1 p.m. Pacific, 3 p.m. Central, 4 p.m. Eastern, plus we post videos for you guys every single day. Tomorrow's video is about a debate that's been sparked on Twitter about what is a compliment within a relationship. If you tell a guy that he's husband material, and he's not somebody that you would hook up with, or be friends with benefits with, is that a compliment or an insult you guys will have to weigh in in the comments on tomorrow's show. I think I have an interesting, maybe not so interesting, strong female opinion on the matter. Apparently this is a gendered debate at the end of the day, but with that being said, keep an eye out for tomorrow's video, and have a fantastic rest of your Monday, guys. We'll be back. We're not gonna let you down. We're here all week, ladies and gentlemen, so come hang out with us in our next stream, which will be on Wednesday. 1 p.m. Pacific, 3 p.m. Central, 4 p.m. Eastern. Bye, guys. [BLANK_AUDIO]

Jubilee brought together a group of black men and women of various skin tones to discuss their experiences and ideas about colorism and how skin tone affects black people’s lives. Let’s watch and react.

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