Speaker 1: I want to say too, that our nation is yearning
Speaker 1: for love and community, that people want to know how
Speaker 1: we can live deeper and more meaningful lives. We have
Speaker 1: been looking for those spiritual teachers in our life today
Speaker 1: who can help us return to love and community. And
Speaker 1: part of what is interesting about us as a country
Speaker 1: is that the vast majority of people in this country
Speaker 1: still say they're Christians. We know one of the heartbeats
Speaker 1: of Christianity is the idea that God is love, that
Speaker 1: we are realized more fully as spiritual beings through love.
Speaker 1: So the question becomes, if we think this, if this
Speaker 1: is at the core of our beliefs, why are we
Speaker 1: not living it out in our actions? And that's the
Speaker 1: kind of political and spiritual question, because I feel like
Speaker 1: we have to attend to the needs of the spirit.
Speaker 2: Welcome Bell hooks to the word on words. This book
Speaker 2: is called All about Love, New Visions. It's yours. I
Speaker 2: count eighteenth book. That is a high achievement to be
Speaker 2: an author with the eighteen books, and this one about
Speaker 2: Love approaches the subject from fascinating perspective. You say at
Speaker 2: the outset, maybe in the preface or the introduction, you
Speaker 2: say that as a small child, you knew love and
Speaker 2: then somehow was taken from you. You lost it, and
Speaker 2: in trying to rediscover it, you found it was terribly
Speaker 2: difficult to do. And that when you would talk to
Speaker 2: people later on, and I'm moving ahead now, when you
Speaker 2: would talk to people later on about your search for love,
Speaker 2: people would say, you know, you really need to see
Speaker 2: a therapist. But talk about because you write about it
Speaker 2: so eloquently, talk about the need of children for love
Speaker 2: if they're going to have it throughout their lives.
Speaker 3: Well, I start off this book saying that I felt
Speaker 3: as a child what it was like to be loved
Speaker 3: and to be recognized, and then I felt that love
Speaker 3: move away, particularly talking about my relationship with my father,
Speaker 3: which I think that lots of people feel that our
Speaker 3: intimate connections with our mothers remain forever.
Speaker 1: But many, many adults have talked with me now about
Speaker 1: their since as children, that they held their father's regard
Speaker 1: in love at a certain moment of time and then
Speaker 1: lost them. And I've been amazed at the number of
Speaker 1: people that have come up to me after reading the
Speaker 1: preface and said to me, that's exactly how I felt
Speaker 1: as a child. But I couldn't tell anyone because we're
Speaker 1: not allowed to talk about not being loved. In our culture.
Speaker 1: We're made to feel that everybody knows love. I talk
Speaker 1: in the book about all of these people who'll say,
Speaker 1: you know, my dad beaten or mom did this, but
Speaker 1: she really loved me. And a key chapter in the
Speaker 1: book is the chapter on children, where I'm saying that no,
Speaker 1: in fact, if we are being abused in any way,
Speaker 1: we are not being loved. That love is amphithetical to them.
Speaker 4: Ladies and gentlemen. That was the legendary Bell Hooks. Y'all
Speaker 4: know what's up, the voice of reason re energized. Shout
Speaker 4: out to my big brother, Maurice Williams.
Speaker 5: Big mo.
Speaker 4: I'm re energized because we were able to give him
Speaker 4: the piece he needed. We gave him the homegoing that
Speaker 4: he needed. And of course I've been thinking quite deeply
Speaker 4: and Bell Hooks was laying out some stuff, man, and
Speaker 4: I'm just starting to see it totally different. You know,
Speaker 4: in my psychological studies, I'm starting to see it totally different.
Speaker 4: We have normalized needing, we have normalized detachment, we have
Speaker 4: normalized craving. And even in the framework that she was
Speaker 4: laying out you know about childhood and the parent, and
Speaker 4: one parent can get away with a certain level of
Speaker 4: abuse of even marginalization, minimization can get away with it.
Speaker 4: But these are cultural archetypes mom versus you know, father
Speaker 4: versus mother. But this topic that I have been working
Speaker 4: on the heart of the matter. But so you guys know,
Speaker 4: I've been on a tear against need, right. I said,
Speaker 4: need is the original sin for me, and we've built
Speaker 4: a whole intellectual architecture infrastructure around needing. You know, a
Speaker 4: healthy relationship is when two people need each other and
Speaker 4: they meet each other's needs, and they love equally, and
Speaker 4: they share and they give, and it's back and forth.
Speaker 5: What if.
Speaker 4: This romanticized view right of intimate relationship can only work
Speaker 4: with those who are somehow broken, who find the answer
Speaker 4: in another Think on this for a second before I
Speaker 4: really peel into the topic. Haven't you heard it before,
Speaker 4: Like when you start to heal, when you start to
Speaker 4: climb that ladder of spiritual elevation. Right when you start
Speaker 4: to climb that ladder, you find that you are you
Speaker 4: have less in common with those who are not on
Speaker 4: the path. Now, for the spiritually evolved, everything is all
Speaker 4: one for the spiritually unevolved. This is where loneliness creeps in.
Speaker 4: So I have been thinking about this topic and it's
Speaker 4: a banger. I want you to think. I want you
Speaker 4: to listen and think with me. But the phone lines
Speaker 4: are open. The number to die one eight hundred nine
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen eighty. That's one eight hundred nine twenty fifteen eighty.
Speaker 4: This is a non judgmental space. Your thoughts, your ideas,
Speaker 4: your concepts, your pushback. You're pouring in whatever you want
Speaker 4: to do, it will not be judged here. A lot
Speaker 4: of people want me to push back against people who
Speaker 4: say things that they disagree with.
Speaker 5: I don't do that.
Speaker 4: This is a platform for you to voice how you feel.
Speaker 4: Tonight's topic the heart.
Speaker 5: Of the matter.
Speaker 4: You matter while you still matter, But will you still
Speaker 4: matter once the matter is settled? Way, hold on, Zoe,
Speaker 4: don't do that. You matter while you still matter. In
Speaker 4: other words, while you're still catering to my wounds, while
Speaker 4: you're still providing for my wounds. This is how when
Speaker 4: we interface in love. Somebody has to fit me, Somebody
Speaker 4: has to fix me. Somebody has to give me what
Speaker 4: I think I don't have.
Speaker 5: Let me say it. Again.
Speaker 4: You matter while you matter the moment you cut off
Speaker 4: the supply chain to the wound. Haven't you been treated
Speaker 4: like you never mattered when that happened? When you stop
Speaker 4: showing up for the wounds, right, the thing that they
Speaker 4: now identify with you don't matter anymore? You matter while
Speaker 4: you still matter? But will you still matter once the
Speaker 4: matter is settled? You matter while you still matter, while
Speaker 4: you're providing, while you're giving right. That's why you matter.
Speaker 4: But will you still matter? Means something the matter circumstance
Speaker 4: situation is settled. If you mattered because my wounds needed you,
Speaker 4: who are you to me after healing cancels your assignment?
Speaker 4: What happens when consciousness discovers that the thing around which
Speaker 4: it's organized or it has an it has organized an
Speaker 4: enormous amount of meaning never possessed the meaning that was.
Speaker 5: Initially assigned to it. One fifteen eighty. Get to your
Speaker 5: phone lines.
Speaker 4: You meant something to me because you made me comfortable.
Speaker 4: The moment you make me uncomfortable, you no longer matter.
Speaker 5: DC.
Speaker 4: Whatded people are asking, zoh I thought you would be
Speaker 4: off today. Nah, nah, this work matters. I'm at my
Speaker 4: brother's funeral, talking like this as I'm eulogizing him. I'm
Speaker 4: talking like this to my family. Do you understand see
Speaker 4: the way we set up in America? You matter when
Speaker 4: you accumulate, when you achieve right, but does your spirit
Speaker 4: matter without the achievement? It tells you we're a blind
Speaker 4: society because if you haven't the societal bobbles and trinkets
Speaker 4: and accoultrement. If you don't have those things, how do
Speaker 4: I know you matter? We are a book cover society.
Speaker 4: We're looking at the book cover. We're not turning pages
Speaker 4: and trying to understand content that's in the book. Do
Speaker 4: you understand that's why this topic is so poignant? The
Speaker 4: heart of the matter, you matter while you still matter?
Speaker 4: In other words, you have meaning while they're supply because
Speaker 4: the supply matters matter material, what you're bringing to me,
Speaker 4: what you brought to the table, the material of it,
Speaker 4: whether it's psychological, emotional, financial.
Speaker 5: Do you see what I'm saying?
Speaker 4: Presence? That's the matter?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: You matter?
Speaker 6: I E.
Speaker 4: Have meaning while you still matter while the supply chain
Speaker 4: is happening. But will you still matter have meaning once
Speaker 4: the matter situation and circumstance I e. Supply chain as
Speaker 4: well is settled.
Speaker 5: Tonight's topic.
Speaker 4: What if the person you swear you love became lovable
Speaker 4: partly because something unresolved inside of you could use them.
Speaker 4: That possibility cuts deeper than coincidence, compatibility, attachment style, or
Speaker 4: the familiar claim that wounded people choose wounded partners. The
Speaker 4: question reaches into the construction of love itself. Perhaps the
Speaker 4: abandoned part of you found someone willing to chase.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna keep it one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: My brother was in a sixteen year toxic relationship with
Speaker 4: someone who would chase him. Now, my people, we all
Speaker 4: Southern folk from Chatanook, and we all showed a level
Speaker 4: of grace and decorum and class. We allowed my brother's
Speaker 4: woman to attend. She sat in the front pew, But
Speaker 4: their toxicity enabled each other's toxicity sixteen years resulted in
Speaker 4: cirrhosis of the liver and many other ailments. You matter
Speaker 4: as long as the supply chain that means something to
Speaker 4: me is coming. Do you understand what I'm saying? Do
Speaker 4: you see I care for you because of what you bring,
Speaker 4: what you do, how you show up in the way
Speaker 4: my wounds need you. Perhaps the abandoned part of you
Speaker 4: found someone willing to chase. The unseen part found an admirer.
Speaker 4: The frightened part found a protector. The financially insecure part
Speaker 4: found a provider. The self doubting part found someone willing
Speaker 4: to believe enough for two people. The emotionally neglected part
Speaker 4: found someone with a capacity to absorb pressure you had
Speaker 4: never learned to hold with your own spirit and someone
Speaker 4: or somewhere inside all of that relief, you said, I
Speaker 4: love you. But is that love true? Is that love real?
Speaker 4: But I want to know what part right of what
Speaker 4: you loved.
Speaker 5: Was there?
Speaker 4: What was it? I want to know was it their usefulness?
Speaker 4: Did you what part of them that you actually loved?
Speaker 4: Was it their usefulness to what remained unhealed in you.
Speaker 4: A partner can become important because their presence makes self
Speaker 4: avoidance less expensive. Their emotional capacity can soften the tension
Speaker 4: created by self neglect.
Speaker 5: I'm destroying myself.
Speaker 4: I'm killing myself, but you're still here pouring into me.
Speaker 5: Their reassurance can.
Speaker 4: Quiet self unbelief without requiring self belief to develop. Their
Speaker 4: money can make fear easier to postpone. Beauty can purchase attention,
Speaker 4: Charisma can purchase access. Status can purchase significance. Sex can
Speaker 4: purchase reassurance. Patience can purchase another day before something buried
Speaker 4: must finally be confronted. Every currency need not involve cash.
Speaker 4: Sometimes one person's finance was Sometimes one person finances the
Speaker 4: lifestyle while the other finances the wound. This does not
Speaker 4: make human exchange corrupt. Love has always existed alongside need, interdependence, labor, protection, kinship, sexuality, resources, sacrifice,
Speaker 4: and survival.
Speaker 5: When I come forward.
Speaker 4: The voice of reason, boy, I'm gonna keep this fire lit.
Speaker 4: Your stay tuned.
Speaker 7: Doctor Tamabryan is a renowned psychologist, author, professor, and minister
Speaker 7: who blends spirituality and social justice to help readers find healing.
Speaker 8: You're holding on to crumbs can keep you from the
Speaker 8: feast you deserve.
Speaker 7: She is dedicated to helping people build healthy relationships.
Speaker 8: Perfectionism can be a form of.
Speaker 7: Control from trauma and overcome life's challenges.
Speaker 8: I do the right combination of things, I'll finally be chosen.
Speaker 7: Join us as we dive into her new book, Matters
Speaker 7: of the Heart.
Speaker 9: Welcome, Thank you so much.
Speaker 8: It's good to be here.
Speaker 7: So, Doctor Bryant, you're a psychologist, author, professor, minister, Can
Speaker 7: you share a bit about your personal journey that led
Speaker 7: to the writing of this book.
Speaker 8: Certainly so relationships are a central point that people often
Speaker 8: have questions about and issues about. I dedicate the book
Speaker 8: to my mom, Reverend Cecilia Bryant, and last September she
Speaker 8: died of breast cancer, and thank you so much and
Speaker 8: for me, it's true that the grief is a reflection
Speaker 8: of like this great deep love, and she loved fiercely,
Speaker 8: to the point where one of my friends, when she
Speaker 8: met my mother said, I wonder who I would be
Speaker 8: if I had your mother.
Speaker 9: Wow.
Speaker 8: And so I know what a gift like a nurturing
Speaker 8: relationship can be. And so trying to help people to
Speaker 8: build that with themselves and with others, family, friends, romantic partners.
Speaker 8: It's a protective factor in terms of our mental health.
Speaker 8: Can help dealing with depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction. All of
Speaker 8: the challenges are easier to face when we're not facing
Speaker 8: them alone.
Speaker 7: To that point, you emphasize the importance of healing trauma
Speaker 7: as the foundation for creating solid.
Speaker 10: Relationships, healthy relationships.
Speaker 4: Why is this so crucial?
Speaker 8: There are traumas that are like medical or natural disasters,
Speaker 8: But when we have been harmed by another person. It
Speaker 8: causes us, understandably to have those walls up to be
Speaker 8: defended against future harm, to have difficulty trusting, trusting the
Speaker 8: other person, but also trusting ourselves. So it's so important
Speaker 8: that we your mind, body, heart, spirit, nervous system because
Speaker 8: it affects our ability to be seen. Instead of constantly running,
Speaker 8: sometimes we are chasing.
Speaker 4: Please say her name again, brother, doctor Tama Bryant cooking
Speaker 4: with the rarest grease. I love her work, I love
Speaker 4: her information, but I'm here to push it further. Connection
Speaker 4: is not supposed to last forever. Connection implies this connection.
Speaker 4: Oneness is the goal of relationship. Communion is the goal
Speaker 4: of relationship. If the relationship still needs you could take
Speaker 4: a developmental psychology class and it'll tell you your life is
Speaker 4: better as you get older if you have have a
Speaker 4: core group of you know, relationships like family, friends, you know,
Speaker 4: co workers. Because the idea is you're never going to
Speaker 4: be able to get rid of need. That's the idea,
Speaker 4: We're always gonna need connection. That's how they teach human
Speaker 4: beings are hardwired for connection. And I'm going to challenge that.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying that the neuroscience is incorrect. But I
Speaker 4: believe ancient traditions have already proved that the real separation
Speaker 4: is from God, and that God exists within you, and
Speaker 4: that because you haven't been trained to go in and
Speaker 4: find source in yourself, you find source in another. And
Speaker 4: when you find source in another without locating it within yourself,
Speaker 4: you might run into something called codependency.
Speaker 5: Do you see.
Speaker 4: This person mattered to me because they stood in the
Speaker 4: gap for my wound, But them standing in the gap
Speaker 4: for your wound, did it prevent you from going on
Speaker 4: the healing journey? This is a real question the heart
Speaker 4: of the matter. Do you matter because of the matter.
Speaker 5: You bring to me?
Speaker 4: Ah, here we come, when we come forward, I'm opening
Speaker 4: up the phone lines. I want to hear from everybody tonight.
Speaker 4: The number to dollar is one eight hundred nine twenty
Speaker 4: fifteen eighty. Let's get busy that.
Speaker 10: You understand who yourself is, so in order to be
Speaker 10: able to reshape about it consistent with your self interest,
Speaker 10: you got to know what's your interested me and you
Speaker 10: had to know what yourself really is all about.
Speaker 4: We are living in en goronment, the delima.
Speaker 11: Of somehow understanding of identifying what our soul really is.
Speaker 4: Had to become a perplexing question. It used to be
Speaker 4: a time that you didn't have.
Speaker 12: To convince black people they were black. It has not
Speaker 12: become an option people can select to be black. Maybe
Speaker 12: I'll be black, maybe.
Speaker 10: I'll be Republican, maybe.
Speaker 12: I'll be Democrat, maybe I'll be an immigrant, maybe I'll.
Speaker 10: Be this or that, because they didn't have a choice.
Speaker 11: We were in a reality that forced us to know
Speaker 11: you black, when.
Speaker 3: You like it or not, you black.
Speaker 4: The realities of your rural world you live again, have
Speaker 4: defined that for you, So there was no confusion.
Speaker 11: People may not have known as Francis Volcity spent all
Speaker 11: of her career trying to help people know the forces
Speaker 11: that were meeting us, that were creating those problems, that
Speaker 11: somehow white supremacy doctrine.
Speaker 4: That was making it painful for us to be that.
Speaker 11: But we knew we were black on the plantations.
Speaker 4: We knew we were black being lich we knew we
Speaker 4: were black post slavery. We knew we were black.
Speaker 11: And then lo and behold, we got this black man
Speaker 11: in the White House, and we certain.
Speaker 5: So what am I doing tonight? You hear all my authors? Andy,
Speaker 5: who was that?
Speaker 4: My friend you are doctor Naim Akbar in here cooking
Speaker 4: with the rarest Greece. Yeah, that was palm oil. He
Speaker 4: was cooking wet. I love it. Why am I doing
Speaker 4: this tonight because I'm talking to folks who are saying
Speaker 4: things about my brother and I'm talking about family. Oh
Speaker 4: he made choices. He should have he should have did
Speaker 4: something different. I had to remind you don't. Trauma is listen.
Speaker 4: Trauma is like honey. It'll keep over time. If you
Speaker 4: don't deal with that, it'll stay right there. I think
Speaker 4: archaeologists found some honey in an Egyptian tomb and it
Speaker 4: was still edible to three thousand years old. It can
Speaker 4: go in there and get that honey and put it
Speaker 4: on some toast and get some butter, and it's three
Speaker 4: thousand year old Egyptian honey. Trauma like honey, it's not
Speaker 4: gonna spoil. If you don't get in your spirit and
Speaker 4: deal with it and sit with it and love on
Speaker 4: it and nurture it, you gonna find someone to give
Speaker 4: you the false illusion.
Speaker 5: I know. I'm sorry to say this.
Speaker 4: Right. See, when you think you matter because somebody shows
Speaker 4: up to feed your womb, your wound, that's a false
Speaker 4: illusion of mattering, because all you gotta do is turn
Speaker 4: off the facet. Whatever material they might give you, security, money, presence,
Speaker 4: whatever they're giving, whatever they're doing. If they turn off
Speaker 4: the fawcet you back to square one. It's anight's topic
Speaker 4: the heart of the matter. Sometimes one person finances the
Speaker 4: lifestyle while the other finances the wound. This does not
Speaker 4: make human exchange corrupt. Love has always existed alongside need, interdependence, labor, protection, kinship, sexuality, resources, sacrifice,
Speaker 4: and survival. The danger begins when we cannot tell whether
Speaker 4: another person matters because we encounter them nude, deeply psychologically nude,
Speaker 4: or because something unfinished within us has calculated their value.
Speaker 4: So many people out here playing games with other people's
Speaker 4: lives because their wounds have an insatiable appetite. Then the
Speaker 4: heart of the matter will change if it's about that.
Speaker 4: Do they matter because you love them, or do they
Speaker 4: matter because they are in service to your wounds? Or
Speaker 4: even deeper, do you only love them for the service
Speaker 4: they provide unto your wounds? And if their service to
Speaker 4: your wounds help make them lovable to you? What happens
Speaker 4: when healing makes their service unnecessary? Does it mean you
Speaker 4: use them this whole time. The abandoned part no longer
Speaker 4: needs chasing, the frightened part can now withstand uncertainty. The
Speaker 4: neglected part finally receives its own attention. I'm here to
Speaker 4: tell you self realization. Self actualization is the death of
Speaker 4: psychological needing. But because western thought and clinical psychology does
Speaker 4: not deal with spirituality, they cannot say when you heal,
Speaker 4: and I don't mean when you maintain a wound when
Speaker 4: you're the maintenance man for the woman. I'm saying when
Speaker 4: you heal, need dies too. When we come forward. If
Speaker 4: you think I just got started, you be right here
Speaker 4: we go now.
Speaker 6: I'm not telling anybody to jump out and act foolish.
Speaker 6: I'm not telling anybody to disrespect.
Speaker 9: White people, to call them.
Speaker 6: Names, because that's fear.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 6: What we need to do is to sit back and
Speaker 6: say we are afraid to go further, because that is
Speaker 6: the truth.
Speaker 9: And as long as there is fear, you will not
Speaker 9: pull together the behavior that is going to mean a confrontation.
Speaker 6: As long as there is fear, there's not even going
Speaker 6: to be self respect, because the brain understands that if
Speaker 6: you're moving towards self respect, if you're really moving towards
Speaker 6: self respect, if you're really moving towards pride, that anybody
Speaker 6: who says you can stand up, anybody who says your
Speaker 6: little children cannot develop will have to be stopped.
Speaker 13: Doctor Francis cris Welson, Come on, doctor Francis chris Well said,
Speaker 13: I'm talking to my folk tonight, because I was talking
Speaker 13: to my folk last night. I can't judge somebody who
Speaker 13: processes differently than you. I had to let my family
Speaker 13: no and my two oldest brothers.
Speaker 4: You guys heard me talk about them before on this
Speaker 4: station several times. Eighteen nineteen months ago, we had that
Speaker 4: major fire and both of those guys went mia. We
Speaker 4: found them at different times in different conditions. But when
Speaker 4: we were children, my mother was twenty seven years old
Speaker 4: and had a nervous breakdown and had to go to
Speaker 4: the hospital. My brother resented a great many of my
Speaker 4: uncles because he felt like and grandmothers and aunts and
Speaker 4: everybody on my mother's side, because he felt like y'all
Speaker 4: could have came and helped us, but instead, all of
Speaker 4: my mother's children, including myself, went into foster care, except
Speaker 4: for the two oldest. They went to juvenile Hall. Well
Speaker 4: what was the equivalent of juvenile hall. They suffered a
Speaker 4: great many atrocities. My brother's father was on heroin. He
Speaker 4: left the family after marrying.
Speaker 5: My mother.
Speaker 4: Left the South and went to Harlem. My father was
Speaker 4: no better. He was abusive.
Speaker 5: Do you understand My brother was traumatized.
Speaker 4: And broken. And I had to tell my sisters because
Speaker 4: not both of them, but one of them in particular.
Speaker 4: You cannot judge your brother because you did not share
Speaker 4: the same experience your family, your father and your grandmother
Speaker 4: came to get you. You did not really experience with
Speaker 4: the two oldest brothers experienced. My oldest brother, Anthony, was
Speaker 4: being held captive in an abandoned house.
Speaker 5: Where he was being forced to.
Speaker 4: Do all manner of things right. And one of the
Speaker 4: things was turn on you know those heaters that you
Speaker 4: used to have to light the heater, and he was
Speaker 4: being forced to turn on the heater a house heater,
Speaker 4: turned it on. The whole house blew up with him
Speaker 4: in it. This is my oldest brother, in his teens.
Speaker 5: He survived DC.
Speaker 4: Listen. I had to tell my sister, you cannot judge
Speaker 4: these men who survived to this point. You know, I
Speaker 4: want the route I went and I did this, and
Speaker 4: I but that's you. Maybe the trauma we all all
Speaker 4: experienced was on a spectrum. Maybe theirs was on the
Speaker 4: far end of the spectrum. So there's no way you
Speaker 4: can process for him or process as yourself within him.
Speaker 4: Don't put your decision making skills on this brother. This
Speaker 4: is not an excuse for the brother. Yes, the brother
Speaker 4: was a co creator of his own demise, But at
Speaker 4: the same time, that same brother protected you from the streets.
Speaker 4: Like I told my family, I said, you are brother.
Speaker 4: Oh was forced into the fatherhood role when he himself
Speaker 4: did not have a father. His father had left and
Speaker 4: in a lot of ways, his mother left because she
Speaker 4: had been on psychotropic drugs ever since the nervous breakdown.
Speaker 4: But he had to stand in the gap for all
Speaker 4: of his siblings, even his older brother. He had to
Speaker 4: stand in the gap for him the heart of the matter,
Speaker 4: That's what I'm saying. Why wouldn't he go to somebody
Speaker 4: that was toxic, that's all he knew. Why wouldn't he
Speaker 4: go to somebody that was fractured when that's all he
Speaker 4: knew when he himself was fractured.
Speaker 14: You see, listen to the topic. Listen the heart of
Speaker 14: the matter.
Speaker 4: You matter. While you still matter as long as you
Speaker 4: can do for me, you matter. But will you still
Speaker 4: matter once the matter is settled? If you mattered because
Speaker 4: my wounds needed you, who are you to me after
Speaker 4: healing cancels? Your assignment? Were many times I would approach
Speaker 4: my brother with other family members who survived alcoholism, and
Speaker 4: I would go to them and we would do interventions.
Speaker 4: And my brother, who a deeply private and quiet and
Speaker 4: he was a gentle giant, did he do you understand?
Speaker 4: He balked every time someone who could give him security,
Speaker 4: someone who could give him escape it.
Speaker 5: It was just.
Speaker 4: It was like, honey, it was something he couldn't resist.
Speaker 4: And I was trying to tell him, you got the strength.
Speaker 4: You got us through it. Brother, You got us through it.
Speaker 4: You protected us.
Speaker 5: Do you understand?
Speaker 4: I had to educate the sisters and the brothers and
Speaker 4: the cousins.
Speaker 5: I can't believe Mo was acting like that.
Speaker 4: I said, I can because I saw what he did,
Speaker 4: what he went through, what happened to him.
Speaker 5: I saw that. I saw that with his other brother.
Speaker 4: My oldest brother leaves Los Angeles after a major earthquake,
Speaker 4: moves to New York. He goes to New York, and
Speaker 4: every day while he's in New York, he's being gay, bashed,
Speaker 4: abused every day. And he stayed there for a few years.
Speaker 4: He stayed there, and then one day he calls me.
Speaker 4: I think it was ninety four. The people in New
Speaker 4: York beat the man so bad. They beat him up
Speaker 4: every day. They stole his family photo albums, pictures of
Speaker 4: us as children. They stole the photo albums in New York.
Speaker 4: One day he couldn't take it no more. He said, Bro,
Speaker 4: can you send for me? Can you bring me home?
Speaker 4: I said absolutely, I'll bring you home, and when we come.
Speaker 5: Forward, I will tell you how me and Big Mo
Speaker 5: met him.
Speaker 4: Come on, man, legendary doctor Amos Wilson. I'm playing all
Speaker 4: black clinicians and philosophers and authors tonight because my family
Speaker 4: is a black family that is probably no different than
Speaker 4: many other black families out there.
Speaker 5: We've all endured hardships.
Speaker 4: My brother was laid to rest yesterday, and he was
Speaker 4: called to be something that he had not fully embodied
Speaker 4: within himself, but he did it anyway. When my sisters call,
Speaker 4: I'm going to buy a new car, come with me.
Speaker 4: He's the one right I will go check out the car,
Speaker 4: check the oil, kick the tires, test driving. If my
Speaker 4: mother's boyfriend was tripping, he's the one. If somebody was
Speaker 4: trying to jump his little brothers, he's the one. But
Speaker 4: inside he was not the one to himself.
Speaker 5: Do you understand.
Speaker 4: Your partner can't matter because they pacify your wound. Is
Speaker 4: what I'm talking about tonight. So back to my story.
Speaker 4: My oldest brother, who was still with us, by the way,
Speaker 4: he came to the funeral to support his little brother.
Speaker 5: He goes to New York.
Speaker 4: Because we had an earthquake here and he was frightened.
Speaker 5: He thought it was over, so.
Speaker 4: He goes to New York. He is abused in New
Speaker 4: York almost every day because he's an openly homosexual man.
Speaker 5: Right, so almost every day they stole everything from him,
Speaker 5: robbed him. Every day.
Speaker 4: He was I guess. He had a job as a waiter.
Speaker 4: He was making some money. But he loved New York,
Speaker 4: the city, he loved the energy, he loved the scene,
Speaker 4: the village and all of that, right, but he was
Speaker 4: harassed daily and abused and beaten. Now, he survived a
Speaker 4: gas leak in a house in Tennessee that blew up
Speaker 4: with him in it. He survived that, He survived the
Speaker 4: Alden Park projects. He was the first one to move
Speaker 4: to southern Califia, Fifornia of our family convinced our mother
Speaker 4: to come join her grandmother and uncles and cousins and family.
Speaker 4: And this is how we get to Altadena. Well, that
Speaker 4: earthquake scared him up out of here and he shook
Speaker 4: it and went to New York until the beatings got
Speaker 4: so bad.
Speaker 5: He called me.
Speaker 4: And he said, can you bring me home. At the time,
Speaker 4: I was working for Loud Records. I was the West
Speaker 4: Coast director of an R for Loud Records Loud RCA,
Speaker 4: And I was like absolutely. I bought him a ticket
Speaker 4: and he came home. When he comes home, it's me
Speaker 4: and his protector. We go to see him Big Mo.
Speaker 4: Me and Big Mo go to see Anthony. We go
Speaker 4: see him staying with our sister. He comes to the
Speaker 4: door and he's got on you remember that shirt that
Speaker 4: Jennifer Beale was wearing in Flash Dance. He got one
Speaker 4: shoulder out. He got on the Flash Dance shirt with
Speaker 4: the shoulder out. He's got on electric blue eyeliner. His
Speaker 4: hair has done a certain he got on leg worms.
Speaker 4: Me and big mole thought it was our sister. Cassandra asked, hey,
Speaker 4: where's Anthony? It was him, but we embraced him and
Speaker 4: loved oni anyway, right, damn, glad to have you back.
Speaker 4: Glad you made it back. Bro, who thought we lost you? Okay?
Speaker 4: Do you have the folk albums?
Speaker 5: Nah?
Speaker 4: They stole the photo albums. Oh lord lord, they done
Speaker 4: stole the photo album So we loved on him and
Speaker 4: we protected him from that moment on, or so we thought.
Speaker 4: We living in Pasadena, one day, he goes to the
Speaker 4: Pasadena Mall. He's being harassed in the Pasadena Mall because
Speaker 4: he's gay.
Speaker 5: This man has been so traumatized. It's my oldest brother.
Speaker 5: He's been so traumatized.
Speaker 4: That instead of running to the security guard and say hey,
Speaker 4: these guys are harassing me, he jumped off of the
Speaker 4: second story. Jumped off the second story, landed on his face,
Speaker 4: and his knee knocked out, all of his teeth, broke
Speaker 4: his knee cap. Because he was abused early on and
Speaker 4: throughout his life.
Speaker 5: He's still alive today.
Speaker 4: We saw him, you know, yesterday, loving on his little
Speaker 4: brother who protected him.
Speaker 5: Trauma is not something.
Speaker 4: That goes away if you don't go in and if
Speaker 4: you've lived through the type of trauma that my two
Speaker 4: oldest brothers, which I've been talking about, have lived through.
Speaker 4: If you don't get some help, psychologists, clinicians, psychiatrists, if
Speaker 4: you don't go sit with somebody, right, you can only imagine.
Speaker 4: If I say relationship is a mirror, you can only
Speaker 4: imagine what those mirrors are gonna look like. And I
Speaker 4: had to tell my sisters we all come from the
Speaker 4: same dysfunction. Don't think his dysfunction is not yours because
Speaker 4: it expresses itself differently, or yours is not his because
Speaker 4: it expresses itself differently.
Speaker 5: Don't think that.
Speaker 4: The marriage. That's why I keep saying, marriage don't matter if.
Speaker 5: You're not healing.
Speaker 4: Right, It's just a piece of paper, it's a social contract,
Speaker 4: it's a business. It don't matter unless you're using relationship
Speaker 4: for what it is for, and that is to see
Speaker 4: into yourself. And once you see into yourself, if you
Speaker 4: don't have the capacity to work it through with yourself,
Speaker 4: go get help. Go get help. Do you understand a
Speaker 4: partner can become important because their presence makes self avoidance
Speaker 4: less expensive. This is what happened to my older brother
Speaker 4: moe someone who would enable his weaknesses. He was a
Speaker 4: co creator of the mess.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: Their emotional capacity can soften the tension created by self neglect.
Speaker 4: Their reassurance can quiet self unbelief without requiring self belief
Speaker 4: to develop. Their money can make fear easier to postpone.
Speaker 4: Beauty can purchase attention, Charisma can purchase access, Status can
Speaker 4: purchase Significance can purchase reassurance. Patience can purchase another day
Speaker 4: Before something buried must finally be faced. Every currency need
Speaker 4: not involve cash. Sometimes one person finances the lifestyle while
Speaker 4: the other finances the wound. This does not make human
Speaker 4: exchange corrupt. Love has always existed alongside need, interdependence, labor, protection, kinship, sexuality, resources, sacrifice,
Speaker 4: and survival. The danger begins when we cannot tell whether
Speaker 4: another person matters because we encounter them deeply or because
Speaker 4: something unfinished within us has calculated their value to us.
Speaker 5: Then the heart of the matter changes.
Speaker 4: Do they matter because you love them or do you
Speaker 4: love them because they are service to your wounds? And
Speaker 4: if their service to your wounds.
Speaker 5: Helped make them lovable?
Speaker 4: What happens when healing makes that service that they provide unnecessary?
Speaker 4: The abandoned part no longer needs chasing what happens to
Speaker 4: their role in your life? The frightened part can withstand uncertainty.
Speaker 4: The neglected part right finally receives its own attention. Self
Speaker 4: unbelief begins surrendering its authority. Financial dependency changes, beauty loses
Speaker 4: some of its leverage. Status stops functioning as borrowed significance. Listen,
Speaker 4: the internal pressure your partner wants relieved no longer requires
Speaker 4: the same release. Now the matter has been settled. Will
Speaker 4: they still matter to you? Once the matter has been settled?
Speaker 4: Perhaps healing does not merely change how we relate. It
Speaker 4: exposes who have been participating in the definition of love itself?
Speaker 4: What is conscious choosing? What is fear based?
Speaker 5: Choosing?
Speaker 4: What is deprivation?
Speaker 5: Choosing? Gosh? Was it a wound?
Speaker 4: Recognizing the person most capable of keeping its world intact?
Speaker 5: We gotta get to it.
Speaker 4: The voice of reason is on fire tonight. I'm sharing
Speaker 4: my heart a little bit. Let's get it. When I
Speaker 4: come forward, I'm gonna keep cooking.
Speaker 8: You talk about the impact of American chattel slavery.
Speaker 15: They go, well, how do I understand? How do you
Speaker 15: connect slavery with contemporary African American behavior. I said, how
Speaker 15: can you not three in thirty nine years of trauma.
Speaker 15: This is a kind of pushback you get when you
Speaker 15: talk about slavery. Well, I I wasn't there, I didn't
Speaker 15: do it, and that was a look at how long
Speaker 15: ago that was, you know. But what made it unique
Speaker 15: from any other form of enslavement the length of servitude,
Speaker 15: the treatment of the enslavery, the rape, the pillage, the
Speaker 15: destruction of people. Europeans systematically turned the capturing, shipping, and
Speaker 15: breeding of other human beings into a business that would
Speaker 15: become the backbone of an entire economy. The other myth
Speaker 15: is that slavery ended and the playing field got level,
Speaker 15: And that's just not true because after slavery came the
Speaker 15: multitude of lynchings, all the way up through George Floyd
Speaker 15: three into thirty nine years of trauma, was there any
Speaker 15: therapeutic assistance? Nobody showed up. You've been harmed, and that
Speaker 15: requires more than medicine and talk therapy. That requires justice.
Speaker 15: Healing cannot happen without justice, you know. Malcolm X said,
Speaker 15: if you stick a knife nine inches into my back
Speaker 15: and you pull it out three, that's not progress. Even
Speaker 15: if you pull the knife all the way out, that's
Speaker 15: not progress. Progress is healing the wound, and America hasn't
Speaker 15: pulled out the knife. I believe that we are the
Speaker 15: pupil of the eye surrounded by a sea of white.
Speaker 15: But it is a pupil that contains the site. It
Speaker 15: beholds what is before it.
Speaker 4: That's scriptural. That is what the greatest fear is. You
Speaker 4: already know Legendary Dorsey High Zone, doctor Joy degru In
Speaker 4: the seventies, my mother moved into a place called Alton
Speaker 4: Park Projectston County, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Sit back, let me paint
Speaker 4: the picture. You turn off the lights, and the kitchen
Speaker 4: starts moving.
Speaker 5: Moving.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, that's when the mice and the rats and
Speaker 4: the roaches and all of that stuff starts coming out.
Speaker 4: As soon as the lights go off, they come out.
Speaker 5: You understand.
Speaker 4: Took her five years to get her kids back.
Speaker 5: From foster care.
Speaker 4: The projects were already doing its damage on the kids, right,
Speaker 4: just the nature the environment of it. But then poverty.
Speaker 4: The projects are what projects experiments socioeconomic depravity in that place.
Speaker 4: My mother wanted us out of there. She got us
Speaker 4: out because of my older brother Anthony. We all moved
Speaker 4: into his one bedroom apartment on six sixty five West
Speaker 4: Altadena Drive, Apartment twenty three. You understand.
Speaker 5: Cut.
Speaker 4: Two years later, he jumps off of a second story
Speaker 4: balcony in the Pasadena Mall and me and Moe go
Speaker 4: to the hospital, the very hospital. Moe dies in the
Speaker 4: very hospital. My daughter is born in the very hospital.
Speaker 4: My mother died in We go to Huntington Hospital.
Speaker 5: To see Anthony, and.
Speaker 4: The first thing MO said was, Man, I know you
Speaker 4: don't want to hear this, but you probably should have
Speaker 4: let them beat you up because you hurt yourself more
Speaker 4: than they ever could. And even then I was in
Speaker 4: my early twenties, I had to wear with all to say, no, Mo,
Speaker 4: you know what he'd been through. You can't give him
Speaker 4: that kind of advice. He was terrified, and when you're terrified,
Speaker 4: you do anything.
Speaker 5: So he becomes terrified for the rest of his life.
Speaker 4: In the two thousands twenty ten, I think it's twenty
Speaker 4: seventeen eighteen or something like that, he gets an apartment.
Speaker 4: Anthony does I'm going to tell you what sent him
Speaker 4: back into the streets of homelessness.
Speaker 5: When I come forward, mighty welcome back. Can you hear me.
Speaker 16: Hey, this is exciting. Can't imagine how happy I am
Speaker 16: that doctor Curry is here. So all right, So, instead
Speaker 16: of reading to you doctor Tommy Curry's biography, which is
Speaker 16: included in the conference program, I want to briefly say
Speaker 16: a few words about the relevance of his academic work today,
Speaker 16: particularly his latest book. Let me be emphatic. You must
Speaker 16: buy and read The Man Not Raised, Class Genre and
Speaker 16: the Dilemmas of Black Manhood. Why because it is one
Speaker 16: of the most important books I have read recently. With
Speaker 16: The Man Not Curry did not just author the twenty
Speaker 16: eighteen winner of the American Book Award, but he also
Speaker 16: inaugurated an entire field by the name of Blackmail Studies,
Speaker 16: which is described as follows. Blackmail Studies is an interdisciplinary
Speaker 16: yield dedicated to exploring the various developmental trajectories and the
Speaker 16: vulnerabilities racial, sexual, economic of black men and boys in
Speaker 16: the United States and abroad. To give you a sense
Speaker 16: of the book's significance, The Men Not signals a paradigm
Speaker 16: shift or a scientific revolution, to use these terms from
Speaker 16: Thomas Kuhn's in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn argues
Speaker 16: that scientific revolutions or non cumulative developmental episodes in which
Speaker 16: an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part
Speaker 16: by an incompatible new one, are inaugurated by growing sense
Speaker 16: that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in
Speaker 16: the exploration of an aspect of nature to which that
Speaker 16: paradigm itself had previously led the way. In both political
Speaker 16: and scientific development, the sense of malfunction that can lead
Speaker 16: to crisis is prerequisite to revolution. In his book, Curry
Speaker 16: shows us that the paradigms of feminism and post structuralism,
Speaker 16: or what he labels theory with a capital T, have
Speaker 16: ceased to function adequately in the exploration of black male vulnerability.
Speaker 16: On the one hand, feminism as a paradigm is premised
Speaker 16: on the primacy of sex over race, which results in
Speaker 16: a commonly held assumption among theorists that black males are
Speaker 16: somehow privileged along the axis of patriarchy because of their maleness.
Speaker 16: This assumption, of course, denies the historical facticity of slavery
Speaker 16: Jim Crow and the New Jim Crow. It also denies
Speaker 16: any empirical evidence to the contrary, that is, experiences of
Speaker 16: black male vulnerability. Curry's conceptualization of black males as man
Speaker 16: knots accomplishes at least two things. One, it delinks black
Speaker 16: maleness from the construct of patriarchy, which, in the context
Speaker 16: of the US is specifically a function of white supremacy.
Speaker 16: For Curry, black feminism internalizes some of the racist logics
Speaker 16: of first wave of feminism, like the ideological fantasy figure
Speaker 16: of the black rapist. Curry contests black feminism, particularly intersectional theory,
Speaker 16: as a paradigm, not because he doesn't believe in the
Speaker 16: equal rights of women, but because of feminism's inherent anti
Speaker 16: black male logic, an inherent logic to racialized capitalism in
Speaker 16: settler colonialism. Two, the concept of the man not names
Speaker 16: the reality of sexual violence that black males have been
Speaker 16: facing since the time of slavery to this day. Curry
Speaker 16: shows that black males in the US, although positioned as
Speaker 16: super predators in the political unconscious, are actually vulnerable to
Speaker 16: different kinds of violence, which render them generically disposable because
Speaker 16: they are raised bodies that are neither sexed nor gendered. Consequently,
Speaker 16: black males are not entitled to being victims of rape
Speaker 16: or domestic violence. For instance, I know these are provocative arguments.
Speaker 16: Paradigm shifts or scientific revolutions are always provocative in a
Speaker 16: good way. I think so. In response to Curry's critiques
Speaker 16: of black feminism, I hope that in the near future
Speaker 16: will see the establishment of Black female studies as a
Speaker 16: field dedicated to studying black females as woman nuts. Black
Speaker 16: males and black females need to be in solidarity together
Speaker 16: in their struggle against white supremacy and racialized capitalism, which,
Speaker 16: as a matrix of domination is dividing and conquering Blacks
Speaker 16: inside and outside of academia. Solidarity amongst blacks, as instigated
Speaker 16: by their common experience with structural racism and super exploitation,
Speaker 16: is a manifestation of what Angela Davis calls an intersectionality
Speaker 16: of struggles. Now, please give a very warm welcome to
Speaker 16: doctor Tommy Curry.
Speaker 17: First, I'm so happy to be here. It was a
Speaker 17: long flight, so forgive me for for being slightly jet lacked.
Speaker 5: UH.
Speaker 17: Let me begin by saying that the paper that I
Speaker 17: want to deliver today at at limit of a hominy, UH,
Speaker 17: is about the threshold, is about the proximity that racialized
Speaker 17: males have UH to the construct of the human Uh.
Speaker 17: I am interested in the violence that de natures and
Speaker 17: distorts racialized male subjectivity, if we could even call it that,
Speaker 17: or rather the position that these entities hold within Western
Speaker 17: patriarchal societies. And I think that our ignorance of this grouping,
Speaker 17: of this position, this artifact in societies that ranged across centuries,
Speaker 17: stops any real decolonial or critical lens and how we
Speaker 17: actually aspire to a better society. So, throughout the various
Speaker 17: literatures that comprise disciplines, the stories of racialized males, conquer men,
Speaker 17: and boys are told by their deaths. Theorists have been
Speaker 17: trained to look upon these bodies with an intuitive understanding
Speaker 17: that rotty mal flesh is the natural consequence of racism, racism,
Speaker 17: and xenophobia, so much so that racialized melness holds a
Speaker 17: symbolic reference to death. The horrors of violence imposed upon
Speaker 17: these bodies of lesser men, however, inspire no actual outrage
Speaker 17: or calls for theory.
Speaker 5: They just happen.
Speaker 17: The disproportion of homicide by police, strangers or intimates sound
Speaker 17: no clarions. Lesser men die and their corpse have become normal.
Speaker 17: The images of flaccid male bodies mutilated frames and flesh
Speaker 17: become placeholders for racism, xenophobia, and the police state, so
Speaker 17: much soul that there is a syndemity between death and
Speaker 17: the least powerful male body within our cultural schemas, little
Speaker 17: else about the male victim of violence is thought to
Speaker 17: be asked. Our theory is beyond its corpse. Sexual victimization, dehumanization,
Speaker 17: and economic ostracism are rarely comments of Hubon and the
Speaker 17: man not race class genre in the Dilemmas of Manhood.
Speaker 17: I attempted to show that not only does this erasure
Speaker 17: of racialized men have an origin in the social cultural
Speaker 17: organization organization of Western patriarchies, but also the philosophical anthropology
Speaker 17: of Western men.
Speaker 18: I'm sorry for this foul weather.
Speaker 2: There it is.
Speaker 10: Shall we go on.
Speaker 18: With what we were talking about yesterday? I don't think
Speaker 18: we finished it. We were talking about human relationship. We
Speaker 18: were it was a dialogue between us about human relationship.
Speaker 18: A dialogue is not a one sided affair, but both
Speaker 18: of us are taking part in the discussion, in the exploration,
Speaker 18: in the understanding together. And again, if I may point out,
Speaker 18: what we are talking about demands his serious mind, a
Speaker 18: mind that is really committed to the finding of a life,
Speaker 18: a way of living that is totally different, that has
Speaker 18: real meaning for living, and so on. So we were
Speaker 18: yesterday morning talking about human relationship and what is involved
Speaker 18: in it and what place has intelligence in relationship. That's
Speaker 18: what we were trying to explore together yesterday. Most of us,
Speaker 18: I'm not talking I'm just laying the cards on the
Speaker 18: table first. Most of us in our relationship depend a
Speaker 18: great deal on another.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna stop him right there, because that's what I'm
Speaker 4: trying to get to.
Speaker 5: I mean, tonight has been.
Speaker 4: An exceedingly powerful show. You already know I love Krishna
Speaker 4: Ja Krishna g Krishnamurti, and he starts right there need.
Speaker 5: Dependency. Before we came forward, I was telling a.
Speaker 4: Story about how my brother, my oldest brother, my brother
Speaker 4: they're Anthony.
Speaker 5: Became homeless.
Speaker 4: And I was telling you about how he jumped off
Speaker 4: the balcony, and how he was in New York and
Speaker 4: how he's abused and of course me and Maurice would
Speaker 4: always be here to support him and protect him to
Speaker 4: the best.
Speaker 5: Of our ability.
Speaker 4: Well, he had gotten Section eight and all of that.
Speaker 4: He got an apartment over in Rosemead. But he never
Speaker 4: told us what was happening to him in that apartment
Speaker 4: until after he abandoned his apartment. You know, we would
Speaker 4: go visit him from time to time. He told us
Speaker 4: what happened. People were breaking into his apartment, people who
Speaker 4: lived in his apartment building. Do you see how this
Speaker 4: ties into Tommy Jay's work, Doctor Tommy J.
Speaker 5: Curry.
Speaker 4: The man not he's not even a human being, can't
Speaker 4: even be seen. My older brother Moe, who passed on
Speaker 4: Thursday last Thursday, experienced the same kind of life, just
Speaker 4: a little differently different expression. But people in his own
Speaker 4: building was breaking into his apartment and stealing his stuff,
Speaker 4: stealing his furniture. And again, this is a traumatized man.
Speaker 4: I don't think he's ever sat down with a therapist.
Speaker 4: So he decided, Okay, I'm leaving, I'm gonna be homeless.
Speaker 4: You guys have heard me talk about him a couple
Speaker 4: of times on the radio, homeless. He was homeless or
Speaker 4: houseless for four years until he got a new place.
Speaker 5: Right. I'm sharing all of this.
Speaker 4: Because if you take in context my entire discussion tonight
Speaker 4: with all of the world renowned authors and clinicians, Belle Hooks,
Speaker 4: doctor Joy Degrue, Tommy J. Curry, doctor Amos Wilson, Francis
Speaker 4: cres Welson, Naim Akbar. You take in all of the
Speaker 4: speakers and the narrative that they're painting broken people crash
Speaker 4: into each other, no infrastructure for healing. And I'm saying
Speaker 4: all of that to say there's no plateau in America
Speaker 4: for black people to sit on and say we good
Speaker 4: right here, which means just because you're at a particular
Speaker 4: space in life, don't judge someone else, whether they're your
Speaker 4: family or not. And it's always at a funeral where
Speaker 4: sometimes the ugliness pops up.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: Do you see what we've been through? You were in
Speaker 4: no position to judge. I would have did it this way,
Speaker 4: I would have did it that way. And that's why
Speaker 4: I created this topic tonight. The heart of the matter
Speaker 4: my brother who was forced and I'm talking about the
Speaker 4: one who passed Maurice, who was forced into the Hercules
Speaker 4: role when he was still listen to what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: He's this dude, never lift weights. He was built like
Speaker 4: Karl Malone six' two six three two twenty just naturally,
Speaker 4: musk but internally he was still a, fractured broken boy
Speaker 4: with no guidance from his. Father then somebody turned around
Speaker 4: and say he should have did better with his. Life
Speaker 4: he made bad. Choices you as his family should never
Speaker 4: twist your mouth to say that if you understand the
Speaker 4: context that created. Demand and yet he still showed up.
Speaker 5: To the best of his.
Speaker 4: Ability he can't show up to the best of your.
Speaker 4: Expectation he can only show up to the best of his.
Speaker 5: Ability do you see this is why this show is so.
Speaker 4: Important i'm going to have these conversations, unapologetically, fearlessly, Right
Speaker 4: i'm going to have this.
Speaker 5: Conversation.
Speaker 4: RIGHT i love the way that clip broke Down Tommy jay's,
Speaker 4: Work Doctor TOMMY. J curry when he talks about how
Speaker 4: black men and black, women and he was, like maybe
Speaker 4: we create the woman's, studies, right the woman? Not you
Speaker 4: have the man not in the woman Not because in this,
Speaker 4: society you're invisible unless you. Are it's, carnivorous socially carnivorous
Speaker 4: as the system needs you to. Be you gotta eat
Speaker 4: up others in order to get to the, top and
Speaker 4: then you gotta fight. People do you understand that's what
Speaker 4: this culture respects? You guys hear me say it all the,
Speaker 4: time The Great Christiana. Murthy it is no measure of
Speaker 4: health to be well adjusted to a sick. Society we
Speaker 4: spend a lot of time trying to adjust and climb that,
Speaker 4: ladder and we wind up stepping on through negative evaluation
Speaker 4: our own people that don't add up to a system
Speaker 4: that wasn't authored by.
Speaker 5: Us do you?
Speaker 4: Understand, Listen I'm Sooe, williams the voice of. REASON i start,
Speaker 4: conversations it's really up to you to finish. THEM i
Speaker 4: hope you guys enjoyed tonight's. TOPIC i love, Y'ALL i appreciate,
Speaker 4: y'all And i'll be back next week with four slappers.
Speaker 4: Deuces