Speaker 1: Kay bla talk fifteen eighty trillion dollars, might do it
Speaker 1: a couple trillion. We're talking reparations. We do that every
Speaker 1: Friday at this time, second hour of the show. We
Speaker 1: call it Friedman Friday because when we ended the Civil War.
Speaker 1: When the Civil War ended, the enslaved formerly enslaved back
Speaker 1: black persons of this country were called freedman designated such
Speaker 1: by the government. I call it Freedman Friday because we
Speaker 1: focus on reparations, all of the repair, everything that was
Speaker 1: meant to happen back in eighteen sixty five that we
Speaker 1: are still struggling to make happen today. And so we've
Speaker 1: been doing this for a couple of years now. I'm
Speaker 1: really happy to welcome in the chief Wellness Officer of
Speaker 1: Blacksmith's Psychological Consultative Services. There's psychologic coal services provider for
Speaker 1: the US Olympics and Paralympic Committee. The leader, doctor ram
Speaker 1: Mel Kwaku Smith.
Speaker 2: Arifi A Moassee is.
Speaker 1: Is out of Milwaukee and he went to University of Milwaukee.
Speaker 1: He's got his bachelor's in psychology, went on and got
Speaker 1: a master's of Science and Educational psychology, a doctorate of
Speaker 1: philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and he's been
Speaker 1: president of Blacksmith's Psychological Services since two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: Doctor Quaku, Welcome back.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure to be
Speaker 3: on what you dominate.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's always great to hear from you. And you're
Speaker 1: you know, obviously you're in the field of psychology, but
Speaker 1: you're also very much committed and interested in Black history
Speaker 1: and Black liberation.
Speaker 3: Oh, no doubt about it. I mean everything that we
Speaker 3: do is as an African centered liberation film, and what
Speaker 3: we do is like, how do we as a descendant
Speaker 3: of those who were enslaves still survive in this wilderness
Speaker 3: of North America. So it's always I have an unapologetic
Speaker 3: love for all people, but a special love for my people.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, when you center this idea, and
Speaker 1: we were just talking about Btty Mason, right, an enslaved
Speaker 1: woman who walked from Mississippi to California and ended up
Speaker 1: owning a large part of downtown and helping to found
Speaker 1: one of our most prominent churches, Bittty Mason.
Speaker 2: So when you go.
Speaker 1: From centering psychology to a conversation about reparations, does it
Speaker 1: seem like a leap to you or does it seem
Speaker 1: like a logic progression.
Speaker 3: No, I mean it's a perfect intersection because you know,
Speaker 3: everything is interrelated in life. So when we started to
Speaker 3: talk about that, and so how can you be a
Speaker 3: person of African descent and not talk about reparations. I
Speaker 3: know oftentimes when you talk about Freedman Frieda and you
Speaker 3: ask people, well, how do you define reparations? And some
Speaker 3: people won't answer the questions. Some people will give a
Speaker 3: very clear definition. And I think one thing that all
Speaker 3: people can agree on, it's about how do you repair
Speaker 3: a harm? And if you are people who have been
Speaker 3: harmed since the very very beginning, that means every intersection
Speaker 3: of life needs to be repaired. Every area of human activity.
Speaker 3: Nearie Fuller Junior used to talk about these nine areas
Speaker 3: of human activity that we all deal with, and so
Speaker 3: you talk about psychology and health, all of those things,
Speaker 3: those are in those same areas that needs to be repaired.
Speaker 3: So correlates.
Speaker 1: I know that there's a large group of folks, myself included,
Speaker 1: you feel like, okay, reparations has to include the check,
Speaker 1: it has to include land, it has to include economic
Speaker 1: you know, make goods, economic healing. But when we talk
Speaker 1: about psychological healing and the impact of not just enslavement,
Speaker 1: but Jim Crow and the subsequent harms, many of which
Speaker 1: continue to this day. Is that something that is on us?
Speaker 1: Is that our own charge, or is that something that
Speaker 1: we should somehow be in partnership with this country, these nations, institutions,
Speaker 1: or it's corporate sort of class.
Speaker 3: Now, you couldn't have asked a better question, because when
Speaker 3: we talk about reparations, I believe in everything what you
Speaker 3: just said, pay us what you will, give us everything.
Speaker 3: But at the beginning of reparations, the first thing that
Speaker 3: has to be done is an acknowledgment of the wrong, like, hey,
Speaker 3: we did you wrong. And not only is it an
Speaker 3: acknowledgment of that wrong, but then there's an apology, a
Speaker 3: sincere apology. And what I tell everybody that I work
Speaker 3: with from a clinical setting, and it's outside of reparations,
Speaker 3: but just in general, I said, an apology is just
Speaker 3: to start. It's like a puppet. But when you start
Speaker 3: to animate that puppet, those are the actions of that apology.
Speaker 3: So the second part of the reparations goes from acknowledging
Speaker 3: and apologizing to what then to repairing the harm. So
Speaker 3: that means I'm going to replace what I took or
Speaker 3: I'm going to get back in a different way what
Speaker 3: was took. And before any land any other things can
Speaker 3: be given, we need that true apology to say, hey,
Speaker 3: you know what, you are truly welcome. When we look
Speaker 3: at the Constitution, I think it's one of the most
Speaker 3: beautifully written documents ever, it's just the same it was
Speaker 3: written by hypocrites and it was not followed through for
Speaker 3: all people. So when we started to look at that,
Speaker 3: the first thing I think when you talk about a
Speaker 3: psychological healing, because just for example, Dominique, if I harm
Speaker 3: you and I say I'm sorry, but you know I
Speaker 3: don't mean it, everything else don't really matter because you
Speaker 3: said I'm still don't feel that warmth of inclusion. And
Speaker 3: when we talk about America specific, what that apology starts
Speaker 3: to stay is this, we are sorry, and we see
Speaker 3: you as a true American, not a second class citizen,
Speaker 3: not somebody who's our burden, but really a part of
Speaker 3: this true fabric. And since we built it, we are
Speaker 3: the fabric to say we not only recognize as part
Speaker 3: of the fabric, but we recognize as being the pillar
Speaker 3: and the foundation of helping to get this country to
Speaker 3: where it's at. And until we get that level of apology,
Speaker 3: all the other things we get, which would be good,
Speaker 3: it still would be hollow and ringing true, specifically as
Speaker 3: it relates to continual justice, because one of the other
Speaker 3: icons of reparation is saying, not only are we sorry,
Speaker 3: not only are we going to repair the harm, but
Speaker 3: we're going to promise not to what to redo the harm.
Speaker 3: And as we look at what America is doing now,
Speaker 3: not only are they not going towards reparations, they're going
Speaker 3: towards the backwards. They're going towards the thing to eliminate
Speaker 3: and remove right. So any apology that might have been
Speaker 3: given half heartedly in the past proves to be what
Speaker 3: disrespectful and untrue.
Speaker 1: Well of just answered the question that I was going
Speaker 1: to ask, but I'm gonna throw it out there anyway
Speaker 1: because it's kind of it could be a follow up
Speaker 1: to what you're talking about, which is that some people
Speaker 1: do feel like we don't want any apologies, apologies or bs.
Speaker 1: You know, the state of California one of the few
Speaker 1: things that has passed and there have been a handful
Speaker 1: since the task Force. The Reparations Task Force here in
Speaker 1: California released their massive report was an apology, and there's
Speaker 1: plenty of people that turn their nose up at that
Speaker 1: and feel like, well, that's just a symbol. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean anything. I had always wondered like, doesn't I wouldn't
Speaker 1: think it would help you in court. I would think
Speaker 1: it would help you to build something. But it sounds
Speaker 1: to me like there's a mental health aspect to an apology.
Speaker 1: And also what there are elements that make a legit
Speaker 1: apology as opposed to a phony one.
Speaker 3: And see that's it, right, there is the apology sincere
Speaker 3: because I tell you this, and this is working with
Speaker 3: people working with couples who's gone through abusive situations, going
Speaker 3: with couples where people have taken money, are taken the
Speaker 3: money that was allocated for certain things and mishandled it.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about France siblings who were hurt and mad
Speaker 3: at each other. The apology when done sincere, Oh, it
Speaker 3: matters so much because what did we say? A true
Speaker 3: part of the sincerity of the apology is it's the
Speaker 3: following actions afterwards. So words mean nothing that the actions
Speaker 3: don't follow. But could you imagine if America apologize, Let's say,
Speaker 3: what if, hypothetically, but then they started to treat every
Speaker 3: black American, every person of African descent, the same way
Speaker 3: that all what they considered and that was really the
Speaker 3: white Anglo Saxon Protestant land only man in the Constitution
Speaker 3: treated us like that, then America truly would be the
Speaker 3: great place. It would be that great experiment where everybody
Speaker 3: could come in and be treated as one. What makes
Speaker 3: that aology insincere is that what we know that it's
Speaker 3: not true. So that's why we don't need an insincere apology.
Speaker 3: But if we had a sincere apology that followed with
Speaker 3: actions were giving us true justice, where we didn't see
Speaker 3: our children being beaten and killed mercilessly in the streets
Speaker 3: without any justice, if we saw correct schools, if we
Speaker 3: didn't see the harm and harassment that's taking place within
Speaker 3: the medical field, if we saw those things, oh, that
Speaker 3: apology would be sweet and beautiful. We go back to
Speaker 3: the civil rights, as you said in eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 3: when this was supposedly the time for what the soul
Speaker 3: of America told redeem herself. And that's what it looked
Speaker 3: like when Abraham Lincoln, not giving him too much credit,
Speaker 3: but just that whole scene in that time where you say, oh,
Speaker 3: guess what we are freed men. My uncle name was
Speaker 3: Charles Freeman, and I used to be so jealous of
Speaker 3: his name because he said, I didn't know what we
Speaker 3: didn't know what our name was, but we knew we
Speaker 3: was a free man. They had that right to rename themselves.
Speaker 3: And so when you look at those twelve years that
Speaker 3: we had in freedom, you said, oh, what a time
Speaker 3: it was. But when they saw how educated we got,
Speaker 3: when they saw how much we took to politics, when
Speaker 3: they saw we already had the skills from being in
Speaker 3: the fields those years, they said, oh, we got to
Speaker 3: step back. And that's when Jim Crow stepped in because
Speaker 3: they had to find another way, even though we had
Speaker 3: convict LEAs and so we don't want to act like
Speaker 3: it was perfect during the time. But when they did,
Speaker 3: Jim Crow, that was to double down and say, we
Speaker 3: can't do slavery in the way it was, but we're
Speaker 3: going to reinvent it. So that made all of those apologies.
Speaker 3: Not only was it that, but the new leaders Andrew
Speaker 3: Jackson came in, said we're going to take away filled
Speaker 3: Operation fifteen. We're going to take away the land that
Speaker 3: you got. And not only were we going to take
Speaker 3: away the land, we're going to party those Confederate soldiers
Speaker 3: who fought against the Union and give them and their
Speaker 3: family's land back that was taken away from them for
Speaker 3: being traders. So when you have apologies that go backwards,
Speaker 3: those mean nothing because those actions didn't follow. But if
Speaker 3: America would, and I said again in a hypothetical situation,
Speaker 3: if those words could ring true, and sincere oh for
Speaker 3: a mental health standpoint, it would be beauty because just
Speaker 3: like our ancestors from eighteen sixty five to eighteen seventy
Speaker 3: was living amongst those who had enslaved them, but was
Speaker 3: turning it around. That's the beauty of our people. We
Speaker 3: are magnanimous and forgiving and loving people. We were actually
Speaker 3: going to live with those who are our captors once
Speaker 3: they gave us, well, once we got our freedom back.
Speaker 3: They didn't give us nothing back, but once they stopped
Speaker 3: trying to hinder us from it and was giving us
Speaker 3: a pathway to citizenship, to freedom, to have an equity
Speaker 3: within the country, they were willing to do that, even
Speaker 3: after all of that pain, and brutality. So nobody can
Speaker 3: tell me that an apology doesn't mean anything. It just
Speaker 3: has to be a sincere apology followed by actions.
Speaker 1: Doctor Quakeku is here and if you have something to say,
Speaker 1: you can call in eight hundred and nine to fifteen eighty.
Speaker 1: He's the president of Blacksmith Psychological Consultative Services. Else will
Speaker 1: continue the conversation the mental health side of repair on
Speaker 1: this Freedom and Friday only on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty
Speaker 1: talking with doctor Kwaku talking mental health and reparations and
Speaker 1: the question of an apology, the question of how we
Speaker 1: are treated in the broader society. I mean, we can
Speaker 1: go into that a little bit more in depth, but
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that the hour doesn't pass
Speaker 1: without looking at which part of the repair that we
Speaker 1: have to do in terms of our spirits, our soul,
Speaker 1: our psyche is our own charge. I think about you
Speaker 1: know doctor Joy degru in post traumatic slaves syndrome. Yeah
Speaker 1: or she she speaks on habits and reflexes that we
Speaker 1: have that we've inherited from enslavement and Jim Crow, which
Speaker 1: we may not even be conscious of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you and my notes because I love the
Speaker 3: Queen Mother Joy. I might have had a chance to
Speaker 3: speak with her and work with her on several occasions
Speaker 3: when she's come to a walk, and I think her
Speaker 3: book hits the point. But I think it's a term
Speaker 3: that we all know. When we hear the term sankopha,
Speaker 3: you know it's a return and go get it. You've
Speaker 3: had the chance to, you know, put your feet on
Speaker 3: the soil of the motherland, and when you go back,
Speaker 3: what you recognize, especially being in those dungeons where they
Speaker 3: held our ancestors. You see the pain, you see the frustration,
Speaker 3: you see the herd. But you also wonder what type
Speaker 3: of currency was in our DNA that allowed them to survive,
Speaker 3: that to allow them not only to survive, but to
Speaker 3: thrive in the land that we are. So what's inside
Speaker 3: of us? There's a sporting brand called Actively Black and
Speaker 3: they talk about one of their taglines is greatness is
Speaker 3: in our DNA. And I think what the indoctrination of
Speaker 3: America has done has made us forget who we were.
Speaker 3: And it's just like a person who had some type
Speaker 3: of traumatic brain injury and some form of MNS and
Speaker 3: they didn't know how great they were. They have to relearn.
Speaker 3: But the beautiful thing about when you go back to
Speaker 3: the san Copha and you start to learn exactly who
Speaker 3: you are, you start to recogniz that's who you are.
Speaker 3: And then what you do is, I don't want to
Speaker 3: get too technical, but now we go into quantum physics
Speaker 3: with this healing, because when you start talking about quantum physics,
Speaker 3: you understand the first law thermo dynamics, what the energy
Speaker 3: is near the created or destroyed, it's just what it's transferred.
Speaker 3: So what we got to understand is how do we
Speaker 3: transfer back from that negativity to that positivity. And when
Speaker 3: you get into that, you go into quantum entanglements. And
Speaker 3: that's how do we reach back to our ancestors and
Speaker 3: even reach to the future of our posterity and bring
Speaker 3: all of those voices from time and space together and
Speaker 3: to say, what, let me recognize who I was and
Speaker 3: who I can be. I think one of the biggest
Speaker 3: lines that kind of bring that together, even though it
Speaker 3: was science fiction, was from the movie Centers when they
Speaker 3: were singing that song and you could see blended voices
Speaker 3: from the past and blended voices from the future. You
Speaker 3: could see that energy and even though it wasn't there
Speaker 3: physical was there in a spiritual space. And so you say,
Speaker 3: how do we go back to that healing? We have
Speaker 3: to go back and reawaken that cellular DNA from when
Speaker 3: we were kings and queens, when we were architects, engineers,
Speaker 3: to the highest level before than doctrination of the American
Speaker 3: spirit and go back. But what is America has taught
Speaker 3: us so many time is to be afraid of who
Speaker 3: we are as Africans, not to want to be associated
Speaker 3: with the continent, not to be associated with the land.
Speaker 3: And that's the first part of what any type of
Speaker 3: colonization is to make you forget who you are. So
Speaker 3: when people ask me why do I change my name?
Speaker 3: I said, it is mandatory when not just white people,
Speaker 3: but even more people for them to have to say
Speaker 3: Quai kuwam Oassi because it's saying the name what's wway
Speaker 3: heally saying the name from that motherland, it reawakens something
Speaker 3: in them that they don't know because it's going back
Speaker 3: to go get who I was. And if we're going
Speaker 3: to heal, and we were already healed from the beginning,
Speaker 3: we just have to do something almost like with our
Speaker 3: body when you scratch your body and it's a sowred.
Speaker 3: What do people say, Hey, just get out the way,
Speaker 3: let it heal itself. But the problem is we're busy
Speaker 3: picking at the scalp, and from a metaphorical standpoint, picking
Speaker 3: at the staff is what learning these American ways, trying
Speaker 3: so hard to fit in to the colonization and the
Speaker 3: things of America. And so as we continue to do that,
Speaker 3: we're going to be further and further away from our spirit.
Speaker 3: And that's what keeps us in a state of chaos.
Speaker 3: And the opposite of chaos is what the cosmosis, or order.
Speaker 3: So for us to be orderly, we have to go
Speaker 3: back and be ordered to what the roots of our ancestors.
Speaker 3: So until we're willing to do that, we're going to
Speaker 3: stay spiraling in the land that wasn't really meant for us,
Speaker 3: trying to fit into a place that doesn't want us.
Speaker 3: When we start talking about this system, how do we
Speaker 3: fix the system? Well, what's the saying that everybody says?
Speaker 3: There's nothing wrong with the system. The system is doing
Speaker 3: exactly what it's designed to do. So if we know
Speaker 3: the system is built upon our destruction, we know the
Speaker 3: system is built on oppressing those who are marginalized and ostracized,
Speaker 3: and we keep trying to fit into that system. What
Speaker 3: we're saying is we're welcoming the chaos into our life.
Speaker 3: We're welcoming a mental dysfunction. So until we're willing to
Speaker 3: go and find who we truly are tapping into that spirit,
Speaker 3: we're going to remain in a state of really emotional psychosis.
Speaker 2: Okay, the lots of lots of unboxed there.
Speaker 1: I do think that you know, I've been to Africa
Speaker 1: seven times, different countries, different places, very very much consider
Speaker 1: myself a Pan Africanist. But there's something that the within
Speaker 1: the reparation space that I think the lineage folks really
Speaker 1: have made a strong, compelling and important point about, which
Speaker 1: is that our ancestors, as Black Americans, as freedmen, as
Speaker 1: whatever you know, negroes, whatever term works for you, also
Speaker 1: are very specific, right, and they also deserve very specific light.
Speaker 1: You know, my my great great grandma, you know, Delphia Archie,
Speaker 1: who came off the plantation as a teenager, and you
Speaker 1: know she was she was a teenager when the emancipation
Speaker 1: was proclaimed, and so I do feel like I gained
Speaker 1: strength and power and the long lineage and continuity of
Speaker 1: our DNA by going to the motherland.
Speaker 2: But I also think.
Speaker 1: There's something really important for us, and I'm talking psychologically
Speaker 1: right now, but also spiritually about recognizing the specific sacrifice
Speaker 1: and the specific triumph of those Black American ancestors, those
Speaker 1: black US American ancestors who built the White House, who
Speaker 1: built this country. Whether they wanted us or not, they
Speaker 1: would have no country. We would in this nation would
Speaker 1: not be a superpower without the blood, sweat and actual
Speaker 1: human sacrifice of our ancestors, specifically as Black Americans.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, yes, those are all valid points. And
Speaker 3: how can you argue with those things? If I could
Speaker 3: be so humble and submit a copy at today Look
Speaker 3: at Ghana with the Black Star when they gained their freedom,
Speaker 3: Kwame Kermer said, we are not free until all Africa
Speaker 3: is free. When I went to Ghana and where I
Speaker 3: received my name in Cape Coles, I said, I don't
Speaker 3: want to just get a name. Remember we talked about
Speaker 3: symbolic apology. I said I don't want a name just
Speaker 3: to get a name. And I remember the chief looking
Speaker 3: at me and said, oh no, don't do that. He said,
Speaker 3: we might not know where you're at but you're from here.
Speaker 3: Now you are ours. He said, not only will I
Speaker 3: give you a name, I will give you my name.
Speaker 3: Quaker is my day name. Just he who was born
Speaker 3: on Wednesday. Atrophy is a person from the village, an
Speaker 3: elder from the village. In Amasi is the surname of
Speaker 3: the chief. And what he said, I want to let
Speaker 3: you know is this. Maybe this was not your people,
Speaker 3: but it is now. So I say that to say this.
Speaker 3: My people came on the boat too. So I know
Speaker 3: that my lineage comes from West Africa. I know that
Speaker 3: we are people who get the blood, sweat and toil,
Speaker 3: the blood, sweat and tears and toiled this land. But
Speaker 3: I say this, if I get something and the brother
Speaker 3: who looks like me, and even though his ancestors didn
Speaker 3: suffering the same way in the same land, I would
Speaker 3: still be remiss for them not to share in the
Speaker 3: coming up of what we did. Because he said, we
Speaker 3: cannot be free to all our Africa's friend, I feel
Speaker 3: like that as a person. He said, I'm not Africa
Speaker 3: because I was born in Africa. I'm Africa because African
Speaker 3: was born in me. So anybody who's affiliated with the
Speaker 3: continent and you know we say, ooh, you know our people,
Speaker 3: but our people were brought here. Let's just say we
Speaker 3: go with the date sixteen nineteen were American wasn't evented
Speaker 3: till seventeen seventy six. So that's the British. So that
Speaker 3: means the British Olderness money. And I've heard you talk
Speaker 3: about this, the do Us, the Portuguese, the French and
Speaker 3: all of those people. And I've heard doctor Chael Grills
Speaker 3: come on to talk about, Hey, you know what, I
Speaker 3: had cousins in Jamaica. I had cousins in Turks and Cables.
Speaker 3: I had cousins in Granada. I got cousins in Brazil.
Speaker 3: When you look at how we were wiped and spread
Speaker 3: apart in the Diaster, In fact, forty seven percent of
Speaker 3: us will shipp to Brazil. So when you look at
Speaker 3: all of those places from over, I say, we steal
Speaker 3: our Wand if we are paying Africans, that means no
Speaker 3: matter who did what or who suffered where, we all
Speaker 3: suffered in some sense. And though we can't quantify exactly
Speaker 3: who did everything, you your parents might have did ten percent,
Speaker 3: of the lift of mind might have did eighty percent.
Speaker 3: But guess what we're going to share in this pot altogether,
Speaker 3: because at the end of the day, we're want so
Speaker 3: to that argument. I don't discount that those with leneas
Speaker 3: would have an argument to say we deserve more. But
Speaker 3: if you get more and your brotherre and suffering, how
Speaker 3: can you steal be free?
Speaker 1: How can you Okay, we're gonna we have to leave
Speaker 1: it right there. We've got a hard stuff for news,
Speaker 1: traffic and sports and we will continue. Okay, b LA
Speaker 1: Talk fifteen eight. Welcome back to Friedman Friday. We are
Speaker 1: talking reparations, the mental health aspect of it, something I
Speaker 1: think we really could spend more time on where with
Speaker 1: doctor QUAKEU a'massie and we we're digging into a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff before news, traffic and sports, including you
Speaker 1: know what does what part of the repair is our responsibility?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: What part of the repair Obviously we're not when you
Speaker 1: talk about cutting a check, changing policies and the national, international,
Speaker 1: municipal aspects, uh politically of reparations. That's one thing. When
Speaker 1: you talk about healing our spirit, our mind and subsequently
Speaker 1: the body, since they're connected, how much of that is
Speaker 1: our responsibility? How much of it is something that has
Speaker 1: to be handled independent or maybe separate from from you know,
Speaker 1: the public space.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I know I veered off from that. So
Speaker 3: to answer that question of it is our responsibility. You
Speaker 3: think about a person who's been abused. Sometimes you never
Speaker 3: get closed or from the person who abuse you, But
Speaker 3: that means, well, how do you still stay home? How
Speaker 3: do you not let that abuse or inn take a
Speaker 3: part of your life? So when we say what do
Speaker 3: we do, it's one hundred percent of ours. And we
Speaker 3: talked about kind of like the energy, how do we
Speaker 3: transfer that energy within ourselves to be our very best selves?
Speaker 3: So when we started talking about what is the work
Speaker 3: that we have to do where we have to look
Speaker 3: and say, well, where am I hurting? How am I
Speaker 3: showing this hurt? How is it manifesting in my family?
Speaker 3: How is it manifesting in my work? How's it manifesting
Speaker 3: in my community? How's it manifesting in how even I
Speaker 3: treat myself? And so this is where we have to
Speaker 3: do a deep dive of self introspection and really look
Speaker 3: and say, what are the ways in which I'm hurting
Speaker 3: those areas in which I claim to love? And once
Speaker 3: we find those areas now we have to dig in
Speaker 3: deep and say how do I do better? The commercial
Speaker 3: a little bit before I came on, the announcer said,
Speaker 3: when you know better, you do better, and a chuckle,
Speaker 3: because that's what my mother used to tell me all
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 2: When I'm a child.
Speaker 3: So she said, my child is to teach you better.
Speaker 3: Now you know better, do But so now we know
Speaker 3: that we're not getting that apology from A because they
Speaker 3: had time to so we're not getting it. So let's
Speaker 3: not be naives. So now the question is how do
Speaker 3: we heal? That's why when you look at people like
Speaker 3: the Honorable Elijah Muhammad Message to the Black Man, when
Speaker 3: we read the autobiography of Malcolm X, when we read
Speaker 3: post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Joy the Group, when we
Speaker 3: read Cast by Isabelle Workers, and when we look at
Speaker 3: all of these different things, we say, ooh, how do
Speaker 3: I get better? When I look at the Wretched of
Speaker 3: the Earth by Friends, and now what I started to
Speaker 3: do is I started to look at those liberatory killers,
Speaker 3: those people like the w'd be the Boys, those people
Speaker 3: who seem to have an answer to those things, to say,
Speaker 3: how can I tap into what they were doing? So
Speaker 3: what I love to do is I love to stay
Speaker 3: in the community with people who are like minded, because
Speaker 3: when I'm around it like minded, guess what, that's the
Speaker 3: energy and the spirit I get. We often talk about
Speaker 3: how does a person like resonate on the frequencies their vibrations.
Speaker 3: If you're around low vibrational people, that becomes your spirit.
Speaker 3: It's a complaining spirit, it's a sagging spirit, it's a
Speaker 3: whate was me spirit. But when I get around people say,
Speaker 3: I'm in power to understand where I sit in this world.
Speaker 3: But I also understand and they're not gonna let this happen.
Speaker 3: I worked in corrections for a while, and what the
Speaker 3: correction person will say, I say this and let you
Speaker 3: ask the next question. He would tell. One of the
Speaker 3: staff sergeant would tell the people say, you might have
Speaker 3: been born in check, but that don't mean you got
Speaker 3: to get check made it. And that's what I tell everybody. Listen,
Speaker 3: we understand that everything was not set up for us.
Speaker 3: But when we look at how resilient we are and
Speaker 3: the beautiful things we've done, we just say, how can
Speaker 3: we do that? But on the level, we're not just
Speaker 3: material success, So we have to define what success is.
Speaker 3: But to have that success that brings that internal happiness
Speaker 3: and joy Bahemus.
Speaker 1: In the chat, she says restitution is the duty of
Speaker 1: the offender, a debt that is owed, but personal and
Speaker 1: collective healing is on the survivors of that community.
Speaker 2: Do you agree with that?
Speaker 3: I say that's what we just said. The America owes us,
Speaker 3: So we're not stopping with restitution. And I tell people
Speaker 3: either they give it to us or we take it.
Speaker 3: It's got to be one of the two. But as
Speaker 3: it relates to healing, we can't get that restitution. We
Speaker 3: can't get even if we got reparations, but we're not
Speaker 3: mentally and emotionally heal. It does nothing because we stay
Speaker 3: mired in that low space. So when we start talking
Speaker 3: about what do we have to do, what we have
Speaker 3: to do is restrategize. Audrey Lord famously said the tools
Speaker 3: of the master will never dismatch to the master's house. Well,
Speaker 3: the biggest tool is the government. So as we try
Speaker 3: to work within this government system, I think is as
Speaker 3: a as a fool's journey. And not to say that
Speaker 3: those elders and ancestors who work so hard from encobra
Speaker 3: Hr forty, what they're doing in great work in California.
Speaker 3: I think those things need to be laid. But just
Speaker 3: to show us to the point that no matter how
Speaker 3: hard we try to work, they're not listening, they don't care,
Speaker 3: they're not going to help us. When we start talking
Speaker 3: about the ancestors, Frederick Douglas famously said he said power
Speaker 3: can seize nothing with the other man of demand, but
Speaker 3: people usually kind of leave it there. But he said,
Speaker 3: find out just what any people will quietly submit to,
Speaker 3: and you will find the exact measure of injustice and
Speaker 3: wrong which will be imposed upon them. I think we
Speaker 3: are so nice, we are so magnanimous, we are so
Speaker 3: beautiful over people that we continue to take this disrespect,
Speaker 3: and that's why it keeps putting on to us. It
Speaker 3: was also lengthy Hughes and said Negroes Meek mob Di
Speaker 3: silent Ki beware the day they changed their mind. So
Speaker 3: I think it's time we change our mind. But we
Speaker 3: can only do that with getting that renewed mind that
Speaker 3: we talked about initially.
Speaker 1: We're going to go to Dwight from Compton. Good morning, Dwight,
Speaker 1: You're on with doctor Quaku.
Speaker 2: Welcome.
Speaker 4: Good morning, Good morning, Dominique, Good morning, doctor Quak Whu,
Speaker 4: thank you so much for giving them on the nation
Speaker 4: and inspiring us. I just had a curiosity. I know,
Speaker 4: every time we hear about the forty acres given to
Speaker 4: the slaves from Special Special Order fifteen at President Abraham
Speaker 4: Lincoln signed yeah, and and I said, if they had
Speaker 4: and then they did a census in eighteen sixty. I
Speaker 4: didn't even know they were doing ciss back then. And
Speaker 4: they had four million slaves back then, and they had
Speaker 4: four million slaves got forty acres, it would have equaled
Speaker 4: one hundred and sixty million acres, which equals the land
Speaker 4: mask almost of California and Oregon.
Speaker 3: So that was just kind of an interesting thought that
Speaker 3: I heard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then a.
Speaker 1: Lot of it got taken back and seized and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Not to be depressing, but yeah, I mean, and that's
Speaker 1: part of the basis for this idea, that this the
Speaker 1: knowledge that reparations is a debt. It's not charity, it's
Speaker 1: not welfare. It is a debt that is owed to
Speaker 1: us and was promised to us, and it's still that
Speaker 1: debt still do did you want to speak on that,
Speaker 1: doctor Quicku.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I just think it's to the point where
Speaker 3: we can say that reparations as we are hoping to
Speaker 3: get will show to be futile. Because once they started
Speaker 3: to do it and they saw what we was doing,
Speaker 3: what we could do, what we could potentially could become
Speaker 3: in this country, they said, oh, we can't have that.
Speaker 3: So you know, Juwanza can Jufu famous. They had the
Speaker 3: books that kill him before they grow or one of
Speaker 3: his things, he would say. And I think that was it.
Speaker 3: When they saw us rising as a nation within this
Speaker 3: nation where we were once enslaved to now to be rulers,
Speaker 3: to have people who be sitting governors or excuse me,
Speaker 3: lieutenant governors and senators and then the House and what
Speaker 3: not like that, they were say, oh, we have to stop.
Speaker 3: And that's when the plan came for the convict lease,
Speaker 3: and that's when they're plan for Plessy versus Ferguson and
Speaker 3: all of those things came to say, hey, we can't
Speaker 3: allow this. So I'm saying to all of us is
Speaker 3: we have to recognize they owe us, but they're not
Speaker 3: giving it to us. They gave money to the Jews,
Speaker 3: they gave money to the Japanese, so when they want
Speaker 3: to give money, they know how to give money. They
Speaker 3: did a Marshall Plan for people who we were at
Speaker 3: war with to rebuild their nations. So if they wanted
Speaker 3: to do it, they would have done this. They told
Speaker 3: us over and over and over it again. I was
Speaker 3: listening to I Love doctor Cheryl Grills and I was
Speaker 3: listening to her on Freedman's and she was talking about
Speaker 3: how Governor Newsom had did the committee had appointed her,
Speaker 3: but she said, I'm less than encouraged to say. He
Speaker 3: hasn't been really involved because he was running for president.
Speaker 3: He didn't want that stigma attached. And you think about
Speaker 3: any person who's run for president, maybe say for mary
Speaker 3: Anne Williamson, who has really talked about reparations, and what
Speaker 3: they're telling us is they're not going to give it
Speaker 3: to us in the way we're asking. And if we
Speaker 3: keep asking, it's the biggest gaslight. And I think that's
Speaker 3: from a mental health standpoint, is the most frustrating. We
Speaker 3: can't be Charlie Brown trying to kick this football knowing
Speaker 3: they're going to pick it up.
Speaker 2: But we are. But we are making progress.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at it politically, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think they'll ever be like here you go Cinderella,
Speaker 1: here's your you know, here's your forty acres. But I mean,
Speaker 1: you do have commissions, you do have you know, Evanston,
Speaker 1: where actual checks are going out, you have people getting
Speaker 1: land backs. So even though it's hard fought every step
Speaker 1: of the way, it's I don't know if i'd put
Speaker 1: it in the category of Charlie Brown, because we are
Speaker 1: forcing progress.
Speaker 3: And I will never fight against progress. I'll never fight
Speaker 3: against small victories because those small victories aren't small. But
Speaker 3: this is what I'll say. See, this is the biggest
Speaker 3: gas like, this is the biggest mental manipulation. Remember when
Speaker 3: Barack Obama was elected and they said we're in a
Speaker 3: post racial society.
Speaker 1: They I mean, but only idiots believe that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sorry, when you live in America, have
Speaker 2: you met America?
Speaker 3: Okay? I want to make if I can make that
Speaker 3: same thing to reparations, because I don't want part of
Speaker 3: what you mean. Remember Malcolm X said, he said, if
Speaker 3: the knife is in my back nine inches, don't pull
Speaker 3: it out six or three inches and say we've made progress.
Speaker 3: There's no progress till the knife is out, the wound
Speaker 3: is healed, and there's no possibility for that knife to
Speaker 3: inflict harm on me again.
Speaker 2: But you're not.
Speaker 1: But you're not suggesting we just threw up our hands
Speaker 1: and give up.
Speaker 3: No, no, we owe Listen what I'm saying I'm trying
Speaker 3: not to say on your radio and with the words
Speaker 3: or I would put a disclaimer for KBLA, these other
Speaker 3: words of doctor Quai cool with not KBLA radio face.
Speaker 3: I think we are too nice with the reparations. I
Speaker 3: think we need to do something more forceful. And it
Speaker 3: doesn't always have to be violent to be forceful. There's
Speaker 3: many ways you can be financially violent. You could be
Speaker 3: violent in different types of ways. That's why Martin Luther
Speaker 3: King boycotts were they were financially violent. But we have
Speaker 3: to be violent to the way in which we let
Speaker 3: them know we're not asking, we're taking. And until we
Speaker 3: do that, they're going to continue to give us crams
Speaker 3: to appease us, but never give us what they owe us.
Speaker 3: And until you give me what you owe me and
Speaker 3: whole if I loan you two million dollars Dominique, and
Speaker 3: then you give me back thirty eight dollars that don't
Speaker 3: really do nothing for me.
Speaker 1: And then I tell you, but we're making progress. I'll
Speaker 1: give you another thirty eight too more Bora.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's also how long do we wait? Because because
Speaker 3: if we keep saying, give me the crimes, give me
Speaker 3: the pieces, as hard as we working, you're showing me
Speaker 3: the lack of sincerity. You're showing me the lack of
Speaker 3: commitment to this. And so what I say is, if
Speaker 3: we keep asking, they're going to keep saying no. But
Speaker 3: if we take it, That's why I go back to Langston, Hughes, negroes, meek, mild, disile,
Speaker 3: la Kai beware of the day they change their mind.
Speaker 1: Talking with doctor Quickuc will continue the conversation when we
Speaker 1: come forward.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a.
Speaker 1: Freedman Friday, so that means you are on KBLA Talk
Speaker 1: fifteen eighty. Molly Bell always says it, what is reparations?
Speaker 2: It is repair.
Speaker 1: When we talk about reparations, oftentimes we're talking about checks.
Speaker 1: Today we are talking about the whole. Well, what does
Speaker 1: Bob Marley say, emancipate yourself from mental slavery? None but
Speaker 1: ourselves can free our minds. Doctor Quaku is with us,
Speaker 1: how do we break?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: You know what, let me go in because these folks
Speaker 1: are talking to you Okay, they're talking to you in
Speaker 1: the chat on YouTube, Forensic account And says we need
Speaker 1: to stop pretending there's a chance we'll get reparations via
Speaker 1: the Republican Party or even close. Friday Jones says, remember
Speaker 1: you take things in silence. Molly Bell says, I understand
Speaker 1: what our guest is saying, but we're talking about reparations repair.
Speaker 1: I guess I agree with President Obama. Speak it into existence.
Speaker 1: We're making progress. Listening, and Forensic Accountant says, a party
Speaker 1: within which your ascension requires loud anti blackness is never
Speaker 1: going to be interested in supporting reparations. Friday Jones also
Speaker 1: calls it spiritual warfare, thoughts, well.
Speaker 3: You know what, I'm a fan of Friday Jones. I
Speaker 3: listened to her when she's on your show too. I
Speaker 3: love how she's spits it and break down. This is
Speaker 3: what I say as we talk about reparations and the
Speaker 3: mental health and the healing, these are things that we
Speaker 3: have to do for ourselves. We say, you know what,
Speaker 3: we stand tall because we stand on the shoulders of
Speaker 3: our ancestors. So the question is what will we do
Speaker 3: for the next generation. For part of the mental healingness
Speaker 3: is almost to Moses mentality. I might not see these reparations,
Speaker 3: I might not get it, but you know what, I'm
Speaker 3: going to dedicate my life to making sure that it's
Speaker 3: better for those who come after us. When I look
Speaker 3: at the people who we revere from the past, and
Speaker 3: that's anybody who shed blood or anybody who sacrifice, from
Speaker 3: the Fanny Lou Hammers to the Martin Luther King, to
Speaker 3: the Fred Hampton to the Medgar Evers. When we started
Speaker 3: to talk about the Liddes, when we started to talk
Speaker 3: about all of the people who gave and gave so much,
Speaker 3: the names that we don't even know when we respect them,
Speaker 3: what we respect is what they did so that we
Speaker 3: could have it better. And so if we want to
Speaker 3: have a mental freedom and break it comes into breaking
Speaker 3: this cycle. Because what it is is I'm free of
Speaker 3: the I want me incarcerated. I told you I do
Speaker 3: a lot of work in the corrections facilities, and what
Speaker 3: we tell the man and say, even though you might
Speaker 3: be literally in this cell, how do you free your mind?
Speaker 3: And that's the thing for us. In the way you
Speaker 3: free it is by making sure you rebel against the
Speaker 3: system that you know is oppressive, and you say what
Speaker 3: can I do to break it down? We can't all
Speaker 3: do everything, but if we all do our part, oh,
Speaker 3: that wall starts to come down. And then when you
Speaker 3: leave this place, the legacy is that I did more.
Speaker 3: Then this world was better for me than when I
Speaker 3: came in. And if we can do that for our
Speaker 3: people saying I made it better. But what my urge
Speaker 3: and my action call for everybody else is to say,
Speaker 3: did we lose doctor Wakekoop, be sure yourself as to
Speaker 3: help others? And when she would tell me that, it
Speaker 3: let me know the more I help others, the more
Speaker 3: it helps to heal me. So as we go help
Speaker 3: our people, that's where the healing begins.
Speaker 1: Yes, And that goes back to what Friday is also
Speaker 1: saying in the Child, which is the mental becomes taxing
Speaker 1: when advocates fight each other instead of the true enemy.
Speaker 1: That's part of it. And that also reminds me of
Speaker 1: one of the things I wanted to ask you we're
Speaker 1: so close to the end of this hour, is that
Speaker 1: how do we break those generational cycles? And those crabs
Speaker 1: in a barrel is one example of the attitudes that
Speaker 1: were bred into us, whipped into us, you know, intentionally
Speaker 1: ingrained in us in order that we would undermine ourselves.
Speaker 3: Okay, so I love what you just said. Crabs in
Speaker 3: a barrel, we use that, but crabs don't live in barrels.
Speaker 3: That's the unnatural environment. If you put crabs in their
Speaker 3: natural habitat, they help each other. So everybody homework is
Speaker 3: google up crabs and how they really help each other.
Speaker 3: But when you're in an unnatural environment, you're going to
Speaker 3: fight against each other. But you put them in their
Speaker 3: natural environment, that's when they become beneficial to one another.
Speaker 3: So what you say is one nobody's ever going to
Speaker 3: be on one accord. That's why when the emancipation in
Speaker 3: Haiti happened, the first person is the first people that
Speaker 3: killed was the collaborators, the people who look like them
Speaker 3: that they knew what betrayed them, so they said, we
Speaker 3: can't have this division. Now. The thing is, we're never
Speaker 3: going to agree on everything, but we have to agree
Speaker 3: upon a big picture. And when you get those people
Speaker 3: to come together agree up on the big picture, now
Speaker 3: we have to reduce the egos. And that's back to
Speaker 3: the sankofa. How do we become a community again, How
Speaker 3: do we become communal instead of this individualistic thing that
Speaker 3: the indoctrination of this European society has taught us. It's
Speaker 3: about me and mine and my family. It's about I
Speaker 3: versus we. And once we go back to our natural environment,
Speaker 3: our natural mind, that's where they're helping versus the fighting starts.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Reminds me of when we were in Costa Rica and
Speaker 1: we saw these monkey this monkey who was raised in captivity,
Speaker 1: who didn't know how to act like a monkey, and
Speaker 1: then he fell in love with the monkey.
Speaker 2: This is a true story.
Speaker 1: He fell in love with the monkey that was raised
Speaker 1: in the monkey habitat in the wild, and she taught
Speaker 1: them the ways of monkeys. And for me, the metaphor
Speaker 1: was Black Americans, you know, the descendants of enslaved persons,
Speaker 1: teaching ourselves how to be ourselves.
Speaker 3: You know, whenever you look at any movie of some
Speaker 3: white missionary and they go into the Asian community, the
Speaker 3: Indian community. So this person turned Indian, this person turned
Speaker 3: that know what it was, even that indoctrinated mind, once
Speaker 3: it saw beauty, it recognized that what they was taught
Speaker 3: was wrong and they what drift to what feels good.
Speaker 3: And that's the same thing for our people. The more
Speaker 3: we assimilated to the society, the more we want to
Speaker 3: fight against ourselves. The more we move towards back to
Speaker 3: Saint Copa, return and go get who we are, how
Speaker 3: quicker we become mentally whole and we start to have
Speaker 3: some progress as a whole, as a collective, not just
Speaker 3: as a few.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know, I feel like I didn't get to
Speaker 1: the long list of questions I had in my mind.
Speaker 1: So maybe we'll do this again. But we just have
Speaker 1: a minute here, doctor Quaku. I'm thinking about habits we
Speaker 1: need to break or acquire for our own repair. Maybe
Speaker 1: you could leave us with some thoughts on that.
Speaker 3: Well, you're the first thing. What I say is to
Speaker 3: do is what we said before. Get yourself one acknowledged
Speaker 3: to yourself that I need some help. And once you say, hey,
Speaker 3: I've been indoctrinated, what do I do now? What you
Speaker 3: do is you surround yourself, whether it's new books, whether
Speaker 3: it's listening through dominique, whether it's listening to different books
Speaker 3: written by the answers the people who've done this. Nobody
Speaker 3: has all the answers. But as you start to read
Speaker 3: those things, you see your own cellular DNA wakings up.
Speaker 3: And what we've been taught is this Every answer that
Speaker 3: you ever need to know lies within you. We just
Speaker 3: have to get out the way.
Speaker 1: Remind us how to read what you write here, your podcasts,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 2: Doctor Quaiku.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I write an article every week on Civic
Speaker 3: Media's entitled Quaku Cipher. See why I t a t
Speaker 3: r quakeku k w e k u Ceipher. I'm no
Speaker 3: longer in to radio on WNLB because I've moved jobs,
Speaker 3: so I can't do that anymore. You know, you were.
Speaker 3: You came on my show one time, which I absolutely love.
Speaker 3: But I still have things on the past, me and
Speaker 3: my sister Lisa Mootrie, doctor Lisha Mootrie, host of the show.
Speaker 3: So they can go back and look at the check
Speaker 3: in and now m Boulependo on w NLV radio and
Speaker 3: see some of our radio shows from the past.
Speaker 1: All right, well, doctor Quakku, it's always a pleasure to
Speaker 1: talk with you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us as Friedman Friday.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. Have a beautiful day.
Speaker 1: Indeed, we shall reparations. Now we're going to talk with
Speaker 1: some I think these are Generation Alpha joining us in
Speaker 1: the studio, see their worldview. Need some of that ballot
Speaker 1: refresher Coming up next on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty