Brown Ambition, Episode three. Hey guys, it's Mandy, thank you so much for coming back.
Hey, hey, hey, it's Tiffany.
Hey hey hey. So that's like your trademark. Is that from SNL?
No, it's from fed Albert. I say it like whenever I speak on stage and stuff, I say, hey, hey, hey, I'm not sure what or either faed Albert or that old show like, oh my gosh, somebody's gonna know. It's like this old show with Shirley and Rod and what's happening?
What's Oh maybe that's my Maybe. I'm like, this is where the age difference comes into play.
I'm thirty five. Somebody's gonna know what's happening. And if you do, please tweet us at the BA podcast. Yes, at the BA podcast on Twitter. You'll know what's happening. If you're thirty five or older, you know that show.
Well.
I have to start off by saying congratulations because Tiffany just gave her first te X talk I guess well yesterday on Saturday.
So congratt, Yeah, thank you. It was very nerve wracking. It was nervous. I've been planning for months and it's done and I'm proud of my work and so I can't wait to share it soon.
Excellent.
So we're gonna start off the Buzzworthy segment. It's a sports themed edition of Buzzworthy, which I don't hope you guys won't mind starting. Let's start what good or bad?
First? Let's start was Good's? Well, it's actually they're both kind of bad. Oh yeah, I just realized, Well, Serena, that's not so bad. That's true.
Okay, so everyone probably knows by now that Serena Williams, the great, amazing, inspirational Serena Williams lost her bid for the US Open Championship, which also meant that she's not going to break the record for the most wins in a calendar year or something like that.
Basically winning every major tournament in a calendar This was the last tournament that she had to win.
Did you watch it?
No?
I can't watch them. It's just too nerve racking. I grew up playing tennis. I played tennis since I was like four or five years old, and she was one of my idols. I was tennis team captain in high school, and so I just get too nervous to watch her.
Well, I was watching on Twitter. I was.
I was on Twitter at work on Friday, and I all of a sudden, Roxane Gay, this writer I've read I talk about sometimes she was tweeting like a second, like every second she was tweeting like, oh my.
God, Serena. No, no girl, though, Drake, it's your fault.
And then so I turned it on and I'm at my desk and I probably caught the last like five minutes of the match when it was like not going well for Serena. And then I don't really so I don't watch tennis. I think I played tennis on the Wii like twice, and so I don't know how how the points work. Okay, when I was watching Venus versus Serena, I was, I watched the whole thing, but I was.
Like, yeah, yeah, get her, yeah, like if someone's.
Winning, right, I just kind of waited for the announcer to tell me who was up. Okay, So I was watching the last five minutes and I could tell things weren't going well. And then finally when like Roberta Vinci, congratulations by the way, I gets yeah, when she hit that last game winning point point, right, yeah, all of it. So I was at my desk, and I didn't realize that everyone around me was also watching the match, and so were my editor and I were like oh at the same time, and I'm.
Like, oh, you're watching it. I was trying to watch it all the down. Ye, well, everybody's watching.
And you know what I mean, Serena, I mean, hopefully she understands like how amazing she is.
And it was just so much pressure, so much hype.
Yeah, and honestly because honest obviously, I mean no offense to Aberta, but you know, Serena's number one. I think Roberta's number.
Like forty something. She wasn't even ranked, I don't think.
Yeah, so not to you know, take away from her win, because she she did win, but Serena to me is the best player in the world in that.
I don't think anybody would argue with that, you know, as.
Far as Tedus is concerned women's tennis, and so, you know, it was just, you know, you don't win every time.
I think people will talk about the loss, but you can't. You have to really think about all she's accomplished and all she's represented for black girls and over the course of her career exactly and I'm just excited. I'm glad she got a lot of hype because I feel like, how often do you see a face like hers on a magazine New York Times magazine, She was on New York magazine recently, and so I'm just really glad that she got the attention she deserved. Exactly, I don't know
if I agree that it was Drake's fault. Everyone was pretty much like damn Drake was in the audience. Everyone just like went for him. Oh, I blame Kim Kardashian personally, because that's the easiest.
Why was she.
Drinking tea with Kim k Why the week of a match like this?
I know, well, you know what, that's the way sarnall be back. She's still in her prime. So are we ready to move on to the Yeah?
So second in our bad news buzzworthy for the week, So James Blake, another tennis star rights tennis.
He was number four at one point in the number four Okay, you's not currently, but he was, and so he was outside of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York in New York. There's a video of it, so you can google James Blake video and just leaning casually against the hotel waiting for I guess his ride. He's in the US Open, which is in town, and all of a sudden, you just see this man run up to him, tackle him to the ground, and put handcuffs on him, and it's clear that James is totally confused.
The police officer apparently was confused as well, because they thought that he was part of a credit card scam ring and they had the wrong person.
On top of that, the person that they.
Thought that he was was also not guilty of what they were accusing him. So it's like one you tackle the wrong guy for a crime and the person that you think he is also did not do the crime.
You have to watch this video because it's so disturbing to see how like how many times have I just stood outside a building and like on my phone texting waiting for someone. He was literally just relaxed and chill on the side, and then this cop comes out of nowhere and just flat out tackles him. No Miranda rights, no high can I see your identification? What are you
doing here, sir? Or He didn't look like he was even you know, even if he was up to something like he there was like he probably wasn't gonna run for like there's people around, and then to see him get tackled, and then you see in the video people watching him and looking at him on the ground getting handcuffed, And I'm thinking from like if that were me, I would be so mortified.
Yeah, and scared and terrified. Yeah, he said in an interview, like I was really, I was so scared. I didn't say anything because what did you say? This person just runs and tackles it. He doesn't even fight back. He's just you could tell that he's stunned, like what is happening?
Right?
That cop has like has had five other citations.
Of this is a disturbing part, yes, of aggressive behavior towards citizens.
So this is not someone who hasn't done this before. And of course the the police commission, you know, they're trying to cover their bases by saying, well, you know, we're looking into it and we're not really sure what's really going No, it's clear in the video that he ran up on someone because he thought he looked like someone. There was no struggle, there was no we told him to stop, but we had to bring him down. R you know, there was no can we speak to you, sir.
And the fact that it's happened several and that was I think five times just in the past couple of years. Who knows over the course of this guy's career, how many brown men, black men he has just you know, without any cause, has just tackled to the ground like that and embarrassed. You know, It's unfortunate that it takes a celebrity mm hmm, someone who has a public profile, who can get on the Today Show and talk about
it and put a voice to this. But I'm kind of glad it happened because I mean, for you know, a man just chilling like in Harlem or Brooklyn outside of it, you know, on the corner, just minding his own business, who gets taken like that. Those kind of people can end up in jail for absolutely no reason.
Oh, we didn't mention with James, but I believe he's half white, half black.
Yeah, he's so, he's lighter skinned and a celebrity. So I think that plays into why people are maybe paying more attention exactly. But this isn't the first time that a black celebrity has been wrongfully. Remember there was that like Hollywood producer who was at lunch in Beverly Hills or some like really nice place, like he was having lunch at a nice place in La somewhere, and out of nowhere, a cop just comes.
And arrests him.
Apparently he was saying that he was, you know, a suspect in a robbery or some sort of like shoplifting incident. That's another example of this is so crazy stupidity.
Yes, well, so sorry for the downer.
Yeah, but.
Can't ignore these two stories.
I can't do it. Next to our agenda, is it's.
A brown break?
Yes, oh lord, brown break. If you guys have forgotten, let's refresh your memory. Brown break is just something that's happening that we just can't with. We just can't anymore. We need a brown break from x y Z. We've talked about Tiffany's had a break from Donald Trump. I've taken a break from internet trolls and white feminism and white feminism, and we have some excellent, much needed breaks we're going to talk about today.
Yes, so I'm going to take a brown break.
And I think every woman can feel me on this, from cat calling and unwanted aggressive just attention for men. So I mean I think every woman at some point has walked down the street, especially if you live in a city and you know a man has said something to you that was inappropriate anywhere from you know, hey beautiful and you keep walking to being super aggressive. I can remember, in particular, a man I was I forget what city I was in. I was just walking down
the street. He approached me, and you know, I was nice because I believe in, you know, being nice if you're nice to me, and I told him no, thank you when he asked me for my number or whatever it is that he wanted.
And as I walked away, he began to follow.
Me and yell at me and cursed at me up the street for about two blocks.
I was terrified.
I was almost afraid to run because I thought I felt like he has this animalistic instinct that if I ran that he was going to physically attack me. So I like, you know, I walked calmly, but I'm looking around and people said nothing.
As it's really there's people around mm.
As this man walked up the street, and so sometimes men think, Like a friend of mine told me, like, oh, you know, sound school, she's beautiful. She didn't even say anything she's so stuck up, and I had to tell And I told him, I said, you don't understand how many times that women have been in danger because of a man who thought she was beautiful and said something. It's not you, you're taking it personally. She's protecting herself because me acknowledging you, or me saying okay or thank
you or whatever might put me in danger. So I've learned to ignore men when they say things like that. It's not because I'm trying to be rude or nasty. It's because I've had men follow me up the street or cursed me out, or threatened me or get angry when I've decided I told them I've had a boyfriend. So yeah, I'm just so over you.
No, I'm glad that there's been a lot of there's been a lot more talking about street harassment lately. There's actually this group in New York called Holliback, which is a nonprofit run by I'm pretty sure this young woman who started a nonprofit to end street harassment and raise awareness of street harassment.
And then there was that BuzzFeed video.
Remember that buzz vie while of that girl who wore or someone filmed her walking from like the Bronx all the way down through New York and all like she had so many men come out and like can't call her name.
You see the ones I like the ones where they have the father or the boyfriend, like sitting with your daughter or their girlfriend, and they put a video on the daughter or the girlfriend and the father sits with her and watches really and then so because they want men to see, this is what your daughter's going through. Are you putting someone else's daughter through this? Or this is what your girlfriend is going through? Have you done
this to someone else's girlfriend? And you could just see how upset the men are that the women in their lives are going through this.
But if you have, just like you, have you ever tried to explain I have a hard time trying to explain, like if so, if something happens. So there's been days where I like to work a lot, and there's days where men will yell at me while I'm biking. One time, actually, some guy he stepped I was it was dark, I was going down a hill in Midtown, and he stepped in front of my bike and just stomped in front of me, just to scare me and like try and
like freak me out, which he succeeded in. And then that earlier in the day, some guy in the street called me out, and I was just I came home in such a terrible mood and feeling like so bad, and I couldn't even find the words to explain to my boyfriend what had happened, because I feel like trying to explain street harassment to a man in their minds, you're like, oh, it's no big deal.
I'm like, well, you you are cute, you know. You're like, that's the point.
Where are you trying to make me jealous? I'm like, it's not about trying to make you jealous. It's emotionally taxing.
It is emotionally taxing, and honestly too for me, it's usually it's just a matter of like where I'm afraid, honestly, not not always. You know, sometimes some guys are like hey, beautiful, You're like hi, and you keep moving. But sometimes every once in a while you get that guy who just doesn't seem to take no for an answer, and you're like, so, so you're priming yourself, like do I have to run?
Like you're thinking these things I don't think men realize, you know, but I bet you if it would have happened in front of him, you'd be upset and mad.
Though it wouldn't though, because those guys are cowards.
Yep, you're right, And when you're holding the hand of a man, you don't get that kind of attention, which pisses me off because like, I like doing my own thing and yeah, being independent and free. But the unfortunate thing about this brown break is that it's hard to take a break from something that's like out of your control in that way. But hopefully groups like Hollaback can raise awareness and make it easier on us.
So what is your brown break?
So I need to take a brown break this week from something a little more fun but equally annoying, which is the man bun. I blame several people for the proliferation of this hairstyle. I know that brown men don't necessarily rock the man bun, but some men do. I'm looking at you, Leonardo DiCaprio, Andrew Garfield, Jake Jillenhall, who's that guy from that movie with Matthew mcconaughe who won the Oscar, Jared leto Oh, I love you.
Oh he's so beautiful.
But that is that man bun. And the fact that it's being written up in the New York Times. When something like this kind of trend is written up in the Times, that's when I know it's like it's time you have to stop. I know it's hot out there, guys, I know that, Like, it must be hard having longer hair, But.
Why not just cut your hair? Yeah, it's okay?
Or why can't we Why can't men learn how to use like bobby pins?
Just it's just saying to the man. But I mean, you see that usually some guys with dreads. If it's going to be a brown guy with a man bun, it'll be a guy with locks who does it.
I like a man with locks who has a hair tied back though nothing wrong with that.
Yeah, I do like a man with locks. This is just a totally separate line. All of a sudden, all everybody's mind went somewhere.
Everyone our security guy here, dreads.
He's kind of always kind of older, but he looks good. That's a good look.
Yeah. I don't think I've never not looked at the face of a man with locks, like if I passed by guy with locks and from the back I have to at least take a piece of peek at his face like ooh, he's cute.
Moving on.
So please, men, if you're listening, no more man buns. Tell a friend, help a friend, tell your family. A man Bun's done.
It's done, Cut it off.
Today's tip this week is preparing financially for marriage.
Dun, dun, dumb.
So first and foremost, So this is where I am. My boyfriend and I we are talking about marriage. And one of the first things I did with him was we talked about his credit score.
I showed him was this before you moved in together or after right after we moved in together?
Ok?
I was like, I.
Think I can't remember why. I think he said he was looking to buy a car or something like that, and I said, well, what's your credit score?
Do you know?
Because before we go to get a car, they're going to ask. So I was kind of casual with it, but you know, deep down inside, I was like.
What's your credit card?
And so he was like in the load of mid six hundreds, and which I was like, okay, And I saw why. It was just because he had this one credit card that He had a secured card, which I call like the baby credit card, and he it was almost maxed out because he was making small incremental payments.
And I told him, I'm like, oh.
You know, if you're the closer you are to your limit, the lower makes your score. It was really the only thing he had on there. I'm like, once you pay, your credit score is gonna jump. So he paid it off within three months. He's up to seven fifty excellent. Yeah, And so it was that's a great conversation to start with.
Is credit scores definitely creating a budget. So it took a little longer for us to get to the budget point because the credit score thing he was interested in because you know, he wanted to get a car, but the budgeting thing was difficult.
So I had to figure out kind.
Of like what his pain points were, like how do I get up the budget and save a little bit more? So he has an eight year old daughter, so I would use that like, you know, you should think about are you sitting aside for Alyssa's college fund? You know, and if not, let's do a budget so we could see how much you could set aside for a Lista's college fund. So we worked through it that way. And now just the other day I asked him what he
was doing. He' said, oh, doing my budget to see if I have any money left over for something he wanted to do.
I was like, when it took a year, it's a slow that's you need to Yeah, it's a slow process.
Men are and you know obviously whoever whatever the gender is of your partner that you're trying to budget with, but men especially, it just takes longer for things to sink in and.
They don't like to be told, yes, how to.
Manage their money. I'm speaking from experience. I've been with my boyfriend for three years, We've lived together for a year and a half, and I'm finally starting to see the fruits of my lip.
Yes, it takes the seeds have begun to sew.
So with your partner you have to ask those questions about credit, about how much debt they have, that's very important, and then what plan kind of like, you know, well, what are your plans? Like my boyfriend is a bills paid on time type of guy, but as far as like cash, he's not as responsible.
So I learned that once. It took a little while to kind of learn his like system.
And once I did, I realized, like, Okay, if I want him to do something or say something, I have to make it almost like a bill in his life because he's always he always pays his bills on time. So you have to get to know your partner and how they operate financially and kind of work within that. It depends on you and your partner. But figuring out what that looks like for you is what's best. So
figuring out a savings plan. We do have one joint account, which is our savings account, and at first it was for vacations. That's how I tricked him into saving. And the other day he was like, we should turn this savings account into a home account so we can buy a home with it.
That was my initial plan.
But the fact that he's come along without too much pushing is really good. Yeah, So that's another thing too.
So if you need help, you can always sit down with a planner, like there's there. You can find a fee only planner, which means that they'll they'll charge you by the hour and they won't take a percentage of like whatever savings you have with them or investments, but they're kind of just there like a therapist, and you can sit down with them with your partner and they can be the middleman, like if you're having a trouble communicating with your partner, which I was having with my
boyfriend when we moved and we moved in together. We were having a lot of like communication issues around money, okay, And he and I wound up attending a couple's in finance class actually through this group called Society of Grown Ups based in Boston, So if you're in Boston, check it out. And there was a financial planner there and she kind of just helped us facilitated conversation and make it less tense for us to talk about our goals and things.
Like that, because you don't want money to be the thing that pulls you apart.
Oh god, and it can so easily play your part.
Really, you know, that's something that you want to talk about, and then so you want to you want to make that whenever you're talking about it, that it's not this like dun dun, dull conversation, you know, like it's time to talk about money. So I've learned I never had that weird anxiety with money because at home it was just like normal talk.
So learning to make money normal talk in your house helps as well. What's that like?
I was raised by a single mom for most of my life and she had four kids, and I just I always thought of money as this like this like basically a form of anxiety. It was never there where it was it? Could we get it? Like it was like this elusive thing. I had to really work on my relationship with money as I grew up. And you
know that kind of stuff turns up in relationship. Oh, for sure, I'm super afraid of not having money and so I'm obsessed with saving and that can and you know, if your partner's not in the same page as you, that can be like a point of contention. And I yeah, I guess it's like a final thing. Just expectations are everything.
You have to really like figure out what your partner's expectations are for their savings and money goals, and like what your expectations are and then try and find a common ground.
Yeah, agreed. Communication is key And if you.
Guys have any more questions about money and marriage, money and relationships, please send us an email. Our email address again is Brown Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com.
And we're bac back and it's time for brown brilliance. So we called it Wins earlier.
Yeah, we've had an identity change. No longer Wins. We're calling it Brown Brilliant, play off of black excellence, Brown brilliance.
Yes, what's rest time? How do you feel about it? We might still keep it even if you don't agree.
But cowen exactly, And so really brilliance is when we just highlight some brown awesomeness that's happening on the interwebs, on the internet. And so if you know of any awesome brown people doing some awesome brown people things, you can tweet us at the BA podcast. You can find us on Facebook at Brown Ambition, and you can email us at Brown Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com. So I'm going to kick off because I don't know I'm talking right now.
Because you like to hog them, like, just keep it real, so brown yesterday, I'm just going to keep it anywhere.
And so yeah, so I did teex yesterday, But the brown and brown brilliance of this week for me is not going to go for me. Instead, it's for Nate Burkhard. He brought the very first Tedex Newark to Newark. Newark has been long troubled with crime and all of these kind of negative, negative news that you've seen about Nework. So this was something positive and amazing and awesome. And ted X is a international brand and for it to come to Newark and for it to be done well,
so I'm super excited about it. And I just want to say congratulations, Nate. You are brilliant in all your brownness. I believe Nate is brown, Yes, I think so.
Well, you don't have to be brown for brown brilliant. Yes, I mean we can open it up to everybody.
But yeah, I just want to tell him that congratulations. That was an awesome job.
Good job Nate, and good job Tiffany for being on ted X. Excellent.
And I have a real quick one to add from one of another one of my favorite authors. I'm going to talk about authors a lot because I'm a reading book nerd, but this author, her name is Jumpa Lahiri. And fun fact about Joompala Heirie. If you watch some Mindy project, Mindy Kaling is a huge Joombalahiri fan, and that is why Mindy Lahiri's last name.
Is Lahiri on the show.
But miss Lahari Jumpala Hery, the author was just awarded the National Medal of Humanities from the President himself, Barack Obama, at the White House, which is a huge deal. So I just want to say congrats to her, and if you want to read her stuff. The Interpreter of malal the Interpreter of maladies. No wait, it's how you say it, maladies. I'm not the biggest brain fart, obviously I read. I don't really talk out loud a lot. Interpreter of maladies
and the namesake. I think her latest book is called The Lowland. Just check her out. Excellent fiction. A lot of it, you know, relates to the Indian immigrant experience.
So good for you. Jumpa.
Yes, I was gonna call her Jupola, but because you corrected me that her name is actually Jumpa and then Lahiri. Yes, so that's a kind of like a Nigerian way of doing things.
A good jobble. They're like, oh, your name is what that's cute. Your name is Veronica. Your name is Vero.
I was saying earlier, you guys missed it. That was going to give Mandy a Nigerian esque name. I'm going to think of how to do so I'm gonna that way. When she does good things.
I can wear what did you call that? The thing, the the head, head, the head to gallet, that's what they call gallet.
I went to the most man Nigerian weddings for another episode.
We're talking. We're going to talk about Nigeria wedding. Yes, because they are. Yes, that's a good one epic.
But in the meantime, we're letting you guys go Yes. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode again. Send us your questions, your comments, Brown Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com, hit us up on Twitter at the BA Podcast or on Facebook at Brown Ambition, and we're out.
Bye bye,