Make It Make Sense (with Michael Harriot)

phenomenal episode of My Mama Told Me the podcast. But we died deep, deep into the pockets of black inspiras theories, and we worked to finally prove that Montell Williams is planning to murder the second husband and restore his relationship with Kamala Harris. That's right. He is gonna seek his vengeance. He lost the good one, Ladies and gentlemen. He's gonna stand outside of Kamala's house holding up a boom box playing uh Mrs Officer by But Bobby Valentino will will

we will will we like a cock car. He's gonna get her back. I'm your host, likes think Erman. I'm happy to be here. As always, I have been reading through some of the wonderful notes that people have been sending us over about the podcast, and so many kind words, a lot of people saying very sweet things, and a few people correcting some of the stupid things that I say. One of which I'd love to read to you all today a message that came from a gentleman named Corey Stewart.

I think it's a gentleman. It could be a lady. I don't know and don't matter, but Corey sent us that basically, uh, in reference to me Paul is dead theory that we discussed where Paul McCartney was said to have died in a car crash and and uh no longer was actually Paul McCartney, but was being played by a different person. Uh. He said, you're correct about Paul being interpreted as dead because he's shoeless. But there's more. This is good stuff. I didn't get to my dad.

A boomer Beatles fanatic explained the theory to me. This first in line is John Lynne. He's in an all white suit, has long hair and a long beard. He represents Guy. Next comes R and Go Start a three piece suit, sharp mutton chops and shiny black shoes. He's the preacher. Next is Paul McCartney the corpse, shoeless in the suit. Finally, George Harrison is dressed in all denim, a durable working class outfit. He's an undertaker now. He says he's interpretations very but he thinks that the Beatles

are basically putting us on. He personally doesn't believe that Paul is dead, but he does believe the Beatles are in or management are basically playing in to the rumors to help people. Uh give a subtle nod to the people at home, and I say to all that white people have a freedom that nobody else says. Good for you, white people for being able to have antics of murdered people on your album covers and still be celebrating. It's it's a fun game you guys get to play, and

I'm very jealous of it. Anyway, my guest today, I'm super excited that he's here. We often talk to comedians, but we don't often talk to bright people, and this is an exciting turn of events for us. He's great, brilliant thinker. You know him as a writer or at the Root dot com. Please give it up for my guests, Mr Michael Harriet, and thank you for having, Yeah, I'm excited you're here. Paul McCartney is supposed to be a lie. He's supposed to be dead because he's one of the

two Beatles that technically is quote unquote still alive. But there was a theory that when he was in a car crash in the sixties I think it's the sixties, that he had died in that car crash, and they replaced him with like a double and kept like living the life out of Paul McCartney despite the fact that he was a dead man. So you want to hear

an interesting story before we get started. So years ago, right, and I can't remember with you, right, but there was a preacher in the Detroit who wanted to raise money for the civil rights movement. Bought Morton was the king up right, and all the stars showed up and they just want They didn't really I guess they gave money, but they were really there because everybody was talking about this preacher's daughter. So they kept asking, are you gonna

let the preachers daughter sing? But the king didn't want them to let the girls seek because she was fourteen years old and she was pregnant. Uh. But finally the organ he says, look, I'm not going to play for anyone unless you let this girl sing. She comes out, blows the audience away, gets a record contract. Her name is Aretha Franklin. Damn. So okay, all right, and and this this gets crazy right. One of the people there

at the concept was Little Richard. He asked the organ player to go on tour with him, and the organ player goes on tour with him, meets the Beatles in Germany, and to this day, that organ player, Billy Preston, is the only musician besides the Beatles that's ever been credited on the Beatles album beat all because Martin Luther King didn't want because all because Martin Luther King was being a hater and trying to keep this young lady from shining and doing the thing that she wanted to do.

And now that we get this, yeah, this organ player says no, I won't and he becomes the man and she becomes the lady. Ah, that's a great story. Yeah. See, this is the kind of utility that comedians don't bring to the podcast we just talked about. But stuff, and that ain't helpful that I need. I need good stories like this one. But stuff too though. Good thank god, because I'm not planning on changing who I am. Uh So, as long as we're both at home, we'll we'll have

a great time together. I'm excited about your conspiracy theory because I think that it it sort of is an umbrella conspiracy theory, if that makes sense. It really hits a lot of places all at once, in a way that I think other conspiracy theories are not often able to do. But you said, my mama told me white

people ain't got no sense. Yeah, man, Um, So the back story is, and I was raising a small town in South Carolina, and like the weird thing about the town is that the black part of town, where the black people live, is a perfect square. And I was home, and my mom she was, well, Mom, everybody in my family, my my mom or sisters were black panthers, and so she homeschooled us. And so I really never met or was around white people until I was a teenager. I

started going to the public school. And whenever you would ask anything about like something you'd see on TV, is it true? And she's like, well, you know, white people ain't got no sense. And and so when I went to school, they skipped me two grades and put me in this gifted and talented program, and I realized, like all of these one I was the only black kid in this program, and I was smaller than everybody else. But they weren't particularly smarter than all their black kids

in the neighborhood that I grew up in. And I realized they're not that smart. My mom was right. Why people ain't got no sense and they just know the system and it manifest thing manifests itself in all kinds of ways throughout my life. Man, you know what I think about, Like, they think we are less intelligent because they define what intelligence is, right, sure, so so think about this, right, So what is intelligence? Right? So if you do calculus in your head, is that intelligent? Right?

So think about this. Take stuff, Corey, what he's doing when he's shooting a shot on one leg being pushed and fouled, Is he's calculating a paraveler or the fly right in his head? Like, that's gotta be a sort of intelligence. Because he's not stronger than anybody else. He's not bigger than anybody else. He's not bigger than anybody else. He's just it's just his mind has a level of accuracy in the ability to calculate that I don't have.

That's the sort of intelligence. I love what you're saying here, because I do think that it's often overlooked and a very difficult conversation to sometimes have with people. Is that, to your point, intelligence became this standardized conversation. You're either smart or you aren't, and the standard was set by

a very specific group of people. You all decided, Okay, it's going to require you to take this many Trigg classes and learn these kinds of literature to qualify how smart you are, when in fact, there's a bunch of motherfucker's running around here who are real smart and real good at stuff that the average person, even if they're exceptional students, could never pull off. Right right, man, I was.

I was listening to the one of the people who started Rockefeller Records with Jay Z and Kareem Bigs, and so Kareem Biggs was saying, there was another guy on the podcast it was just like a a worker at Rockefeller, and he said he was so sad when Rockefeller uh sold itself right, And Karim says, well, we always knew, like just being from the streets just being in the game that there was going to be a point where they offered someone offered us more money then this record

company was worth, right, And that's when we just had to decide what that amount was. And our whole journey was deciding what that amount was. And I was thinking about that, like these three guys from the streets, man, they that's a really a master's level economics class opportunity, cause, right, but they just figured that shot out themselves, right, that at some point, look, somebody's gonna try to buy out this business, and we have to decide collectively what this

business is worth. And you know, you calculating the fact that like they weren't even friends at the time, which complicates like, okay, how do you split up this business that otherwise we would have probably shared equally or whatever the funk their plan was. But to your point, it's like they didn't have to take an economy class to figure that out. They just kind of they knew they were able to to figure that out on their own.

And that is a massive amount of intelligence that we never celebrate through it's certainly through any traditional learning, right, because they just I think what I learned, right, is that by me learning outside of school and then going to school because I'm really always tell people I've never really never learned anything in a classroom. But I realized that what school does is teach you how to absorb the information and the way that they're giving it to you.

I remember one time, man, I was my mom used to teach vacation Bible school, and we went to vacation Bible school one day and they asked me, like I was like six seven years old, and he asked me my time tables, and I didn't know my time tables. Man, My mom was sold Harris. She made me go home and learn my time tables. But here's the thing, right, I just got on the captin that I figured out how multiplication works. But I know no one ever told me.

Just think about this, No one ever told you like, oh, you don't have to learn past twelve, Like, why don't we stop at twelve? Right? Like, nobody can answer that question for me? Why don't we stop learning? God Like? And so I went to school years later, and we would take these time tests every Thursday, these time math tests in the teacher and take off points for me not showing my work. And I was like, what you need showing your work? Like you don't know your sixteen timetables.

You don't know why am I needing to demonstrate math to you When I did the math? You like, I don't have to show seven times eight, But I don't. I don't have to show sixteen times fourteen. It doesn't make any sense. It's because you learn it to memorize the things that they told you. Listen, one of my biggest fears in the world is having And I used to be a teacher, but I worked in I worked in English, so I had nothing to do with the math. But the very idea of somebody coming to me and saying,

why is one plus one two? Is like, I don't know, bro, it just is. That's that's what they told me. That's what I'm telling you. What the funk do you want from me? Do you know what I mean? They don't teach us that, They critically don't teach us to think. They teach us to memorize the things that they tell us, which is I think, and I don't know if it was like this might be. This sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it fosters reality that you gotta follow directions for

the rest of your life. Right Like when people tell me something, I automatically as a skeptic saying, well, let me find out if this is true. I like what you're saying here because I think that this sort of circles us back into the conversation about white people and their sense or lack thereof is is what we're saying is or what you're saying is is that there are more things side of lead that we should be skeptical of, that we should take a second to at least find

our own answer for. And instead we are sort of like following the rules that are placed in front of us because that's how we're conditioned from a young age. Like I'm not gonna push back on these things because if I do, I'm at risk of whatever the funk we think we're at risk of by not, you know, exploring further and back to the conspiracy. White people live

in a world that is built for them. It's built off of the ways that they were taught, and then it's it's like living in a padded room for your entire life and thinking you're indestructible. M right. They think that they're stronger, like I got strong the wall. Well, you living in a world that is padded for you. Oh no, dog, I like walls against my shoulder. It don't even affect me. It's like no, Actually, regular walls hurt a lot. And if you just tried the regular wall,

I ensure you you'll feel differently about all of this. Also, there's something I'm really curious about and what you're saying, because you're talking about your mom homeschooling you and never introducing you to like white information, right that Like she she starts you off by just learning what she would consider non white information up to this point. And I'm wondering what that is, you know what I mean. I'm

a person who I didn't I wasn't homeschooled. I went to white schools and white institutions, not my whole life, but most of my life. And I'm curious what what qualified specifically as non white stuff up to that point, right, And so I don't think it's like she wasn't teaching to be like like playing and speeches in my sleep, but it was like it was like, you don't know, she might have been playing that sleep and that's why you're in here now. But people tell me a lot.

I don't know how to talk to white people because I think when I look at people, we inherit a subconscious deference to white people that like we don't even realize, like even as unapologetic as we want to be, a lot of people don't realize that they have it right. Like I don't think white people are smarter when I

go into a classroom. When I was growing up, she would change all of the names and the books that you like if if she would buy us regular books, right, she would change them to like the names of our cousins and the names of our and so right. And so we live in a world where like subconsciously we think we are like planets for involving around the white sun.

And I've never had that thing. I was like, you know, I just assumed that there were and sometimes, like a teenager, there were more black people in America the white people, Like I just I mostly saw like that was a

shot to be right. And so so I talked to white people still to this day, like I talked to black people, and they a lot of times take it as an insult, right, just because I talked to him like black familiarity of a human that that is not better than you, that does not require some sort of like code switching, as it were, to to make them feel comfortable. It's just hey, mother, this is welcome home.

Like just like one of the things that kind of went viral last year was I saw this clip of Pete Buddhaja is talking about black people need role bottles. You know, that's how you prove the schools right. And so you know, I could have written something that said, you know this is wrong, but I talked to him like people in the are neighborhood. The title of article is Pete buddha Jar just a lying motherfucker, right, because

he relying. You can't go to Harvard and study as much information and consume as much information as he has. And then your answer to improving the school system is we need role models. But you know, the average white school districts gets fifty dollars more per student then the average black majority black school district. You know that black schools don't have the kind of algebra and and high mass classes that black school What you want to say

is about role models. Black women are the most educated group of people in the country, gerally, the most educated, and so how are you gonna be in a black neighborhood adult see a role model as far as Rode right, Yeah, y'all put us in these neighborhoods. So black people live next to lawyers and doctors and engineers and garbagemen, and people work at McDonald's. Every black person knows a black somebody black successful. So I mean, it's a stupid argument

to make. And the only person who was making is somebody who was just a rule full of white people

and decided a lot to make them feel right. And I think, I think you're getting into something that I've I've been feeling a lot lately, is that we we constantly in this country, are finding ourselves in these negotiations right where like Pete Buddha Jedges is put in front of us and we're told that he's a good guy, this is a nice man, and we should let the nice man say things about a community that he supposedly cares about. But the reality is he don't know nothing

about black people. He doesn't have any business talking about black people, And the fact that he happens to come from a minority community as a queer person doesn't make him any more connected to us, So he doesn't get to speak from a position of expertise, and we shouldn't sit there and pretend like he could just because he's quote unquote a nice man, right exactly when he got you got to parents who were professors, You went to

one of the most elite private schools in America. And you're gonna tell me, like you know about black schools, how now you would you went to an elite private school, didn you? With the Harvard what you know? And you're the mayor of a city that mostly complains about how indifferent you are to its black population. It's not like we're sitting on like a dude who's demonstrated years of care and carefulness in the way that each treated the community.

He's judging in front of a room full of white people, right. And the crazy thing is is when you think about like all of that stuff that we've been saying, right to have a system and a world in a country like that and just go blindly along, you can't have any sense to live the world. Right, Like lived an apartment with thin walls and you heard the man next door beat his wife every night. You just put in

ear plugs. You don't have any sense. Bro, Yeah, you don't have the calm, not even comes in that you don't have humanity in you. Yes, I love what you're saying here because I think that that, at its essence really will help clarify for our listeners exactly what not having sense is. So it's not that the system in and of itself means that white people don't have sense. The system was built by you. Obviously you're gonna try to, you know, thrive in the system that's built by you

white people. Good for you, I guess, I don't know. But more importantly, this undying faith in a system that is clearly flawed, that it's clearly broken and clearly not assisting anyone else around it, and then being like, yes for everybody, we're good. Well, I don't know, figure it out is insane. And so yeah, y'all ain't got no sense.

As long as you keep selling the system to me, you out of your damn mind right to know black people go to a furious schools and to think that less intelligence, you can't have any sense to think that there is something innate about black people that makes them keep getting shot to the by the police like we we magnetic bullets, like all these delicious bullets, I can't

get another. The hell are you thinking? There is no logical answer to all of these disparities except racism, or the world doesn't make sense, like to think you live in a logical world and to see these disparities and to keep skating by like a figure skater in the Olympics. Bro, you can't have the sense. White people ain't got no sense. You ain't got no sense White people. You're skating by, But we're tying your heart and then we're gonna sunk

up your knees. We're coming. We're coming for your knees. White people were done with this ship, all right, We're gonna take a break, moving back with more Michaelariat and more, my mama told me. And we are back. Yeah, we're back here with more Michael Harriet more. My mama told me it was fun watching your face through those drops. You had no idea what was happening, and honestly me neither. I'll just be pressing stuff and it's all a surprise

every single time. You're you're obviously a journalist, You're a man who knows a lot of stuff. I would love to dig into some research about your subject specifically, because it's such a broad conversation, I thought one of the most effective ways to enter this in terms of like a tempting to add a little bit of uh qualifying to it, was to talk a little bit about whether

or not appealing to people's humanity actually works. Right, how much of us actually attempting to get white people to see us as human beings is an effective effort or if it's just all in vain? Would you consider that a fair entrance than not an easy one, but certainly a fair one. Oh, yes, Yes, it's a subject I

right to talk a lot about. So I found a little bit on this article from and it was really more of a case study from this uh from the European Journal of Social Psychology that basically suggested, and this was really fascinating, that appealing to common humanity actually reduces social change, that it doesn't make things better, It actually makes things socially worse, but it does increase the connection and sort of like bonding in smaller social sub sets.

So it doesn't fix humanity, but it does make us feel closer in these smaller groups. Yeah, yeah, I could definitely believe that, right, Like we see it all throughout history. Right, So let's take like he's a subject that everybody knows about the civil rights movement, right, So the civil rights movement we often think about like because now we want lu the gig is his great hero, right, we are forget about white people hated Martin Luther the Gag, but

he died. Martin Luther King was literally one of the most peaceful people in the American history, and the FBI wrote him a letter and told him to kill himself, right, right, So, so you know, if you you can't get any more placid and innocuous as Martin Luther King. He said, we are going to fight hate with love, and they killed

him for that. So if you if love is the greatest thing that you can offer to humanity, and that's what you offered to humanity, that was his message, and they killed him, then there is no logical reason to believe that appealing to white people's humanity will get us anyway. Uh. In the year nineteen nineteen, there were hundreds of riots all across the United States and what's called the Red

Summer of nineteen nineteen. And the reason those riots existed, like they just popped up all across the United States was because for the first time, black soldiers had gone into the army and fought in World War One, and when they returned, white people were upset generally because they were looking them in the eyes and treating them, treating

white people as their equals. Right, because they had been in the Paris, all over Europe and the Netherlands and in Africa, and they came back in the head month and and white people killed them for that, right, Your white people, uh felt very frustrated that black people came back with confidence and a new self esteem and they were like, fuck this, I'd rather you die than believe in yourself. Right. So there is no reason to think that appealing like just simple appeal to humanity will give

us some sort of like leg like. But first of all, we exist in this world. So if they don't see us as humans from the beginning, it is hard to imagine what else we could do to engender that mm hmm.

So one of the things that the study says, and I think that this is super useful to what you're already pointing out with examples, is that basically humans tend to categorize themselves, whether uh intentionally or unintentionally at three levels there with increasing sort of like levels of inclusiveness. There's the personal, the social, and then the grander human right. And we're able to shift and expand those groups as necessary, depending on who we're talking to and who I guess

qualifies to fit within those groups. Meaning like, uh, my personal might just be my friends and my family. But then if my uh, you know, wife now expands my group by bringing in a new friend, that person then gets under that umbrella. And similarly, in the social, I might identify with black people, but then I might also identify with like an expanding sense of like minorities depending

on what's happening in the world or whatever whatever. But one of the things that the research sort of shows is that it is extremely rare for people to actually expand beyond the social into the human. That like, no matter what it is we whatever is wrong with human beings, we can't ever make it from social meaning that smaller

subset of black people into world issues. I wonder why that is, Like I I wouldn't presume to know why that is, but I think just generally human beings, first of all, tend to congregate in tribes and groups and the other thing is like, just as human animals, right, we want an advantage, right, And so you know, if you're white and I'm black, you know, the white person kind of knows that in America they've got an advantage

over you, like just living in this country. And I think theoretically sometimes they might want to eliminate that advantage, like would be a good person theoretical, but that means also that they got to compete with more people forward, food, money,

or whatever. So like I think maybe and I could see generally what white people might want to, like in their heads, say we are all one, but when it comes push comes to shove, right, and it's one piece of meat, yeah, and you hungry and I'm hungry, you want the whole piece of meat, or you want to spend with the black duds, right. And I think that's a really important thing that it sort of gets into,

is that this subgrouping, this aligning. Right. So like in the case of looking at the George Floyd based off of what you're talking about, there were a lot of people after George Floyd dies who go like, this is awful. I hate that this is happening to black people. I want to do something, but effectively, if we're truly being honest, if we're living in a world where people are truly being honest, there's not that much you can do without

stealing food from your own mouth. And so because people are unwilling to fully steal the food from their own mouth, y'all ain't gonna do that much. You're gonna feel bad. You ain't gonna necessarily like, uh, party in the streets about the ship. But no, dog, I'm not going hungry.

I figure it out. You we all eating, go ahead right right, like, because I mean, the truth is this, I mean, this ship is hard to being black, right, and like I want to be with you, bro, but like you know that good shot by the Boldies and schools and you know, people follow you around at the store like I don't get you, man, But like, right, I mean, I'm gonna let you have this one. This ain't really my thing. People generally seek the easier path

in life. M hum. And then I think I think part of what's interesting in this study that they did was they did find that the most common way that people did appeal to humanity or sort of recategorized for humanity, was actually coming from the victims of these situations. So it's super unlikely that somebody who is the perpetrator of the crime to then like recognize the humanity in the person that they hurt. Nazis ain't going to see Jews

as human vice versa. It's more likely that Jews, the victims of this crime, are able to see the humanity in the Nazis, in part because it's the only way that you can move forward in your own life and your own subgroups. That like, if you spend your whole life sort of being engulfed in this hatred, you're never going to be able to like take steps forward and then eventually like build a life, be happy, grow as

a human all that stuff, right, is that commonality. Then it's that commonality where it's like people in a foxhold in war, right, we share this thing, we share this moment, and that bonds us forever. So so victims are probably more likely to bond than like, you know, the people

who have never suffered those kinds of things. Yes, and that's exactly what the study says is that not only does it make us appeal to the humanity of our oppressor, which is, you know, effectively not helpful, because the oppressor doesn't see me as a human at the same time, but it also creates a deeper bond with the subgroup

that I already exist in. So now I'm I'm holding super tight to this subgroup and it doesn't allow me to see anything past that sort of conversation, right, which is really the brilliance of like documents like the Constitution, you know what I mean, Because the Constitution tells you all this ship about how valuable all humans are, that like every man is created equal, we all have these

inalienable rights, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. But the reality is you're talking to very specific people who are going to see themselves in a very specific subgroup group and never actually see the other humans involved in this conversation. So you're only affirming the evils and people and not actually actualizing the ship that we really need,

which is all of us being legit equal. It makes me wonder what's the what the answer is though, Like if you can't appeal to someone's humanity, then what do you appeal to? And Like I have this theory that you have to convince people that the dumb stuff that they're doing the dumb ship they're doing hurts them. Racism hurt white people too. Write Like I was talking about diversity, right, like people look at diversity like say you own a

company and you're trying to increase your diversity offers. Some people look at it as like you being doing something beneficial for black people. I was like no, Like when you have a more diverse group of people would offer perspective working on something, then you have a better You end up with a better product. And I was talking about the news like for along Tide for years, like we don't see no black people on the news, like giving us the news and what we got is homogeneous

perception of the news. And it's interesting to me, Like so I remember one of the first news rooms I work in it, right, and they would report the news like say somebody got shot. They were reported by reading the police report, right, And I was like yeah, yeah, Like the least, the least trustworthy thing in this whole equation is the police report, right, Like that's where the lies are. They police always, always, always, always lie on

the police report. Right. And if you go back and look at bid the camp footage and compare it to police reports, this is invariably true. Right, But when you don't have anything but white people in your news room, you report the police and and the problem with that is it's not because you want to stick it to the police or something. You reporting like you want trust

the source of dudes. Your news is subjectively worse because you have all white people who don't know this, right, yes, and so bringing into black people the first to find your dude room really makes a better product just because you just got more. Yeah, I mean, it's to that point.

It's the motherfucker's writing essays from Wikipedia the first couple of years where like you, there was a while where we didn't know right where we were like, hey, this is kind of like the new encyclopedia, and this is a useful resource. And then at some point we realize, oh, ship, this is just people writing what they think is correct on a document that then gets posted on the internet. It may or may not be true, and quite often

is a very muddied version of the truth. But you don't get to keep writing your essay from Wikipedia after you've acknowledged that the ship ain't right. And if you do, you ain't got no sense you acting up right, They said Brianna Taylor was okay, was uninjured when they took her to the hospital. They said, boy was was resisting and he was fine, like the the officer restrained him right like until we saw the footage. Remember Walter Scott in South Carolina. They said that he attacked the police

officer and a man was running away opposite direction. One of the more important things that you're also getting to, and this is a little complicated, is is the ways in which they create these subgroups, or forced us rather to create our own subgroups through this victimization, through these offenses that are happening to unlike people in a lot

of ways. That like, despite the fact that you and I are black, or even better example, despite the fact that George Floyd and I are both black, that's pretty much the end of the ship we have in common, right like that, ain't a dude who like in any under any other circumstances. You place us in a room where I just vibe with him, We ain't. We ain't got that much to talk about if the man kept living.

But unfortunately, because of the crimes that you all keep committing over and over again, I'm forced to create a subgroup with a person who otherwise would not be my subgroup, would not be in my personal circle. But I would argue that that you didn't create the subgroup, right, that that you you just realized that you were in the subgroup.

It's forced on us. We probably grew up on different sides in the country and different worlds and different upbringings, and this one thing that brings us together wasn't created by us, Like we didn't manifest this, right We in a world that are two worlds that are totally different, and the one thing we have in common affects our lives so much that they outweigh like like like I neve go a dirt road in the middle of a small set of town bro like, we don't probably don't

have that much income hell from there in common like the average Because this because of these sub groups they created, Yes, a pent And I think I think that again is like part of the mastery of like the people who sat down and I like to think of it as like an evil twiddling their fingers sort of group of people.

But the genius of what they created is they're forcing us to live in these subgroups that they created, that they spawned and sort of like left us in uh that block us from actually seeing the people that are like us in similar subgroups. So the reality is that there are poor white people in this country who have such a difficult time with the word privilege and the idea that they somehow have something better than everybody else.

And the reality is if we could have a real conversation, we could clarify exactly what privileges and how it falls and whether or not they fall under the categories that we're even talking about half the time, But we can't have the conversation because it's just black people and white people and subgroups and and distinct voices that don't actually ever want to see the humanity in the other side.

It's it's such a complex discussion to have, right, And the part about it is right, it's like the controversy and the discussion, like we don't get that right, Like they are the ones who get fragile when you want to have this discussion if we want to talk about black on black crime, like I always tell people black people don't like black on black crime either. Like we got all kinds of fraternities and sororities and church groups and and teenage mentorship programs that try to stop it, right,

So we want to stop it too. Bro, you can't go into a black church and barbershop or beauty salon without hearing somebody talk about a nigga who at ship? Right? We know the ancient niggas, right, and if because it's you know, white people who ain't shipped too, and white people know that they got ancient white people. And if only we had to worry about just the eight shient white people in the ancient niggas will be a lot

better off than to worry about all the white people. Yes, and I love that, And frankly I would love a subgroup of ain't ship niggas and a subgroup of ain't ship white people to realize, hey, we're the same, we ain't shipped together, and then we can we similar Similarly, the people who are ship can be like, hey, I'm the ship. I don't want nothing to do with whatever

that is, and we can separate ourselves from it. It's it's the way that these subgroups have been created, in the way that they're strategically kept in place, is the most dangerous, scary part of all of it. I agree with that kind of segregation segregated city. You heard of your first folks were bringing segregation back, and this time ain't ship. Niggas are on the wrong side of the tracks. That's the deal. Ain't ain't ship but equal, and that that's a hard thing to get to, but we're gonna

get there. There's one more piece of research that I would love to run past you because I started thinking. You asked the question, I think it's an important one about how do we fix this? Is there any possibility for any change in all of this? And I started to think, Well, the most literal attempt at fixing it

is through like diversity training. Right, That's what white people always turn to whenever the world is in disarray, They go, we got to train our employees to be more aware of the other colors out there that it they probably know about, but are for whatever reason, treating them differently.

And one of the things I read a Harvard Business Review study that sort of talked about the effectiveness of diversity training, and evidence show that little change or of their behavior happened from white men specifically, despite an increased acknowledgement of bias around them. So throughout like the six months of diversity training that they went through. Nobody changed their behavior, but they all went, hey, I see that this is fucked up more than I saw it was

fucked up beforehand. And in fact, the only group that did change their behavior was women. Women tended to be a little more open to, like, uh, to experiencing other

groups and other people. But one of the things they pointed out was it was largely junior employee women at the office who were attempting to now reach out to all kinds of people above them, recognizing that like, yo, this world is fucked up, and I gotta get help wherever I can find it, or resources wherever I can find it, because I'm naturally gonna be mistreated as a

woman in these positions already. I yes, when you think about it, though, right when you are in a space like that, like corporate America, the people generally at the top are people who are able to set set aside emotion for the sake of like their savages, right, like people who The best football players could play through pain, right, and they'll hit the hell out of you. They don't want to top of you, bro, they want to knock you out. The best basketball players can pay play through paining.

The best bankers will steal your house from under you, Like, I don't care if you ain't got got your boys. I don't give if you just two days later bro that my house, my company gets the profit, and now I'm at the top of the heap. So I would imagine that those are mostly men who have been First

of all, we are are trained to SUBVERTI feelings. Right, So by the time you get to to the real world, right, like you've been talking about the cry, you've been talked not to empathize with another human being, right, And so that is the vacuum that allows inequality to flourish. But it's also this to the crazy thing about it. It is the it's all sort of thing that allows you

to get ahead. Right. Yeah. I think you especially are hitting something on the head with talking about capitalism, right, because at the end of the day, so much of what whiteness is is cooked into capitalism, and it's part of how they are able to not see the humanity in other groups. Is like, look, I'm playing the game. I'm just playing the game the way the game is

set up to be played. I'm following the rules as I know them presented to me, not acknowledging that like, hey, the game might be kind of fucked up, like maybe this ain't how games should be played, or certainly we if we are going to play him this way, you should at least be acknowledging like that. I could, I don't know, consider the game in a different way than

I've been playing it the whole time. But instead you're able to treat it like a game, thus detaching yourself from these other groups, and subsequently, even when you're not playing the game, i e. Going to work or shutting down an orphanage because you want to put up a parking lot, whatever the funk it is, you then detached from the humans because they effectively will make the game

harder for you in the future. I agree with you, and going back to the study that you introduced earlier, that is why I think that appealing to humanity does not work. What you have to do it's not convinced them that the game is fucked up because it's sucked

up for us. You have to appeal to them and say the game is fucked up because it's funed up for you too, right, so you wouldn't have to stifle all this pain to get ahead if you just allowed everybody to flourish instead of boarding all of the resources for yourself, just take for something like taxes. Right, so white people don't want to pay a lot of people don't want to Conservatives, they don't want, for instance, welfare or socialized medicine because it will take their tax money.

And for a lot of people trying to do you say, well, this will help people. There have a lot of people said, you know, look at a little Timmy coffin. What's you gonna do abou him? You can let no Timy diet, Timmy die. What you do it, bro? What you do is you say, look, everybody, it's gotta have healthcare. Bro, your healthcare costs so much because you're paying for a little Timmy's call anyway you going to back. It's against

a law of let Timmity die. So what we could do is give everybody some healthcare and instead of them gouging you because they know you got the insurance plan and so they paid the little Timmy cough on yours and a little bit for themselves, we just give everybody something and say you gotta take what we give you, and then little Timmy ain't coughing and they ain't taking

all of yours. But now if you want to hoard the resources and let little Timmy cough, it's fucked up, not because a little Timmy cough, bro, but because they're fucking you too, right, white people. But like when you have bad schools, you have high unemployment, you have high unemployment, you have high crime. What do you think those people who are broke and unemployed and uneducated going to do. They're gonna break your car window. And when you break

your car when you're gonna say, ah, the niggers. Now it's the world. It's the system that you wanted that fucked up your car window. Yeah, And to that point, we could create a system where we catch little to me before he even starts coughing, which effectively saves you money. It effectively keeps your car window from being broken in.

It's all the things you're saying that we could stop it onto minority reports ship before we even get there, but instead you're allowing it to get to the worst case scenario and then hoarding resources under the presumption that a bunch of people are going to continue to be sick and misbehave simply because that's just how we get

down and that ain't it right? Well, I mean, we know, like I'm looking at sociological visa, that crime correlates to poverty more than it correl's color, more than it carlates to whether you grew up in a city or rural area, more than it correls to anything that correlates to poverty. So if you could just get people to stop being poor, did you you decrease crime? How do you do that? You got to educate them, So why are you giving

all the poorest people the worst education. You gotta give them some better education than even if some of the white kids are getting and then you have more educated people, are more education populists equals lower crime and everybody's living. But if you don't, little Timmy's carfin and they're gonna break your call with I think perfectly said, we're gonna take one more break. We'll be back with more Michael Harriet and more, my mama told me, and we are bad.

You got what I need. Yeah, we're back here with more Michael Harriet, more of my mama told me. We're still talking about the dangers of white people in their nonsense thing no sense, and they're creating nonsense all around us, which ultimately is adding to the destruction of the world humanity as a whole. I would love for us to close this bad boy out with the game. If you're down for it, let's play uh, a fun game that I like to call white lies ugly. You're disgusting. I'm

gonna kill you. Give me two white lies. This is a very fun game where I Michael will introduce to you a traditional white conspiracy theory, one that white people have maintained for quite a while. And I would love for you to just unpack exactly why you think white people are so invested in this conspiracy theory. What do you think I'm holding onto? Yeah, exactly perfect. This is a classic I think you're gonna love it. Uh. White people for a while have maintained that most people in

politics are secretly lizard people. I'm sure you've heard that before, that they that they're uh, they're actually like lizard alien people from I guess the bottom of the earth. Sometimes I hear the bottom of the earth, sometimes I hear out of space. But there are lizard people hiding in fleshy skin, and they're planning our our ultimate destruction. Despite appearing to be uh servants of you know, justice and

all that other stuff. My question for you is why do you think white people referring to our our leaders and best as lizard people is so important to them? Okay? So I give you to answers, right, so I know they a right so perfect. The truth is that this idea came from an idea that was generated, like in the early Christian Church that the people who were nobility, the clergy class, they were actually not just ordained by God, right,

but they were a different bloodline. Man, Like, like why would you peasant in France just think, oh, the guy who's leading me is going to pass it down to his son and I'm cool with that unless you thought like there was some kind of inherited bloodline that was different from yours. Right. So that is an idea that is generated, that's been generating over other thousands of years. Right, And like if you're a white person in America, that it seems like the only logical answers you can't get.

So I don't do y'all have waffle houses in l A, Right, I mean you know I'm familiar. I think we're all familiar with the waffle house. Actually, So I had this thought at Denny's the first time I had But I was in the Denny's and it was like after the club. It was like three eight m. It was like this fifty eight year old white man sweeping up in the Denny's at three eight m. And I'm thinking, what the

funk happening? Like white man in the worst position. But those are the people who believe in It's like the people who believe in Q or nine right, Like, so we know from UM polling data and like the people who are more likely to be Trump supporters are uneducated, white poor people. Um. You know that's always surprises people that, you know, white people, poor white people generally don't vote. Right.

That's what gave this, you know, this big league because when Hillary Clinton ran against him, all the previous data says, well, we don't have to worry about the poor white people. And that's right. So, so poor white people just think about living in a world where and this is a quote I stole from nobody, but they have convinced you that you're not a loser. You're a winner who just

hasn't more. And yet that's not why people thinking, right, And so the reason they believe in stuff like listed people coming from out of space and putting on zipping up human skin and controlling the world. Is the only other choice a poor, uneducated white person as is to believe that he ain't did enough in his life because you are all the opportunities you have the world that

is built for you, So why aren't you afraid? My mama always said, you know, I mean when you talk about people with average intelligence, that means like half of the world is below average and and so. But nobody thinks they're they're dumb. Nobody thinks that they're dumb, and nobody thinks they're dress bad, and everybody thinks they're funny. That's three things that you can always invadibly count on. That's why people who make you laugh are generally more

intelligent than people who are serious. And I'm not just in it because I'm I'm a comedian. That's actual, like like generally to a lot of people to write to sell my own brand. Oh you don't know, like like there are studies that shows like people in comedy have

higher i Q. Hell yeah, Like I'll take it. Sure it's the standardized white tests, but hell yeah, I'll own that ship, right, And it's probably yeah, because I mean you think about what comedy is, like the gift of birds and the ability to like kind of pull this one joyous emotion out of people. You have that exercise of multi to do that. But let's go back to the visit people, right, so that things start with Dave starting to do named David Ick, who started this, uh

theory that these wrorior bloodlines. It goes back to the iluminority. These people came from outer space and they control the world through the system of community cation and sometimes they you know, you might catch him with their skins off, and that was their goal, Like you don't remember when you know this is probably for your tattoo rem Alex

Jones snuck into this, uh. This the growth where all these this is the actual thing, right where all these rich people meet every year, like Bill Vision, powerful people, and he thought he was going to catch them, like he literally thought. He thinking they're gonna be in there drinking goat blood and like doing evil ship and they

were just being regular people, right. But the truth is it goes back to what you were talking about earlier, right, These subgroups, like victims create subgroups get easier Dan, the people who are perpetuating the oppression, right and rich people like black people think white people sticking and the white people don't stick together. You know, we think rich people

stick together. Of these people don't stick together, right, Like, we have these unfounded notions that the only way these people can achieve what they achieve is through some collective effort, when the truth is that they have just built a system, like they don't wear no white Like if you gave me the choice of reconfiguring the school system, the economic system, the banking system, having generational wealth, bro, you might think I came from out of space, but I would be like,

like all my people would you know what I'm saying. We'd have the best schools. You know, everybody would be clapping or be the laughing at the white people. It would be, you know, great potato salad at McDonald's. And people would think they must be got no some kind of magic. She all of that now, But you you built and control a system. I think you're hitting on something that that uh certainly is resonating with me. I've

been watching a ship ton of the Crown lately. I don't know if you watch the Crown at all, now I hadn't gotten into it. Well, I I like it because it's just proof that, uh, it's a lot of what you're saying, and and they're all scumbags and gross people, but in a very specific way that I'm I'm fascinated by.

But one of the things that my wife and I we're talking about the other day was how insane it is that people are rooting for the bloodline of a family that's held above them, right that they're literally cheering outside because this bloodline has continued of people who are going to they're basically paying taxes every year to maintain like a giant palace for them to go do stupid

ship in. And one of the things that I think you're getting to is they do legitimately think to cheer for them, you have to legitimately think that their blood is different than yours, that they are in fact, this blessed group that deserves this sort of like celebration. And this is where you know the lizard people are slightly different but kind of the same. Is that you can

own in America. You can only make sense of the difference that these white people have and the way they've excelled, the way they've they've made it is to believe that their blood is different than yours, that they're cold blooded and sort of like some sort of alien creature, because otherwise do you have to make peace with the fact that you're just a regular white dude who didn't make it despite the math working into your favor. But the crazy, you know what, the crazy thing about that is right,

Like that extends to us too. Right, like the people who believe that there are lizard people who control the banking industry also believe that we have something in our blood that makes us inferior to them. So it's not just like the lizard ship like it. It's crazy and it don't Again, white people, ain't it sounds like white people ain't got no sense. If I told you that there were lizard people who won't let me get alone and that's why I can't get ahead, you would say,

he ain't got no sense. But if I got mad because a black person moved next door to me, or my daughter bought home a black person that she was dating, you would say, I mean that seems logical. It is the same and sad. Right, it literally doesn't make any sense. Right, It is as crazy as lizard people with zip up skin. But we've accepted one and don't like both of us

have accepted the other. Like you have to correct black people all the time to like, you know, you I'll see black peoples like white people do this with their money or white people, you know, they keep their kids how to speak before me, I was just correcting somebody the other day on too white people tach take kids how to speak for Linkol and they actually black people are more likely to speak a foreign language than white people.

Like it's just this thing that we believe because like they get better schools and and like white people get to keep theble and like do this with they they got extra money because it is generational, right, it's intergenerational. They have the better schools, they have the better platforms. They have it is and it is not that they

don't work for that money. It is that they have placed barriers in front of us so that if we put forth the same effort as a medeo a white man, we're gonna be poor and that white boy are gonna be okay. Yeah, And I love what you're saying, and I think it's the almost the perfect note for us to end on is that this is truly about maintaining a type of a functionality in their own world. That to your point, they ain't got no sense, and they

know they ain't got no sense. But the only way that you can keep thriving in a situation where you ain't got no sense is to make all of it nonsense. Is to make all of it completely nonsensical for everybody around you, and then trick a bunch of people who do or potentially could have sense into not having sense with you. It is all insanity. Nothing makes sense, and so you might as well act like they do. Right, Yeah, it makes sense and racism exactly. I love it, Michael.

I think we did it. I think we nailed this is this is great. This was super cool. Could you tell the people at home where they can find you, what cool stuff you have going on? Any of that? So? I have a book coming out in the fall called Black a F. History. It is blackest History of the United States, and I write every day for the voots dot com. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram and everywhere else at h H A R R. I ot to ours win t tell Yeah, so follow him, go

check out that book, Black A F History. It's gonna be dope. And as always, you can follow me at Lengthston Kerman and you can please if you want, send us drops, send us ideas, send us conspiracy theories, send us corrections at my Mama pod at gmail dot com. I would love to hear from you and uh by my crop chips in your qualibars are racists? Money stuff you can't tell me