Prison B*tch Syndrome (with Garrick Bernard)

there it is. There it is. Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another phenomenal episode of My Mama Told Me the podcast when we dive deep into the pockets of black conspiracy theories and we finally worked to prove that Tim Duncan is a screamer in the bedroom. Sure the man was quiet his entire career. Five championships, and he never said a word out loud. When you get Tim Duncan's legs over his head and that motherfucker's gonna scream, I believe it. I'm gonna sell T shirts. Let's say Tim

Duncan is a screamer in the bedroom. That's says something I'm passionate about. That's a little side project I'm working on as always. I am your host, Langston Kerman. And it is December twenty two, the day after we were supposed to get our superpowers, Black people. We were supposed to get our superpowers, and I still can't touch my toes. I have no ability to reach down to my toes. Now, if I did get a superpower like I was promise, it has nothing to do with toe touching. I have

not figured out yet what my superpower is. I was expecting my forty acres and a mule type strength. It is not kicked in yet. Please, if anyone knows what's going on with my superpowers, please send a message to me. I would love to be able to do some cool black ship like. I don't know, dunk I can't do that. I'd like to dun't. I don't even need fucking superpowers. Just let me dump. I don't know who I'm talking

to it this point. I don't know if I'm asking the girl who made up the black superpowered conspiracy theory, or if this is just me crying out to Jesus. If I'm saying, dear Jesus for Christmas. I'd like to dunk. I don't know. I'm thirty three and I need to grow up. Either way, we didn't get no superpowers, and that bitch was lying. That has nothing to do with the podcast. Sometimes you just gotta share ship out loud so it doesn't feel like you're alone out in this world. Well,

you know who's not alone out in this world. It's my guest today. He's got friends, he's got ship going on. He's a powerful man in the comedy industry. He's so funny, he's phenomenal. I love him so much. You know him from Solar Opposites. He was a writer on Solar Opposites. He's a writer on Star Trek Lower Decks. He is a hilarious comedian who you've seen on Comedy Central. Give it up for my friend, Mr Garrick. But now, how you guys doing. What's going on out there in crowd? Yeah?

The crowd love they are. What are your thoughts on Tim Duncan getting them screams now? I think you're right, bro. I think that Tim Duncan also can. That's how he won all those championships. Is fine putting his knees at his ears. You can only hit back forwards if you could put your ees behind your ears, like that's it. That's where he stayed nimble. He kept a loose bedroom and that kept that's obviously a man who is a pro in geometry. He knows his angles and he knows

this is where you spot. That's how you make old timmy feel good. Yeah, yeah, Tim Dunkee, Sir, I just love the idea that that because we all have some ship that helps us get our repression out, like we all have a thing. And by all accounts, Tim Duncan has been completely silent as a human for over two decades decades really of like watching him on television, So there's got to be something weird he's into. That's why his whole outfit always all all of his outfits always

fit weirdly because he needs that extra breathing room. You're a wild boy, Tim Duncan, please come on the podcast. We want to talk about it. Well, we can't talk about that anymore today because you brought conspiracy theory that that I think is maybe one of the first conspirat c theories that I ever bought into as a child, and I ever genuinely. I think I believed, or at least thought to be real in the world. And I and you said, my mama told me sagging with your

pants is gay. A hundred like that was tried and true, just to go to one that everybody just believed. Every adult, every barbershop, everyone like everybody was just like, not sacking your pants, that that means that you you were in prison. You went to prison and at some point you sagged your pants and everybody was like, Oh, that nick is available, like that that body is available. That's it me, I need it. I'm gonna get it. You know that that shop is open for business, you know, no mass needed.

I'm in there. Okay. This is fascinating because you framed it in a way and the way that you just said it was that you go to jail and then you become available. You start to lower your pants, you sag your pants, and then you're open for business. Is that how you originally understood it. Yeah, that's through my pre internet deep dies. Everybody was like just the rumor mill was saying, you go to jail, you know, like if you sag your pants, that's your way of letting

the world know. The jail world that you were, you were ready, like it was some kind of like weird open door policy. It's just like you, um, let's do it right. Prison doesn't teach people healthy communication, and so you learned signals in prison, and one of the signals apparently for coming out is showing your ass crowd to another human being. Where were you or how old were you when you feel like this theory came into your life? I think this had to be like thirteen, So there

were two instances. It's, you know, your first instance where your mom is just like, all right, you're starting to enter into adulthood or slowly like creep into it. So here are the rules. You know, no fucking in my house, you know, and don't sack your fans, like like that's that's every black mother's first. That was certainly what my mom told me was like, hey, I don't care what

you do. You ain't gonna have sex, and I'm me and your stepfather the only ones to have sex in here, and that she had other men who after she divorced my stepfather, who she also had sex with, and good for her, good for her for having the revolving door did come through because wait, a minute, Wait a minute, he wasn't revolving, not covering some layers, wonders the saint Saint dude's been married four times, but the states all the same, and I I am proud of her for

either way. She went, I'm so sorry, but no, it was it was you cannot have sex in the house, try not to, you know, have a girlfriend too soon, all of that stuff. And it was nice, but everybody was saying, don't sag your pants, like from uncle's haunts. Everybody my my family's Caribbean also, so like they were trying to avoid any type of gay inkling or anything like that. They're very homophobic over there on that nobody

has mastered homophobia better than people of the Caribbean. Oh my god, they're so good at it that they look very gay and still argue you that you're not gay. I haven't. I have an uncle that will wear the most flamboyant ship and then just be like, no, no, I'll beat your like, bro, he got a fish net fucking shirt on, nipples are hell out, and I'm just like, what's going on over here? Whatever? Imagine sucking your teeth at the gay plot while wearing a mess tank time.

That doesn't even make sense, but they find a way. Oh man, like in that community, their whole like their whole word for gay people's anti man. So like that's it's literally translated anti man. And that's the most disrespectful thing I've ever heard in my life. It's funny, but it's disrespectful. Oh it's but it's I don't know. They're they're they're so weird and they have such like a lot of them just need to come out of the

closet so they stop fighting each other. But yeah, I mean, I think, I think to your point, so much of homophobia is rooted in like, yeah, suppressed feelings, some of which is like, oh, you're you're gay, and you're struggling with that, and so you learn to outwardly hate the thing. But other parts of it is like you're more complicated it than gay or straight. You had both of these feelings, or you've been attracted to things that like, like you said,

this motherfucker's in a mesh tank top. That ain't that ain't heteronormative by any traditional standards. So you like certain gay things, but you don't like the associations, and therefore you'll try to murder anything that makes you feel uncomfortably very like, there is no spectrum. It is black and white for them. It's just like, no, man, there's the shades of gray in there. It's cool to dabble on one side or the other, you know, don't be mad

at yourself. But I don't know, like any time I see them at like Carnival or anything like that, and they're just wearing like the most like flamboyant thong basically you got a throng and peacock feathers on. You don't know, it's just like, what are you doing? Like we gotta talk about this. So okay, that was the moment at like thirteen or whatever, having like Uncle's come through and all that stuff. But the other moment was in high school where I was just like I was already on

the fence about the whole theory. People are just like, oh, yeah, they they're bringing in the jail stuff, and they're bringing in at this point, they're bringing in the fact that like you don't get belts in jail. So he was just like, oh, they're a little loose, you know, so your pants are down and all that stuff. So I'm like,

there's some validity coming out. And then I was running track at Palisades High School and they were dedicating their track to Carl Lewis, the great four hundred meter sprinter, and I was sagging at the time, and Carl Lewis this like, I don't know, he's like six three six. He looked tall as ship from my like short perspective, comes up to me. Mind you very fluaboyant man, where I'm just like, all right, you might be hiding a

little something over there. Man coming up to me and saying, hey, you know that if you sag, that means you're gay or something. And I'm just like, yo, I don't nigga, I don't know you bro, Like, I don't know. You got sag shamed by Carl the Great Carl Lewis. Gold medalists go to Olympic medalist, Carl Lewis. I got sluge shame by Car. Like, I'm just like, this is like

prime jerk movement. You know, like everybody's wearing checkerboarded fucking skinny jeans, you know, the skinny Nobody knew what skinny jeans were at that point in time. So you're like honestly like you're wearing girls pants and they're not long enough. All you wanted was like the scrunch at the bottom or whatever, and for it to be a little tighter,

so you sag sag. And when you're in high school, I think even more to that point, when you're in high school, you don't know that pants come in different like length. Like you're just like, all right, I'm a thirty two. I'm gonna buy some thirty twos. But then you realize you bought some thirty two and so now you got these little ass pants on, so you're gonna sat them. Yeah, you know, you gotta bring them a little loop because you're not gonna be like flooding in

school or whatever. Like I mean, the you know, the Caffray's pants are in now, I guess. But you know, John, not one, not certainly, not when I was in high school. Absolutely, even when you were in high school, I don't think that that was the case, not at all. You you will get made fund up pretty pretty severely. But yeah, so like everybody kind of just had their pants kind of low, and it's just what it was, you know.

So having Carl Lewis come up to you and say that it was devastating for me personally, because you'll never be fast if you got your pants like that. I don't know, girl, Please give me something man like I need. It hurts. It hurt me to my core. And I mean since that day, I think my pants have been pretty much at my waist or at least a little bit lower. But this has been one that I just wanted to know just fully, like what it was, like, where it came from. I'm just generally curious about it.

This is me not even coming with my own conspiracy theory, but just like asking you as a conspiracy theory expert expert me on this sagging journey. I don't know that I could ever qualify as an expert. I think I'm a person who enjoys mayhem. I do enough research to stir up a negative version of the conversation that we otherwise could have resolved, like we could have been working towards solutions. But I was like, nah, if I read the rest of this article, that's gonna make me feel whole.

And that ship right and the Robert Crost the road Less Travel. You know, it's like, where's the chaos over there? You know, where is that chaos? Well? Okay, so Carl Lewis told you to pull your damn pants that. What is your reaction in this moment? Do you immediately pull it up? Do you get defiant? What do you do? Um? I think you just cry. Um. It was just you

pull them up. You pull them up, and then you you feel embarrassed, like especially if that's like the only thing a celebrity has said to you, or like somebody that yeah, you looked up to or look up to at that point in time, You're just like, yeah, this is just what this is true. It immediately made it true for me because this isn't like a family member that you could go back and like research, Oh here is why they probably think this, or like there's no

way that this person thinks this at all. For it, so you get, you know, qualified by somebody who has several gold medals, that just makes it try and true for you for sure. Yeah, that's it's a funked up thing that celebrity does to us, because celebrities. He was good at running. Yes, Carl Lewis was a great runner, right, that's about it. This tho I don't know nothing about fashion. He doesn't know what what trends are happening in your

high school. But he as a great runner, a man with gold medals, now gets to dictate to you, a child, how you should be wearing your clothes the threat of being raped, Yes, exactly, because that's essentially where it all comes from, is that everybody is just so afraid of rape and jail that they're just like making up all the different ways to avoid it, at least like don't drop the soap, you know, don't wear your hands underneath your but because that's like a way in or all

that stuff, and that just comes out to you know, the real world or whatever, and rows these weird roots and turns into these weird conspiracies that and it's even more complicated in that the threat is rape, but it also is being presented under the guise of consent, if

that makes sense. So it is it is men consenting to pull down their pants as a signal of wanting what sex or sex in jail, while simultaneously threatening everyone else with rape, which is like this confused metaphor that only a bunch of homophobes could have come up with. Come up with, Okay, So I also think that like the Arian Brotherhood came up with this. Okay, wait a minute, I don't wanna goddamn minute. Hold on now, I feel like you're about to get into something wild, something devastating,

something that I had never heard. I've never heard anyone say this before. But I'm genuinely curious about this. So what I'm gonna do is give you thirty seconds. We're gonna go into a game I like to call talk that talk, and I'm gonna give you thirty seconds to talk your talk about why the Arian Brotherhood may have come up with this theory about sagging. Are you ready

talk that talk? Garrett? All right? So I think that the Arian Brotherhood came up with this ship because they see all these black dudes coming in and they're just like sagging their pants, looking dope as fun at all times that the sprune at the bottom, and they're like, no, these things are corny. They gotta be corny. We gotta come up with some reason to have them be corny. So let's just say that the only reason why they're sagging their pants is because they're probably gay, their buddies out,

they want to get funks. And I said, we gotta demasculate the black man somehow, so let's just say the thing that they think is cool, it's corny and ship, and it's just gonna make its way to the streets and it's gonna you know, run rampant, damn the completely Oh man, that's deep. Wow. So this was like not only some prison rivalry ship where where you're creating a narrative about your enemies, but it also functions on it

even higher racial level. We're going to introduce the premise that all all black men coming into this hyper masculine space are less masculine than they theoretically would be or should be. Kind of thing, right, you look at any like hoking dude, and I do that often. It's just what I do, and I just right, I try to think of all the reasons why I am not that or like why I am at least on par with this person. And you come up with silly ship all the time, like he's just like, oh man, look at

this naked shoes. His shoes are bad. He got little, he got little calves is he look at his Look at how small his ankles are, you know, And it's just like it's something silly to support the fact that this naked at any day I can talk to your girlfriend and you can't do shit about it. Absolutely, he'll beat the funk out of you. You know the the amount of times that I picked apart another man for the sake of comforting myself in my own insecurities, you know what I mean, Like, I don't I'm not okay

with me. So I'm gonna make this dude somehow less himself because my ship ain't popping. I do it all the time, all the time. Just let Niga be dark skin in like like we just oh you know my secret. I've been trying to keep you all from being dark skinned, black ass out of your motherfucker. Yeah, I love this. So I do think at the essence of what we're saying, whether it is the work of the area nation or just our own self hatred, what it is it is fear.

It's at the root of this is a lot of people being afraid of a new threat or a change in their world and subsequently trying to find a way to protect themselves against that. And the only way they could come up with this to be like that's get It's as easy as that. Honestly, everybody has always said it. It's literally the easiest punch line is like something like that's gay, it's lazy, it's corny, all that stuff, But me saying that you are less of a man is

the only real way to hurt you. And that's that to me, is I think where I learned because I think, you know, having grown up in the early two thousands, I am not exempt from having made gay people the punch line of of many of my jokes at a certain point in my life. And I think that to me was when I really sort of had the breakthrough. And it's a shame it wasn't a breakthrough and sort of recognizing my own sort of dehumanizing of another person.

But I do think the breakthrough in a lot of ways was gay people being like, hey, bro, I've heard that joke before me being like, oh damn, yeah, I don't want to be hacky, like having like comedian ideals in high school. And he's like, fun man, that's people been saying that you don't thinking funny dog that I've been writing this material for years and the funny but

he told me this has been hacked. That's at the end of it, right, So you're telling me that's saying something is gay is hack, but okay, but I can pretend to do my mom's accent, right like that that's cool, right, dog, Like I just wait, wait wait, I could still compare black people to white people and say how we different. But but that's that's okay, right, that's okay. It's like that's a little hack. But like, also there is the other aspect that gay black men are some of the

funniest people on the planet, hilarious. I always equate like black man's a gay black man is equal to Goku to super Saian th Goku. It's just it's just a better like they're just funnier at it. They're better at it. And so for a funny like probably always the funniest person in the room coming up to you saying like, oh yo, those those gay jokes they're they're not funny. It's like, yeah, so I'll past my biases and write

some new jokes and like. And that's the thing. It really forced me to reflect on why I thought it was funny in the first place, because it wasn't coming from a place of hatred. I don't think I've ever looked at any group of people and been like I genuinely despised you or what you represent. But jokes are jokes, and if you can get a laugh, you can get

a laugh. But like you said, having the funniest motherfucker come up to you and be like that, s it ain't funny, man, I'm not charismatic enough to walk my way through that, and they'll they'll fire your ass up to like being read by a gay blacker is devastating. It's that's why I think Carl Lewis cartis secretly gay and he didn't tell nobody gay. Carl Louk and you hurt Garrick and you did, can come out and apologize to Garrick and he'll pull his pants up and we'll

be even. All right, We're gonna take a break and we'll be back with more. And my mama told me and more, but not and we are that you got what I need. Yeah, we're back here with more character more. And my mama told me. We're still talking about sagging pants and the sort of cooked in homophobia that led so many of us to believe that by having our butt crack showing we were in fact flagging our homosexuality

for the world. At what point did you stop sagging was that Carl Lewis moment, the exact moment that you were like, oh, I can't do this no more. Yeah, it was Carl Lewis's moment. It was like, you know, you try to run from getting jumped and you tripped. Every now and again, it happens. This was like also during the time when people would like put their jeans underneath like their chucks somehow, like you're the length was a little too long, you know, so you have to

like cut the bottoms or whatever. But I think that's what it was. It was like before the taper bottoms and before all of that stuff. It just felt weird to sag for me, and I want I've always been at an obedient type, you know, like I just I like rules before. I follow the rules all the time, you know. And I was like, all right, cool man, Like this is the second adult or second group of adults that have told me to put my pants on my way, So I was like, all right, I'll just

I'll just do it. Yeah, you know, you're also who knows what the real word is? Like these are people coming through and saying like, oh this is you'll seem less respectable if you have pants with all your waists

and all this stuff. I mean, I think I think similar to and and it's not exactly what you're saying, but I think that at a certain point I did start to recognize that what I thought was cool had no functionality, you know what I mean That Like, I was sagging my pants because it made me feel closer to my peers or made me look like what I thought was like a cool image out in the world. But then it was like, hey man, this is not good to walk like. It's not easy to walk this way,

and it might sit. Okay, So I remember running track. You you go to like a chiropractor every now and again, and my pants were low or whatever, and he was like, yo, you realize that this is like sucking up your your hip flexures or whatever. That that is so like because you have to keep your hip in a certain way in order to do that. So it throws off you're

running when you're running down or whatever. It'll make your feet flare and make you like duck footed a little bit so, and it will make them really tight and

all that stuff. So that was another reason this is starting. Okay, now this is starting to scare me a little bit, and I'll tell you why, because it's starting to make me think that maybe sagging was introduced in some sort of intentional way to ruin a collective like the collective hip flexors of all black men, so that we were less limber and less capable previously couldn't access the quick

twitches exactly. You know, we got these thick slave legs, and they're like, how can we slow these niggers down? They got to introduce a fashion where they tie belts around their thighs to keep them from so quickly. This is this is again. The cops are just like, they keep on getting away from us. You got to figure something out, man, What if we somehow put like a rope around there. I'm not saying I'm not saying Butt's saying I belt maybe uh maybe something. Oh man, Okay,

let's get into some of this research. Let's do it. One of the things that I quickly discovered is that sagging as we are referring to it, also in relation to this sort of jail premise. This prison premise had other names, and one of the things that I read it was at certain points called is jailing that like, if you were sagging your pants. A. A sling for that was jailing, which I had never heard, and kind of feels like white people made that one up. That's

a that's a little too on the nose. Yeah, clever, They're gonna have another word for it, not just literal term jailing. That isn't all right. And to your point, the way it's written, it's like j A I L I n apostrophe And that feels like, you know, like a white marketing tad sat down. It was like, you know, they don't pronounce their ga right. This is very much like a black's rule on my garage term for sure, exactly.

So the other term that I heard or read rather that feels much more like black people came up with is PBS or prison bitch syndrome. Not public broadcasters. No prison bitch syndrome. Uh you know that syndrome you get when you expose your butt crack to another man in prison, And I love that so much. So one of the things that I quickly found in my research is that the theory that this is a sort of flagging of

your homosexuality in prison is completely false. There's no evidence that this was in any way a trend within the

jail system. To your earlier point, the issue of taking people's belts away and taking people's shoelaces away and anything that would have been used to tie up your clothing was one of the major sort of starting points for where sagging, at least in theory, was born, right that, like, you take somebody's belt away, and then you hand a regular sized to triple X size jumpsuit, and so it's going to be falling off of his body, and then he naturally is going to try to figure out a

way to look cool despite the fact that his clothes don't fit through adversity. I think is will always be cool at any time, doesn't matter. It raised like the

phoenix you are, I guess I exactly. And so one of the things that it immediately made me think about is how sort of wild it is that we immediately jumped to weaponizing sagging against kids and against young people as like this dangerous, ugly thing and completely ignore the fact that the entire thing was born out of limited resources and fucked up circumstances that we put people in

when they go to prison. Do you know what I mean? Like, we're not talking about the fact that these people are a small person is being given oversized clothes and no chance of wearing the clothes properly. We're just like, hey, right, it's just like, just get me better fitting close that. Yeah, I'm funneling so much money into this place. Why why can't I get better clothes? You know? It's I don't know.

It feels weirdly like a punishment that they always do that they can always justify and saying like, oh, we can give them shitty food all the time, like food, food with baggots in them. We can have them in chain gangs, that we can do solitary confinement because we are punishing these people, but they're still like people. At the end of the day. What do you really trying

to do? What do you what does this teach anybody other than the fact that I don't trust belts hold my pants up, so I'm just going to, you know, hold them up by my you know, with my arm or something like that. Exactly. It's this ugly sort of manipulation where you claim like, oh, you couldn't handle belts, you're not a decent enough, reasonable enough person to handle having your shoe strings in there, and then shame the person after you take their ship away that otherwise would

keep their clothing in place. Yeah, it's it's yet another trap. You didn't give me belts, So now I'm getting like, so now it has anything to do with my sexuality. That doesn't make it easy. It doesn't track for me. It's it's exactly Yeah. So here's where it gets even

more complicated is because of this trend. And this again is all theory, but because of this trend, rappers pick it up right and it becomes sort of like a cool way of signaling that, like you're a person from the streets, so you know the streets is by sagging your pants, your iced tease, you're yeah, you're fucking two shorts. They all start sagging in the early nineties as a way of being like, I'm part of this culture that

you know, lets the listeners know. Which how it becomes popularized in urban America if you will, And you know what I want to say that it could have been like this really nice, beautiful moment where it's just like yo, Pooky's coming home, blah blah blah, you have your coming home party and it's nice. He comes home, pants are sagging. He doesn't like normal fitting jeans anymore, Right, everybody, pull your pants, everybody, I'm coming home, coming home, everybody before

he pants out. For Pookie, he's feeling weird about this, all this stuff, and then everybody is like, let's just wear Let's just do a year, a year of pants sagging for Pooky. I love the idea of them doing a walk. They organized it, yeah, tim k where they just they walk in circles with stagging pants from I love that so much. And Pookie is like there he's he's sitting on the sidelines crying because he's devastated. That's the other thing. Jail destroys a person. Yeah, he is devastated.

He's sad. He doesn't know like if he can have a belt or not. He's asking his mom can he go out again? Like a year old man, And we're just like, yo, he just needs to comfort this man. And too Short took it upon himself to make it cool, like a goddamn hero. He was like he swooped in and he said, hey, man, y'all are going through some ship. They're treating you poorly. They're giving you no resources to be human. Beings are treating you like animals. You know

what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna show a little bit of allegiance and shine like you in my videos and instead a bunch of people. And this is where the complication sort of becomes even more complicated. Turned it into a signal of gang violence and danger in the black community because they're afraid of what too Short sagging in allegiance with his brother or friends or whoever represented it always steps back to that stuff. They always try to

bring it back to, oh, this person. I don't think most people who have been to jail come out and are just like, no, I want to I want to go back to the streets. They don't want. They have to. They might have to, they might have to provide or something like that, but I don't think they really like, just this is just what I do. I love being poor and shooting niggas in the left. Nobody nobody really

wants to do that, you know. Like, so for you to just equate it back to the gang violence rather than like digging deep on this situation, it's just such a troubling thing. Like it it's being mad at the pants and not being mad at what the pants represent or with the essence of where this culture sort of was born two punchlines deep. You realize, Oh, they don't have pants that fit in jail. That's why, because we're not,

they're they're treating them incorrectly. You know, they're being pieces of ship to them exactly, They're not giving them their basic human needs. So so one of the things that I found that I think ties into this very well is that the journey of sagging pants and baggy clothes actually follows a very similar trajectory to that of the zoop suit. You know, the zoop suit of old fashioned. Yeah, the big old Steve Harvey joint. Yeah, he tries to

bring that back so so hard. And when he tries, Steve, you got that mustache, man, I shoulders ain't supposed to be that big Steve. You gotta you gotta relax man. So so the zoot suit apparently was similarly born from a type of limited resources that in the nineteen thirties,

black and brown people made it popular. Mexican people and black people in America made it popular because they started putting on these oversized soups, and some people speculated that the reason their suits were oversized was because they didn't have the resources to go get them tailored like other white people were getting them tailored. So it became kind of a style, right, and this is a style that's similar to sagging pants. People treated like it was like

hoodlum ship. They would basically associate anybody in an oversized suit with being a gangster or being like a bad person in society, much like they did later with Dashiki's and afros in the sixties and seventies. So it is always just like, oh, what are nigg is doing? Oh, that's bad, that's bad. There it is. Look, I don't like it. There's something wrong with that one. That's exactly right.

And that's how I like. Even thinking back, the only time I I can remember a suit suit is somebody having a Tommy gun attached, like somebody like shooting that car or something like that. And that's another weird thing is that it's always a white person doing it. Boom, now you're talking about come on, man, the third eye is a little crusty, but it's open, open that mother. But it's always a white gangster doing it. And yet

it's always equated to black or brown bad behavior. And so that's the essence of the danger of the way that white capitalism manipulates things, right, is that not only do you demonize us US black and brown people wearing these clothes, but then you manipulated enough so that you can use it for popular culture, so that you can create a film where a white gangster wears a big suit and shoots the Tommy gun, and you gain money

off of those resources. You gain popularity from this imagery while simultaneously keeping that image connected to poor people who otherwise are only doing it because this is all they had. Exactly at the end of the day, everybody just loves to watch like a good juxtaposition right there, Just like if I just see if I saw a machine Gun Kelly sagging his fans and with Hella tattoos, Just like, man, it's this is interesting. I like, I like, I'm gonna listen to his music. I like the way he raps.

He's a good rapper, and he's like he's fine anyway. But like, but to your point, I think you want to know his origin story. You want to know how machine Gun Kelly ended up that way because of the way that they've manipulated the imagery, and associations in America were less interested in finding out how the black version of machine gun Kelly got the way that he is,

even though they probably have equally interesting journeys. Could you just be yourself for a second, I would truly love it and appreciate it because I know that there was no type of adversity that caused you to sag your pants or wear a big suit or anything like that. You can afford a taylor, you can afford a belt. So where are we going? What do we what are we? What are we doing? What made you choose that? Outside of the fact that you saw a cool black person

doing it? Exactly where did this actually matter to you? Or where you actually committed to this culture in real necessary way. So here's here's where it gets even more fascinating. Is I actually dug up a bunch of times throughout recent history where sagging was actual, laws were sort of created against sagging. People were actively trying to send people

to jail or criminalize sagging in a way that was punishable. So, first example, in May two thousand and four, Louisiana lawmakers attempted passing a bill sixty six basically made it a crime to wear clothing in public that intentionally exposes undergarments or intentionally exposes any portion of the pubic hair, cleft of the buttocks or genitals. All right, Okay, so is this before or I and I don't know is this before or after? It's after the Willennium? Is after the Willennium?

We have established that it is after the Willennium? Um, but is this before after the abolishment of Portlands being a sundowntown or like just no black people being allowed in Oregon because there are so many of those institutions or what have you that are just overlooked that nobody cares. Nobody cares about what white people are doing and how

they're fucked up or anything like that. They've been love Craft Country and us in Portland's since it had to event since like it was like a really early time.

I think to the greater point, there's a bunch of like weird laws that get introduced that couldn't possibly be reasonable laws, But because you guys are in charge, you get to make them seem reasonable, you know what I mean, you get to like For another example, in two thousand five, Virginia House delegates basically created a thing called Droopie Drawers Bill, where it was a fifty dollar fine for people who wore anything that was considered lewd or indecent, and that

again is subjective as far as lewd and indecent. It it's completely up for grabs. Another example in T sixteen in Ocala, Florida, they successfully pushed to prohibit the style of city on property. And we're offering like basically charging people a five dollar fine or six months in jail if they got caught wearing the wrong type of clothes. Six months in priss, six months in jail. So we're

going back to where it started. So I can come back out with another thing that you're just going to fuck me over with because you're not doing your job with like clothing people correctly in prison. You take my resources away, you create a culture that allows me to mimic my stolen resources as a way of at least feeling whole as a person, and then you make feeling whole as a person for me punishable by taking away the only other resource I have, which is money and freedom. Yeah,

fucking oh my god. I I am trying to like come up with points or anything like that, but it is it's just so baffling, or like it's just so crazy to fucking watch the like the cycle continue and like just hear it so plainly laid out, because you know, again I didn't know what where the like deep confines of sagging, like where it came from and all that stuff. But you know, just having it laid out so plainly is, yeah,

it don't help you sleep. Here's here's my personal favorite, and this one actually did make me laugh out loud. And Pikeville, Tennessee officials basically created something or started they were trying to create one of these laws the same way, and they claimed that sagging was leading to a larger health crisis related to improper gate of the saggers, meaning like they were walking different because of having sagged and

it was ruining their bodies. The mayor even pointed to a study from a dude name Mark oliver Man's bag of the National American Medical Association that's supposedly found out that eight intent staggers suffered from sexual problems like premature ejaculation. How this isn't this, bro is it? Now? We're like now we're back to it. It's just like, I mean, it's got to be doing something because yeah, sexual because it's got to emasculate the black band. And that's the

thing to your point, it's okay. We tried to call them gay. Gay didn't work. Now they're they're starting to recognize that gay. Isn't it a bad thing? Or it isn't as scary as we try to make it out to be. But you know what, we can tell them the dick's gonna stop working. And if they believe that he's gonna have a leaky dick, that's it. That's it. Hey, you're gonna come too fast in the bitch and you no more so you don't want to do what are you gonna do? You put your pants something? I don't know.

The improper gate is also like what I was talking about, like the duck footing or whatever. It's like that stuff goes away after like a good couple, like stretches, stretch for a little bits a few times, you'll be all right, You're good to go. But you saying I am going to be prematurely, prematurely ejaculated. It's just the wildest ship. It's just like, oh my god, you you couldn't think of anything better? Nah? Where is that jump? Like what

are they saying? Are they saying that it's like cutting off blood flow. Oh know. To be clear, it later was discovered that the person and the study do not exist and was just repeating ship he read on the internet, so it ain't cutting off ship. There was no information about it. He was just like, hey, I heard aiding ten of y'all come to fans and trying to insert a fine afterwards based off of it. This is why old people shouldn't be allowed on the internet at all.

You shouldn't be you shouldn't be able to have infinite knowledge. I think. To the greater point of all of this, old people shouldn't be allowed to dictate ship in the world at all. You shouldn't be able to tell me anything because you haven't lived in the real world for a while. Like this, it's going back to you know, you telling kids that they shouldn't sack their pants or what have you, because you haven't reach the real world. You have been so far removed from what society actually is.

Once you reached like let me say sixty, Let me just throw that age up there. You don't love, you don't know anything anymore, you know, and so just chill, just shut the funk up, just chill, go play a little fucking bedazzled game on Facebook by that game. Play that game where you try to get the ball into the cup over and over again. Play that and leave your kids alone, Leave me alone, go stare out the

windows or something. Old people, if you're listening, just shut the funk up and uh, we'll take another break, and I hope you shut the funk up the whole time and listen to the commercials and we'll be back with more. G Bernard And my mama told me, and we are that ye dress you want you you could do? So you you do you can? You want? You want him to do you more. My mama told me it's the longest drop I have and I love it so much.

That nigga spitting And we're still talking about sagging pants and the possible just sort of like elderly white tyranny cooked underneath all of the media, the marketing around sagging pants. Okay, one of the most famous people, I would say, most iconic figures, infamous figures at this point, whoever weighed in on sagging pants, and there have been a few. Barack Obama had a quote about it where he basically said, look, I don't think people should go to jail for it.

But like your grandma was watching Pull Up Your Pants, Steve Harvey said some ship under his mustache about it. Bill Ingvol weighed in on sagging Pants, where he, of course said something pretty racist, although it was under the mask of a joke, so I guess it was okay,

who knows. But the most infamous of them is Bill Cosby, the cos and he became infamous in his thoughts on sagging pants when he gave a speech that is now known as the pound Cake Speech where he basically goes on a long, rant, long run about what black people need to do to better themselves in their own communities. And So what I would like to do is play a game with you. This is a brand new game called I don't think Bill Cosby is as good as

he claims he is. He and you gotta say, still faces, that ship still slepts, and I don't get or if he did what he did. Okay, So what I'm gonna do with you, what I think we should do, is I'm gonna read you some snippets from this famous speech and I just would love for you to unpack your thoughts on it as we go along. Things You're loving things you're hating things, You're uncomfortable with things that maybe were a clearer identifier that Bill Cosby was in fact

the monster that we now know him to be much earlier. Cool. I'll get us started. Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower middle class economic people are holding their end in this deal in the neighborhood that most of us grew up in. Parenting is not going on. People clapped. In the old days, you couldn't hooky school because every

drawn shade was an eye. And before your mother got off the bus into the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had on, and where you got it from. Parents don't know that today. I'm sorry, but parents do know not to put fucking Ophiois in people's dreams. You silly bitch. I'll tre you. Parenting is not going on. I think that was the first thing my mom told me before. She was like, hey, if you see a young lady at a club, don't put

anything in a drink because that is weird. You're weirdough for the rest of your life. Yeah, that's their So Bill Cosby clearly did not have that part of the talk, But he did have the part of the talk where he was like, you gotta stare out your window at kids and know where they're going at all times. You don't. They're fine, Okay, let's get this party going. I'm talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he

was two? People clap? Where were you when he was twelve? People really clap? Where were you when he was eighteen? And how come you don't know he had a pistol clapping, clapping, clap, And where is his father? And why don't you know where he is? And why doesn't the father show up to talk to this boy. I was at work. I work three jobs. Keep this through over whatever. People are just like, oh, yeah, my mom came to see my play.

I'm like, wow, that's congratulation. I like, my mom was at work during the day and then she went to school at night, so I think I would see her every now and again, Like my kind love that your mom was just a hard working roommate. She was just a hard working roommate like I. I I would see her, sure, but she would be like in the room or something like that. And you would knock on a a door like mom, you okay, get away, I'm studying from board, you know, exam.

I can't have my eyes open. Yet it wasn't too hard, right, right, and like at a two parent household or whatever, So fuck you o Cosby, And I still say until Carl Lewis told me not to, but until a different old black man yelled at me about this, right, but he was also working, Like there are certain things that you just kind of have to let your kid learn and

understand and like be independent about. And to Bill Cosby's stupid point, like parenting is short still going on, but there are some gaps because you have to work because we live in a society where black people aren't given the best opportunities, so they have to like constantly have jobs at all all times. And until we have wealth, then we can like talk about like, oh, I'm here

all of the time. And I think, I think to that grander point, that's the danger of the way that so much of this has been sort of put to us all of these years, is that there is a deep allegiance between me and Bill Cosby because we are both black, when in fact, the difference in our wealth is so vast that we actually have zero to negative ship in common in you know what I mean, Like we don't actually have anything tied together because you have all that money and I don't. Our day to day

ain't the same. The fact that we're black is just a technicality. Bro. Yeah, it's truly so. He's so far moved from any type of adversity happening to him. If you were to bring up that, the fact that where zoos, like where Zu Sus came from, he would give you the response, why didn't those niggts get their pants tailored? It's just like you're missing the entire point, Mr fucking dumb Sweater, Like, now now you got him? I don't

know you goofy switter ban, like, leave me alone. I can't afford a tailored Were you not listening to me this entire time? Okay, I'm gonna hit you with one more quote. This one's I think maybe my favorite. There are a bunch of really wild ones where he accuses women of having six or seven babies by six or seven baby daddy's and it's a lot of wild ship, but this is my favorite. He says, are you not paying attention? People? With their hat on backwards, pants down

around the crack. Isn't that a sign of something? Or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Laughing and clapping? Isn't it a sign of something when she's got her dress all the way up to the crack and got all kinds of needles and things going through her body? What part of Africa did this come from? Laughter? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans. They don't know a damn thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaliqua, Mohammed and all that crack and all of them are

in jail. Damn me Kim, Oh my god, but he is. He's doing the same thing that any rich, old white person would say. It's just pretty much equating the black experience is something that he saw on TV. I have never seen several needles in anybody's arm. I don't like you're also also if I am shooting up, I ain't doing multiple needles at once. I'm focusing on my sweet heroin and then I'll get to whatever else I want to try. Right, it's what what the hell is wrong

with you? You know? Like? And then I haven't met a Shaniqua like I have that I have, but that's beyond the point. And Shaniqua shouldn't be shamed because her name is Shaniqua. There's nothing wrong with the name Shaniqua. The only reason we treat a Shaniqua as a bad name is because people like Bill Cosby tried to trick us into thinking that that was somehow a Thai black, when in fact it's just all right, Nigga's be making up stuff the name. What does that have to do

with how sparks shanique is? Why does Shaniqua have to be equated with having six kids? It was like that

none of that matters. Dog Like my My absolute favorite part of this and this is, I think something that is probably the most telling and most ignorant thing that he said in all of this was he goes on this run about how these names aren't African, and one of the names that he lists is Mohammed, as if the most common name in the entire world, and especially in the Muslim world, which dominates massive parts of the

African continent, is somehow anti African, is nut. He's not reading anymore, man, He's not reading, he's not paying attention to the world because he goes, he shoots his show, and he comes home and puts people drink Like that's he was too focused on side pussy and he stopped listening to Like you said, he stopped reading books and this eye got bad. He probably had trouble reading after

a while. And like, there it is. You know what I think that now that he's in jail, he's like starting to see, like he's like, oh man, maybe maybe sacking isn't all bad, Like right, like you look kind of cool. Hey, show me how you did that? You do that like that look look kind of knights and you're not You're not gay at all. He's like, no, actually, I have a I have a degree of philosophy. You're

missing cospy. It's like, so you've just been in here reading and it's like you sack your pants, Yes, sir, I do. It's because they don't get belts in here. I'm I'm a thirty two and I get a double XCEL. So it is what it is. And I didn't even think about that. That's how jail corrects people, honestly, not through pants sacking, not through making license plate it's just you having time to sit with yourself and think about it, you know. Helliot, all right, this was fun. I think

you had a good time. I think we effectively did the thing. Eric. Can you tell the people where they can find you? What what cool ship you have going on? I'm just Garrick Bernard Instagram and on Twitter. Garrick was taken. You can find me writing for Solar Opposites in Lower dex Man uh Solo Opposite seasons. So you should be coming out in like a couple of months. It's being animated right now. You're in it. Yeah, I did a little part. I show up in that mother, you show

up a couple of times. It's great and they're they're both phenomenal shows, so please go and watch them. I love them both. They're so funny, and Garret, you know, did an amazing job writing for them. And as always, you can follow me at Langston and Kerman on all of the apps, the Twitter and the Instagram. And hey, if you have your own like drops or conspiracy theories or things that you feel I should know about, please

send us email. We would love to hear from you, and you can send emails or voice memos We would love to even hear your voices, which we could potentially play on the podcast. Send us your emails at my Mama pod at gmail dot com. That's my Mama m O m m A pod at gmail dot com. Okay, I've done enough. I refuse to do more by your qualitas, racist money stuff I can't tell me