Who REALLY Didn't Earn It? | Angela Rye SoloPod

have been asking. My mom is doing really well. She had her first treatment, chemo treatment yesterday and she is thriving. That is a strong lady, So continue to keep her in your prayers and your thoughts. Today we are talking about something that is really really important. I know for so many people in this country, particularly Black folks, it is so important that we talk about something that a

lot of us were raised with. So there's a saying in the black community that we have to be we would have to work twice as hard and we have to be twice as good. So for a lot of us, this DEI conversation is particularly triggering because it's something that we grew up knowing that we actually couldn't be not as good as and couldn't not compete and couldn't put

our best before we had to. So when people talk about DEI, which is diversity, equity and inclusion, and the weaponization of that, that's something that is particularly triggering to a lot of us. There are some examples of that this week that I really want to get into because if there was ever an administration that had people who were not as qualified, it is absolutely this one. So we're going to get into that, and I really want to talk about that through the lens of the myths

of meritocracy. So that's where I wanted to be today. So the first thing is I really wanted to just take a step back and talk about this argument around merit. You're hearing a lot of people in the ecosystem talking about what it means to, you know, earn you spot and to not get a handout, and you know, people have to work hard. And there's this reverse discrimination happening against white Anglo Saxon Christian men, and when you look at what Donald Trump is putting into place for civil

rights protections, you might think that is true. However, it is obviously blatantly false. There's not a lot of reverse discrimination happening around here, y'all, And just in a matter of weeks, he's almost even in Black History Month, taken us back to plus e versus Ferguson times, which is essentially not separate but equal, which is what the Supreme

Court rule. But it's actually separate and vastly unequal. So that's where we are right now, and I really want us to lean into that through the lens of some of Donald Trump's most recent appointments. So again meritis idea that you earn your position, that if you work hard, your work will speak for itself and the doors will open to you. Well, what does it mean when racism

stands in that door? Or what does it mean when somebody's connections daddy's connections, I don't know, like Fred Trump for Donald Trump, or somebody's trust fund makes the way for you or your mom or daddy made a call on your behalf. And in full disclosure, there are instances where my parents have made calls on my behalf, and I know that's the point of privilege. That's not a moment where I earn something. That's a moment where those

connections come into play. When we think about legacy admissions in college, that is about having some connections that's about your parents working hard and being able to open a door for you. I think parents opening doors is not necessarily bad. But when you are literally taking opportunities from people who are overwhelmingly qualified and deserve to be in those positions, we're talking about something different. We're not talking

about legacy admissions here today. We are not talking about folks of color who have earned their positions but get blanketed as DEI because they've demonized it. We're actually talking about folks who are beneficial of white supremacy and the systems that follow it. Caset indpoint. So, just last week, Donald Trump decided to fire a four star Air Force general by the name of Charles C. Q. Brown. He served as the chairman for the Joint chiefs of Staff.

It is a pretty important role for those of you who don't know. The Joint chiefs of Staff is the primary advisor to the President of the United States, the National Security Council, the Homeland Security Council, and to the Secretary Secretary of Defense. So this person has to have a working knowledge of how military systems work, particularly uniform personnel.

It is a very very important role. Well, it just so happens that up until the end of last week, we had a black man who was serving as the second ever black man Joint chiefs of Staff chairman. He had forty years of service. I'm going to just tell you some highlights from his bio and forty years of service he served. He went to Texas Tech, served as a US Air Force fighter. He was a command pilot with more than thirty one hundred flight hours, and he

was serving in this capacity since twenty twenty. Well, what happened is he was apparently too woke for them, right. They think anything that is race conscious is woke. They think that anything that pays attention to race in our diversity is problematic because for whatever reason, we should be ambiguous and not really care because somehow race is weaponized

when we just highlight race to them. So they decided to fire this four star Air Force general and replace him with a man named John kin They call him John raising Kane. He's a lieutenant general. And for those of our our military officers know that these are a military person I'll know that there is a difference between a general and a lieutenant general. So just our phase value, here's the face. Here's the face, just off phase value alone.

Our general outranks the lieutenant general. So lieutenant general uh cain is what's so funny? Is you guys, I'm looking at this. This is hilarious. So on the actual official website, oh my god, it says Lieutenant Lieutenant General John D. Kin and then it just skips down to Lieutenant Lieutenant General Dan Kane. I'm assuming he goes by Dan Kane, but we know is he goes by raising Kine. I think they have a typo on this site. I wonder what the real DEI is because they got typos on

this site, they better get it right. This man is a three star right, he's a three star general. He worked at the CIA as the Associate Director for Military Affairs. He was most recently the Director of Special Programs and the Department Special Sorry in the Department of Defense Special Access Program Central Office, and he served as a Principal staff Assistant an advisor to the Secretary of Defense there. This man has now been promoted to the Joint Chiefs

of Staff Chairman. Now what I think is interesting here is while he's more qualified than your Secretary of Defense, Pete heg Sath, and he advises Pete Heath which I think you can determine in terms of rank, that means Pete hex Seth outranks him. Right. What is interesting about this is that they are constantly making merit arguments and claiming that DEI or diversity, Equity and Inclusion means that somebody got a door opened for them that was not

deserved on qualifications, just on face value. You guys can go and look at these biles yourselves online on the official military websites to see what they're talking about. CQ Brown outranks and is more qualified than John D. Game. Okay, so that's the first thing that I wanted to talk about. The second thing is the FBI. So, and this is important because again a lot of us have fallen into

these traps around DEI meaning that folks didn't earn it. Now, there are people who didn't earn it, and I'm going to get into that with this FBI nomination. But it's not black people. Like you can't look at somebody that's a person in college just be like, oh, you didn't earn it because you black sid in this role. That's ridiculous. Like you should look at people's bios, their resumes, their qualification, their gifts their talents and make a decision from that way.

But now we're finding ourselves on the defense trying to prove that we belong when that's not ours to prove. You need to prove while we don't belong. And instead what's happening is a lot of corporations, company schools, universities, federal government agencies are taking a page out of Donald Trump's playbook and dismantling programs that are serving people well and are balancing the skills of justice that have not

been balanced for so long in this country. They're still not so even while I'm talking to you about this military rank and joint chiefs of staff chairmen and getting ready to get into FBI, these are entities that many of my peers, me included, don't necessarily love. Like I'm not, you know, an FBI champion. I'm not about to go cut an FBI ad or do a billboard. But what I can say to you is it's important for us to understand that there should still be qualified folks working

on the nation's behalf in national security entities. So the FBI cash Bettel was narrowly nominated last week. As you all know well there's another guy. You guys probably are like Dan Bogino, Dan Bongino, his name sounds familiar. Well, it's not because he's this high ranking officer in the intel community. It's not because he served so many presidents in the past. Although he has served some presidents. I will give him that as the form of a secret

service officer, including for a president Barack Obama. But you probably know his name because he's a popular podcaster. This popular podcaster is your deputy director for the FBI. Now here's why that is astounding. The deputy director of the FBI has traditionally been a position that was reserved for

a career official. What does that mean? So in the United States government, there's something called appointed officials, and of course there are elected officials, but there are appointed officials in the administration who work under the president and vice president appointed, and then there are career career service are folks who have engaged in work for the government, not as a part of any partisan any party. So it's

not a partisan, no partisan affiliation. They are doing this in service to the American public, doing this on behalf of their country, regardless of who is at the top of the ticket. Or who regardless of who the president is. So normally the FBI hires someone in that role, that is that has had a career of serving in an intel capacity, serving in the FBI, etc. So Don Mangino has Dan Bongino. By the way, I got caught up in Madon's and Madan's today. Dan Bongino is someone who

has called the FBI irredeemably corrupt. He has no experience as an officer in intel other than being a other than being a Secret Service Agency agent, which doesn't in and of itself mean you're not qualified. But it is remarkable and unprecedented. That's the word that you're gonna hear thrown around a lot. For those of us that remember when Donald Trump was elected in twenty sixteen, that's where we said all the time. Now he said unprecedented, like

unpresident the president. But I'm saying unpress sedented because they're doing a lot of things that are not normal. So this is someone who is a media personality, he's a former Secret Service agent. He does not have any experience with the FBI, and they're putting him in here after saying that the thing is, you know, irredeemably corrupt. I'm sure there are many of us who hear that language

and aren't alarmed by it. But I think what's remarkable is he doesn't have any experience to determine where the corruption comes from, what system needs to be dismantled, what system needs to be looked into. What you know, who can be the real watchdog for the FBI? That probably ain't Dan's role. And speaking of watchdogs, this is a also the administration that has gotten rid of a lot of inspector generals. I think there are at least ten

now that are gone, so they don't want any watchdogs. Nonetheless, he is the deputy director of the FBI now, he does not have to be Senate confirmed. This is an appointment that Donald Trump can just make, and their responsibility is to supervise domestic and international operations with no FBI experience. So my question for you all today really is for

us to consider who really didn't earn it? What does it really mean to dismantle DEI it sounds like we should be this mantling these same tired systems that put white men. Although I think y'all, don't you kind of think Dan is I think Dan is a brother. I think he might be black, which would make this even worse because now they're putting them in a position that he don't have no business in to be Like, see,

black people didn't earn it. Y'all picked him. Okay, we didn't pick him, But I just want to say I think that what is remarkable here is that we have this opportunity to really examine who really didn't earn it and when we say these things, when you compare resumes, and what is typical, and why it isn't the best national security interests of the country to have someone who understands how those systems work, particularly when you're engaging in

operations with foreign adversaries or people who are on domestic soil trying to compromise our national security. If you have no experience in doing that, what are we talking about, Like y'all see, I wouldn't earn it if y'all hired me to go run engineering at Google. That's not my expertise. You can't just put plug and play any white guy to fill a role of influence in this government and

not expect for that thing to completely break. And then that begs the question, maybe they know after all that they didn't earn it, and they're totally fine with breaking systems because they don't want the system to be here anyway. And if they've anointed Donald Trump as king, we end up right where we started. So I think that is

which is this is an unprecedented time. I think what we have to acknowledge is that the weaponization of diversity, equity, and inclusion is a method to distract us from what really is going on. And what really is going on is Donald Trump is trying to give favors back to people who carried his water doing this during this election, even if that means putting the entire country in harm's way. If that isn't didn't earn it, I don't know what

is that is the opposite of meritocracy. The face of meritocracy and black excellence for the rest of his Black History Month and the rest it is black here is gonna be Charles c. Q. Brown. The face of didn't earn it is gonna be Pete Hackseth. It's gonna be Dan Bongino, and it's gonna be Dan not don Kine, a lieutenant general that replaced a general for no reason. He I promoted with no experience having done the same things that Charles c Q Brown has done. And Charles

c q Brown was beloved. So that's all I got today. I talked a long time. Let me see what these questions are. Somebody said, was Joy Anne fired as a part of DEI reform? You know, I'm gonna tell you this. I think that nobody black on mainstream television right now is safe. I think that a lot of people are made concessions to Donald Trump and his policies, trying to ensure that they don't get fined. Because he's technically the new FCC chairman. He has decided that he is going

to run the FCC, the FTC, and the SEC. Okay if in order for him to run the Federal Communications Mission, he's going to make sure that there's nobody that's criticizing him on air. And I think that we are going to see many of these systems begin to unravel. I think that Joy Read was one of his biggest threats. How do I know that because as soon as he learned that Joy was no longer at MSNBC, his response was finally, which means that Joy was on his radar.

And so what we have to be aware of is as people take out black folks and Latino folks, and Asian folks and women and indigenous folks, as they take folks out under the auspices of we want to play safe, we want to make sure our business is successful. What they need to know is they're actually undermining their business. What they need to know is they're actually putting Americans

in harms way. What they need to know is they're actually putting folks in the international, our greater global community in harm's way because there's nobody there to tell their stories. Now, I'm gonna tell you something that might be unpopular. We started turning TV off, TV off because we know that these media conglomerates don't want to tell these stories. That's why it's important for you to tune in to podcasts like ours. I know Joy's gonna be dropping soon something soon.

You need to tune into Joyce show on what she does next. Check her out on substack on all social media platforms right now, it's important to listen to shows

like Roland's Brittany. So many other people, Aaron, our friend, Aaron, so many other people who are doing amazing, amazing work informing you raw and unfiltered, because now, in order to be on mainstream media, you're gonna have to make some concessions, and they haven't maybe some of them haven't had to make them yet, but they are going to have to make them soon. And that, my friends, is what is going to put us in very very precarious positions and

in harm's way. So we've got to pay attention to this. It's not DEI that they're trying to dismantle. It's not even just the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four that they're trying to dismantle. What they're doing is trying to dismantle the fourteenth Amendment, which gives us all equal

protection under the law. That's the thing that black folks could lean up against after slavery to say that we are indeed free and we are somebody we are in fact citizens, despite what they said in the dread Scott ruling. Those are the things that we have to know. So as they try to dial us back, not even just to Jim Crow, but to before Jim Crow, we have

to pay attention. We have to call a thing a thing, and we've got to make sure that we're given accurate information, and we'll do that by any means necessary, no matter what he tries to take out. So it may be a little scary, but we're going to keep pushing. And on that note, that's all I have for you all today. Thank you all for your questions. I'll answer some other ones online. Make sure you tune in on Thursday. That's our main show, Native Lampod where we always give it

to your real the best we got. We'd be fighting in there, but it's so good and we love to hear you ask questions in your comments, make sure you're sending those in. And lastly, my good brother Andrew Gillum started his solo pods yesterday on Monday. It went very very well. He's talking to y'all about how to make sure that we're organizing for the fascist regime that we are now living in. You've got to watch that show. Get organized, organize your communities. We don't know how long

we'll have social media systems. We don't know how long we'll be able to upload on YouTube. We don't know how long the power y'all to power grid got attacked in my neighborhood today. We don't know how long we're gonna have these things so make sure you're organizing people, human bodies, getting phone numbers, develop a phone tree, your churches, your other places of worship, your friend groups, get organized so we don't find ourselves isolated. Okay, we can make it.

And take it from a true soldier. It's not me, it's Mama Rah. She looked at the care today and she said, cancer ain't got nothing on me, and neither does this fascist. Let's go, y'all, Welcome home. Native Lampard is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Reason Choice Media. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.