Native Lampod is a production of iHeartRadio and partnership with Recent Choice Media.
Hey everybody, it's Angela Rai.
Of course, I joined my co hosts Tiffany Cross and Andrew Gillim every single Thursday for Native Lampod, where we welcome you home. One of our favorite things in Native Lampod is the number of listener and viewer questions we get every week. One thing that's come up quite a bit every single week in our social media comments and
in some questions is why the name Native Lampod. It's something that's been deeply inspiring to all of us, and in fact, during our promo clips, we spend a lot of time talking about what native Lampod means to us. So this week we had a question come in from Chris who asked us about Native Lampod, and we're taking this opportunity to make sure we do a deep dive with you all. We can't wait to hear your response. We'd love to know what the native Lampod means to all of you.
Welcome home.
Able to Chris Flow this video submission for y'all.
Question for y'all, I'll keep it short. Where did you get the name Native Land Podcast. What does it mean to be native to you? We could have chosen from any number of names, numbers themes out there. Tell me in your own opinion why Native Land as a theme and the topic and the title of this show.
Well, I thank y'all know I don't like to do anything shallow, So for me, this has a really deep meaning. When I thought of Native Land, I thought about James Weldon Johnson and the Black National Anthem and the fact that I will never stand for another national anthem. But in that Black National Anthem, and the last stands in the third verse, it says true to our God, true to our Native Land. When I think about you all as my friends, my brother, my sister.
Truth tellers, I deeply respect.
True to our Native Land means we can pay homage to the ancestors who were kidnapped from our native land, and we're brought here to build something that we still have yet to truly benefit from, and we still stand on Native Land paying homage to the indigenous folks who built this place, who welcome people in, who didn't necessarily treat them with kindness. That's an understatement, but that's what
I think of. There's a double entendre there, and to me, it makes me think of that James Baldwin moment when he talks about what real patriotism is. Because we are patriots, we have every right to question every single aspect of our native land.
It's interesting Antelas says that because when she first told me the title to get my opinion about it, I took a different perspective and that we are creating a native land because no matter how they make us feel, this is our home. And I know my entire career I have felt homeless, like the news media has always made me feel mostly unwelcome or displaced, you know, in a space that if I were ever speaking a truth or speaking to the rising majority of this country, it
was taken as controversial or as something subpar. And even what we consider biased or unbiased is all based on what's rooted in white and male. And so this podcast is a native land for people to come. You have a home here, no matter what you look like, no matter where you come from. Here we create space for you and everybody's welcome.
Yeah. I love that. I You know, all of us have had our work experience on major platforms, you know names that will be recognized around around the globe. And even in those spaces, while we were invited to offer our opinions and perspectives and analysis, always felt in many ways curated. Even still it was curated by the wrap
it up. It was curated by the fifteen seconds. It was rated by you know, you're the progressive on the panel, and so bring that perspective, even if the topic may have been more nuanced than one of a political ideology or perspective, and so you know, the the the the title,
the theme, the the titling of the show. Native Land UH to me is less about a physical edifice UH and more like translating these airwaves, translating the way in which we're communicating to our audience and then back to us as a space that doesn't have to be validated, that doesn't need anybody sign off that it is ours. It's our quest, you know, our desire to move toward
the more perfect, how we define it. I'm excited by the the idea of native land by one yes, paying homage if we were to think about it in the physical to uh, to the lands that we set on that were rob that we're taking, the were brutally stolen, but also a reclamation of this space as ours, not belonging to anyone else, not being curated by anyone else other than ourselves, true to our beliefs, our ideals, and frankly welcoming to people who are just like us out there,
you know, scavenging through, just trying to make it, have opinions, not experts at everything, but offering up what they believe and guess what if it's their lived experience and their truth, it deserves some platform for airing, and I look forward to us being able to do that on this platform.
Well home, yeah, welcome home. What you said made me think about the current existing landscape of news media and some I'm curious to hear from my co host here in your opinion, Andrew, who is the mainstream media made for?
Well, I mean, if we if we were to just assess, you know, the mainstream media by its approach to most things, complicated issues to the simple, I think it's theater and large part, I think it plays a lot of times to consumerism. I think the bottom line matters there more than anyone ever says, and and by and large I think it plays to frighten a majority. It causes a lot of angst. I mean when I'm at family, it's funny.
We were all together for Thanksgiving, my family, and almost to a person, people are like, I don't even want to turn on the news anymore. I know there's nothing good there. And I just found it interesting having been part of that community before, of of of communicating to people over airwaves, it just struck me that to a person, people found their peace and their solace, their joy, and
their happiness away from hearing from mainstream news. So what kind of news could you be if you repel otherwise decent, caring, you know, thoughtful people, and that their escape defying peace in their lives or joy in their lives, is to not pay attention to the news. That's a sad state of affairs when we think about it. But if that's the experience of every person, to a person, you gotta believe that it's not accidental that the news is being communicated to us in that way.
It's definitely not accidental.
I can say that I'm one of them, like, I cannot watch the news regularly. Cable news programming is just too much. I got some of my friends shout out the joy, you know, who will watch it. We still watch a joy, but I am I can't watch a lot of it.
It is repulsive.
It is frustrating when I think about many of the segments that we were on, you know, like we're set up for more combat and it's exhausting, and so then you're supposed to go home and be your partner's piece and be and it's just really hard. So when I think about who the news is made for, I think about, you know, folks who have a hard time developing their own opinion and are easily taking advantage of, easily manipulated.
It's almost like the same folks who watch QBC commercials, right, you know what I mean, Like they can package it in any way and sell it to you, you know, tell you, tell you it's raining, and they're pissing on you, like it really is. It's just too much and it's exhausting to watch. Like I get the same feeling watching the news tip that I did what I used to like consume love and hip hop or basketball, wives and no shade to some of all of my friends.
But I watched one day, I did like a marathon chaw I got it. I said, Oh, I feel.
Dirty Wow, it's the same way I feel watching any cable news did not matter for it's progressive, midstream or conservative.
It really doesn't matter.
It's the wind up machine.
Yeah.
Well, I think you feel that way because it is a different version of reality TV, except it is not our reality. So I think the news just go one step further and say the news is made for the comfort of white people. That is who is centered. That is the audience they want to curate. Your average cable news viewers between sixty two and sixty five and white
and male. And so when programmers look at what the content for that day, that is who they're talking to, which is baffling to me because you are speaking to a shrinking demographic and completely ignoring a growing demographic. We are the rising majority of this country, and yet when we show up on air to speak an honest truth
in ways how we communicate, it is not accepted. It's considered controversial until the white boy says it's okay to do so if we speak in our vernacular, when we use the way that we talk, it is not okay, And so the white boy does it, and then it's fun. We can't quote quote rap lyrics, but they can. We can't talk about what happens in our life. I'm talking to the truth. We say we going to be the truth on this podcast, I'm speaking truth. We cannot talk
about make references. You know, if I say something that is something that we all understand, right, a colloquial reference that is specific to our community, it's not okay. And I would always have to say, well, if you don't get it, it ain't for you. That's right, the same way I don't always get your country music reference or your roll and Tide reference. That ain't for me. I should get to talk to the rise and majority of
this country and make them feel seen. And so obviously I have a personal testimony sure that I for sure know it doesn't matter what the cable news executive looks like. The position they are there to uphold is that is the comfort of life?
Yeah, it's it's the matrix, right, just insert whomever. Yes, But the system is programmed to operate a particular way and produce a particular result. And this is why I think we have to be really careful when we start lifting up and edifying sort of these individuals as first and and and the like. And I get the symbolic reference and I and it does make me symbolically, you know, proud to have someone exhibited that my daughter or my
son or I myself might be able to see. But then we have to go layers deep to understand, like, Okay, are you a disruptor? In what way are you changing this thing so that we're we're not caricatures.
The problem for sure, and that is the difference, right getting a black face that is going to carry the voice as a white folks doesn't do anything for the community.
Or continue to marginalize, you know, communities that have previously been violated, have been put in boxes, have been reduced to nothingness. If if your existence here is only to perpetuate that, not to disrupt it, not to break it so it can forever be broken, but to rather, you know, continue to expand the bottom line and make you know, those nice you know, because she's suits happy. Then you're not of service, You're useless, You're not a service.
But you know where we are going to be as services right here. And that's one of.
The reasons why I'm excited about this podcast. I want to know Tiff from you first, why are you excited about this podcast.
I'm excited about this podcast because I get to do this with my friends, who I've known a long time.
People think we met in media. We did not, let me.
All have known each other long before we were all in front of a camera exactly. So it's really nice to show up here and one be in a space where we feel welcomed. Two I'm excited about this because our words and our truth will not be policed. I was exhausted with having my words policed, or having the fight even to talk, you know, to talk about issues that were significant to so to millions of people across this country, and having to defend and define my humanity
every week. It's so relaxing to show up in a place where I don't have to do either of those things. We can skip past all that and just get to conversations of substance. But also to keep it a buck. Conversation sends us some foolishness too, you know. We have a good time with each other. So yeah, I'm most excited about that, and.
All of that could exist like in one place. I hate this idea that if the world out there is serious, that the only thing you can bring back to the world is serious, right, And it's not a reduction to the fact that there are real, serious, consequential things going on. But by goodness, we come from generations of folks who had to find joy in the smallest of places because the world wasn't offering it to them. There every day was torture us, it was labor, it was work. There
were no days off. Even your faith was curated to you, right, it was brought to you by sponsored by massa in them right, And so folks had define moments where you could appreciate being alive and around the people you know, who you love, the fact that you are whole folks. You're not just a employee of somebody. If I'm bringing it to current day, we're nobody's employee, we're nobody's employer.
Or exclusively, we're mothers, we're fathers, we're brothers, siblings, where niece's nephews, so on and so forth, and that's okay. And in each of those places we bring a different side, a different side of ourselves are allowed to live and breathe. And I'm hopeful that I'm excited that we don't have to check any part of who we are at the door, uh before we walk in and take these mics, that we can show up fully that I don't have to apologize for any part of myself and in and in
and in life. If we really are in pursuit of, you know, true liberation, that's exactly how it ought to go. We shouldn't have to look over our shoulder and apologize and make excuse for lament or feel the the the weight of imposter syndrome when you're when you're home. And so we're creating a different kind of home and hopefully moving people closer toward this, you know, this way of thinking, rather than this very myopic way in which the world right now requires us to exist.
I'm excited because you all agreed to do this. I'm excited because I know from walking with y'all down the street how much your voices mean to our people and to a lot of folks who don't look like us but just felt resonance with you because of your authenticity.
So I'm very grateful.
I think my excitement is coupled with gratitude because I know that there is a space for this in the hearts and minds of so many, including my own, and I look forward to everyfreshing, authentic political conversation where we can chop it up legitimately, not because we're trying to go viral, but because we really are trying to solve some of the toughest problems, and y'all have always been that way, So thank you for being problem solvers and being willing to do it on the record on air.
As a Native Land I S Get It s Get It family.
Native Land Pod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with reisent Choice Media. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.