Hello, cousins. Today is a special edition of Respectfully because My Breitbart interview came out recently where they did a profile on me exploring my background. And if you are new to knowing me, you may or may not know that I spent my entire life as a liberal growing up in a very progressive, very left-wing household.
And that was all the way until I was red-pilled in 2020. Now, what I thought was really interesting in the comment section is that there were some people questioning, did I actually used to be a liberal? Then there's other people questioning, is he actually conservative now? Is this all a grift? Like, what does that journey look like?
like and all of those questions are great questions you know i'm a firm believer of questioning everything at this point but i can assure you i certainly did spent i certainly did spend many years as a liberal Now, I want to give you guys a little bit more of my background, and then what we're going to do today is react to a 17-minute video that I made back in 2019, where I did a quote-unquote expose of all the racism.
that I dealt with growing up in my small town of Pontiac. And what's interesting about it is... In retrospect, I have a lot of love for my hometown. So watching this video back for the first time is going to be interesting for me, but also wildly uncomfortable for me. And I'm doing it for you guys. Then we're going to go through. There's this whole series that I did. So it's going to be an interesting one.
look uncomfortable but it's a safe space here because you are all my cousins y'all know the vibes go ahead and like share comment and subscribe welcome to respectfully So what had happened was... I want to give you guys first just a quick synopsis of my background. My Stories of Us episode on PragerU.com also does a very thorough explanation of what went down. But giving you a long story shmedium is, again, I was...
in a very liberal household. I was actually born in Southside Chicago, a very rough neighborhood. I often say that one of my childhood friends was Chief Keith. Everybody thinks that's a joke. But I'm like actually dead serious. The rapper Chief Keef, Mr. Love Sosa himself. Shout out to you. But I come from one of those. areas where most people end up either being a drug addict being a gang member or just getting into a very sad
hood lifestyle over in Southside Inglewood, Chicago. A lot of great-hearted people there, just very few opportunities and so much crime that opportunities are afraid to come to that area. Well, when... One of my siblings got into some trouble, actually.
Two of my siblings got into a little bit of trouble. My family decided to pack up and move the entire family down to the middle of nowhere to a small town called Pontiac, Illinois. Now, what's interesting about that is Pontiac was the complete opposite of Chicago.
It was this small, rural, country cornfield town, 10,000 people, 95% white. And my parents went there wanting us to be as far away from gang culture as possible. And I was only two years old, so I assimilated arguably the best out of all of my siblings. siblings um i am the youngest of five i grew up with two of my brothers you know all these details for those who always want to know well i spent a lot of my summers going or most of my summers i should say
in inglewood chicago because my grandmother still lived there so i had this interesting dichotomy growing up where i would live in south side chicago during the summers and every other weekend we would go up to south side chicago every other weekend because my mom needed to get her hair done by a powerful black woman and i grew up though in this small cornfield town so i would often feel like i was too black being around white people or too white being around
black people and it really felt like i couldn't win and i had this identity crisis on top of that you have my family that was so left-wing and so just progressive um i feel like part of that comes from the fact that my father is very light-skinned. He is Creo, so we have a recessive trait of very, very light-skinned. My father is literally whiter than Dennis Prager when it comes to his skin color, and I'm not kidding. But because of that, his father disowned him.
because his father was actually darker than me. And I do feel like that's part of why he became so... pro-black and growing up i would hear from various people in my family that white people were the enemy and calling white people blue-eyed red-headed devils and all these different things so i spent many years with this mindset that i needed to be
weary of white people while growing up around white people and having all of these white friends and I was really well liked in my hometown which again is another thing that makes it weird in retrospect I was Pretty popular. White people loved me. I have this one photo that I feel like is symbolic of my high school experience of all of these people. Shout out to all of them. They're all... Let me make sure I still like all of these people. I do.
It's almost my 10-year reunion, so just had to make sure there was no one I needed to shade. I love all these people. The caption on this photo on Instagram actually says, Happy Black History Month, funny enough. But this was the dynamic of my high school. I was in 15 clubs. I was in two sports. I was valid.
victorian i was homecoming king i have a photo of that too like i was very well light in my hometown so it's weird how i became so progressive especially during college, which we all know is an indoctrination camp, all because... Again, I felt like I wasn't black enough. And I looked back at my hometown with all this disdain after some years. And I graduated in 2015. And this video that we're going to play actually comes from...
2019. So this is before my notorious BLM era, because many of you know I was out there marching. I was marching for George. I was marching for Breonna Taylor. I was helping lead some of these BLM events in various towns, including even though I lived in California by this point, I was helping people organize over in Illinois some of these. BLM marches and it was just an interesting era of my life but before we even got to the BLM era and long before my red pill experience which
If you want to know about that, just go watch my stories of us. Long story story, I applied to be on a reality show, and I was going to be a BLM activist on the show. I got cast for the show. In the process of getting ready for the show, I accidentally debunked myself, sending the counter arguments. It was a whole situation. a video for that. This is a video about the past. So 2019
After doing, again, I mentioned I'm going to be going through all these different slides that I did on Instagram, but I want to start with the video. The 17-minute video where I essentially exposed my hometown and it went locally viral with thousands. of views on it and a small town that's a lot. And it's going to be an awkward experience for me. So bear with me, but let's get into it.
So for those who haven't seen every day this month, I've been discussing different topics on black culture. Can we pause this already? A couple of things I need to address. I can already I'm already anxious watching old anxious Xavier. I'm already seeing, like, the way I get a million pounds, I go like this. I have an anxiety disorder. I always have had it, but I've gotten better at dealing with it. But...
Just the way I started that video, I can already tell I'm wildly uncomfortable. So this is already going to be a sight. And do not clock me that I still have that sweater. Because watching this back and realizing I've been wearing that sweater since 2019, which y'all are not going to do is clock me. I am donating that sweater literally this weekend. But let's continue.
Just misunderstandings and just trying to create conversations so that there's better understanding of black and non-black people. So one of the things I wanted to talk about was just. The fact that so many people feel like racism doesn't exist anymore just because people aren't getting lynched every day because segregation is gone, but it is still very prevalent. So I wanted to share a few of my example or my experiences of racism growing up in Central Illinois.
Just a handful because there's a lot that can go into and I don't want this to be too long. As well as I reached out to a few people that also grew up in central Illinois and just kind of discussing some of the things that they dealt with. One of the things I want to say from the go is that I don't want any. names to be addressed for some of these issues nobody has been told about besides some of the close people to me some of them
Kind of spilled out on Twitter or whatever back when I had a more immature way of dealing with things. But I don't want anybody getting called out on this. How ironic. I'm talking about spilling things on Twitter being in the past and now that's my whole career. loud, super ghetto black people. They're all intelligent, educated black people that I'm going to be talking about.
With that being said, there is almost two sides of the spectrum where you have to ignorant people who that much more are racist because of the fact that you are not ghetto and because of the fact that you can put together an intelligible sentence that. They get mad and triggered that you're not ghetto. So they then bully you and want to ostracize you that much more and call you things like an Oreo and make you have this identity crisis because of the fact that you're not.
ignorant and then you have people okay i want to address that so that's an interesting point you know that is something that still irritates me but i look at it from such a different perspective now but at the same time i kind of clicked with that um But I just... See, here's the thing. I feel like a lot of my values have remained. It's just my lens of the world is different. I used to view everything...
I hate to say even victim mindset, but a lot of this is like this victim mindset of everybody's out to get me because I'm black. And they want to be like, oh, we can say this because you're black or because... my best friend is black or because I'm dating someone black, that means I can say and do these racist things. And just being the one that they use all their black jokes on, et cetera. And with that, I want to first address the thing that...
Hands down, almost every single person I asked about things that they dealt with going into Central Illinois talked about was how often people just use the word. as like their automatic go-to word anytime you're in an argument it's the first thing they want to bring up first thing is crazy even where people will say to me um see you're the difference you're uh you're not an i want to make it very clear that
And it's also with that when people say like you're a white black person or you're not black, you're a white guy in a black body. White is not a standard of education. White is not the determining factor on whether or not you're ignorant. White is not. a personality trait, like people try to make it seem. So that is just so unbelievably ridiculous that people so often feel the need to say that.
That is actually something that's interesting. I had a conversation with someone about that not that long ago, about how that used to be said to me a lot growing up, where people would say that I was a... n-word with an a not an n-word with an er and that was the difference and that people would say it thinking it was a compliment sometimes and it never was to me
And it still isn't to me. And that's something I haven't heard in a really long time. I do wonder in retrospect, is that just something that happens in like small towns where they don't really understand the weight or the gravity of those words? But... that that's just it's just bizarre and then people saying like oh you're the whitest black person you're such a white black person i will say and y'all are going to hate me for saying it but
I get that more from leftists than I do from people on the right, at least nowadays. I don't really remember what the people back then, what like their side was. And I don't even want to make this too overly political because this is really just me reflecting at this. point but
I feel like when I hear people be like, oh, like you're a white black guy, it has more to do with the stereotypes and the stigmas that are put on people of color that were expected to fall into a certain box. And what is something that I have observed being around more conservatives.
Because back then, I was definitely around a lot more liberals. And growing up, I was around more liberals. Or more leftists, I should say. When I'm in conservative spaces, I don't hear that anymore. I have been in the conservative space for... Four years now. And even before that, I always have had conservative friends. And it is very rare that I hear someone say something to me of like, oh, you're a white black person, because if anything, they just appreciate the fact that I'm.
person i'm an american and i am adding to the conversation rather than making the conversation about something as trivial as skin color so i do wonder Again, in retrospect, because this is me reflecting on me, reflecting on my childhood. And I wonder if it's because I brought race into so many conversations that race was brought up to me so often, or if it's just a sign of different times. Just an observation.
Or Kunta Kinte, if you don't know who that is, that was a king of the show Roots who got enslaved and brought to America. Literally one person ever said that to me and I was so triggered. Of people using these type of terms to try to get under my skin. The funny thing about it is...
Whenever I would get mad or try to voice my opinion on why this is messed up, people would then tell me to calm down or stop exaggerating or even if they blatantly saw it happen, they'd be like, oh, you just need to get over and move on. That's just the way it is.
reason that it's the way it is is because of generational ignorance and because the fact that nobody's addressing how messed up it is from the go and then with that also on the other side of the spectrum people also want to discredit you because of your
color and people want to take like a lot of people that are successful at sports want or get things like oh the only reason that you're so good at sports is because you're black or and not because of the hours that you put in the fact that you're the first to practice and the last to leave then when you get scholarships because you're black or you get into a good school because you're black the first thing people want to say is
oh you got this because of affirmative action which i addressed on my um instagram story if you want to look at my highlights it's on there um all my points on that i'm not going to get into that and also just like i'll get into it right now though
So the first one, I think, is I don't really know what I was getting at with that. I don't know anyone that's been told. I mean, this this might have been the case again. Like, maybe I'm forgetting because I'm getting up there in age now. I'm at the big age of 28. But I don't remember anybody.
saying to me that I was good at certain sports only because I was black. I mean, there's a lot of unathletic black people out there. However, the affirmative action thing is a real situation. I actually did a five minute video here at.
PragerU that was inspired by an incident that I had about affirmative action where my... very first day at college or not first day but my first week or two at college i was at lunch basically this guy looked at me who also is a leftist now i still got him on snapchat and i know what he says uh even though i don't check snap i'm a grown man that often at least but
But the very first thing he said to me when I sat down at this table one day was, Xavier, did you just write a smiley face on your application? And I was like, what? And he just kept asking me, I'm like, what are you trying to get at? And he basically told me or literally told me that all it would have taken for me to get into the University of Illinois was for me to put a smile or to attach a smiley face. And then he says, you're black. I'm sure you have decent gray.
You could have just attached a smiley face and they would have let you into the university. So, of course, I read that person for filth. But that filled me with so much insecurity throughout my freshman year of college because I constantly started having this.
hyper fixation on did i earn anything that i have because the more i looked into affirmative action it just started making me feel guilty for things knowing that i had put in the work knowing that i had never had to be growing up knowing that i did all these clubs knowing that i did the work
from a very, very young age, I still threw all of that out of the window because this person mentioned something to me about DEI, which you could argue is me being sensitive. I mean, I was 18. What do you want from me? But at the same time, it's like...
This is part of why I can't stand DEI. This is why I can't stand affirmative action. It's because... affirmative action and dei create this gateway to where people have the excuse to discredit you because of your skin color or because of whatever creed that you're a part of that has the bar lowered for you in order to get in i had all the credentials to get in
I had the credentials to get into the honors program. And that's why I did. And I'm very confident in retrospect that everything I accomplished, I would have had even if I wasn't black. But... When you have affirmative action in DEI, it is harmful because you take away the assurance that someone would have that they earn their own opportunities. So that's all I got to say about that. Let's keep going.
The first thing people started saying to me before even saying congratulations, people would sometimes say, well, the reason you got it, you know, is because you're black. Not a single scholarship I had was because of the color of my skin. Just if you want to know. But that's the first thing that people want to go there for. They want to discredit you.
Then when it was announced that I was in running for valedictorian, the day after it got announced who was in the running, I remember somebody slipped a note into my locker saying that a nigger should not be valedictorian. True story. And I'm just like... And I'm pretty sure I know who made that. Again, a leftist who was always just trying to troll me because he was bitter and he wanted to sleep with my cousin.
i didn't even let it phase me at the time i was just like well i am so it is what it is but in retrospect i wish i would have addressed that more but i didn't feel like i would it would have made any type of impact which i still don't know i was so shady the last name of the person that put that note in there i just subtly said their last name
Let me not be too messy. Yeah, like I said, please don't disclose names. Even though I just totally threw shade at the person who put that note in my locker.
Well... For those who know Pontiac, when I picked up a friend that was near Casey's Pizza, kind of past the high school, from there all the way to around Donnelly's, and I had even done a couple laps around blocks to see if this person was following me or not, this person is like... literally chasing me and I had two friends in the car who can attest to this and I'm about a quarter mile of the way to on Route 66 towards Odell and this person comes up to the side and tries to run me off the road.
and they roll down the window they scream at me and no i'm not going to censor it because it wasn't censored but it was said to me and their friend threw a glass bottle at my car why what i'll say about this situation because this is um This is a situation that really did happen that bothered me for many years.
I will say, to begin with, the person who did this reached out to me after I made the video and profusely apologized to me. And what he said stuck with me was he kept saying that nothing that he did could be justified, but...
That he was an immature kid and while I don't want to take accountability off of someone for being a kid that's immature and doing stupid things because at the end of the day what he did was completely wrong i appreciated that he reached out and took accountability and appreciated the fact that i didn't you know say his name and the fact that he did this but
It was situations like this and a couple other situations that I know I talk about in this video where, yes, there are incidences of racism. There are racist people. There is circumstantial race. Excuse me. There is circumstantial racism. But what growth and maturity and reflection has taught me is that there is a world of difference between circumstantial racism and systemic racism. What that guy did to me.
Trying to run me off the road, saying those profanities to me. That was not a systemic issue. That was an issue of an ignorant, immature kid being racist because he thought it was funny. and that again does not excuse any of the things that happen but those were the type of incidences and i hope this if anything i hope this reflection helps people understand why i used to be woke
Not justifying that I was woke, but it explains a little bit of context of why I used to have the mindset that I did. Because the criticism that I get a lot is people are like, well, we should never believe anything you said because you were stupid enough to drink the Kool-Aid one.
You fell for this once. You were woke before. What means you're not going to be woke later? And I've been conservative my whole life because I always saw through the BS and you didn't for this long. Why did it take you so long? It was situations like this. Because as you're going to see, there were more incidences like that. And they crafted this mindset for me that because I was black, I was going to have to deal with this my whole life.
And another thing is I grew up in this small town. And even though I would spend so much time in Chicago, the thing is, is when you're a kid, the world you know is the world you've seen. And as someone that never was really traveling, I never went on vacations, anything like that. I knew. Pontiac. And I knew some of the incidences that I had in Pontiac. So my worldview was shaped around the fact that there were some racist kids in this hillbilly town who did a couple bad things to me.
But as I have grown, as I have now lived in various places in the country and have traveled the world, I've recognized what I dealt with as far from systemic racism. It was just ignorant kids doing racist things. Still isn't okay, but that's the context that matters.
We claim I ran a stop sign, but the stop sign doesn't exist. But regardless, it's the fact that this happened. Then there was another incident where I was in the high school parking lot and I got dropped off by a friend. And as I'm walking to my car.
that was waiting in the, or I was walking to my car, and there was a pickup truck with a Confederate flag, and they start beelining towards me full speed, screaming, die as if they're gonna run me over so i'm literally sprinting away from this truck and then they just barely miss me um so that they can just laugh at me and make fun of me so then i get in my car i rush home and i sit in my car for an hour just wondering like
How is this still happening? How is this in a modernized, globalized society still happening? Why? Because people choose to be ignorant and because of generational passing down of racism. and because these kids are just ignorant and in fact both of the kids so maturity is realizing that so many of the people you are surrounded around are mentally unwell and like literally mentally handicapped i'm not kidding
Like, I just thought I remember growing up thinking that so many of these adults are around me were just quirky or just weird. But then in retrospect, it's like, oh, no, like you had autism. You literally were on.
spectrums of different conditions and of the two people who were in that truck from that incident again not justifying what they did but just context and retrospect one of them clearly autistic clearly autistic and the other one was literally in special needs classes but i don't know what for he was just kind of slow so yeah was that a real incident that was traumatizing to me yeah
But I'm not going to say that our country is racist because two special needs kids tried to run me over. But that's all I have to say about that. At the same time, if you remember, if you're from Pontiac, you can remember the KKK was actually having a rally nearby and we're sending out invitations to people locally in Pontiac. That is true. But everybody was pissed. The consensus of my hometown is they were irate. That's why I got shut down.
And just going off of that, too, I had parents or friends whose parents would tell me things like they would honk their horn and scream, pull your pants up. If they ever pass black people on the street with their pants hanging down, which is funny because a lot of the white people in Pontiac do too, but regardless of the fact, why is that okay? Or they would say how I'm their favorite black person, the only black person allowed to hang out with their kid and just...
things of that sort pause real quick that's another thing that i got i did get that a lot as a kid is people were telling me that i was the exception i was the one black kid that they were okay having around their kids and um ignorant racist
But it's also a lack of exposure because at the time, this is more context. Like when I grew up, I was one of the first black families with kids to grow up in that town. So a lot of these parents never had been around black people. And the only vision that they had of black people was. black culture that they saw online and the crime statistics that would come down from chicago and also
if this adds any context to, we had a federal prison in our town. It was like one of the biggest, it's like one of the biggest federal prisons in the country. It's like on the outskirt of town. So a lot of the black people who would come to town would be visiting people in prison and then they would wreak havoc in our town. So, again, I'm not saying that it's okay to stereotype all black people because of that. But in retrospect, actually, not even retrospect, right now.
It is irritating to my soul how many Black people are completely just the worst representation of Black people. And then an issue in the Black community is that we take our lowest common denominator and put that as the forefront of our community. If we stopped...
glamorizing and romanticizing ghetto thug gang culture, I think that we would have fewer stereotypes that apply to us. Luckily, now with more media representation, you are seeing a lot more positive examples of how Black people conduct them. themselves and seeing more positive black tv characters and rather than just like these drug addicts and thugs and gang members all the time on tv or on the news
I do think that there is positivity to good representation because otherwise, what else are these people going to judge by? If you've never been around a black person and all you're seeing online and on or on TV.
because this is like before the internet was even or not the internet oh i'm not that old this is before social media was as all up in your business as it is now so a lot of people literally were not seeing positive representations of black people so again justified no ignorant yes what this video is confirming for me
Is while my lens of how I view some of these situations has changed, what I do still stand on and something that I've been very clear about my entire tenure as a conservative, even though people on the left love to like people on the left love to send.
me a random example of people being racist and then being like well what do you have to say about that you say that this doesn't exist never once have i said that racism doesn't exist never once have i said that racist people don't exist what i say is that as a A nation.
Systemically, I do not believe that there is racism anymore. You will still see racist people. You will still see racist people who are in charge. You might see a racist CEO. But that does not mean the system of America is racist. That means that there are ignorant people. And that goes.
far beyond just black people, because there are also people of color who won't hire somebody white. So when it comes to that, that is all something that needs to go away. And I feel like it was starting to go away until this hyper fixation on race started to become repopularized. so that's that's interesting like watching this back so far it is really
If anything, it shows that that's been something. Well, actually, I shouldn't say I'm consistent on. I was consistent. I'm consistent in the fact that racist people exist. What has changed is that I am now very clear that systemic racism is gone. The boogeyman is gone. Moving along.
And the last example I kind of want to give, but I'm not going to get too much into it. I'm really not a police hater, to be clear about that. I'm actually very respectful. Pause it. Always have been. A lot of y'all try to clock me and say that because I supported BLM that I've always said that all cops are bad.
Never once have I said that. I was peak woke here. That is 2019. My hair was black. My face was skinny. I didn't even have a beard. That is old me. That is the old Xavier. I even said right here, I have never been a police.
hater i've always had good relationships with police so that is tea that is receipts to freedom because y'all always want to tell me that I used to be a cop hater never was because even in my woke days if you look at my sign my sign I stand behind it said honor your oath or surrender your badge if you are a police officer and you're not doing your job correct
surrender your badge. Retire. Get fired. Do something. Go home. Call the sick. But what you not gonna do. See right there? That was the sign I took to all the BLM rallies. or at least the ones that were in California. So don't do too much and try to say that because I was marching for George Floyd that I was against all police officers because that is not the case, partner.
I'm waiting to get that off my chest. There's a lot of people who are police officers and people who are going to be police officers. But in Illinois, there is still so much prejudice that some, some of the people on the Pinehead Police Force have. So just blatant examples, like I remember my brother and I being at a park when we were really, really young. It was...
It couldn't have been. My brother was a degenerate, mind you. 2 p.m., probably about 1 p.m. We were walking through the park on a Saturday, and this officer picked TNI up, took us home, and said to my mom that he didn't want us getting into any kind of trouble. And my mom was like, what kind of trouble would he have?
be getting in and that particular officer has a history of harassing my family but that's a different topic for a different day and he's even admitted to um to my mom about the fact that he harassed my eldest brother But that's besides the point. And I remember... Without spilling too much of my own family tea, that officer had... while he was probably while he was overstepping making us get in the car and go home in retrospect
That officer had a point because we were in a park called Fell Park. And in Pontiac, Illinois, that was the park where everything bad happened. Every single thing that was bad was happening at Fell Park. And we would...
This story, I had to have been like seven, if even. Actually, maybe even younger than that. I think I might have been like... five or six i was really young and i remember my brother who's almost seven years older than me he was getting into a lot of trouble he was breaking into things and he was doing so much
Okay, he was always getting a whooping, always getting suspended. He was doing too much. So when this officer picked us up and took us home and said that I want to make sure that they weren't getting into any trouble, he had a point. I get it because who knows what we would have gotten into and whether that was trouble because we, not me, because I was a child of God, like I was sent here to be. But my brother was always doing so much. So whether it was him doing something crazy.
or if it was something crazy happening around us that would have affected us, that officer potentially helped us. And for the family members that he was harassing, not all of them, but some of them were guilty.
Some of them were guilty. So you know what? The harassment was justified to an extent. To an extent. Shout out to that officer. Actually, I think he got fired for something else recently. So I guess that's karma. But at the same time, he wasn't wrong about everything. So let's keep it moving.
We're having an incident that I discussed on Twitter and everybody tried to tell me that I was milking the situation, but I was almost falsely arrested for a robbery that had happened hours before when I had blatant proof that I had just gotten from.
You know, we're towards the end of the video, so I really just want to sum this up, what happened here. This situation, this is a true story. I almost got falsely arrested. It was... racially profiling it that is true um they ripped my pants to take my wallet out i'm still pissed about that because those were my most expensive jeans at the time but basically what happened was there was a robbery earlier in that neighborhood and
It was an elderly woman who couldn't remember who or what, like what the person looked like that robbed her. Ironically, a woman who used to babysit me, I'm pretty sure. But she said that the culprit had on a black mask and a black and black gloves. So when I got dropped off at my cousin's house.
This was after I was taking finals at University of Illinois. The police officer saw me walking in the neighborhood and they came up to me asking if I did something and they harassed me. It was a whole scene. It was humiliating. It was mortifying. I will say. to this day that police officer or the police officer who ripped my pants was just being a jerk for no reason and what i didn't realize that and this was after my
First semester at college and a crime had completely spiked in my neighborhood because of an increase in Section 8 housing. It was like a whole thing. I didn't realize what I was getting myself back into by going back home. And that was a really unfortunate situation where I do feel like the police did not.
me any justice um and this is why i say there are some police officers who are bad at their jobs um something that I should add into the main person, the main sheriff or whatever his role was that was leading that whole situation was black. Notoriously, he didn't like black people, though. He still doesn't. I will say that that's a very, very open secret in Pontiac, Illinois. But, you know, there are police officers who are objectively bad at their job.
I have no problem saying that. But having the mindset that all cops are bad is insane. I have had so many positive encounters with police, been helped by police so many times. And for those who really know me, I'm a Karen. I call 911 about. Everything. Let a neighbor be too loud in my neighborhood. 911. Let the homeless man from behind my building light another Christmas tree on fire. Calling 911. Let you get too bold in my DMs. I'm calling the police.
Okay? So I back the blue because I single-handedly... am the reason that they need to increase the budget because i call them for a lot of reasons so i just want because this video is so long i cannot continue to watch myself at this point but i will say
I feel very proud of the growth that I've had since then in perspective. And I will say that everything that I said in this video, as far as real life experiences, they are true. Some of them I viewed from a very weird... perspective in retrospect and i shouldn't even say weird because i understand why i had i had a very small-minded view of the world i had a very just everything through the lens of race type of perspective in the world and um
If I could say one thing to myself back then, it's that you'll be so much happier. when you stop viewing things through the lens of race and start viewing things through the lens of logic. Okay, so now that we've gone through my cringe video, let's go through some of my cringe story posts because like I told you guys in the beginning, this video was the end of it.
series that I did for Black History Month in 2019. And every day on my story, I was posting something woke, something about educating Black people, whether it was about Black hair or about... issue within the black community, such as colorism or talking about HBCUs, which shout out to the HBCUs. I love the HBCUs. So not all of it was negative, but I just wanted to show you guys some of the mindset that I had back way back when.
So first off, we started this with, in honor of Black History Month, I've decided to speak on a black issue or misunderstanding every day this month. So letting you guys know the tone. And yes, I'm blind as a bat, so I'm just going to have my phone with me during this so that I can... actually read because you guys are going to see I put a whole lot of words that meant a whole lot of nothing on these screens. So let's go next.
So I'll give four today because I started this a little late in the series. Feel free to ask me questions, yada, yada, yada. This is not... I'm sure some statements will be controversial and are not intended to be offensive, but informative. Like, here I go being a professor. Let's keep going. So the first one we started with was a white black person or talking white. So...
We talked about this pretty much earlier. I still stand behind this being a problematic conversation. In fact, one of these days, I want to write a whole book about it. So we're not going to go too much into that, but y'all need to stop doing that. Stop telling people that they sound white.
or that they sound black or act black that is so ignorant your level of education is not based on your skin color don't tell me that i sound like a white person i sound like someone who didn't want to be in section eight depending on a stimulus check that's what i sound like next the one
drop rule so you know this one is interesting so this actually was hold on let me see what i said if i said something woke do not refer to obama's halfway okay so this one i think does add a little bit more clarity as to why Black people who are biracial tend to just say they're black. I understand why there is confusion on that. So it does kind of stem from the one drop rule. Back in the day, if you were 10% black, you were black.
If you were 5% black, you were black. By law, at a certain point, if you were one drop black... you were black luckily we are not in those times anymore so when a biracial person says oh i'm mixed stop giving them flack i feel like that's something that more within the black community is still an issue where if you are mixed race where people expect you to side with one or the other or they'll say where is your mom black is your dad black just stop
Just stop. And why does it even matter? Oh, yeah, it does matter because of college applications. Black Lives Matter. While some activists totally missed the mark, I'm glad I acknowledged that even then. And mind you, this was 2019. Okay, so I was on this long before George Floyd. So while some activists totally missed the mark, the majority of BLM supporters are not saying other lives do not matter.
I would say about a year later, that was not the case. I would say in 2019, a lot of the people who were supporting BLM were at the time decently sane. 2020 is when a lot of the BLM people became insane. Ugh. Ugh. There are so many white people who die and like nobody's talking about it either. It's like this mindset that I had back then that black people were being just like hunted down by police officers. Like I was just so brainwashed.
This is pre-TikTok. I was just brainwashed by the internet, period. Because one of the statistics that I learned that absolutely blew my mind is that as an unarmed black person, you have a five times higher chance of being struck by lightning than being shot.
and killed by a police officer. Okay, so again, you have a five times higher likelihood of being struck by lightning as an unarmed black person than being shot and killed by a police officer. If anything, the second a black person is murdered... If it's by a white person, all eyes are pigeonholed on that person. But you know the time that black people dying was turned a blind eye? When it was children being shot by thugs.
When it was a black person killing another black person, black on black crime, y'all don't want to talk about that. That's when there's a blind eye. But when it's a white person killing a black person, then we have to stop the whole world.
Drawing the line of cultural appropriation versus appreciation. I am really interested to see what examples I had for what on this because I have not reflected on this. Fun fact, when the first thing, the first PragerU video I ever watched was a Will Witt video about cultural appropriation. And I want to say that was in 2018. So my mind got shifted a little bit on this topic compared to before I saw the Will Witt video. So let's see the examples I put on here.
Red. Appropriation. So dark. So I said some of the red flags. Failure to acknowledge the origin of the culture representing, tarnishing the sacredness of the cultural concept or practice, taking ideas and practices without showing that you understand understand or respect said culture fair that's fair do I think it's the end of the world no but fair let's keep going appreciation
paying homage to the culture's history being knowledgeable of its origins and what it took to develop its glory maintaining or maintaining a sense of self-awareness avoid stereotyping okay i i don't disagree with any of this
I think there are examples of cultural appropriation that are just cringe. I don't think it's a big deal. I feel like culture is so blended nowadays that it's like, who cares? It's like I literally go around wearing a Chinese hat. But that's appreciation because I'm also 2% Chinese. So it's like...
I don't think it's a big deal anymore or a big deal at all. But yeah, I kind of ate that. Thanks, Will Whit, for that video. What's next? White privilege. Oh, this is the one that's going to get uglier than Ken Barbie. okay if you don't know who ken barbie is consider yourself lucky that's a very ugly person ken barbie is very unfortunate looking um as stated by nikki minaj so
Adam, you are so shady with those bombs. Okay, let's go through these examples of white privilege. Living your life without constant stereotyping. White people are constantly stereotyped. So I was already on some BS there. I was already on some BS there. I don't know what made me think that white people don't deal with stereotypes.
There are so many stereotypes that are good and bad that all demographics deal with, but the amount of stereotypes that white people get, I don't know how in my mind I was so blind to thinking that they didn't have to deal with stereotypes. Being considered more reliable and trustworthy without showing any of your character. I don't know where I got that information from. You know, I will say that...
As a black person, like if I'm wearing like sweats, there's a higher chance of me being like racially profiled at like a Nordstrom's or something, which happened recently. But I kind of can't blame them because who's out there stealing? When you see these videos.
Not saying only black people steal, obviously. But when you see these videos of these crimes and stuff in LA, Nordstrom is always getting robbed. Bloomingdale's in these department stores are always getting robbed. It tends to be black people. I'm sorry. When I zoom, I will literally zoom in past their gloves and I'm like, dang it, it's once again my color. So no, it's not okay to be like thinking that black people are not trustworthy the second you see them, but I get it.
not being pulled over for driving while black ask your black friend what that is ironically i haven't been pulled over in years and anytime i get pulled over cops love me They really do. I do know that there are like some board police departments that will say like if it's an area that is predominantly white, I have been told by police officers literally that they'll pull over. If they're really desperate for their quotas, they'll pull over.
someone that just looks urban that doesn't even have to be black just looks urban so i think that applies to white people too because white people can look a little rough around the edges no shade P.S.A. If you don't understand what white privilege is, ooh, not me having typos in 2019, the ghetto. If you don't understand what white privilege is, congratulations, you're living in it.
White people, I am so sorry for the way I wronged y'all. I am so sorry. That is so cringe. If you don't know what it is, you, congratulations. You, you're living in it. Shut up. I wish I could just tell myself to just shut up. I really thought I ate that too. Some of these I did eat, but I really thought I ate that. You're living in white privilege, so you don't know what it is.
Or maybe I'm just delusional. And maybe white people aren't spending their entire lives feeling guilty because they were born in a certain skin tone. You know, shout out to white people. Do not date a person of color before having an understanding of the issues we deal with. Thank you, next. And that Ariana Grande, thank you, Next Era. You know, I mean, there's some truth to this, but at the same time, it's like when you love somebody, are you really about to spend...
all of your time trying to think of what racial things that they're going to deal with. I feel like. that is just again being fake deep there are i mean yeah you should learn the culture you should learn the good and the bad of what the culture you're marrying or dating into deals with but i think that can definitely go both ways but It's I don't think that's too crazy, but I just think it's cringe more than anything that I really thought I ate when that thank you next on there.
Okay, last one we're going to go through today because I can only cringe on my old self so much. Non-black two cents for black issues. And I go into how if you are not black, you are not allowed to be a part of the conversation. But how ironic is that after spending all this time...
Over the course of that month, telling people like, oh, well, white people, you don't deal with this and you do get to deal with these benefits and you do have these privileges. Why was I putting my black two cents in white folk business? I was all up in white folks business. okay so the hypocrisy there
This is the old me. I've come a long way. So if this proves anything, it proves that I, one, have come a long way. Two, I wasn't totally crazy, but I was definitely just way too woke for my own good. And three, for the people who try to say that I'm just grifting and that I have always.
had this mindset i or i either have always had a conservative mindset or that i never had a liberal mindset or however other angles y'all want to spin it spin it right back right back onto your own self because i just came through with the receipts i hope i never have to do this again i hope this is more pleasant for the viewer than it was to me experiencing reflecting on all of this and
That's on growth. That's on being red-pilled. Again, if you want more details about my red-pilled experience, go watch my stories about us at PragerU.com. I appreciate you guys for tuning in to yet another episode of Respectfully. Be sure to like, share, subscribe, comment. Let me know your thoughts. Feel free to drag me. We're all cousins here. So cousins, y'all can roast me, bully me so that I never have that mindset again. And that's all we have today. I'll see you on Tuesday.