Black Martha’s Vineyard

it was all kind of color. It was. It was straight up like it was straight up like white man can't jump, like we were hustling. We were hustling. White man. White man can't bid, right, white bi can't bid. I love it. Yeah, so let's tell that. Let's tell tell people what bid whist it. Bid whist is a more advanced version of space. You have four players and two pairs, and you bid your hand based on the number of

suits you can win. And the cool thing about bid wiss, unlike spades, is spades is based on how many spades you have in hand, because that's the best suit in your hand, it dominates all the others. But in bid it could be any suit and it creates tremendous variation, and a lot of the action depends on bidding. Yeah. Yeah, when we get together, I'm Martha's vineyard. Our two families, uh you know, me and you and our wives Danielle and Stephanie. We end up playing late at night most nights,

and yeah, most nights. So here here Actually we were playing this summer and uh, I just I had to just press record on my phone because it was getting out of hand and I wanted a record of this. You can't talk Sto'm talking across the board. Oh see, this is what happened with bid. I actually learned playing

from your mom, who is as cutthroat like that. She would hear that in not her head and be like, yeah, yeah, don't don't sit down at the table with me if you're not prepared to you know, right to not only lose, but also to be embarrassed at the same time. Don't come to a gunfight with a knife, she would say, right, okay. I'm Khalil Muhammad and I'm Ben Austin. We're two best friends, one black, one white. I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is some of my best friends are in

this show. We wrestle with the challenges and the absurdities are the deeply divided and the unequal country. And on this episode, we're gonna take a little vacation. I think we should talk about this magical place for our families. Where is it. It's Martha's Vinyards, all right. Yeah, that's a place where people get together and renew their energy. They we connect with family, and a lot of people also go there for cultural reteets and for making social

change and building political power. So I think I think there's a lot to share about the real Martha's family. Yeah. Yeah, So then this TV show came out this fall, Our Kind of People, which at least ostensibly is set at Martha's Vineyard, And our show isn't going to be really about that TV show, but it is going to be

about Martha's Vineyard, that's right. And because the show plays on this notion of powerful black people, Uh, you've got denied to thinking about your own power to talk about, yeah, but proximity to power. And I think that's that's kind of what what happens at Martha's Vai had all kinds of interesting people come together for vacation. Let's get on the ferry. Let's go, Yes, we go, that's right? Whatsoll here we come? No? How many years have we been

going to the vineyard? You know, I don't together. I don't count. It could either it could either be five or it could be ten. I'm not sure. Well, I think the first trip together was back in twenty twelve, so about a decade. I just have this mental image of like Jonah being super tiny. I think the first time maybe he was three Injustice was yeah, yeah, Injustice, who's my youngest was five? Yeah. So so part of the spending summers together for me is also seeing our

children grow up together. You know that that that that they're cousins in this way and you know there I'm

uncle Ben, your uncle Khalil. That's right. I mean to me, it feels like, you know the way that people put those markers on their their closets of how tall their their kids have gotten, that there's something over the summer of seeing marking time by when the child graduates from the carousel to the arcade, to going to backdoor Donuts at midnight, yeah, backdoor donuts, yes, to then hanging out at Ocean Park, to then like even driving to a beach party, like you know, the old PSA. You know,

is your kid home? Right? Do you know a kid? The answer is no, because we're on Martha's Vineyard, right, So that's part of the magic of the place. You know, Martha's Vineyard is this place that historically has been overwhelmingly white, from sort of upper income to very wealthy. There's different parts of the island that white people own homes and vacation there. But the fact of owning a home is a big deal. It's an island after all, so it's not easy to get to and you know, people fly

in and out of the space. Yeah, So I mean it's a predominally white space. You know, it's mostly my kind of people, right, yes, but for a long long time, it's also been a place, a special place for African Americans. And there's a place called Oak Bluffs. It is traditionally the place where African Americans have have been living and vacationing for more than a century. So, I man, I've been dying to talk to you about this new show on Fox series Our kind of People. Our kind of people,

that's right, yes, yes, our kind of people. So this show it's on Primetime Network television, and it's about or supposedly about Oak Bluffs. A lot of people know about, probably most obviously because the Obama is a vacation there for years. But I don't think this TV show is about Martha's Venue really at all. It's it's made by the creators of Empire, and it's kind of just a version of Empire, not set in New York City, but set on this make believe fantasy island. But really it's

even shot in North Carolina. Yeah, we're not going to spoil anything about the show, but it's a soap opera

and it's super setsy, right, It's it's wildly melodramatic. You know, beautiful people who are the upper class black echelon, and all their scheming and machinations of triu of intrigue and backstabbing and and like illegitimate children and who belongs to who and who extorted who In the past, I've seen your type for four social climbers who save their money for summerhouse to come here in Floss when the family's

on this island, hold it down all year long. Because we don't just have a summer fleeing with black excellence. We are black excellence. Yeah, it's it's a total caricature and it doesn't really have anything to do with the actual real Martha's Vineyard the culture of Oak Bluffs insomuch as it's a kind of class critique of you know, a slice of black America, right Like, that's that's kind

of what the show is set up for. So so we watch this new TV show our kind of people, and we had such a strong reaction to it, right like, this isn't the Martha's Vineyard that we know, Yes, exactly. And as much as this is personal to me, it's also really powerful. I mean it's powerful to see what it means, you know, to not be performing politics of respectability in front of white people and you know what Tony Moore, us and or others would call, you know,

the white gaze. I mean, people really do get to let their hair down, and in that space all sorts of amazing things happen, and that makes a place really special. I've always thought about this of the beauty and Martha's Vineyard that it's unlike other places. It has a kind of subtlety, even a kind of quietness, which is really powerful to me. And my favorite spot actually is that strip between a pond and state beach, which we know

really well. And you are both looking out over this pond with willows in the in the sunset or the sunrise coming over it, and then to the other side you're looking out into the ocean and it's just kind of stunning to me. Not in its drama. It's not dramatic, but just to be in this place of tranquility. There's another beach just up the street, or so to speak, on Beach Road. It is the Inkwell, it is the historic beach that African Americans carved out a space for

their own, and that is where the polar Bears. You gotta like explain what are polar bears? Listen. Polar Bears is a group of women who started out decades ago for an early morning swim. And they started doing this because a lot of the early black vineyarders were actually people who worked on the island as domestics a long time ago, and so this was an opportunity for them

to get together before they started their work day. That evolved over the years, and then as the group and the number of black vacationers on the vineyard and homeowners grew over the decades, Polar Bears went from a tiny group of women to I think Stephanie mentioned this summer there were like one hundred and fifty or something. Yeah, more than one hundred and fifty. It's really really special. It's and uh, it's it's it's kind of one of those things at the Vineyard that you can't find anywhere

else in the world. And I'd say, like, when I was thinking about our kind of people, that TV show and just like how high strung everyone was to sort of cut each other's throats. Yeah, I mean that show. You're right, it does. It does make everybody seem like

some backstabbing, conniving, evil person. But in fact, the Polar Bears itself is so reflective of the culture of Oak Bluffs because, as Stephanie told me, at the end of every session, the leader, Miss Caroline, says, you know how you feel right now before you start your day, Take that with you when you go back to to the shore. Spread that feeling and that love and that warmness to everyone you encounter this day. Isn't that amazing? And then you do it the same thing the next day. So

that's what Martha's Vineyard is so much about. You know, there is a specific reason why we go there to Martha's vineyard and even that part of Martha's vineyard around Oak Bluffs, and not to somewhere that's actually much closer to home for us, like it could be the Indian on the Dunes, or it could be Michigan, or for you, it could be it could be the Jersey Shore. And that reason is race, jan That's that's that's maybe a

but it is. It is this history there of race. Yeah, yeah, And I mean, I'll just say, you know, Stephanie and I over the years have gone on honeymoons and anniversary trips, and I stopped. You've gone on one more than one honeymoon. Well, well, not exactly what you give my point anniversary stuff, okay, And this is my point about the difference between going to Jamaica or some other place like in Jamaica, which

we've been a bunch of times. Um, you know, it's a black country, and everybody who works in these resorts is black, but all the vacationers are white. And you can count on one or two hands a number of black people who are actually there on vacation. And so I just you know, stopped enjoying it as much as I could, because you know, Stephanie would want to dance, like you know, at the karaoke bar, and I'd be like, we're the only black people dancing. All the white people

are looking at us. It's just uncomfortable. Yeah, And so the vineyard couldn't be more different. I mean, it is everything from being able to completely be yourself. There is no white gaze. Uh, there are tons of white people around, but it's as close to like the experience of equality, meaning that no one's looking at anybody like why are you here? You don't belong here. It is wonderful for guests to be alone and help and host their friends

and simultaneously like the best possible family vacation. Hey, listen, I've been on vacation too, to places without you and uh, you know, even as a kid going on vacates with my family, it turned out they were they were mostly white spaces. You know that that is kind of the world in which we i it's it's it's America, and it's it's vacation places around the world, right, and so so that really is something unique about going to Martha's

Vineyard in August at least to this part of the island. Yeah, that's the thing. The truth is that what makes the Martha's Vineyard unique is that it isn't like a form of segregated not at all. Really is still in this place of tremendous integration. Let's talk some about how Oak

Bluffs came to be. There's a documentary by Stanley Nelson called The Place of Our Own, which he made in two thousand and four, and his film feels to me like a counterpoint to our kind of people to that TV show we were talking about at the beginning of the episode. The documentary has real people in it and it's so grounded in a sense of place. Yeah, yes, I think for me, M. Stanley Nelson is is probably the most prolific and award winning documentarian period and as

an African American, his content has been just disremarkable. And so I've known Stanley Nelson for a long time. You know, he's done a lot of stuff at the Schaumberg Center. So I called him up and I wanted to ask him about this new TV show, but I also wanted to ask him about the history of Martha's Vineyard. He's been gone there for sixty five years. Oh, you're being the journalist exactly. You know, we historians do do oral history.

My friend. Oh my god, this place, you know, I mean, it's just an incredible place and it's and it's a place where because black people have been going there, you know, since the eighteen hundreds, right, black people have for a whole And he said essentially that sometime in the late nineteenth century, African Americans had been there as domestics working for white property owners, were working in their homes, doing some of the domestic work that we find all over

America in the nineteenth century. And one of the things that comes as a result of that is the ability to buy a very inexpensive land and property, tiny little houses, some of them these little cottages that to this day are famous, um in Oak Bluffs as these little gingerbread houses that people, you know, sometimes rent. So yeah, I mean there there are lots of cultural depictions, and most of them play to the kind of internal class politics of Black America that there is this upper crust elitist

group of people and the vineyard is their playground. Uh. And you know, we see that in in a lot of different versions of this. But you know in different in different ways. The Inkwell from nineteen ninety four. Love that film, but by the end of vacation you'll learn all the right moves yet at the eg Well. And and also Jaws, right, Jaws, Jaws, that's right, the most famous. My daughter and I just watched Jaws. She's taking a class and filmmaking, and she was like, let's try to

count the black people in it. And there was like it was like five, you know, every beach scene, everything. Yeah, that's right. What a great film. And film Jaws all over Martha's Vineyard. Yeah, that's right. And then there was this famous novel set at Martha's Vineyard, The Wedding by Dorothy West. And there's there's an Oprah mini series produced

by Oprah Winfrey in nineteen ninety eight. Now, how in heaven for me could Eddie Banish to possibly read her precious cottage to someone He definitely comes from one of the viral elis and just a word. Dorothy West ended up spending fifty years on the vineyard and wanted to tell this mid century story about basically class and skin

color on the island and wrote The Wedding. She's part of this community of black women homeowners and to to this very day they do social service, they do philanthropic things and do fundraisers, but they're part of kind of

the core of the black community of of of oak Bluffs. Yeah, yeah, and early on, I mean I saw this as well, that oak Bluffs was also in the Green Book, which was a way to tell black people where it was safe to travel, where they could actually they could actually like you know, you can rent in this cottage and this in here, and you can come here. And so this sort of pattern of people coming and more and

more people coming and following starts to develop. And at the heart of this black community was this beach called the Inkwell, it's actually a tiny, tiny part of the coast of beaches that that Martha's Vineyard provides, but it still is the kind of center of gravity for the black community that has just blossomed and bloomed. And you know where once it was property owners and their children and generations of those folks. Now visitors don't just come

from Boston or New York. They come from Chicago, like the Austins, they come from Detroit, they come from California, they come from Houston, and it is just you know, ballooned with energy and excitement and culture. Even in August, at the height of this moment of when it's its most the black visitors are at their peak. The island as a whole is still largely white, like beyond Beyond Oak Bluffs, like you know, Black Dog Cafe, Nantucket red

kind of place. And there's something about that, like this part of Martha's Vineyard during August, which feels like a what if about America? Like what if America was not racist and segregated in the way that it is right and you would experience spaces like this. Yeah, for me is like both insider and outsider, Like, so my wife is black and my kids are biracial, and they they sort of revel in this place. Yeah, it feels really it still really is such a remarkable place and unlike

really any other place I've been. But I will say professionally it's a play swear. I mean literally, there's one degree of separation between me and folks that I either work with or no. And I think this is a relatively recent phenomenon in the last fifteen years or so, that there are all these sort of cultural events that are happening there over this month as well. Yeah, there's film festivals, there's our shows, there's book talks. You know,

people are giving lectures. So when we come back, let's talk more about that, because I think that the ways that people there want to engage socially and politically while they're on vacation. Like you just said, it's not just an escape to go there, but it's also a way to organize and strategize and figure out how to deal with the real world with racism and injustice, all the things that are going back on what you could say is the mainland. Yeah, we'll talk about what that looks

like up close. We were just starting to talk about all these cultural events in Martha's Vineyard. You know, they happen all over the island, but one of the special places where they happened is a church called Union Chapel. And it's this beautiful church built in something like eighteen seventy eighteen seventy one. It is shape like an octagon. It's mostly wood. It has these high risers. In addition to pews, it also has a balcony that goes around

I wrap around balcony on three sides. It has open doors on each side. There's no air conditioning, so like it's just letting air in and every Sunday beautiful in that way. Four sides of it open up with two double doors, and it's on a little rise, like on a tiny little hill, so it feels like it's elevated. It's very it feels like a place of a reflection. Yeah, so in some ways it's like the spiritual home of the black community during the high season of all I guess, yeah,

that's a beautiful way to put it. And we end up going there a lot as well for all kinds of events, right, And I just have to say this, look the first time I saw Stacey Abrams with that Union chapel. This first time, says Stacey Abrams, being the black woman who ran for governor of Georgia. So she lost in a controversial election a few years ago, but she's also helped to lead Georgia in this most recent election that produced Senator Warnock. I saw and met Keisha

Lance Bottoms there for the first time. This is a place that, like so many black churches in America, have been the center of not only cultural worship and spiritual worship, but also political organizing and in that way that the Vineyard is that on a scale you've never seen before. I mean we're talking about, you know, not just ebenez Or Baptist Church that produce Martin Luther King or any

number of churches in the DC area. This is a church that draws national attention for annual political fundraising, for political strategizing. You see people who are running for governor, You see people who have been secretaries in cabinet level pians in Washington, d C. This is truly a place and the Union Chapel at the center of it for serious Black power building. Yeah. So this summer on a

Sunday morning, we actually went there for a service. While the church is not it's a non denominational church, is not a black church per se, but it's going to feel like that in August, is what you said. Like it has. It has integrated leadership, and it has particularly curated programming, including Sunday morning sermons where they invite in prominent black preachers from around the country country. Yeah, so we went there. The speaker was Otis Moss, the third

guy who is incredible powerful speaker. His church is Trinity United here on the south side. Ye and the same church that Obama attended for twenty years. Obama's church, maaster Jeremiah Right, became subject of some controversy during the two thousand and eight Camps Pain. Yeah, that church, and and Otis moss Is is Jeremiah Rights successor. And you know, so Otis Moss is someone that I've heard speak in Chicago several times. He's a powerful speaker, he's incredible thinker. Yeah.

So here we are outside the church that morning and the sermons beginning, and we're going to do our own little call in response together. Neighbor, neighbor, Oh, neighbor, we have nothing. So he is giving a sermon and he one major part of it. He talks about going to the circus as a kid and how much he loves the circus and particularly elephants. I love everything about I love the lions, the tigers, the bears, oh my, I

loved everything about the circus. But there was one particular animal that absolutely fascinated me Gia on a completely different level, and that were Those were the elephants. And he's such a great speaker, and he does this thing while he's speaking where you also sees people in the audience who he knows and he he calls out their name, so there he says Gia and you know, and it makes him feel like he's actually having a conversation with you.

You're like, ga oh, yeah, you're like wakes everybody out. That's great. Yes. So then he goes on and he basically he tells this parable about in a sense of, you know, why don't the elephants stampede us and kill all of us? They're so much bigger. And his uncle points out to him that they were shackled and their trainer has now removed the shackles, but they essentially still feel like they're shackled. They still feel constrained, and they've

internalized this. They're still they're still in under control. Yeah, well, just to clarify that too, he makes the point that they're they're shackled from the very beginning when they're tiny and they're well, you know, for an elephant, when they're babies, and so the conditioning that takes place, you know, over years of their lives. By the time they're full grown,

they're just accustomed to staying in their space. He builds sort of this to this crescendo about how we have nothing left to lose like we're in the sense we have to, you know, whatever it is to take action. You have nothing left to lose. We have nothing to lose to order to build a world for our children's children. No matter who you are, we must join together in

these yet to be United States of America. Whether you're anglic Can, Agnostic, Presbyterian or Pentecostal Baptists or Buddhist Atheist or Asian Jew or Gentile, Muslim or Methodist, country or ghetto, urban or suburban Lutheran or Latino Queer or Quaker, pH D no d jail or Yale, you graduated kum lod or thank you Lord, indigenous or in remmigrant, we have nothing to lose. Fight on, struggle on, We have nothing to lose. God, bless you. How incredible is that? Yeah? Lord?

Or thank you Lord. That's that's just that's incredible. Right, We've just felt this. We removed by his words on our feet, on our feet like everyone else there. I was incredibly moved by Otis Moss's speech, and I was also troubled by it, and maybe in a way that he even wanted people to be troubled. I'm not sure it was that phrase we have nothing to lose, you know.

I sat there, Khalil, thinking about about all the things that I and maybe other people do have to lose, you know, and here we are incredibly privileged to be in this space, and certainly that's something that we could lose, and we could we could even choose to give up.

And there's even just you know, vacation takes time, right, and so having the time to go away for a week, and the work that needs to be done in the country is so consuming and it's so demanding, and the things that are happening like COVID, right, and schools are under attack, which we talk about in another episode, like it's happening in this moment, right and right, and voter suppression is going on, and you know, these are the

conversations we're actually having in this moment. So yeah, I just was sort of I was sitting with myself thinking about all the things that I could lose or even choose to give up to try to help the world, you know. And this might be this might be the white guilt part of it, but but I was thinking about, here we are on vacation, is it something that I that that I should even be giving up. You know,

should I even be there? Yeah? Yeah, like white dude having his cake and eating at too, right, Yeah, because because you know, I was about to go get a hamburger afterwards and go to the beach, you know, like I wasn't gonna leave. But but in that moment, I had these thoughts. Yeah, and I'm and I'm thinking of them now too. But but but yeah, you know, like

we went and played tennis afterwards. Yeah. Uh. But I mean I'm glad you feel that way, you know, as a white guy whom you know has has an extra level of responsibility for your people and all the shit they do. But I think part of part of this is really about, you know, if people are mostly there for one week, ben Um, I think Otis's message is, you know, you have to take this message back home fight.

Probably anyone who's listening to this isn't surprised that we we alternate pretty quickly between playfulness and seriousness, right right, yeah, Well, can I just say something about that. That's like a form of code switching, right, No, I mean part of

the boat switching, I know, part of the genius. Well yes you do, but yes, coach switching is this concept that, uh, that black people have to um perform a certain kind of assimilation politics, a kind of you know, I'm not scary, I'm just like you, white person, powerful white person speak a certain way that that makes sense to white people. And so much of this episode, you know, is about how the island itself, you know, is a is a place where where people don't have to coach switch, um,

they can just lean into who they are. Yeah. Yeah, So what I was going to say was, uh, you know that that we you and I alternate very quickly between play and seriousness, and so it's not very surprising that for us that vacation is also a place where also doing what people might consider work, like that's actually just part of who we are and we like to

do it. But that what you're saying too is right, that like, that's true for for many people in this space, that they're both on vocation and they're doing kind of socio political work at the same time. I can't say it enough that for you know, for a long time in this country, black people have had to make a choice about whether or not they pursue actual systemic change or whether they play by the rules and hopes that things will just happen somehow, particularly for professional blacks working

in the private sector. This black journalist, Ellis Coas, wrote a book right at the top of the Obama administration, published in two thousand and nine, and he was responding to some evidence that black people had more positive outlooks on America and on racial progress. And so he interviewed Harvard NBA's Black Harvard NBA's and then some other young people associated with a program called a Better Chance. He wanted to get their take on race relations in the

age of Obama. And at the end of this analysis, he asked those black Harvard NBA's what the top ten rules for individual success in Black America, and they gave, you know, to top nine rules were something along the lines of b hardworking, be ambitious, cultivate networks of more powerful people than yourself, you know, make sure you know your dreams are really big. And then number ten, the number ten rule for success was never talk about race or gender if you can avoid it, other than to

say race or gender do not matter. Yeah, yeah, that's and so this is exactly the point. Yeah, that's exactly. This is exactly the point that this is the space where you are free to talk about that where no one is saying don't talk about those issues. It's it's you know, you're whatever those people were imagining at Harvard of like being under pressure from trying to trying to

adapt and fit into a mostly white space. Yeah, so at the end, at the end, right, this is why the Island has been and continue needs to be such an important place for power building because people can be honest, they can be authentic, and they can engage in these important matters of renewal and and and strategy. I mean, you know, everyone's not here to solve the world's problems, but it's certainly a place where if you opt into that,

you can. Yeah, I completely agree about not just wanting that escape, but how that escape is is a way to figure out what you're going to bring back, you know, from the island to the mainland, which is both metaphor and literal in this case, right, it's both the rejuvenation, but it's actually it is actually a place of strategizing.

It's a place of conversations, it's a place of ideas which which generate and and personally for me and you, you know, this time that we spend together which is filled with a lot of play, is also filled with so much discussion, and in a way, it's like a whole season of this show is sort of you know, chopped up during during that time we have together, you know,

by we're building these ideas. That's right, And I think that's the beauty of the island, both both in its actual majestical nature, um, and the fact that it is an island, as you pointed out, you are off the mainland, uh, and simultaneously a place where if you want to opt in to the kind of conversations about power building, Um, you have so many occasions. Yeah. And there's something too, I mean, I imagine from many people there of seeing

this alternative America. You know that that if America had, if if more black people had opportunities and the ability to grow in a certain way, that this is what the country would look like. That that figuring out how to replicate that that that this has to It can't just be here, and it can't just be for these you know three weeks that that people go in August, you know that that this has to the country needs

to look like this, this needs to be our our future. Um. Well, well, the week that that we spend together there and that our family spend together has been the best week of this year so far for me. Um, you know, I'm still always the best. I'm hoping, I'm still hoping that that that, you know, the rest of the year, I might have a really high week that that tops it. But uh, you know, but but I always appreciate it.

So I love you, Yeah, love you too. Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me Khalildbron Mohammed and my best friend Ben Austin. It's produced by Sheriff Vincent and edited by Karen Shakerji. Our engineer is Martin Gonzalez. Our associate editor is Keishell Williams, Our associate producer is Lucy Sullivan, and our showrunner is Sasha Matthias. Our executive

producers are Leetal Molad and Mia la Belle. So thanks to Stanley Nelson and to Danielle Austin, because I definitely wouldn't have been going to Martha's Vineyard if it wasn't for her At Pushkin. Thanks to Heather Faine, Carly Migliori, John Schnars, and Jacob Weisberg. Our theme song, Little Lily is by fellow chicagoan averyar Young from his amazing album Tubman. You will definitely want to check out more of his

music at his website, averyaryng dot com. You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at Pushkin pods, and you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider becoming a Pushnick. Pushnick is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted listening for four dollars in ninety nine

cents a month. Look for Pushnick exclusively on Apple podcast subscription. What's What's What's the old saying from football? Not the size of the dog in the fight, the size of the fight and the dog. I said, I actually said that this morning to Jonah. We're walking to school and and and our dog ran up to a giant German shepherd and I said, you know, hey, jon it's not the size of the dog in the fight. It's the size of the fighting the dog. And I said, and

our dog has neither. Hey that's good. It's good to know