Brown Enough: Embracing The Middle Space

absurdities of a deeply divided and unequal country. Don't Khalil, Oh my god, it is. It's election day. You know, it is Armageddon Day. Armageddon Day. And I got a question for you. Yeah, do you vote? Of course? I voted. Not only did I vote, I voted early? No. No, I mean do you do you just vote? In general? Like? Oh, do I vote? I don't vote? What's going on here? Man? Do you think I'm one of those people? I love voting on election day. I love going in there and

seeing all the people volunteering. I love getting a sense of what's going on, just like it's a pulse of democracy in some way it is. Yeah, My wife was an elected official as she ran in local school board election. She won two out of three of them. And I will admit, before voting for her for the first time, which was about a decade ago, I didn't really care

about local elections. I mean I didn't pay attention. And I think more than at any point in American history, certainly in the twentieth century, the stakes of this country hanging the balance and what's happen locally all over the place, for local munist elections, for state elections, and so today's a day to vote, folks. All of it matters. And if you listen five years later, it's also going to be a time to vote. So it's almost a reason.

That's right, man, where you just said it is exactly right. And this has been accelerated in the Trump years. We all have our eyes on national politics. We are no longer thinking about what's going on locally, which gets us to our guest today, Christopher Reevas is somebody who is going to get us in some ways into Los Angeles politics, right, Yeah, because this guy it represents in a way the future of the world. He is helping us to see the fullness of our humanity and what's at stake. He is

an amazing author, actor, podcaster. He's got these two podcasts, Brown Enough and Ruby Rosa. He's got a one man show that he put on called The Real James Bond was Dominican, the Dominicans, the Doctor, the Diplomat, the Jingalo, the Alchemist, the last living Playboy. And he's also a network sitcom actor. He's been on a show called Call Me Cat, You Picked Me Over Max with his perfect hair, chisel jaw and searing blue eyes. All Right, So he

also has this new book out called Brown Enough. True Stories about love, violence, the student loan crisis, Hollywood, race, familia, and making it in America. We devoured this book, yeah, And part of what grabbed our attention immediately was that he identifies Tanahassie Coats giving this talk at the Los

Angeles Public Library. Tanahassee had became famous for this article about reparations in twenty fourteen, and then a couple of years later wrote a book that became a bestseller, and it was about the black white story of the horrible shit that has happened to black people in this country. And continue used to happen. That's exactly right. So Chris gets up to the mic and he asked a question,

and this is a question black and white. That's all I hear, black and white as a brown man, a Dominican, Colombian, Afro Latino in this world. Where does that leave me in the conversation? And Tanahassi answers, not in it? Oh staff, you're not in it. He calls it my moment of awakening that made me realize, oh shit, something's up here. That was that was cold blooded. When I read that,

I was like, damn um. And I've interviewed Tahs in the public, you know, in front of a big audience, and he can be prickly about, you know, people saying here, you are the super successful author, why didn't you tell my story? Or why didn't you tell a story that represents me? And he's just like, I mean, I've heard him basically say, you know, write your own book, and that's exactly what Chris does. He writes his own book. He takes this moment as an occasion to say, you

know what, I have power. I have agency over my own voice. And while I didn't always think I did that's his awakening the agency to tell his own story. And we are grateful that he's done it, because as much as I saw that moment, I was like, hmm, and like, is he really kicking Tanahasi Coats in the butt here and like making me think differently about it? And in the end, you know, this is the most

the most powerful. In the end, he really does help us understand how black and white are the pillars that uphold the erasure of brownness. He was saying, listen, in this country, the binary that we're stuck in is between black and white. And he was saying, you got you gotta like redefine that, you gotta change that story. It was like challenge issued. All right, well, let's go to our interview with Chris. Hey, Chris Rivas, thank you. We

are so excited to have you on our podcast. You know this great book that you wrote, Brown Enough, Khalil and I both dug it. We both read the whole thing where I had to talk about it, talk to you about the struggle you're going through of being brown

in the United States. Great, Yeah, let's do it. This is also partly a story that grows out of your own childhood your own socialization within and a Dominican community in Queens, your own parents immigrant story, and trying to make sense of the anti blackness that exists within that community. And let's talk about this incredible place you come from, but is also this very complicated experience, this personal journey

around race itself. It took what thirty four years to discover that where I lived was the actual representation of the world in my opinion. You know, I think we know Queens is one of the most diverse places in the world, and Jackson Heights, where my grandma live, is literally I think we've done the numbers, the most diverse place in the world. What a blessing that I had no idea. I had no idea that in that place was a pool of genius, a pool of brown and

black genius, a pool of like literal beauty. Because they were never on the billboards, they were never on TV, they were never on screens. I didn't see my Dominican father, I didn't see my Colombian mother like I never saw Jackson Heights in that way. I never saw Queens in that way. I saw Beverly Hills in that way. I saw so many things that were not me and my community. I wanted to be like the kids on TV. And

then my parents didn't want me to speak Spanish. I know that I felt embarrassed by it, but I didn't understand why I felt embarrassed that I didn't speak Spanish. I didn't understand why my dad was fighting with people and his family who called him, you know, a good ingle, trying to be like the white people in order to move ahead, in order to do the American dream and everything that came with that. My mom and dad thinking we can buy a house. That's what Americans, that's what

we do. That's what's going to get our kids this next level of life. You know, maybe they'll go to college. All of this, they stopped seeing as much of their family, you know, certain parts of their family. I think the quote in my book is that my dad has after that moment, it's like they don't matter. They're not the ones paying the bills, they're not the ones putting food on your table. They want to call me white because when we use the word white, really, what my dad's

cousin was saying is what are you trying to have power? Now? You're trying to leave us behind and I wanted to be an actress since I was a kid, y'all, ever since I saw Peter Pan on Broadway, you know, like I was just like I was, I was invested in telling stories in that way. And one of them I love the most was James Bond. I mean, that's that's me running around in my tidy whities with all my little nerve guns strapped around me, like, pretending to be

on missions, pretending to be this white British dude. And it was as simple as like, how would my life have been different if I wasn't pretending to be some white dude, but I was pretending to be my pops myself? Yeah, khalil An, you know anyone else? Oh? All right, well that's fascinating about this desire? Is that the guy you're going after, So just unpack him a little bit. You know, it really started. I created this play and it's now a podcast about this Dominican man, James Bam was based on.

You gotta tell us his name because it's an awesome name. Portfido Rubrosa what we call him, got it? I mean, let's just assume our listeners don't know him anymore than you did, and I'll admit the first time I'm hearing about it. So tell us the interesting, the most interesting man in the world's story. Yeah, So Portia is incredible, truly the most interesting man in the world. He was twice the richest man in the world. Wow. He was a diplomat for the dr He lived in Hitler's Germany.

He lived in Fidel's Cuba. He ran guns for the New York City mob into Cuba. He was best friends with Sinatra, Kennedy, the rat Pack, you name it. Was he a playboy? Yes, they say, the greatest living playboy of all time. I mean slept with every major princess, Harris and waitress of the forties and fifties. So this guy, this Dominican man, is this international playboy and super cool. And he befriends Ian Fleming, who writes the James Bond novels which become the movies. And Ian Fleming is like,

this is my guy. Ruby is who I'm going to base this character on. You discover that James Bond is based on this Dominican dude, and you just feel all kinds of pride. Right when I discovered Portfridio Ruby Rossa and that this man was Dominican. I went straight to Pops and I said, Yo, you know about this dude? He said yeah, and I said, Yo, he's epic. Why don't you tell me about him? And he said I didn't think it mattered? And I was like, it doesn't

matter matter. All I wanted in my life were heroes, Like why doesn't it matter? This is an epic person everyone should know about, not just Dominican. And then this makes me wonder, my grandma has property out there. Why don't you visit? Why haven't you been back in thirty years? Like I don't want to talk about it, you know, all of this stuff. I go to my mom, Yo, Mama, how come you never took me to Columbia. Well, we was busy here. We were here trying to give you

this life. Look at your life now. Yeah, we call that striving strive me. That's that's the immigrant driver's story, right, and the things we lose in that striving. They had their heads down, they were focused. Here's a question I have for you, Chris, because I was I've been thinking a lot about you know, I like Khalil. This is the first I'm hearing about him. And I'm also thinking about this moment for you where you discover this person

who you would you literally embody on stage. And there's also seems to me, and I'm asking this rather than saying it, there seems to be something a little tragic about him too, in his own sense of identity and you know, racial identity. Am I right about that? You're one hundred percent right? I mean he in the forties and fifties was whitening his skin and got a nose job, and so then talk about how this is the guy that is also like you're coming out guy, you know,

like this is the weird moment. Do you sort of find affinity to him because he doesn't just capture pride, but you're all of your own confusion as well. Yeah, that's why I call him a warning sign. You know, I saw someone so desperate to be seen by whiteness, so desperate to be seen. He also tried to be an actor in Hollywood. He was going to do a movie with Jaskobor. He was denied by the US Immigration Service, like last minute, they were all said. He was getting

acting classes from Humphrey Bogart. Humphrey Bogar, y'all like that's me calling Daniel de Lewis and being like yode y'all get out. He was so desperate to be accepted by whiteness, not by his dominicanness right, not by where he came from, by the things he wanted to be. He was never satisfied. You repeat some of these mistakes, I mean, you you, oh my gosh, like crazy and the brown man, and me was like, oh, is this why my manager told me to get a nose job? And is this why

I did it? Oh? Is this why my manager told me to cut my hair? Yeah? You do get on a sitcom, like a network sitcom after you get this nose job? Right? I do? Yeah? I mean after I got the nose job, I started booking work left and right. And I have to wonder, am I a better actor? Or is it because I look more? I look nicer, I look more approachable, you know, I look Yeah, I fit the standard, I fit the mold. The more you talk, I mean, the more remarkable it is to really hear

in his life this story of cultural appropriation. It doesn't make any sense that most people, and maybe it's not most people, maybe it's just me and have been in me. But like that, I think certainly in my own immediate circle. Most of us haven't heard of this guy, and so cultural appropriation is as much about the erasure of people who are the actual doers of our society. Right Yeah, the beautifully said, I mean that's that was another big

tipping point for me. It was like, oh, whiteness is trying to take things from me, Christopher Reevas trying to take my nose, my hair, my curls, literally, you know, trying to take queens from me. But also what heroes has it taken from me? What warnings has it taken from me? Who else is out there that I don't know about? I want to know about the other amazing heroes we have brown heroes black Like, who else is out there that the narrative of whiteness controls, either takes

or says, I'll let you have this one. I'll let you learn about this one, you know, which is so powerful in a time right now where we're banning books again, we're banning books in twenty twenty two. Humans should know about this man. Anyone who's been twice the richest person in the world. I feel like that's pretty cool, you know, like that's accomplishing something regardless of how you got there.

And so one of the things about Ruby's life that really stuck out to me, on top of all this sort of epicness and sadness and wildness, was like Homeboy was with a lot of white women, and I got a lie and something clicked to me, you know, like I was dating a white woman. And so I looked at this sort of you know, white woman that I was literally sleeping next to, and I looked at my history of all the women I dated, and I said, I need to do some work around this, and so

we broke up. You know, I didn't exactly say why didn't you know, I didn't be like I'm having a racial awakening, like I gotta go, I can't do. It was just a real life It was a real life It's not you, it's me, which is true. And then I went in search of my desires. I went in search of like, Okay, every movie I've ever seen as a kid shows me some brown or black dude being saved by some white women. Right. Why have I thought that the hand I hold determines my worth more than

my own hand. I've really started figuring out what am I attracted to and why And because I like to do things in a public nature or I don't know if I like to do them. I think it's just how I But you are a professional actor, come like, so yeah, you do like to doing things that the public matter. I think it's just how I meet myself. You know, if I write it down, it's like it's holding me accountable. And so I wrote this piece in The Times that I titled please Don't Hate Me for

dating white women. They called it I broke up with my girlfriend because she was white. It went insane, It got translated into all these different languages, and it really opened the door to me asking bigger questions about how I moved through the world. Like that was a big in for me. Looking at dating and intimacy in that way in relationships was a big into like how am I moving through the world as a body of culture? And what power am I literally giving to to whiteness.

So listen, you know this is a black guy and a white guy show, right, So here we are talking about our interracial friendship. We're best friends. You heard about the show, and we are the embodiment of literally the black white binary that troubles this story that you tell and you enter into this conversation in power by saying like, yo, enough enough already. So do we have this wrong? Are we contributing to the problem, Chris, help help us figure out how to be better. You are not causing or

keeping the problem going. That is the world. It is a binary world. It is a white black world. Before you even came into existence, before you were formed, like, it has been a white black world. It has been his her world. We are just now starting to really crack open the doors. And this goes way beyond race of what it means to embrace the middle space. We're making this space more full right now. So it's literally happening. It's more conversations like this. That's when he needs to

have it. Yeah, you're talking about this middle space. But you write in the book, you know what is brownness the vague but large gap in the middle where things are forgotten, don't exist, don't matter, or don't belong. What is brownness a concept everything between black and white, the global majority and both a large and majority. You're not talking about a small number of people, We're talking about

a huge number. You're in La where over fifty percent of the people are Latino explain that, like, how could such a large group be left out of the conversation. I do think there is more brownness in the world than anything else. Yeah, Yeah, this world has a lot of brown people in it. And I'm not just talking about the Enos. More ethnicities and heritages and cultures and flavors than I can even think off off the top of my head. Yeah, I don't know how we all

get left out. How it happened. I mean, yes, it's systemic, and it happened, and we're just we're here now. And so what I can speak to is maybe hopefully towards the future and be like, all right, so how do we have more inclusive conversations, dialogues, awarenesses. Yeah. I want to stay with this for just a second longer, because I think it's really important, like both to acknowledge that brownness is also about a physical appearance and also a

kind of political project. And I want to share very quickly two examples from my own children. My wife grew up herself a little bit anxious about her blackness, and partly because she spoke in such a way that other black kids teased her. You know, you're trying to be white, and so at some point she kind of defined herself as Neapolitan. And that matters because when we were raising our fine bndess lady, it is kind of crazy, right,

but okay. Nevertheless, so when it was time to be parents our firstborn son, named debraun Stephanie, like, her instinct was to like acknowledge his brownness because he's, you know, he's like Beyonce colored right like that, you know, kind of a little shade darker than beige. And I was like, no,

he's black. And so this little like debate between us manifest later on when we left this like super white college town in Bloomington, Indiana, and we went to visit my mother who lived on the South side of Chicago where I grew up. And we were walking on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago on the Magnificent Mile, and we were surrounded by the sights and sounds of the city. Everybody was there, and our son literally is like, oh

my god, there really are black people. And this is insane, right, Chris, because here he like, there's the dude's lame is Jabron Muhammad, Like if nothing else, he's like some some like black dude in the making right, Like, you know, he can't. He's nothing but brown or black or something. But he's our child, and somehow we had missed the fact that in his own socialization he was seeing his face as brown, but the political stakes of him being black weren't clear

to him yet. And I think that's kind of what you're talking about, Like there are the whole world is made up of brown people more than any other, like physical reality, and yet the stakes of our politics internationally are like choosing white or black. Yeah, we've choosing is a good word. I mean, we could expand all the whole our own choice. Yeah, man, that's what we're here, because we are here to you want us to make

a choice. Let's talk about this. Let's talk about brownness as a different choice, assuming you have the choice to make right. We talk about privilege a lot, and that's one of the great definitions, is the ability to have choice. I don't think whiteness is trying to take our color. They're trying to take our culture. They're trying to take you know, really the things that make us unique and vibrant and flavorful and colorful, you know, like it's all

of these things. And when you say, take what do you mean? Because when I think of assimilation and I think of pretending, and I think of choices like what's going to allow me to survive literally physically, what's going to allow me to thrive possibly move up a social financial ladder, and the dangers that come with pretending an assimilation. I think it's trying to take bodies of culture's culture and make it one way, you know, make it our way, make it the white way, make it the acceptable way.

And so this idea of choice, when do we as bodies of culture wake up to the choices we've been making? You know, that's a whole version of racial awakening is have I been making my own choices? Or have I been brainwashed hypnotized into think I'm making my own choices? But really I'm just trying to survive. All Right, we are here with Chris Revas. We've been talking about brownness. We're gonna take a quick break and we come back. We're going to talk about Los Angeles, where Chris lives.

Now we're going to talk about a local scandal about racism, this tape that was released and how it reflects on the national stage and national politics. Hey, we're back with Chris Revas and some of my best friends are Chris. You know here we are mid term elections. Politics is royaling the country and you live in Los Angeles and you know so in October the scandal happened. This tape was released, and we want to just sort of unpack it a little bit because it seems so relevant to

your work and to this conversation. Three Latino City Council members in Los Angeles are caught on tape, including the council president, Nori Martinez, and also a Latino labor leader. So there are four people talking and this conversation actually happens in twenty twenty one, but the tape is just released and then run by the La Times this year. They're talking all kinds of anti black stuff and both like actual black people, like African Americans, but also people

of darker skin. So yeah, let's let's let's listen to a clip because this is this is it's just a really strong language here and our listeners should here. It's a black and brown on this floe, and the white guy with a little black kid was risky, hate the kids bousing off the There's nothing you can do to control him. They call someone's kid a black kid, a monkey, thank you. I wasn't going to even try it. Uh. They talk about working class immigrants from Wahika who live

in Korea Town as little short, dark people, dirty dirty. Yeah. And then even like the progressive da this guy George cascoone, you know, they sort of dismiss him as somebody he's with the blacks. So yeah, man, I want to throw it back on you, like explain like was it did it surprise you? Why didn't it, you know, tell us about it. My first thought is, you know, thank god, thank god that's tape was released, right, Like, It's not like,

how dare they? It's like, of course they, you know, the Latina Latin, Latin XE, whatever people's preferred, you know, identity pronoun is Latinos have so much racism and colonization and white supremacy. Deep deep, deep, deep, deep, deep deeply braided into that it didn't surprise me because white supremacy is not an American thing. It is a global thing. But Latini that is one of the bigger sufferers of it,

and what does that mean. I'll started my own story before I speak about someone else's Dominicans there's people on the same land, the same island, similar dark skin. Right. My grandma's black, y'all, but she ain't black. God forbid you call her black, but she's black. Right, No, they're black. I'm Dominican, right, that's in my blood. And they're they're being that those Haitians is when you say they are they or anyone black black people are black, I'm Dominican,

you know. And so you have to do hero who is Haitian, has Haitian ancestry, baby powdering his face, you know, identifying with himself with whiteness, killing the black people that he's associated with. So I'm just gonna speak to my own blood. Yeah, man, I hadn't. I hadn't even thought

about your hero and his Haitian background. Yeah. So's he's the president of the Dominican Republic for like thirty one years, from like nineteen thirty to nineteen sixty one, and massacres something like an estimated twelve to thirty thousand Haitians under his rule. It's just it's just unbelievable. So that's your

Dominican side. What about your Colombian side? Colombians have one of the largest slave trades in the world that don't come up a lot, like a lot came to America, a lot went to Colombia, and you know, and so you go to places like even now at Adina, Mexico, Costa Rica. Who's on the hats It's white people. You know, it's white it's white lavinos, but it's white people, like it's white people selling you products. It's white people on the shows. It's white people on the del novelas's white

people on the news. I just did an event for you know, NBC Telemundo and a woman genuinely asked me, how can we how can we show it better for our community? And I said, yo, you know, you don't have one alf for Latino on your staff. And where was their response? You know, I don't. I mean, it's just nothing like I was like I asked it. The guy who hired me was like, you're talking about colorism right like you're you're talking about it deeply, deeply rooted

and lots of Latino cultures. And that's what you feel was sort of at the root of going on in this conversation that was outed between these city councils. Ye, that's what was happening in la and none of them you deserve to sort of be in places of power. But also what they're associated with power is their whiteness or their non dirtiness, you know, or they're closer to whiteness, so they're better. And no, they don't deserve to be

in places of power. But you know, thank God that we know how these people are moving through the world and thinking, this is why you're thankful this came Yeah, that's what you mean. Yeah, that's why I'm thankful this came out so we can have these conversations and hold these people accountable. But I care less about holding them accountable and more about people listening to it and holding themselves accountable, asking do I think this, How have I

participated in this? How am I participating daily in white supremacy and in anti blackness because we all have a hand in it. Yeah, that's one of the things I think.

I mean. To your credit in the book is such a powerful personal story about your own journey, because you don't pull any punches in terms of how you yourself have come to see your own grandmother's scolding you for bringing home a black girlfriend at some point and recognizing the obvious and subtle ways that all around you people were saying, get closer to whiteness, Get closer to whiteness,

that's where power rests. When I heard about this story of a Latino council members and the labor leader in LA and I even brought it up in class, you know, teaching this semester in a class called race and Racism and the United States as a Global Power. I was also hoping my students would appreciate that honorary whiteness is driving our electoral politics. What do you mean, Yeah, honorary whiteness meaning people who are not European descendant, but who

either have the category bestowed upon them. But in this moment of our midterm elections, partly what we're seeing is that this large Latino population, which is the largest at least by census demographic of non white people in America and will be the majority population, and something like a generation is also at war in a sense with itself over whether it's going to choose to follow the path to power laid by white people or it's going to come up with something different. Do I have that right

or do you have a different take on it? Because I'm really interested in these ideological and political divisions within Latino communities. Your parents are in Miami, it's Cuba an American based. I mean, it's like, this is some real stuff we're wrestling with, Chris politically. I mean the words you said that I really love is the war with ourselves. There is some serious, serious awakening and radical honesty and transparency that needs to take place. But inside of the

Latino community. And I want to share something that I had just learned this recently. So for the Brown Enough podcast, we recently interviewed doctor Saudi Garcia. She said something I'd never heard before. She said, if you Latina xe whatever, you know, if we use the word Latin before anything, we are identifying with whiteness. We are all Afro Caribbean or Afro Latino, like we need to identify with the other half before we identify with the whiteness. We are

indigenous beings of the land. And then all of this sort of colonization in Spain and this and this other things happen, you know, that sort of separated us in slavery, right, bringing you know, slaves in and adding all this to the mix. Every time we put in Latin anything, regardless of what you put on the end of that you are identifying with that whiteness in you, adding more to that internal struggle that I don't think people even know

they're fighting. They're trapped inside of you know. I do. I quote it because it's it holds up. We've all seen the matrix, like it's hard to wake up. You mean the movie star in keantle Reaves and Larry Fishburn who went to your high school, right Talented unlimited, right your community. It's hard to wake up, y'all, It's hard to wake up. And Chris, this is amazing. I'm listening to you and thinking about a sort of term monology.

And it also, like in electoral politics, it also cuts the other way, like Khalil asked you about your your parents who moved from Queens to Miami, and you know, a lot of us think sort of like Latino or Latin X, like as a monolith like here at least this group of people. And part of this conversation is we're talking about within it it also being so varied

and so different. And then you're also sort of spinning it another way and saying like and the term is also sort of a kind of forgetting but yeah, I don't know. I mean, can you talk a little bit about like Khalil sort of talking about the differences within it and even like an electoral way like your parents are in this now sort of Cuban Republican stronghold of Latino politics. In Miami, we got Democrats and Republicans, okay, and for a long time Republicans have really been power.

We can call it power, and then we can call everything, you know, democrat everything else. And you take a place like Miami, it's little Cuba. They're the ones in power there. They run a show, and so they are Republican because they are white. They are the white ones. They are the powerful ones. Right, that's why you have you go to Miami. Right now, you'll see to this day converted ice cream trucks, you know, yelling Trump, screaming it down

the street. Right, they're the ones in power. And so Miami's are I mean, don't like, we can't even get started on place like Miami. They're they're so lost in the sauce, you know, like they're they're too far gone. You come to a place like Los Angeles, so many Latinos here don't even realize that they have power. They're not even voting. They don't realize how much space they take up in the conversation. And I've been having this conversation a lot, and this is why I think the

city comes with conversation is actually important. I'm so glad you turn it that way. And I've been thinking about the scandal at the last counsel in exactly those terms and trying to make sense of it. And it was enough of a scandal, like on the local level that even Biden felt like he had to weigh in and demand that they resign. I mean, the President of the United States had to step in, and maybe if the mid terms weren't coming up, he wouldn't have done that.

But I think I'm hearing what you're saying. On you both of you could correct me if I'm wrong about this. But in some ways, the racism that was exposed, which was really ugly, also sort of masked the other thing that was going on that was revealed is that these four powerbrokers didn't really give a fuck about people in the community and especially working class people. I mean, they were talking about holding power and retaining power, and you're

talking about like from the bottom up. They were figuring out ways to negotiate to keep themselves in power. But they were dismissing people from Wahaka as you said, like you know, I don't know what village they're from. They just showed up here, and you know, and they were willing even to seed certain districts to keep a black council member in place so that they could stay in power, and that kind of like coalition building just for itself.

This is what a political machine does. A machine, a political machine reproduces itself and isn't about sort of lifting anybody up that might be an offshoot of it. Is that right? Like like is that what you're saying? Like this is uh, it was exposed that they didn't care about about the people in the community. They are self serving, you know, like that the conversation literally proves their self serving. But I do think that that conversation is happening in

more rooms than a than a record has been. Hell yeah, hell yeah. You write about this in your book, you know, about like actual progressive politics, you know, because I don't know, I mean clear, we could we could hash this out a little bit, like you know, here we have this Democratic Party. It's like, what does it actually stand for. And so I mean, you write in your book about student debt, and you write about, you know, healthcare debt.

You write about these issues that are affecting real people who like can't afford the country in the way it's set up. And Democrats are the worst storytellers in the world right now, in the world. That's huge there. They're horrible story tellers. And Republican Party is an unbelievable storyteller. And something I want to recommend that every human read is by Josse Orga said, oh yeah, The Revolt of the Masses. He wrote this in the twenties Homeboy. He

did some prophesizing. He separated the world into two people, minorities and masses. Minorities had nothing to do with ethnicity or race. Minority was if you are a surgeon, you are a minority. You needed training, like that's legit, Like not everybody can come in and cut out your kidney. He was like, there are things where you need training, and then there are masses. And he said, one day something will come along that will allow the masses to have a microphone and they will start to think they

are a minority. And he said that will be the most dangerous day in the world, because people will start gathering around the things they disagree on more than the things they agree on. There will be so much power around what we don't agree on versus what we agree on. The Republican Party is so good at gathering around disagreements, like they push it, push it, push that agenda so hard, and it galvanizes, it galvanizes more than any democratic event

or party has ever galvanized anything. Right, because they're just like no, no, no, no, that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong. They're trying to take from you. Yeah, I have I have genuine issues with the storytelling of politics right now. The Republican Party is really good at convincing them that they're actually working for the people. Sure, yeah, we are going to take another quick break. We'll be right back.

I want to come back to brownness, where we started this conversation as a metaphor for reimagining how we should

think about what we owe each other. And in a way, Chris, I'm really just I'm taking what I took from your book and putting it back to you, trying to say, like, this is how I understand how you want us to reconsider who's in this conversation, and you use that as a really powerful insight into why me the black guy needs to pay closer attention to you, Chris, your story and the millions of other stories like it, And why Ben the white guy is in a way in a

position to bestow power on the rest of us by virtue of the privileges that come with a whiteness. So what you also tell us in this story of brownness is that the grasp of power grows out of the development of capitalism, and that capitalism has created austerity for everybody.

Austerity for the quality of life you live, Austerity for your access to life saving treatments or just regular checkup at the doctor called healthcare, austerity for the affordability of a fricking education that everyone deserves, austerity, or, as Robert Reich, the former Clinton labor secretary said, inequality for all. That's

what you get with capital. That is the story you tell, And so so round us out with how appropriating brownness for ourselves is also about reclaiming what we owe each other in a society that should no longer be about austerity. I'm going to round you out by using the donut metaphor, and donut economics says, the world right now is an arrow. The arrow must go up. The arrow must go up

by any means necessary in our world. Right, Yes, I talk a lot about capitalism, and capitalism is dangerous, you know, like it has been dangerous ever since. You know. We took land from people and then then made them work on the land we took and then paid them a living that they could only spend that money at our stores, so that we never lost any money. We have an arrow that must go up at any means necessary, by any means necessary means, at the cost of Khalil, Chris

and even Ben by any means necessary means. Like there is a cost, except that cost is often taken from bodies of culture more than other bodies. But the arrow must move up. The stock market must rise. We must right. The people who created the system of power must stay in power, and the arrow must move up. Also it relates to Republicans, right, they've sold that the arrow is shifting down, and I will keep it up. I will

keep the arrow up me right. Donut economics says, we want to stay in the in the flesh of the donut. If you go towards the inside of the donut, you're going to steal from the land and from the people. If you go to the outside of the donut, you're also going to steal from the land and the people. Like what does it look like to stay in the flesh, to think in a more reciprocal way? And so when I think of brownness, I think of the I think you know, we're in the we're in the meat. We're

thinking in a more ciprocal, more expansive way. We're thinking of a less this that a less more and more and more and a less. I get more breath, like I wanted to take a deep breath there. I think we heard it. When we think in a more expansive, generous way, we realize, like I get to take a nap. I don't got to be on this race for more and more and more, this race that was sold to me by whiteness. I don't have to be the arrow.

I get to be here having these conversations, these generous conversations, like I don't keep it, get to meditate, I don't have to keep proving it. I don't have to hustle, hustle, hustle on a race that I was told like I had to work extra hard just to even start. Nah, screw your race. I'm hopping off the wheel like so so. Brownness to me is a more expansive, delicious way of living because it includes more of us, not less of us.

And it's less fighting for the arrow because an arrow skinny hell, and only a couple of people are going to get it. But the donut is fat, and we can all eat from the donut. Fat Donuts. Hey, listen, this is this is gonna be our new show spin off Fat Donuts, the three of us. I love donuts. I would I would eat donuts. Y'all love once a month because metaphorically literally, we're gonna start a new show. We're gonna have a franchise. We're gonna in New York, Chicago.

Fat Donuts gonna be yoga and donuts. Well, listen, Chris, you've taught me a lot. I just own it for myself. Really appreciate same here, Same here, man. How well you've told your own story. The book is really great, and you know, we just look forward to you telling us more stories and teaching us more about a different way to live with each other in the future. Thank you. I'm really I'm really grateful for y'all appreciate. Thank you, Chris,

thank you so much, thank you, thank you, Chris. I'm so glad Khalil that we got to talk about Los Angeles today. You know, Mike Davis, the urban historian, died in October. His City of Courts about about the city definitely shaped my way of thinking about how we think about cities. Yeah, yeah, and about America and writing about it. It was a nineteen eighty story about like hyper surveillance.

He had a chapter called Fortress America. It was really about a kind of dystopic vision of fear and the other and how you know, white elites were just locking it down for their own benefit and privilege. So prescient,

so prescient. And you know, we're talking about Los Angeles today and we're talking about this scandal with the local officials, and it feels like we're also talking about the Democratic Party, right, we are the Democratic Coalition on this recording today, you know, black, brown, and progressive white, and we are the Rainbow coalition at well, and Los Angeles showed this, you know, in this scandal, like how precarious this coalition is, how like how much

in fighting and how we don't really know how to like, you know, hold it together. I really love you coming back to this point because here we are on election day and the future is uncertain and the point of Chris's whole story, his life as he's lived it, his commitment to the arts as a way to express his ideas, and this book that he's written as a kind of call to action for all of us, is to recognize that living in a world that has been defined by color as a way to hoard power for some at

the expense of others is the moment that we're living in. Yeah, yeah, I mean it is a moment of white replacement theory. I mean it is a moment where our political parties cannot separate themselves from this existential threat. And uh, you know, we don't know what the future holds, but we know that every day matters at this moment, and having Chris help us make sense of this is really valuable. And

you're right. So here we have this amazing storyteller on the show, and you know, some story about a deeper mission for equity which is escaping us, which we're not talking about, and you know, and Chris brings that up that came up in this recording in Los Angeles, and you know, it's what we talked about today. I think that no matter what comes in the not too distant future, we have the right people to help us figure it out. And uh, and I know I'm gonna be good because

I got you, man. I got you, man. Do you mean to figure out how to do this podcast? Yeah? We were whatever. All right, I'll see you on the other side, all right, Love you, Yeah, love you man. Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me Khalil Gibrama and my best friend Ben Austin. It's produced by John Asante and Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Jasmine Morris, our engineer is Amanda Kwang, and our executive producer is

mia Lebelle. At Pushkin, Thanks Selita Mullad, Julia Barton, Heather Faine, Carly Migliori, John Schnars, Gretta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg. Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the brilliant Avery R. Young, from his album Pubman. You definitely want to check out his music at his website. Avery R. Young 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. And if you like our show, please give us a five star rating and a review, and listen even if you don't like it, give it a five star rating and a review, and please tell all of your best friends of about it. Thank you. I don't know if I put this in the book, but

but I referenced it a lot. You know Howard is in and like People's History of America, says the biggest trick. Not in the book. Oh, not in the book. Not in the book. Khalil has memorized the book. He knows there's nothing you can you can't get anything past them. Not in the book. Third printing. You almost wrote it on page seventeen, but put it in the third printing.