Does Race Really Exist Or Did We Create It, With Wyclef Jean and Alvin Tillery

but it doesn't define who you are morally. We have so much more in common than you could even imagine. The basic thing you put two kids together, They're gonna want to wake up, They're gonna want to play, They're gonna want to have a good time. As they get older, they're gonna want to fall in love, have opinions. This is every kid and they all have a heart. We are here for another session of Spit in the room.

He has so many possible titles and accolades, but he prefers that you know that he was the kid who took the donkey to school. Facts why cleft gen. Thank you, Thank you so much man for pronouncing my name right through the years, they've I've been like waiting to get awards, and they'd be like, the next award goes to why cleft gene like man, you know, so thank you. My French teacher would be ashamed if I did not get

Jean correct. And he is the director of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University, doctor Al Tillery. How you doing, brothers, Good to see you. Good to see you two. At point of full disclosure, Al was like a resident assistant in my dorm in college. So this is a little bit of a about five years ago. Yeah, I say four or five years ago, something like that, give or take a couple of decades.

So so we're here to continue our conversation about genetics, about our history, about who we are and what science can tell us about that, and why cleft. I'd like to start with you. It is the story that you know in terms of who you are, into your ancestry, your your racial makeup, your genetic makeup, what were you born into? What was the story you've got man? So I would say for me, it started off in Haiti.

I was born in Haiti and a small place called kadet Bukea and uh inside of kwaidet bout is even a smaller village inside of that called Lisa. And in this village, the chances of you getting out is like really rare. My father, of course, similar to other parents, got a chance to come to America before me. My daddy left me when I was one. He came to the United States and the idea of a possible dream on making things better to get his kids over to America.

And my dad he had a gift. He was a minister. He was a man of the cloth. He was a Nazarian minister. But now peep the catch. My grandfather was a voodoo priest, right, so the story definitely gets interesting. So my father basically defied the teachings of my grandfather was like, yo, I'm going to be a minister. And then years later, of course, he brings me to the States.

My dad brings us to the States. But but growing up the Haitian Revolution eighteen o four, the first black general towsnt loverture and this is coming out of Haiti. So the fascinating thing to me, you gotta understand. By the time I got to the United States and I was reading history in school. Something bothered me because when it was going back to black history, I was like, man, I did you know we're talking about Mark Luther King. We're talking about um Harriet Tubman, right, and who who

I idolized. But I'm like, Yo, how come nobody talking about two sons Lovertu're like, we have to explain to these people in this class that you had Haitians that basically were free while you had Black Americans that was slave in America, and the idea of keeping them separated and making sure that these people, um never got together. So my dad always told me, don't forget you are

a descendant of eighteen o four two cent lovature. So this was like how I was brought up with a very fearless attitude, almost like at times I think it was stupid. You know what I'm saying. You'd be like, yo, duld, be like, yo, get off the block. I am not getting off the block. I am. I descended them to, you can shoot if you want me. I will not get shot. You know, I am exactly Haitian black man.

So yeah, that that's what they instilled in me in the very beginning, that you are part of a revolution. So for me, um, I've never understood like the idea of not making it, Like in my brain ten years old, I get to America, I can't speak no English. By the time I'm barely fourteen years old, I'm in the studio with Curtis Blow like that typical immigrant story. And then it was always bigger than music because I was like, look, you know before you rode the the audio and he

was like, yo, how you want to be introduced? And I was like, yo, just why Cleft Young? Because I think to anyone who's listening to it, okay, we can say, oh, why Cleft Young? He wrote My Loves Your Love for Whitney Houston. Why Cleft Young? He's the guy who wrote Shakira Shakira, Hips Don't Lie, breaking Michael Jackson and Elvis record with the biggest song in airplay. But to a kid like my daughter is thirteen, she's like, so what, Like you know what am I going to get out

of this? So I think the idea of saying, well, we started from nothing, like coming from a place where it looks like impossible to make it and then actually making it is more of a bigger story. So for me, like just the idea of growing up and understanding a Haitian revolution. It taught me a lot, Thank you, man Al.

This is a nice segue to some of your work and in politics and race and how do you come to a conversation about genetics and history, especially given the context that Wide Cleft has given us, where he's already laid out some Transatlantic slavery and the different forks in the road that that has led to some of our folks. What's so amazing about White Left story is he's telling an individual story, right, about his family, about how he was able to climb out of a certain socio economic

situation to where he is today. And of course there's some God given talent mixed up in there, and I love the part about him being a preacher's kid, right, But but what I hear in that story is a story that is shaped by structures, by you know, the structure of the world, and there's a racial structure to that world. His narrative about the Haitian Revolution, that's a sort of group based narrative that we tell ourselves and our family and we all have them, right. His is

one that valorizes black freedom and black rebellion. And I bet that that's something that helped him propel forward. Right. Not everyone achieves that kind of success just because they have that story in their background. And what's so interesting about the sort of DNA ancestry work is that it's opening us up to new stories that we weren't aware of, right, And it's opening us up to the possibility of learning

new stories that we can tell ourselves. But you know, I've got to say and challenge him a little bit. You know, as a black American growing up in a in a pro black household, I knew about Toussaint, I knew about Christoph right has an historian of these times. I know that the Gabriel Rebellion in Virginia, those brothers were trying to get to Haiti, right because they had

heard what had happened there. So it's really is a kind of story that transcends boundaries and so, but it is still a story that is shaped by the realities of the slave trade and the racial structures that we all live with. And what we tried to do with the twenty three and Me project was figure out how much of those stories matter for the stories that Americans tell themselves about their identities and their race even when they do the genetic testing. And I would like to

intervene for a second if I may. So you definitely made a strong point and about you you understanding and you knowing the fact of history. But what was going on right at the time was within a school system that we was in, within a public school system, within structure of academics, and what we were getting these stories were not told, and of course in parts of America,

I'm sure that it was. But living in the projects and and and growing up, so the way that a lot of my friends found these stories, which was funny, was through the vendors in the streets. So a lot of this knowledge. I wanted to throw that in there. So you had two parts of education going on. You had that formal and then you had the brothers and the sisters on the street, like yo, this is the

part of it. That So when I'm listening to like nas illmatic, you know, and we talked about different books like you know, Egyptian Book of the Dead or you know the israel Lights that will keep you on the street and debate for you with you for like a hundred million dollars. Yeah, you like it. It's too hot. But and at the same time, though it's like this was it was, it's so important, like within this so when we're talking about like DNA structure and everything, and

where did it come from? So class wise, there was two forms of education. There was one going on in institution for us, and then one going on outside, which was the streets. I totally agree. Where I found out about the Hasty Revolution was from that same informal, uh sort of education West Philadelphia. My parents household the books

that were there. It wasn't in the school system. And that's exactly the point that I'm making is that that absence, that lack of information was intentional, as intentional as the billion dollars that Haiti had to pay in reparations after defeating the French, which is still the reason today that Haiti's poor. Right, it's all part of the same and I shared a lot of the same story. I mean, look,

I have a Nigerian name, We're not Nigerian, right. My mom was like a very woke woman back in the sixties and seventies and wanted to reclaim some part of our own African narrative and story, and so I heard some of these things outside of the classroom, getting quizzed on all the nations of Africa, and I'm like eight years old to make sure I entered this world with a dual set of skills. So I appreciate both of

these perspectives, which aren't even different perspectives. Al you made reference to a project, and I want to go a little deeper on this survey that you've done that examines American's attitude towards race and genetics. Can you describe the study and and tell us some highlights of what you found out, especially things that we might not expect. Sure, well, you know we're living in tense times when it comes

to racial and ethnic issues. All of the surveys that we see in the media that academics like my self conduct show that tensions are on the rise. Americans are deeply concerned about the way our politics is spilling over into our social interactions, our neighborhood interactions. And it's a very tense moment in our in our republic, in our democracy. And so what twenty three and me wanted to know, what Joanna Mountain and an which I you wanted to know, was how much is an idea of the genetic race

concept playing in these rising tensions. And also, how is the work that they're doing at their company affecting the climate? Is it sort of leading to positive self understanding where people can bridge some of these differences, or you know, is it reafying race? Is it? Is it making making it worse? Right? And and and I give Joanna and An a lot of credit for just wanting to know. I mean, they came to me and said, you know,

you know about race relations. How can we design a study where we can see what Americans think about the relationship between genetics and race. So, spoiler force, what's the answer. Are we better? Are we worse with what's going on? We're a hell of a lot better than I thought we were. So so what I expected as the expert on race is that about two thirds of Americans would believe, uh that race and genetics are tightly bound together. We actually found the opposite. Only about a third of Americans

nationally see a strong connection. But you know, if you think about our popular parlance or are are common everyday talk, we hear things like, oh man, he can't jump he's white, or let's think about the news stories. The reason we need affirmative action at places like M. I. T. And Yale or Stanford is because Latino kids, uh, you know, we're black kids. They can't get these test scores. And

this is the Bell curve argument, Charles Murray. And so we expected these types of scientific understandings of race to be widely distributed in the popular consciousness, and they're not. And that's good news because it means it's all social. Is it that people don't think that race is defined by genetics or they don't think that the stereotypes of racial performance and superiority are defined by It's both. It's more the first, but we did test for the second

thing as well. So about a third of Americans and all of the big census demographic categories believe that race is defined by genetics. But there are variations. So white Americans believe in that that third and you know that's white,

they believe in it slightly more strongly than the other groups. Right, But then when you start to ask people questions about realms of human possibility or the way that we behave in the world athletics, cooking, dancezing, all things that you and white you know, our world champions at right, we see sort of a creeping up of black and Latino and Asian responses in the belief that so so Blacks believe that there's a little bit more genetic mix with sports, right,

Latinos believe it with the cooking, or right, and so so the things in which the group has narratives of dominance. That third creeps up a little bit. And I think that there's a scientific, scientific explanation for it, but overall, most people in all these groups don't see the science as part of an explanation. So we've established in this series, and I think anyone who starts to look at genetics,

we'll discover this interesting statistics and whack left. I love your take onto someone who seen so much in the world. We're not to that point genetically the same. There's zero point five percent difference between all humans that genetically explains how we're not quite like each other. And we spent a lot of time focusing on that zero point five percent difference. First of all, what's your reaction to that idea white left? Well, I mean, first, I'm excited. I

just took my DNA test. I'm waiting for the results. My daughter said, I'm one percent white so why should say that I don't know, we gotta I don't know. Um. So, once again, it's very interesting just listening to the overall statistics, Like I'm very surprised, I would say, like traveling probably half of the globe. I think it's something that everyone should know, Like we have so much more in common then you could even imagine. It's like the basic thing.

You put two kids together, They're gonna want to wake up, They're gonna want to play, they're gonna want to have a good time, they're gonna have as they get older, they're gonna want to fall in love, they're gonna have opinions. This is every kid like, and they all have a heart. Within this heart, it's going to be shaped. And I just think that a lot of times we just forget that, right and because I just think like through the idea

of politics and religion at times, these two things. At times it separates the fact that from a cell we become, and so this is important, From a cell we become. And I always go back to that because I mean,

science will prove it. So this cell, like, however you want to look at it any part of the world, it's not like it doesn't appear as some like holy grail, you know what I mean, Like this coming from this side of the region, it's a holy grail cell, you know, coming from So whether we're in the Middle East, we're in Africa, we're in Haiti, and in all parts of the world, we find common ground within the structure of

the youth no matter what. And I always tell people like, this is part of it that you should definitely think of. I'm gonna give you a case studies. So before I was here, I was in uh Georgia right next to Russia, then Turkey, then Switzerland. Right then I come back all the way on this side, and I'm in Alburquerque. I'm in New Mexico, and I'm in the six oh six and I'm chilling in the six h six and man, like yo, man, do you know this is where Billy the Kid hung out at and they used to and

he got killed three hours from here. Right now, they're having a conversation about Billy the Kid, and then it goes beyond Billy the Kid to a conversation about mighty warrior Indians. And within this conversation, now you can see the conversation is happening amongst the youth, right, and then you have Mexicans, you have Americans, you have but within the youth there's no fire arms. It's this ideology of conversation.

So I always think like past the point of science, right, even nostro diamonds right, the idea of saying like, okay, he has the gift, and then who who is Christian in heart right understands like they still have to be a bigger explanation of things. And I think sometimes we cry at death. We cry when when people die, we cry, But the idea of birth, which is the greater miracle, like we don't really pay attention to that. And I think that we're selfish when we're leaving po. You don't

want to see somebody leave you. You love the idea of them being born, but you don't want to see them leave. And I think that when we are born right and from this cell we become. I think the unification as the world moves forward, it's understand that the kids are more unified then we are as adults. It's so important to understand that all you know something that that white left was talking about with the politics and the religion. It reminds me a bit of your study

and the survey. You have this people looking for the scientific explanation of race, but it turns out it's more of a social explanation. And what we cling to is not based in science. It's based in our behavior and how we live together. Does that give you more concern

or more hope? Well, it makes me more hopeful, right, I mean again, starting from my knowledge of how Americans think about race and the ways in which powerful institutions, government, sort of financial, sort of our geared towards structuring our lives. To disrupt the beautiful narrative that white cleft is talking about. White cleft is absolutely right. If you go to a classroom of children below the age of five, they have

no consciousness of what races. They know that you know, my friend Isaac or Johnny skin maybe brown or white, and mind is different, but they have they attached no moral judgments and whatsoever to those differences. So they're taught by adults. It's all around them. They're taught by institutions. Right, and so has someone that's spent their life. I spent my entire life combating sort of racial inequalities and trying

to bring us together. The idea that this is one less front that I have to fight on, that we as a society have to fight on, is incredibly hopeful to me, because, of course, you know, we in the social sciences and sciences, we've we've known for thirty years that it's not genetic, but we were worried about what the man on the street with the woman on the street things, because, as I said, all these inequalities that we live with today, that Haiti lives with today started

with taking narratives about that point five skin color difference that we have that makes us these visible differences and giving them the weight of science. So people are brought from Congo and Benin to Haiti and Georgia and Virginia, where my people are from, because the slavers believe that their brown and black skin would make them better suited to work on plantations in the hot sun. Right. That's a scientific explanation, pseudo scientific, it's a cultural explanation for

cruelty that is freighted with science. Right. And so you know, the idea that we have one less front to disrupt this narrative on is very very hopeful to me. It's good news. This survey is good news. We have a lot more that we need to find out, but this is a fantastic start. So let me test a pseudo

scientific theory on you. As we saw the fast paced, relatively recent, fast paced acceptance of marriage equality in this country, one of the reasons offered was more of us started realizing we have gay and lesbian brothers and sisters within our own families, like they are part of us. We are part of them, and so they're not so distant. It's not a whole other. It's like, oh, that's my cousin.

As we start to do more of these different genetic tests and find out, oh, I gotta got a little congo in me, got a little banine in me, do you see any similar possibility or is that just way too naive and hopeful. No, it's not not even hopeful at all. We we don't know. And I think that's the next enterprise for for the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy in twenty three to take on. We can get at that with experimental research, and we

hope to figure that out. But but there is a worry that you know, for example, the testing can cut both ways. You can have someone saying I am you know, one percent Congolese, and so I should get the same type of consideration in universe see emissions or or employment that someone who is ninety nine nine percent Congolese and lived in you know the projects in New Work or you know Westfielle. You know. So this is coming right,

and so there are dangers there. But but the hope is that it is like the story in the twenty three and Me commercial where the young woman's I think her name is McKinney, she's got this very genomic scan up and she's she says, I'm going to Cultivoir, where my wife is from. By the way, shout out to the Ivorians or and so you know, this this idea that that of her that's Ivorian makes her want to go to Ivory Coast, but she had a lot of

other things that she's not choosing right. And so my concern is that as we get into these tests, people will choose to stress the parts of their genetic makeup that they identify with already from stories or the ones that will give them some sort of advantage, and that something that our society has no idea how to mediate. Yet, So white left, if your daughter is right that you that your one percent white? Will you use that for

financial advantage? No? Actually, white officers, my daughter, I had my right here. You can just let me. It's not gonna work. I mean, I gotta work. I'm black and I'm a rapper. That's actually how I start my class self there today, because I've been using my own scan for fifteen years. And uh, you know, I don't know if you know the smelling, but I'm actually a lynching survivor.

When I when I integrated my bus stop in New Jersey, some high school kids decided that they were going to hang me in a tree and kill me at nine years old. And thank god the bus driver was one time and cut me down and I made it. And that's why I do this work every day. Right, So I always thinking back to what it was like being in that tree. Right. So the first question I asked my class I say, I put up my scan that shows that I'm thirty percent Scottish, right, And I say,

so what does this mean? This cat is Scottish? What does he look like? Well, he probably can pass for white, well, you know, And then I reveal at the end that you know, this is my scan and they're like shocked, right, And I think the testimony to those boys when I was nine years old that hey, I'm thirty Scottish wouldn't

have made any difference. And that's what you know. You know, the institutions that are policing all of these differences, the people that are policing all of these differences, there's no evidence they're going to be swede by the genetic scan, right, but we we just don't know where it's going. Yes, you have so sports, yeah, music right? Food? Right? Does your genetics matter for that? Like for example, of a dude's like, yo, I'm supposed to play golf. You know,

the idea of brothers. It's only like when we see them playing golf, we get so excited because we'd be like, oh, it's only a couple of them. Or women, for example, when we see them doing certain sports we like holy criddle, right, or earlier when you was like white man, cand jump, you know what I'm saying. So I really want to understand, like scientifically genetic wise does display part of the DNA.

So it's really interesting that you you go there, white left, because, as I said in the survey, when you get to food and sports, the sort of Black and Latino and Asian acceptance of a kind of genetic explanation for race creeps up. So let's say it moves from like thirty to on those questions, right, So still the majority of

people don't believe that it's an explanation. But but you know, in our full community, when I'm in my barbershop, you know, cats are talking about you know, you know, why would they pick a white boy in an NBA draft? Or you know, can this guy you know who's Asian? Can he actually be the point guard for the Knicks? Right? Like, I mean, these are the questions that we live with

every day. And the reality is we only see one. Yeah, they'd be going to them places and they'd be like, Okay, out of all of them, it looks like this one he can surpass the norm. Right So that so, well, these are social stories, is what I'm gonna say. So, if so, basketball is the sport that black men in my age, Cohort grew up believing was there's football and basketball, not baseball. You go back fifty years, the sport that my grandfather believed was the sport of black men was baseball.

Jackie Robinson integrating the Major Leagues was the huge monumental achievement. Right, So what changed in that fifty years Neighborhood poverty in Black America gets worse. City government start closing down baseball fields and they replaced them with basketball hoops, and then you get a revolution. My grandfather broke his heart that I didn't want to play any baseball, right, So so that's part of it. But there is a genetic story

whe left. So you you you take people, you steal people from western Central Africa, Nigeria, Congo, and you bring them over to the United States, Haiti, Jamaica, Antigua, and you isolate them genetically. You say you cannot have sex or marry anyone except the people that have that skin color. You're gonna reproduce a taller genetic population, right, Nigeria, Congo, these are all among the tallest countries in the world. So you bring people over, you isolated for five years. Yes,

Black Americans are on average taller than others. My Scottish ancestry is holding me back at five nine. This is where I wish, I wish things are different, right, But so so you do that and then you put basketball hoops in these communities where people are on average taller, it's not surprising that we have an NBA that looks the way it looks. So the stories, the culture, social forces, the genetics all come together, but the indability doesn't track

the genetics. That was so and and I overstand that. So I guess through failed policies through the past, what seventy eight years have shaped a rebirth of genetics? Right? I'm I'm also fascinated by this idea that even what is explained by genetics still needs some social environmental consideration. Right.

I may have certain genes that lead me to be predisposed for certain things, but if it's not activated by my environment, if it's not reinforced by the community, I may never expressed that um and so you know, when the society pushes you in that direction, we may activate those things a little bit more. Why cleft, I want to abruptly change because I just want to get this out. You mentioned this beforehand. What are you working on right now?

So what's interesting about this theory of everything that's going on. I'm gonna give a music theory to the world on genetics, just based on all this conversation, because just listening to the style. So coming inside of the music industry at the age of seventeen years old, right from the gate, they let you know like, okay, if you're a black man, certain forms of music don't even step in the field because of the way these charts are set up. Right,

music genome, yes, so music geno. So what I did was I defied that because I don't I didn't believe in that. So I'll take you through a few albums. So the idea of the fuji's creating a score and going into as a producer. What was I listening to when I was listening to doing the score as a studio engineer. Now, if I was to tell anybody who's listening now, why Cleps Young a hip hop artists, right at the age of nineteen, how was he crafting the score?

And then I would tell you I was listening to Pink Floyd and I was telling you I was listening to the Wall. Now, a lot of people is probably like, holy sh it, we would have never guessed that. But hold on, why would you have not guessed that, because you'd be like, hold up, this kid is from Haiti, he grew up in the projects of Brooklyn. How did he discover Pink Floyd. So once again, right, so we defied the idea of you saying we must listen to

this because we are in that certain environment. Also, I want people that are listening to this, um the youth challenge your environment, right because statistically we are put in these environments through all of these years, like you said, through failed policies, so we're supposed to be taller, were supposed But at the same time, I want them to understand that you are the masters of your own destiny.

So after the score and this is all proven theory, right, So I went on to create an album called The Carnival. The Carnival is in more than five languages. Now if anyone from Sony Music is listening to this from the headman in charge at the time, that was Donnie Einer Tommy Mattola, the score cells over eighteen million right now. Why Cleve Jon has an idea because you know the the label one another eighteen millions. You show up and you're like, yo, this is my new album. It's called

the Carnival. And they put this thing on It has English, French, crayon, Spanish, right, and they're like, what the hell is this? Because once again, it's not supposed to fit within the geo space of saying, well, which chart are we gonna put this on? Because if you sing and gone to November, this sounds like a grassroots record. And then you turn around and then you're doing b GS that sounds like this go then you turn around and you're singing one Thana meta like dude,

like you're all over the place. Why can't I be all over the place? Literally? Yeah? But what? But what what defines you? Why must you just be in one space? How am I able to understand the bigs and at the same time understand sell your cruise? So it's important. Now I feel we're in modern time and I feel like streaming has disrupted that. So what streaming has done now is it has proven my theory of the carnivore. Because now my daughter she listened to what the hell

she want to listen to? Nobody could tell her don't go to a tell us swift to me goes to whatever she does, whatever she wants. So now streaming has allowed the youth and the internet now the revolution as the Internet has allowed each individual to define themselves, like now you can't put no kid in the geo category

and say, oh, you can't listen to this right. So then we had The Eclectic and I called up Kenny Rogers and I was like, yo, Kenny um, I need you to do a drop for my album, The Eclectic, And people go you from Haiti man, what the hell do you know about country music? Then I go into well, people from the Caribbean, this is common, like country music is one of the most natural form of music, and they go white cleft, we don't get it. So here

it is. So back in the days before we even was born, you had the evangelists that were bringing the faith over to the Caribbean. So when that was bringing the idea of the faith to the Caribbean, there were radio stations and there was antennas. So a lot of these antennas were bought by people that love country music because there's a part that people don't understand. Country music is storytelling, but at the same time, it's a lot

of Bible versus the original country music. So the idea would be, okay, we would bring country to the islands. So now when I'm in the projects in Marlboro and it's a Sunday afternoon and my mother's listened to Devil went down to Georgia to find a soda stale, you know, and I'm like, yeah, that's Charlie Daniels. What what I don't get a Cleft. So I just want everyone to to to really understand. So at the end of the day, I don't know what my DNA is. My daughter says,

I'm one percent white, I might be British. I don't know what's going on. But I only say that to say, do not limit yourself to putting yourself in a box like challenge that. So, for example, like the next Wild Cleft album, it's gonna be a country album, right, who is Who's gonna tell me I can't do a country album. I sang at the Johnny Cash tribute and if y'all look at this is gonna trip people out once again,

there's still a stereotype fact the right. So they're like, my man is like, okay, the next artist coming up, why class young? Um, he's about to do a Johnny Cash and dude, the place was startled and I'm not. And when I'm standing up to sing Johnny Cash, what tripped everybody out? I'm not doing a popular Johnny Cash song. I'm doing a song that they wouldn't even know, you know what I'm saying that. So, what I want people to understand is, at the end of the day, do

not limit yourself like to a box. Yes, through policies, we've been structured to say, Okay, you know what, the baseball fields are going down, we're putting up basketball courts. But I really want as we move forward, I really want the kids to understand that you could defy that, you can still rise up beyond that and say this is what I'm gonna want my future to be, you know, clean with the Johnny Cash deep cut. You already gone, baby, already. There's a consistent theme that comes up in these do

that at conversations and and almost any scientific conversation. You see science and this basis as a limit, as a prescription, or as a possible foundation, as a partial description, and grow from there. Al what what have you seen in your work, maybe in the survey results that might be consistent with this advice that wide Cleft is offering young people. Well, I think it's fantastic advice. And I think no matter what your positionality is in this society, adopting that why

Cleft Sean uh you know, Haitian revolution attitude. We're all eighteen o four, it's the way to go for it. There there, there, there's a real like sort of you know, motivational book in there right at the sort of eighteen o four attitude, right. But at the same time, what I would like to see is a society that turns on the possibility that the structures that put these divisions

in place begin to work to unravel them. If everyone has that a ten o four mentality, it's a glide path to a fully realized democracy where you're not geo coded into basketball players or soccer players, country music listeners or hip hop listeners. Right, And that's what we really have the work to do. And that what I think is great about the twenty three and Me project is that they're trying to leverage their power in this space

to push in that direction. And and my life's work is to have a world where it looks like Star Trek. You know, Star Trek. Everyone has got these different sort of skin colors, and you're from these different planets and everybody notices it, but it doesn't define who you are morally, And in that system, you're shaped much more by take easts and interest in the hybridity that is a fundamental part of the kind of cultural experience that Wycleft is

talking about, and we're a very long way away from that. Right, we didn't even start on this path until about ninety, about six years before I was born. Right, we don't even get laws to say that you can live wherever you want until right, And so what we've done is we've passed the laws and then we've forgotten about it, and people are still living mostly isolated, racially geo coded life. We're still living in the world of the charts, and

we're still living in the world of the charts. And so it's going to take incredible cultural capital, incredible investment on the part of massive institutions and governments to move us in a direction where everyone has the kind of

space to flow in any way they want. Well, I feel very fortunate that we have cultural capitalists like white Cliffs Gan in the room, that we have powerful institutions like Northwestern University in the room, and that we can keep having conversations like these two break down those charts, to think outside of the genetic box, but also understanding the value of those and to get to a more diverse and democratic future. Thank you both so much for being here. Thank you, and I just have to say

I'm so proud of you man. See where you've come from, and uh, I remember many days on the stoop with you in front of Claverley Hall, and I'm just incredibly proud of you. Thanks Dad. I want to dig in more on today's topics and guests. Check our show notes and if you enjoyed the episode, share it with a friend all your friends and be sure to leave a review. If you want to hear more surprising stories about how we're all related, search and follow Spit on I Heart

Radio or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Spit is an I Heart Radio podcast with twenty three and me. I'm barraitune Day Thurston. You can find out more about me at barratune Day dot com or sign up from a text message. It's just hit me up at two O two nine O two seven nine four nine. Put hashtag Spit podcast in your message. I know where you came from.