I'm Tamika D.
Mallory and the ship Boy my Son in general.
We are your host of t M.
I Tamika and my Son's Information, Truth, Motivation and Inspiration, New Energy.
What's up, my Son Lennon, Greetings, Tamika D. Mallory. How are you feeling today?
I'm doing okay, okay.
Until freedom down today a little until.
On time, summertime.
I love. It's way too hot outside.
You say that every week every week.
I went outside and I've seen the devil licking somebody's face out of it.
But it's better than it was last week. A little bit, but it's better.
Yeah, the heat is still on hell man.
I mean that's just a reality. I think. You know, when you hear.
Certain groups of peace people trying to deny that climate change is real, I mean, it's actually playing out before our eyes like we see it, so I can tell me that's not real.
AnyWho.
You know, I'm really about to like change my profession. I'm telling you because I would like to focus on quality control.
That's what I want to focus on. That's the thing I want to focus on.
I realized that I that in my third life because I have one that is an organizer for social justice. I have another one that is an event planner, and then I have a third one that should be in customer service and quality control. I had an experience during my family reunion where you know, I checked into an Airbnb and when I got there, beautiful space in a town that does not have much my family's town in Moreauville, Alabama.
You know, it's there's a there's two different sides to it with like like with many areas that's heavily populated with black boats. You got downtown some kind of like some would say uptown, you know, and there's some white money, and there of course are black affluent people there as well.
But it is a very very very country town, small town. And so when you think of and there were there used to be businesses that were like amazing, right, like you know, factories and lots of businesses, and all of that was purchased by big business and then they shut production down and so for years and year in years, those jobs have not returned. So there is the tale of two cities. Again.
There are people who are retired, people who moved there for various reasons to teach college to you know, maybe it's just they found a good town that they like to spend the rest of their lives. You have that, and then you have people who are absolutely struggling and really suffering with a lot of desperation. So when you see beautiful airbnbs popping up because people are starting to
invest in this area again, it's really cool. Shout out to my cousin OLA's Garden, Kim Abney, who has opened up a number of rentals and airbnb properties and they are phenomenal beautiful. You walk in the details is just like his mama, my auntie Ola May Abney taught him this other airbnb very nice, walked in, loved beautiful. But as soon as my and my brother Milton is with me, so it's not just me because I know y'all gonna say, oh, she always got something. Soon as we walk into the bedroom,
he's helping me put my suitcases up. You clearly see a stain on the bed. Then he pulls the cover back and there's another stain. Now, these two stains are more than likely clean. They're more than likely clean, right, And in fact, I'm just gonna make this my thought of the day today because it's so it's just these two stains are there. More than likely it's clean and it's wear and tear. It looks like an old oil stain or something. But the bed looks clean. It's just
it has these two stains on it. So immediately I reach out to the management and say there's stains in the bed, and their response and by the way, I don't hear anything back.
Is going on three hours before.
I had to send an email going through all of it to get the attention of the individual. And eventually she calls me back and she's like, yeah, well, but it's definitely clean. I understand what you're saying, and I believe that it's clean. But I should not have to sleep in a bed that has stains on it, regardless of whether it is clean or not. Whether it's clean or not is not the point here. The point is there should not be stains in the bed.
Now.
Let me just say from the onset that it was corrected. But it was corrected after having to go back and forth with this woman several times, and then eventually she said to me, oh, and she said, well, this one is busy, which is the lady who is the cleaning person?
She herself, This woman was with her.
Family, and she's telling me all of these things and continuing to say and then texting me that I know for a fact.
Those sheets were washed, that bed was clean, those it's clean. Still not did it.
She didn't get what was going on.
She did not understand that when you check into a hotel, you check into a rental property, you don't want to see any type of stain.
And by the way, that is called wear and tears. So what you do when it.
Has a stain on it, it's time to throw it out and get new ones. This happens all the time when you are running. Well, no one else has ever complained. Meanwhile, my brother he's like you, he ain't trying to have you.
Know, Milton, it is not that serious. It's fine. When he looked at it, he was like, nah, this is a stain.
Like and you know, I'm the one and all of the guys around me would be like, oh boy, here she go to glass the four, this, that, that and the third. But even he was like, no, no, that's a stain.
It's two stains, and it's one under the comforter. In my thought of the day today is that, of course, as a black woman, you know I want to I should be able to say and defend my position as black women, and I would imagine black people we are constantly shrinking ourselves so that we don't upset, annoy, agitate others, or bring further harm to ourselves. So all of the hotels in this particular area, it's places that I personally would do.
I don't like to stay. This is my mother's hometown.
I love it there, love it there, grew up there, can't wait to go back. But I don't like staying in the hotels. So the idea that there are Airbnb properties that are very nice popping up is really really good. And I don't want to put myself in a situation where I have a bad rating or you know that, where these people can write whatever they want. I've already been down the road with Airbnb where somebody blatantly lied.
The management company blatantly lied. Airbnb knew it from reading all of the messages back and forth between us, but still told me that they cannot delete the comments on the review that was left for me.
Because it still is up to the will of.
The property manager, even though they read screenshots and saw
that it was a lie and it's very basic. They tried to say that I had an additional person in the house above the people that were supposed to be there, but then it was proven that that was the driver who dropped off our bags and was only in the house for maybe fifteen minutes, and it was proven in the messages, but they still left on my comment thing, you know, my review and Airbnb that I had an additional person in the house and so I violated the rules right and Airbnb could not and would not do
anything about it.
So therefore, here I.
Am dealing with this sheet situation. And instead of me doing what I know how to do, which is to write and be very clear about why this is problematic and to make my point and also to demand of this woman to stop telling me like I'm a child, over and over again that the sheets are clean, I am unable to do that because I need to try to protect my name, my brand, myself physically. Who knows like this is a white woman in a country town somewhere.
I don't know what the hell she might do. I have no idea I know her husband is, I don't know how children are. So I don't want to get into a back and forth with this woman. So ultimately, if you read my messages, I'm saying I'm my apologies, I'm sorry, I'm the freaking customer, and I'm apologizing to the lady and trying to be as nice as possible to try to de escalate or whatever you want to call it, diffuse any possibility that this situation was somehow
backfire on me. And I just feel like that is the most uncomfortable for the rest of my trip. It was in the back of my mind that this woman had been extremely rude to me. I mean, it goes on and on, and we don't have the time to talk about it today, but it was nothing that I could really do because I wanted to be in a comfortable place where I could stay for my family reunion and also not interrupt other people for feeling like they
needed to protect me. So, you know, that's a that's a it's a very uncomfortable place that we as black people are constantly trying to shrink ourselves so that we don't upset other people even when they're doing us wrong.
That's that's really a real thing. I go through it all the time, you know. I try not to be as aggressive when I'm communicating with certain people, understanding that I speak with the level of passion that I've been told is aggressive and scared people. You know, a lot of times, in certain situations where I don't even think I'm wrong, I apologize because, like you said, you fear
the backlash of what can come out the situation. You know, we constantly have to do that, you know, and knowing how picky you are, and it's nothing wrong with being picky when you're paying your money for something. You know what I'm saying, and that's customer service. Like you know, you know, I play with you a lot and go, oh gods, it's gonna go. But the reality situation is, it's not like you're wrong. You don't want dirty civil where you don't want dirty cheeks, you don't want dirty things.
You don't want to overlook that as a state on you, and you don't really have to, because when you provide a service, especially with people have to lay and their heads and live living for us, it should be immaculate.
Actually, it should be an immaculate space to.
Where the sheets where people have to lay their body or they don't know if this is a fucking comstain or whatever stain that comes from somebody else, like nobody should have to guess what kind of stain is on the sheet in the blanket, you know what I'm saying. And you and if you don't see that you're willing to move past it, then you you shouldn't have to. And when you bring it to someone who is providing the services to you, when you bring it to their attention,
it shouldn't be any pushback. It should just be like, oh my, I apologize, you know, even though they're clean, I understand, I apologize.
I'm gonna make sure I get you guys some fresh sheets.
And that's it. It really shouldn't be much more than that. But that's just not where we are, you know. And unfortunately we live in a time where, you know, especially as black people that we like you said, we have to try not to say as much and try to cause it's less problems because we always gonna be seen.
And unless unless it's a videotape or something.
Just like you said, you you had the whole screenshots of text messages would showed that somebody lying on you and you still had to deal with the backladgh. So it's just like a lot of times you want it, it's even worth it. You know, you got to weigh your options. Do I even standing up for myself or do I be quiet? Because I know standing up for myself can give me ostracized and you know, in ridiculed.
So it's a lot man.
And meanwhile, this white woman got to walk away from the situation. And by the way, the way Airbnb works for people who don't know, you make a review first and then she makes a review after, so they and.
They don't get to see it until after they make their review.
But nonetheless, you make a review first and then they make a review.
So for me, I and you know, I'm just, I'm just like.
Systems and customer service and quality control needs a new focus. It really does, because people are spending their money services that they don't like.
Products are coming.
Listen the way in which people the clothes are being made. Everything is just being thrown together and people are basically being forced to to I don't know what you call it. I got some moose from my hair and the top of the moose bottle was cracked open, and they were trying to tell me, oh, there's no way.
To exchange it.
And this this and that I had to go all the way to the corporate office to get five dollars. But if you mailed me something and it's broken, you're supposed to replace it. Like, how dare you even think you can have a policy that says that you don't have to. So this is something that for me is
a real passion. I have no idea the process of getting you know, scooting myself from one world to the net, but I really I wish that and when I go and come back that I would be in quality controlled and customer service.
Well, listen, man, I know if you and customer service, the customer service is going to be immaculate because what you demand from customer service, it's pretty much what we all shit.
You know.
Like I said, I joke about it a lot. But should we should have Queen Silp? Should have people, you know what I'm saying. We should have people who want to be actually like their job, Like their attitude shouldn't be like you bother them because you're asking them to do things to make you comfortable as a customer.
You know, yeah, we shouldn't thank you very much. So do we have a music spot?
Like, listen, I don't want us to just be giving the music spotlight to people that don't deserve it.
So I don't have a music spotlight, but I do want to highlight a clothing brand that has beautiful clothing and it is my guy Smith is Smith, and it's called Actively Black Actively Black.
This is a shirt. Look see this.
Let me say that a more confident Okay, yeah, this is this is one of the church black and cocky.
Yeah, Actively black man. So they sent me a bunch of stuff. Shout out to him, Listen to me. It is quality sportswear, quality sports. Where they sent you a whole box of stuff.
I'm getting ready to start going through it for my travels.
Shout out to Landy Smith. Shout out to Actively Black. If you do not have some of their clothing, then you need to go on actively black dot com.
Right now.
They partner with Alan Everson. I've seen Obama and some of their clothing. You know they're doing. They're doing amazing things. It's one of my premium brands, top brands. He sent me a box of stuff that I'm gonna work out it and some it's fly stuff.
It is work.
It ain't just worker, it's quality sports.
Were man it's real quality, high quality sports with Wow. If you look at I've had a free shorts from last year that I got that's still in tip top shape, Like I work out in them all the time.
My favorite work out you.
That's what I was gonna say that well, a little different from you. They also sent me a box, and I'm so proud of Actively Black. First of all, I remember when you first started promoting them, a lot of people didn't know who they were, and this was like at the very beginning of folks saying we need to buy black, and you were immediately on Actively Black. So shout out to you for that, especially after the Nike situation when we decided to not wear night y'all don't even miss Nike anymore.
Like actually I told you, I.
Don't even see it anymore as something like I don't feel I don't I just don't.
Feel attached to it. So that's that.
But but they sent me things and the quality, like you said, is so good. It's so it's such a good brand. And so for people who are like you know, I want to support some black owned business, but I want myself to be because sometimes, let's be clear, try to support our own and the stuff don't be that good quality, like I'm just saying, And it's not just our own. Sometimes we support other brands and the equality
is not there, you know what I'm saying. And then anyway, it's not their customer service quality I got.
I could go on.
But I won't.
Customer service Actively Black they definitely have good customer service and they have a heart for the community and the people, and a lot of folks are starting to get into it. You know, people have been supporting them, So keep supporting Actively Black.
Because I am actively Black, all right.
Family, So today you know, we always have our friends on, but today we got our little sister, and I am really really excited because this is a young woman who is an example of what we tell our young people they need to do. She's not waiting for anybody to give her position. She's not waiting to be lifted and we need to pass the torch and no, no, she is blazing her own trails and carrying the torch all at the same time. And we're just I don't know
my song, what's the word. It's not just excited, it's elated. It's elated crowd to have this young woman as our sister, our colleague, and the struggle and just so many things. And I can actually cry because it's just that deep knowing, you know, watching all of us grow over time, but especially watching Bria Baker, our young sister, go from on the streets, on the ground to putting it in a book and now she has such an amazing project. Let me tell you a little bit about Bria Bacon. Now,
y'all know I don't read bios on this show. It's very limited, but in this situation, we want to make sure that our sister is properly introduced.
To all of you.
So, Bria Baker is a freedom fighter and writer and a national and global strategist. Come on, now, tell them exactly who you are. She has contributed to dozens of electoral and advocacy campaigns, including the twenty seventeen Women's March on Washington, the twenty eighteen student walkouts against gun violence, and Jamani Williams successful bid for New York City Public Advocate. Ria has a BA in political science from Yale University, where she served as president of Yale's NAACP chapter and
co director of the AIDS Walk New Haven, Okay. Now, Ria has a book. It is called Rooted, the American Legacy of land theft and the modern Movement for Black land Ownership. It delves into one of the nation's first and stealing and hoarding the land, and follows Ria and her family on a personal journey to preserve her ancestors land in North Carolina.
Ria, thank you so much for joining us on Tami.
Sah no is going to make me cry because they are being too kind, like little sister. But like I was just following around, happy to learn at y'all's feed and Carmen and Linda and just learn so much from the two of y'all though of course through gathering and other spaces. But it is just so special to get to talk to y'all about a book after having been the little intern volunteer assistant who was taking notes all those years ago.
Yeah.
Well, I just want to say, first of all, I'm very proud of you, and this book is just pretty much a testament of who you are. You know, like you always found things that needed to be spoken on, Like even when I go to your social media, you speak on the things that we need to say talk about, but nobody actually highlights.
And you have a knack for that.
You know in this book right here just pretty much speaks to who you are, Like, what made you say that I want to write this book and about what you wrote about.
Thank you for saying that.
Yeah, I mean, you know, right before we got on this call, you and I Mice were talking about grief really quickly, and grief is definitely what pushed me to write the book and family and love for what it means to be black and happy. And I think I had gotten to a place where I was in the work because I was angry, and then my grandfather passed away in twenty nineteen.
And it kind of made me stop.
It was right after Jimani was elected, and so it was really just like stilled me and forced me to really think about what legacy meant for my family, not just for what I was doing for a theoretical community, but what am I doing for the black people who I'm related to? What's our story? What's the legacy that I need to continue on for my grandfather now that he's not here. And the last words that he said, or some of the last words he said in his
hospital bed was don't sell the land. So it felt so clear learn more about why he cares so much about this land, make sure that the family stays together, because grief can be a time when we.
Are ununited.
And I just wanted to make sure that we understood that we have to be really locked in and laser focused on what he saw is important. And the more research I did, the more it was like, well, now I'm not just doing it for him, I'm doing it for me.
I'm doing it for my little one.
I just I want more of us to have access to land as a vehicle for wealth, but also as just a place where we can be ourselves. And it's we don't you know, We're not under someone else's thumb or being policed.
We're in our own space.
So you talked about America's first sin just stealing land, which makes it not hard for us to understand why they are so supportive of Israel as it steals land, the land of the Palestinian people. Why don't you talk a little bit about that, like in your research. I mean, we know it theoretically.
We talk about.
The native people to this land. We talk about how their land was stolen, it was encroached upon, how they never have been properly acknowledged for the fact that they were already here and then we came to this country. We were, I always say, trafficked to America, and we
built the nation on our backs. And I would love to hear you talk about your research because I can imagine, again from one perspective, we all know it, but when you started to do that research, you probably found some pretty egregious stuff.
Oh yeah, definitely, definitely, because I mean the things that we know about are the Tulsa massacres, which are horrible, horrific, right, but we think that they were few and far between. And the Tulsa massacre happened inineteen twenty one. Two years before that was the Red Summer of nineteen nineteen, but even that is like a misnomer because it was all year, just a massacre every other day across the country. And then before then was the nineteen oh six Atlanta massacre,
and then before then was the Wilmington massacre. So number one, seeing the scale of how often black people were being forced out of the South. So, as you said, like the word traffic, I think it's important that we use this deeper language because yeah, we were trafficked here and
then we weren't just like moving and migrating north. We were running for our lives and being forced out of an expulsed out of, very similar to things that are happening in Palestine and the Congo and other similar places.
And it actually made me, It made me feel even stronger in my result that there has to be a free Palestine, because if I know what happened to my family in North Carolina, what happened to a lot of black families across Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, et cetera, I know intimately what a Palestinian family who is watching their village be turned into an Israeli settlement, seeing olive groves be transformed into like tourism spots for settlers, Like it's
you watch your dreams literally get ripped from under you. In the case of Palaestinians, you're watching bulldozers literally crush
your homes. In the cases of the black people, they're burning all black towns, lynching people, forcing you north, and from a distance, you have to watch a new thing get built on what was yours, like Lake Lanier, right, like that was a black town that they said we're going to put a lake over this and like you have to watch now, like you know, generations later, decades later, you have to watch white people get on jet skis
on a lake where there are cemeteries under there. There were churches, there were schools, there were homes, And that happens in a lot of places. And it's not always the overt violence like the massacres. Sometimes it's the violence of eminent domain. It could be a lot of different things, but a lot of policy and outright violence has been you use to take people like black people's life, savings, dreams,
everything we've worked towards. So when people say things like, well, we got to work together, like insert community, and it's like we have always worked together.
It's just right at the time that we're succeeding.
Jealousy makes white supremacy say, ooh that needs to be mine. I deserve it more than you, and that's what needs to be stopped.
M that's amazing.
So give us a little bit of your personal, you know situation when you when your your grandfather said, don't sell the land. So what was the process like for that, and was there people trying to take the land from you, Like, what was the process that happened with them.
Yeah, well, thankfully, when my grandfather passed away, my grandmother was still living, so it was still in her hands. And then after that it was put into a trust and a land trust for our family to kind of hold on to. And that's important for us to know, is that you need more than just a standard will or more than just well I want it to be this person, like you really got to get the paperwork
to really shore up these assets. Because black people, we are resilient, we are innovative, so we can make some money, but are we going to be able to pass on in inheritance that the next generation can still get? So I feel grateful that it is still in our family since he's passed away, But the larger story of our family absolutely has a lot of theft in it. So our family still has about one hundred acres in North Carolina,
which is huge to me. But when I was doing the research, we used to have a six hundred acre farm in like the thirties, and it's like, so we owned more and had more as a family, Like we had more equity as a family almost one hundred years ago than we do now in a post racial America.
And that's the story of a lot of black families.
And again, like families that were starting over in Chicago, Detroit, New York, Oakland, Newark, they weren't selling their land and starting over with the profits they you were running and you didn't get to bring it with you. So there's a lot of wealth that has been left behind in the South or stolen and kept in the South, but out of black people's hands. But I'm still grateful that we do have a little bit or not. So a
little bit one hundred acres is something beautiful. We have a substantive family plot still, which is really really beautiful. But I know that in two generations it went from six hundred to one hundred. So I'm trying to make sure that it only grows from here and doesn't continue to get smaller and smaller and smaller.
So what would you say is the most important thing that you have learned on this journey?
I mean, I always knew this, but it's important to realize how hard it is for black people to hold on to our stuff, so that we understand and appreciate what it means to keep it. And like there's a lot of critique of oh, well, you know, grandma didn' keep the brownstone, but who was helping her with the property taxes? Who was being a part of and making sure that she knew that you were interested in keeping
that going. And we can't let our elders re hire with assets that feel like burdens to them but could
be equalizers for us. We have to have deeper intergenerational conversations with our elders, know their stories, know what they have, because a lot of us are like, oh, yeah, my family used to kind of have some land, and we don't even know the full story of it, whether anyone in the family is still tied to it, and so we kind of lose sight of acres that we do have or homes that we do have, just because it
kind of goes to disrepair. So I think the biggest thing is just how much how important it is to talk about these things, especially as black people, and then for white people to do the same, Like there are white people who inherit things and they never critique where it came from, why they are able to have certain
leisure and ease that other people don't. And even if you don't think of yourself as someone who's super, super wealthy if you inherited part of a business, a small family, home, stocks, whatever, that's something that a lot of black families have not and not because we don't deserve it or haven't worked for it, but because it's been taken from us.
Yes, well, you know what, just listening to what you're saying.
When I think of black people that I know, older black people, it was always like a big secret.
Everything they had was a secret. Don't talk about it.
You don't tell people how much it costs or how it came into ownership of it. It's like, that's nobody else's business. Hide the papers, you know, put it in the in the floor in the house. But that's not helpful to a second generation or a third generation that is attempting to learn or that would like to mar so that they could keep the legacy going. And I think I hear you saying when you say talk about it, we're not saying just sit around and be like, yeah,
buy home, holds up. We're saying, give the details of all of what has taken place, and then and then also be willing to show the family where things currently stand.
Exactly that, exactly that, And like you said, it's a I'm a response to want to not get too wide with it, knowing that if too many people know, they.
Want what's yours.
I mean, that was even a conversation I have with my aunt I'm thinking I'm being the family activist.
I'm like, Auntie, I don't like that you have.
Guns, you know, gun violence and all this stuff, And she's like, Briya, we live in North Carolina. We are a black family with a lot of acres that a lot of people want. We have to protect ourselves and what is ours. And it gave me a different understanding and nuance that I still fight for gun safety and gun regulation and gun protection and we can't leave black families defenseless, and we can't force black families to put
themselves out in the open. But at the same time, there's a difference between telling strangers on the internet your business and telling the family.
And what used to happen when I was young.
Is at the family reunion, the elders would tell the story of the family. There was a shirt that had a family tree on the back and we would just record this oral history and people knew what it was.
And I think that that is a missing recipe that we got to get back to because other people don't need to know, but we do need to have intra conversations so that younger generations value it and don't settle for a shoe box apartment that they rent forever when they know that there's land that is their birthright, when a home is their birth right, when kids running free in a backyard is their birthright too.
So there's been a lot of talk about deed death right.
We had a black woman on here, actually it was Queen of four and she was telling us a parent I think she said it was her grandmother's home or something that they literally she was still fighting for a home that she grew up in and they just pretty much told her that she didn't. So do you know anything about that especially? And we were talking also talking about the black farmers with what they've been dealing with with their lane. So give us a little insight that you have on those things.
Yeah, that's a really that's a really important part too, the food justice side of it, because isn't it interesting that we go from black people are the forced laborers, we're forced to work this land, so then just a generation and a half later, we are in food apartheid in communities where there are only bodegas and delis and fast food, and we can't access the food that our
ancestors were forced to grow. And that's also something that I say, is like we were forced to work the land, and when they couldn't profit off of our free labor, it was like, Okay, well now we want y'all to have nothing to do with it. And so now we're so detached from it. Where organic food and clean air and clean water used to be a birthright for us
and normal for us. My grandmother used to say that, like we used to grow our own cucumbers, grow our own fruit, have our own pigs and chickens, and now we're forced into these Flint and Newark sort of communities where having a healthy lifestyle is really not even up to you. It's up to the infrastructure you and whether the powers that be will let you have clean air, clean food, clean water.
You know.
And so to your point of those sorts of like attacks and the deed theft and how that affects farmers, I mean, deep theft in general is a big thing. There's a documentary called Silver Dollar Road that kind of digs into this and a black family that had grown up on this land their whole life were told that they were trespassing on land that they'd lived on their whole lives. They were like middle aged at this point. We're told they were trespassing in that if they didn't leave,
they would go to jail. They didn't leave, and they actually incarcerated these like I think sixty year old black men who had lived on this land their whole life. That happens all the time. Sometimes it's they they're just hoping you can't prove that you have the deed, and if a paper gets lost or whatever and you can't prove it, then they've shuffled some paperwork around and now they can't prove it, and now you're just lost in paperwork. And if your lawyer can't handle being tied up with
their lawyer, then you just can't afford the fight. Other Times it's overt like in the Willington massacre, they literally were burning deeds, so after the massacre was over, survivors wouldn't be able to prove whether they owned anything in the community.
That also happened in Tulsa, So.
There's a lot of shady, shifty, manipulative stuff, and that's definitely something to be vigilant of. This idea that you know it's easy to build a black wall street is look, you can build it, but to protect it, to maintain it, to keep it going is the hard part, because white supremacy will do this all the time. I mean, the move bombing in Philly was way more recent than some of these massacres I'm talking about, and that was like what the seventies, the mid seventies.
So this government has.
Shown that it will turn the other way or be actively participating in dispossessing us. And I think that is the challenging part, is how to keep people optimistic and motivated to keep fighting for it.
But I think we just have to because it is ours. We deserve it. I mean, our ancestor.
If they didn't fight, we wouldn't be here having a conversation like we are. And I just feel so lucky to have learned from people like you two, from people like mister B, from people who just have been relentless about speaking up about things that feel so like the odds feel so sacked against us, but still we keep
sounding the alarmed. So we just got to keep fighting and keep trying new things, but self protection is definitely part of it, because they will try and convince us we don't own what we own.
Well, here's the last question that I have for you, and I just want to thank you for giving us your time and your brilliance, because you know what you this. My son made a very good point at the top of this interview, and that is that you are always on a different vibe, like you're educating people. Your content
is different from what everybody else is talking about. So while folks running around up and down about Trump this and Trump that, you'll be on your page talking about land ownership, of talking about women's rights, young people, you know, and young people's power and so on and so forth. So I appreciate the fact that you stay. You are a person who dances to your own tumb and it's not off beat. It's always I was watching my family reunion the line dances, as you know, that's a big deal.
Everybody does a great line dance. They got about twenty five of Fama and I have some cousins that are so skilled at the line dances that they go in the opposite direction in the midst of the crowds are going one way and they're going in the opposite direction. But it's never off key. It's always key and it stands out. And I think that's you know, I think of you that way. But I want you and I want you to speak to this really quickly. There are
people who are advocates for land ownerships. They are advocates for economic development and economic sustainability in our community.
Is there.
They are advocates for us being smarter about investments and savings and all of that, and some of these saying people believe that the political process is not that important, that voting is not important. All of these candidates ain't no good, and therefore I'm not voting for anybody. I'm just gonna focus on getting money.
And in a time where we see the Tulsa massacre.
Proceedings being thrown out of the highest court, at a time when we see the Fearless Fund under attack, which is an effort to help fund black women's businesses by black women, at a time when we see an effort, and not just an f a very successful campaign to dismantle DEI practices within corporate institutions, educational institutions, government institutions. What do you say you're a younger person too, you have your finger on the pulse of what is happening
with young people. Do you think that at this point voting is pass and we should just be focusing on getting money or do you see value in voting?
I definitely see value in both.
I'm not someone who thinks any one strategy can work by itself, because again, you can be focused on getting money, and if you're not building up protections and safety nets, then.
That can just get snatched from you.
And if you only focus on voting, which some people do, and present that as like the thing that's going to save democracy, when it doesn't save democracy, then you disappoint people because it's like you just told me this was the most consequential thing I could do in my lifetime. I did it, and it doesn't feel consequential if things feel the same. So I think think it's both in I think those who are pushing people to vote have to stop pretending as though it's going to be this
like one hundred and eighty degrees change. A lot of things will be the same, but there's also a lot we can change. Voting is not just for the president. There's so many down ballot positions that we vote for commissioners of agriculture, right, jobs that we're like we don't even even really think about, but have so much say over things like what you can do with your land. Like, for example, you could buy a bunch of land and someone could tell you, oh, that's zoned a certain way,
you can't build that business there. You can't do that saying there. So now you have this whole plan for yourself. But because you didn't know that, the person in office doesn't once you building a marijuana business in his state.
Now you know what I mean.
So there's an importance in addressing it from all areas. And I think that young people who feel jaded just have to remember you're not voting because you think that that's going to be the one thing you can do to save the world. You're voting because you need a range of tools in your arsenal.
And that's you know, that's important.
So the last thing I'll say, Another example that I'll give as the last thing is the Bruce's Beach example. Everyone was really excited about this family in California that gets their beachfront land back after cavan Ward and the organization.
Where's my land.
Fight for them to get this land, and they're given this land back. But when the land was taken from them, it was beachfront property with.
A resort on it.
When it's given back to them, it's just it's just the property, no buildings on it, nothing they can move into, nothing they can immediately profit off of. That's a tax burden in the state of California. There's no way for this working class family to make any money off of this land. So when they had to sell it back to the state, people were upset. But it's like what you should have fought for or not. You know, this
hasn't actually come at the activists. But what we can be fighting for on all ends is give the people they land back, and they should get a property tax exemption. And I'm fighting for a change to the property tax code in general so that black families can get more relief. And you know, like those are the sorts of things that we need elect officials doing. Or like in New York, if I didn't believe in voting, we wouldn't have someone like Drewmini Williams, who we know is always in a
position to use his power for the people. So I think that we just have to remember that there are local offices that we can elect people to that can make a huge difference, and at the least we can mitigate harm and decide who do we want to be working against as we fight for more. But if you only focused on getting your money and not focused on who's trying to take your money, then you're looking at only one hand, and there's lots of hands moving.
That's an excellent thing.
I just want you to end this by just telling the people what do you want them to get when they read this book?
What is your hopes that.
Everyone who gets this book, because everyone needs to get it, but what is your hopes that they give from them?
Thank y'all for having me.
My hope is that people will read this book and see that reparations is inevitable. That we can't talk about it as a we should have had it. It would be nice to have no reparations are inevitable. You're not an ally if you don't believe in reparations. You're not
for our community. If you do not believe in reparations, because it is the only thing that can achieve bridging racial wealth gaps and addressing some of the environmental injustice that we're dealing with and getting to put black people in a position to finally be autonomous, to be in control of our own futures, our own businesses, our own families. So I hope that people read it and excited to work more towards reparations.
A baker, that's a word.
See listen.
I just want to say one more thing before we go. Her mama is bad. My mam apre dis sermon at the book thing. And I know where you get it from, because that's a bad woman. So shout out to Mama Baker. We appreciate you, We love you.
Bria. Continue to be great like you've always been.
I always knew that this is who you were, and I'm just proud to see you just butting like a butterfly.
Thank you. I appreciate you. And I'm gonna have to tell her you said that.
Be a Baker. Root it, pick it up. Love you too, y'all.
Shout out to Bria Man, Love her to death, man book, gotta read the Love Her to Life. That's right, Love Her to Life. You should all get that book. Read it. It's touching, it's real, it's everything that's right and it's every element of who she is. So now we get to mind. I don't get it. I posted a meme on my page last week and it was funny to me. You know. It was a guy he was with a girl and she started talking and he was like yeah, yeah,
and what else do you do? And then she just gave him this look like she was confused, and it was like huh, and then he was like, what else do you do? And then she still was confused, and then it was this slow motion boys, She's like, what else do you do? And then she just still was just stuff like she didn't get it, So you know that, and the more of the story is like there are some girls that all they can do is talk. They don't have anything else to offer, and we know there's
some men that don't have anything to offer too. But it was funny, you know, just and there was a lot of different comments on there, and then it brought me, you know, there was one of the comments where women was like, well, y'all need to not you know, you should stop liking pages like that as girls that's all they do and all you do is like it.
And then it was.
Some girls like, well what else, what do we have to offer for her to have to offer more than that. So there was just different comments and different that, And one of the things it brought me to was just thinking about how we are portraying our women, right like. And it's not to take anything away from women who tork like I love to see a woman turk. There's no man, you know, there's very few. I'm not gonna
say nobody. There are very few men who are heterosexual males that don't like to see a woman who got a nice body tworking and working our body. That's just something in man. It's gonna like naturally, you know. But but when you looking to date or you actually looking to take something serious, you want to see more than that, right And I think for me, there was this conversation about BT awards, and I really didn't get involved.
In it because I didn't, you know, I don't.
I don't want to throw shade at anybody or any individual. You know, a lot of these women are talented. They just know how to work and work and be talented. But there are women in this industry who don't work, who are talented, who are skilled too, adult rappers who can n who can do all those things, but they just rather not work. It's just not something that they'll come through with or something that they choose to do.
You know.
So when I looked at the BT Awards and then people like, oh, that's all we got, and I said, damn, you know, and and and then I compared it to that meme and the reaction I started saying, you know, we are we not doing ourselves a disservice?
Are we doing ourselves? Yeah, we're doing it.
We're actually doing ourselves with disservice when all we show is one genre of female doing something right, because it makes it seem like that's all we have. And when you say black entertainment television, if that's the only entertainment we got, you know, then is wrong. I mean, because I know it's not the only entertainment we got. You know what I'm saying. We have artists like Tink, We have artists like on Rhapsody, We have artists like Lady London.
You know what I'm saying. We have artists that I know that are dope that nobody and they're not talking that's that's not what they do. They're not saying they can't. But that's just not the way that they promote their music, and when we're not highlighting them, we're not giving them the same platforms and stages that we give those who do do it. Then it is an imbalance, you know, And I think that's what's happening in society all together. For me, there's just too much of an imbalance one
way or the other. Like what happened to the balance, What happened to where we had conscious music? You know, we had street orientated music, we had just fun and music. We had love song like it's either this or that, right, it's it's all the.
Way this, so all the way there.
And it's like, I think that we need to start highlighting more things because you know, like men are either jaded with just seeing somebody talk all the time, or that's all they want to see because that's all they've been given. You know, you just start taking it as that's all it really is. And I think it's so
much more, especially as black people and entertainment television. I think it's so much more that we have to offer that we actually aren't given, you know, and it's making it's so lopsided the view of what black women is and what black entertainment is it is just changing for and I think it's a negative you know, connotation just attached to it now. And I just wonder, I think think we have to be a lot more intentional and
so I just don't get. What I don't get is why aren't these platforms highlighting different styles of music, different styles of entertainment for females. Why aren't Why isn't that something that people are intentional about doing.
Well, here's my thing. Yes, balance is key.
I always talk about it because I am not, you know, one to condemn, which I understand that you're also not condemning, you know, any artists, right, I don't condemn them. You know when people have come to me and they're like, oh, you need to be saying something about sexy Red and Sukiana and this one and that one because it's filth and it's this and it's that. By the way, every now and then, depending on what the song is, I be bumping a little sexy Red. So I'm not I'm not if.
Everybody say, get it sexy.
You know, I'm not gonna be a hypocrite there.
I also know that there was a people like, well, one person said to me no, it's different.
It's much more raunchy. Well, I don't know how much more raunchy.
You could get the little Kim on the cover of her album where she was kneeling down or squatting down and you could literally see hair on the sides of her vagina. That's a fact. So it's been raunchy. Adena Howard was raunchy. Now perhaps the times were a little different. So it's just like you and me right like or and everybody else out here.
We used to.
Wear the afro and now it's the fade and whatever the caesar and it time things the ball people change. But the message was still popping Kuchie, sucking pp selling, Kuchie getting money. There was the same exac message. The words is just a little bit different. I am not one of those people who's gonna sit here and say, oh, you know, I want to condemn these particular individuals. What I do think is true is that there has to
be a balance. Now, b Et will say, well, they look a lot at album sales, right, they look at popularity, album sales and numbers, social media impact all of that. So if they find that a person you know, is doing great numbers of course they are going to put them on the show, and then those people whose numbers may not be that good, those people don't make it. And I'm not quoting pt, but I'm saying I know the mindset because I've been in these media meetings and i know how they think.
Right. So, but the problem with that, and I.
Watched some of the old time do something that was groundbreaking, and that was that they would mix in the people who you don't necessarily listen to or hear from all the time. They would sandwich them between things, whether it be at a rally. You know, it could be a new person speaking. You know what I'm saying that nobody
really knows. But they got a powerful message. So they're gonna put them on right after Tamika Mallory or whoever, the big whoever, the other whatever, the better bigger speaker is, whoever it is, the President of the United States, whoever they'll have you introduce the President of the United States.
It's like when you think about the girl who did the poetry left.
I never heard exactly Amanda, I forget her last name, but absolutely Goldman a thing, absolutely same exact thing. And I have something to say about her but I'm gonna wait until another time for that on my list of things thought of the day, because since she called for a ceasefire, I don't see her as much as I used to, and I'm gonna through some research to figure
out what happened. But I remember looking at her page she was calling for a seaspire and her comment section, Baby, these people got the nerve to talk about hate and division. I can't even I'm at the point where i need a trap on my mouth like a censor because I'm ready to say things that will probably just get me black ball for the rest of my life. And I'm already hanging off the black ball list.
So whatever. Anyway, So that's what they did.
It was masterful how they give you a little bit of what you like or what's being the shiny thing, and also make sure you get other things in the midst of that. Now, BT will say, well, we did that with Taraji. We let her do her political you know, her political component of her posting, and that made the numbers for research around Project twenty twenty five go up. You know, it increased obviously significantly overnight because of what
she said. So they will say they do that but with the talent piece, that balance is important and they.
Need to be intentional about that.
To be quite honest with you, I looked at I went back and looked at the artists, all of the women, right, because I wanted to see where they extremely naked as I had heard. They really kind of weren't. If you really go back and look at their outfits, they were not completely, you know, undressed. Even Meg, her outfit is sexy, very sexy, and very suggestive, but if you look at it, she has on tights, she has on tights, she has
on all types of things that's covering her actual skin. Glorilla, Yeah, she went out there and shook her little booty, but she just had a little broad top on in regular big pants. Like I really looked. Some of it was sexy, but it wasn't all. It wasn't all overly sexy. It's the content though, of what they're saying, and it's content.
It's the overall performance and everything, right, So yeah, with the address, at some point there's working. There's sexually suggestive inside the music, inside the performance. And I'm just trying to say there are.
Artists that just don't do that.
Don't do that, I agree.
I mean, I agree with you, and I think the standard, the double standard, it spans across many different areas. That which you're speaking of, is not just in music. It's in politics, it's in everything. It's in everything, it's in social justice, it's in every world where people. It can go both ways. It's either the super conservative is the most popular or the people who are most off the chain radical just saying anything, even if they don't know
what they're talking about. That is what people get attracted to because they're loud and they have the most impressions, you know, And so people who actually think don't always get the type of promotion and get to get the awareness around them and their thoughts and ideas.
So I see it.
I see that the balance is definitely problematic, and it just has to be one of the problems that we have because again, everybody's looking for the one hit wonder, looking to try to make the algorithm pop so that their exploit of expression can actually make it to the mouth,
excuse me, can actually make it to the masses. So I get that, But sometimes it's just a matter of actually calling our people in right, like actually sitting down and writing a letter to be et or making a phone call to say, hey, this is what we see. You know what I'm saying, versus us getting on social media and being like F b et, F Meg, F Lotto, F CARDI F this one and that one.
That's really not it's.
Actually because I at all. I know that, I know, you know, I'm just speaking generally. There's so much right now. There is so much divisiveness that is happening. Like, it's so much. I can feel it in my skin. You
can see it coming up the whether. Whenever the politics of a country is array ariy excuse me, awry the people you can see it as well, right, So you got that you have so many different division points, and I don't know, I feel like we're in a place in time right now where we we gotta do a little bit more behind the scenes conversing so we can try to bring our people along versus thinking that we could just push them off a cliff because I don't
think that, you know, I just don't. I don't know that that's going that's an effective strategy.
I agree with it, you know.
I want to hear from our viewers, like, what do you think do you think that there needs to be a balance or do you like the way it is?
Is it? You know?
I just want to know because maybe it's just me. But I know there's so much talent and I love once again. I love man.
You know what I'm saying. I love a lot of I think a lot of was dope. I think you know what I'm saying.
So, but I also love Rhapsody, I love Lady London like I want to see those type of artists highlight.
Yeah, I'm not exactly. I'm advocating for balance. I am not advocating to diminish these women who, through their own art and expression, are doing anything because nobody was out well, not nobody, because there was some people out there. But so I mixed a lot David selling, Yeah, Luke, what's selling KOUCHI.
Right, So don't tell me is different. Don't be different.
Too what I'm saying. But we had ours, we had rock Ken.
Hey, that's what I'm saying. I'm advocating for a balance. I'm not advocating because let me tell you something, I love me. Lotto says she big mama.
I love that.
I'm big Mama.
That brings us to the end of another t in my show. Shout out to our guest Bria Baker, our sister. Her book Rooted. Make sure that you go get it. It is an amazing book. She's an amazing individual as you see throughout the interview. We love her. Follow her on social media. Make sure you follow us t in my underscore show. Send us your requests. Who do you want us to interview? What do you want us to say? Tell us if you love us, tell us you hate us.
Let us know that we number one, because we know we did number one podcast in the world and we continue to be number one.
I'm not gonna always be right, tamik Ma.
It's not gonna always be wrong, but we will both always and I mean always be often.
It that soon so.
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