Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Meet your Girl Danielle Moody. Pre recording from the Home Bunker. Folks, I hope that you have enjoyed this cookout week on wok F where I've been in conversation with some of my favorite friends and guests of wok F to really dig into this week that we have been celebrating America's independence and what that actually means, you know, can we really have true conversations about liberty and justice for all when most people are becoming conscious to and dare I
say woke to the very fact that the story, the fairy tale of America is not the reality, the nightmare that many people have been forced to live under. And so in today's conversation, I'm really excited to bring back one of my faves. And if you were a listener to the early days of democracy Ish, then you know Torrey. Torrey is the creative director over at The Grio and
the host of The Torrey Show. He is also the host of the limited series Being Black the Eighties and Toray and I get into a really in depth conversation right on all the complexities and complications of you know him navigating society as a black man of raising gen Z kids. Who you know, I say to him, his youngest is fourteen, and I damn half her life, right has been already has been filled with chaos if you
think about it, right, she's fourteen. We've come out of the last eight years for under Donald Trump, right, the other four just you know, the year before he came down the escalater and then the repercussions, all of the ripple effects of MAGA, dam and fuckery and the Republican Party turning into a full white supremacist cult, COVID right, historic storms needing to be forced inside because of toxic air from wildfires, like mass shootings, upon mass shootings. This
has been his youngest daughter's life. And he looked at her and he will share this in conversation and said, you know, it's not always like this, and she kind of looked at him and was just like, but isn't it. And you know, folks, when you have the far right want to use children as a political football, want to use them as a talking point. I wonder if there is anyone that ever asked them about how their policies are actually long term going to effect these children that
will turn into adults. So you're pushing for more coal and more oil, knowing good, goddamn well that that is what is causing our planet to heat up, and all of these historic storms that hey, we can't pay for right and be like, we may not be able to live through because each and every time that we have these wildfires, these historic hurricanes and tornado seasons and all of these things, people die, right, and it costs billions
of dollars to rebuild. And yet you have the Republican Party and Joe Manchin Republican Light pushing policies that won't affect them because they'll all be dead in a few years, but it's sure as hell will affect the young people
who are inheriting a steaming pile of shit. And so in my conversation with Torre, we talk about that what it is like to parent during this time, what it is like to you know, to try and provide hopefulness, to provide guidance and faith as you yourself are trying to take in all that is happening on a day to day basis. This is a really robust and juicy conversation with my friend to Ray that I hope you all enjoy, folks. I am very happy to welcome back
to wok affidaily after a very long time. My friends were, ye, I'm happy to welcome you back. Now I feel good about welcoming you back. And you're making me kind of think twice about it now, my friend, wait till we get into it. My friend Toray, who is the host of the Torrey Show. He is also the creative director at the Grio and had a limited series called Being Black the eighties.
And and what else, founder of democracy issues.
Oh right, this show that has gone on so well? AnyWho tore yes right democracy because I.
Have because you three shows?
Yeah, good for you, Thank you so much.
Geez.
So it's fourth of July week, right, you know when white America loves to celebrate America's independence, and you know, we have patriotic shirts that are sold. You got flags that are waving everywhere. And yeah, but in majority of the states in this country, right, critical thought is outlawed. We can't really have conversations about what it means to be an independent country, what it means to have liberty at a time, to be gay, to be black, any
of these things. But so long as you can walk into an old Navy and buy a flag shirt, you and my friend are patriotic. So I'm wondering this week, right, we've passed Juneteenth, which is actual liberation, if we really want to talk about it, when all people in the country were actually free and notified of said freedom, What does the fourth of July mean to you?
Not really much. I mean the jingoism around America and the quote unquote meaning of America. I mean, absolutely, Lance flat, it's hypocritical. America has been a long conversation about who actually is is a full human who is a full part of America? And right at the beginning, it was like, well, just white men, right, nobody else even gets to vote
to be a landowner, nobody else's part. We are having that same conversation now right where the right is saying women should not be a full participant in their own freedom, in the agency of their own bodies. Black people should not be a full participant in the democracy. Gay and trans people should not be a full right. And the
conversation ultimately becomes who gets to be human? Right, because they get to decide in their mind who gets to be so they are full humans, right, white straight CIS men, right, presumably middle class to upper middle class, right, a Christian right, right, of course, right, because we're not talking about working class white now they benefit, but they are not part of the deciding structure. So yeah, we see a tremend this amount of hypocrisy. The American dream is liberty for all,
everybody is welcome. But that's bullshit. It has never been that country. It continues to not be that country. And we're actually at a fairly frightening juncture.
I am a staunch optimist.
And I feel like things will work out at some point. I know you, let's say you're more of a realist. I was a pessimist, but more of a.
Realist, Okay, I'll take that. Yeah.
Of like, no, like shit is going to hell, and like, how has it changed? And the notion that a lot of people have that the racists or the homophobes or the transphobes will one day die out and we will move on to more of a utopic where we are accepting no, no, And it's a very dangerous notion to think that they'll all just die out at some point.
All the racists and transphobes are not baby boomers, right, there are gen xers, there are millennials, there are zoomers who are you know, anti LGBTQ, racist, you know, misogynist.
What have you.
And you know, they may not be walking down the street oppressing people at every second, but they believe things that allow us to create a society that where you know, those of us who are not straight white men sis straight white men are second class citizens in some way. They are perpetuating that whole system. A tremendous number of millennials voted.
For Trump, right, and also, folks, forget that the people in twenty seventeen that were marching in Charlottesville, they were not sixty and up right, they were in their twenties in their khaki shorts with their party city tiki torches. Right, So you know, when we think about this idea that they will die out. And the way that they have been talking about the LGBTQ plus Commune, which I want to talk about for a second, is stating that queer
people are pedophiles and groomors. However, when I see, right, young kids that are in tiny, tiny KKK outfits, when I see young kids that are holding up signs that said, would you have aboarded me when I see all of these things, you know, these parents flipping over tables at school board meetings and punching teachers in the face. For I don't know, reading The Little Mermaid right because it
now depicts a black woman. I think about all the ways that the right has groomed hate right, that it isn't something that is just Oh, this is how older people think. And I wonder as somebody who who often goes back through history interviews a lot of different people, I think that the way that we've talked about the civil rights movement has always made it seem like it was one hundred plus years ago, when Ruby Bridges is
like sixty. Now. Do you think that the way we've allowed the civil rights movement to be discussed to show black and white pictures when we had color right, that we've created this timeline that isn't actually real.
That's an interesting question.
I mean, you know, on Tori Show, I ask a lot of people what does it mean to be black? And for me, that really ties into an almost tangible connection to all the people who came before us, whose shoulders we stand on that allow us, you and I to have the lives that we have now because our parents could not have had this media gadfly experience, right, you know, integrate whatever. Like, they didn't have that experience, and their parents definitely did not have the freedoms that
we have. So to me, I don't think about the Civil rights movement and Black Power movement it's sort of super long ago, because I feel a tangible connection to it. I am standing on its shoulders. I remember being in college and thinking once it would be really interesting to be in the CIA. I think a CIA recruiter was coming and I was like, well, that would be a
cool ass job. But then at the same time, I was like, you know, I need to do something that pays back and speaks to the people whose shoulders that I'm standing on, right. I was already thinking about that sort of stuff in college and earlier.
And you know, you.
Can be the judge of whether or not I have done that, but I was always thinking of, like, I need to live a life that honors what I have been given, the life, the opportunities that have been given because of the people before us. So it's it's not distant to me, you know, And I mean I have I have a family member who was a black panther.
So it's it's very tangiblegible to me. I am a realist and I used to be probably like a deep pessimist, and I am a realist in the way that look the artistism to.
Think I have a realist, you're a pessimist, but the pessivist thinks I have the I know I'm a realists.
I mean, you know.
Everybody, I think in a way everybody thinks they're a realist. I'm an optimist, but I think I'm a realist. We are going to get there one day. It's going to be hard. I'm a person which means I'm a realist.
Because I'm not sure where we're I'm not sure where we're trying to get to because it's never going to be a utopia, Like we're never going to have the kind of I guess the kind of dream actualize that our ancestors had been fighting.
For that I want to say, well, utopia, Like I don't even know what utopia looks like, right beyond what.
People being able to live in their skins and in their body without oppression, without fear, without violence.
I think I think that it's important to eliminate the notion of what is in white people's hearts and spirits.
I don't give a.
Fuck if you love me or if you think that I'm equal to you. Right, And when we think about the amount of internalized racism that we deal with, white people absolutely have internalized racism. Right, they're not even challenging it, right, most of the right. But to me, the most critical aspect of the whole thing is the wealth gap. Right, there's a massive racial wealth gap. I don't know the numbers of a top my head, but you know they are easily google able. The upper black family has a
fraction of what the average white family is. There is essentially no black upper class, right. There's a tiny number people who would constitute a black upper class. But there is a black upper middle class, and a Black middle middle class and a black lower middle class. But so there's not sufficient wealth in our community to be able to help each other when one of us has a problem.
One of the things I read talked about how black people tend to have reverse inheritance, in that the older generation has nothing, so when they get older and they are sicker or a knee of help, we have to take care of them.
Whereas in a lot of white.
Families where they were able to get a home loan cheaply one hundred years of business. Now the right a business loan. Now the grandparents are able to help out the children and the grandchildren. Right, you need help with your mortgage, with your down payment, with you know, your business, like we are in a position.
We can help you.
Now we then to not have that. Right, So there's all these different ways that the wealth gap, to me is.
The central ya. And if we can get we can narrow that.
Sum, then we would have that would impact politics, that would could impact criminal justice, that could impact schooling, impact in so many ways the entire world. Now, somebody far smarter than me said, the only way that that would ever happen, the let's just call it not the equaling but just just an evening out, would be reparations.
M Right.
We have to have an intrusive financial impact on the journey of the black community to change the trajectory we have because the way America is now, there is very very little class ascension. Right, It's very hard to end up not in the class that your father was born into. Right, That's not the way America was supposed to be. That's not the way America used to be. But that is the way America is now, So how would we change it? Well, at some point there will have to be some sort of reparations.
But in order to have and because I've been thinking about this, because I think about the people that have been working on reparations, I think about the member of Congress that introduces just the report, let us just do a report. They won't even do that, right to see where we would land. California had just come out and say, well, if we were to provide reparations, I think it was going to cost the state. It will cost the state trillions of dollars, right, trillions of dollars in order to
do that. When we talk have conversations about reparations, it always sounds like we are asking for some type of philanthropy, that we're asking for some type of charity. And I'm saying, no, motherfucker, give us back what you extracted. Right Like, if you hadn't if you were required during reconstruction at that time to give back the wealth that was taken from free labor to provide land, we wouldn't be in this situation.
Right.
They gave reparations to the slave slavelders like, so sorry, so sorry, we took away your interns, because that's what they call them in Florida textbooks. So sorry, we took away your interns. So here's a fucking stipend.
And of course you know the history. It's not just about slavery. It's about what happens in say, it's about what happens in in Tulsa with other places where our communities are destroyed. It's about wage theft and redlining.
Yeah.
One of the things that blows my mind that we don't even know the full extent of is this whole is it home assessment? Was that where somebody comes to tell you the value of your home. Yes, but many, many families have seen if the assessor and I might not be using the right word there, thinks that it is a black owned home.
They'll devalue it.
They'll devalue it.
Yeah, sometimes as much as fifty percent, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And only a few people are figuring out, well, if I get my white friends to pretend it's their homes, then it'll be more.
So.
We don't know how many tens and tens of thousands of black people sold their.
Homes that were devalued by hundreds of thousands of dollars thousand dollars.
Yeah, and that is money that did not come into the community. On top of the money that was directly given to white people. Here's a cheap home loan for you the fifties and decades later, that adds up to So it's it's just an extraordinarily difficult situation. Policing is a whole different part of it. Schooling is a whole different part of it. If we had a sufficient amount of money in our community to have more self determination, yep, then we could start looking at a world that has equity,
not even equality, but just equity. Right, then we could start talking about creating better schools for ourselves, perhaps, you know, having better lawyers to defend ourselves when we have issues.
But this is this is what Rosewood, this is what Tulsa, this is what hundreds but lat I mean hundreds and people because we only know and barely know the names of those places that were destroyed. And so when I think about even just the idea that white people created around separate but equal, right, black people had created separate towns, separate societies running their own buses, banks, school systems, like
all of those things. But white people couldn't take it, yeah, and they had to destroy it.
And those are just the big stories we know, right, right, What about all the people who like the farmer who.
Lived in unincorporated towns, Yeah, who just you know, he just had it and he built it up, and some white people came.
Just stole it.
Right, there's thousands and.
Thousands of such stories. We've been screwed economically by this country over and over and over, and slavery is just one part of it. And it's not it's not just a thing that happened. America does not become America without slavery, right, it is the thing that leads to America becoming a global economic power. And not really secondarily is the work that the enslaved people did because cotton was then the
biggest product in the world. Right, so we're able to produce cotton wave faster and cheaper because they not have to pay the labor than anybody else. But no, it's the value of the human beings.
Yep.
And when we talk about reparations in the realm of slavery and white people, some white people want to say, well, my family didn't own slaves. Right, everybody in America who benefits from the American economy benefits from slavery. Yep, right, because the American economy is buttressed, is created by slavery. But there's all sorts of other industries and institutions, insurance, transportation, all sorts of people who never owned slaves but benefited
from the slavery. The gun industry becomes massive in America because of all this. So there's all sorts of people who are benefiting from slavery, never own slaves, and we should.
Be part of that.
And the fact and the idea that it's that it's a controversial and revolutionary and basically unspeakable idea.
Right, you can't be a serious political thinker and.
Talk about ridiculous because who is going because the oppressor is never going to give the oppressed the keys to their liberation. Like that's just not how it ever works. And I feel like when we have these conversations, I'm like, I don't even want to I don't want it to
be even referred to as reparations. I'm like, give me back what the fuck you stole for, Like centuries upon centuries we just named so many other ways outside of chattel slavery, how we have been economically forced into ghettos and in situations that have locked us into an economic future that was going to sustain a not even a working class, but a working poor, right, because that's what they've wanted. I want to switch gear, and that's what
I want to talk about. I want to talk about the way in which you have Republicans right now, like Rohnda Santis, Greg Abbott and all of the Republican governors across the state that are doing their damnedest to erase black history, to ban critical literally ban critical thought, all of it. I believe torre is about creating a permanent under class, thank you. All of it is about creating
a permanent under class. And they want to make sure that the demographic shift right that is coming that everyone was like, yes, look, black and brown people are going to be the majority. They're like no, no, no, no, that's cute, right, because we're going to lock you in.
If we can't lock you into being the working class, we're going to lock you into student loan debt because we don't want to give you relief there because if we give you relief there then you have opportunity for mobility, and we don't want that.
Well, let me address two things. Yes, capitalism requires working poor, right because somebody has to do the jobs at the bottom of the totem pole. I shouldn't say that somebody has to do the jobs at the bottom.
Of the ladder.
I mean New York's Manhattan still has relatively significant size of real estate where there's.
Projects in Lower Manhattan.
And this, I believe this is the most in Manhattan, the most expensive real estate in the country. So it points out how valuable the working poor is that they continue to have quite a bit of projects right in
Lower Manhattan. Right, that land is worth a lot of money, right some of us right on the river, like, so you know, clearly somebody is saying, I don't know, we need some people here because if we have them coming in from the outer burrows, that's not going to But the other thing, you know, Nicole Hannah Jones is so brilliant. She's a genius, and you know you have a real fought leader when somebody can say things that really change
your thinking on things. And I had her on to Ratio several years ago, and we were talking about that twenty forty thing that white people are very focused on. When when white people will become the minority? Now that so the people of color, which I don't even like that phrase, will become the majority, right, and we already have I believe it's under age.
Ten and under age twelve. There are more black, brown.
And Asian people in this country than white people under twelve or something like that. Nicole Handa Jones made a really interesting point when I brought that up, and I know, I remember in twenty sixteen, I remember Van Jones was
going around for CNN talking to Trumpers. Yes, yes, all of that, yes, and they were bringing it up without him asking about it, making different reference, sometimes coded, but sometimes references to like this is our last chance, like we were about to lose the majority in this country. We need somebody to stand up for white rights, saying essentially that. But what Nicoleana Jones said is that whiteness is fluid and flexible and it will take people in.
You know, the Irish, the Italians. Jewish people were at one point in America not truly white people, right, and over time they were subsumed into whiteness, which increased the power of whiteness. And her argument, which makes a lot of sense, is that overtime Latino people will be subsumed into whiteness, right, so that it then becomes so then that increases the size of whiteness, and this change in
the demographics doesn't actually happen right now. This is this is what she's this is what she's saying, and I put a lot of stock into what she says. So I don't know if that reckoning or that pivot moment when they become I don't know if.
That's gonna happen.
But also the coalition that on the other side of white, there is black, brown, and Asian, right, Latino, Latina Asian. I'm not gonna say LATINX because they don't say LATINX, right, So it's like super woke to say LATINX.
They're not saying LATINX. So what are we doing?
Do we have shared political needs black people, Asian people and Latino latinas I don't think so. I think we have different outlooks on the world. I think we have different things that we need politically. So looping us in together is like a fear tactic to bond white people because we're not all gonna align. I mean black people don't all align the same issue. I think black, brown, and Asian are all gonna align on the same issue. Like no, I mean like to go with gross generalizations
and stereotypes. Asian people remain quote unquote the model minority.
Yep. Right. I'm not saying that they embrace.
That, no, but it's what's been placed on them by whiteness.
Yes, so they have a certain relationship to whiteness. Politically, right, we see a lot of Latinos and Latinas voting Republican right and some of the data is saying because they're in their political thinking, they're not They're either not leading with their ethnicity or they are trying to assimilate and this is part of assimilation for them. And I'm sure
there's other reasons as well. But so are we going to see this group of like all the people of color are going to politically band together and get what they want? Like, I don't think that's gonna happen, right, You know, if we nominate a black person for president or governor, are the Latinos, Latinas and Asians gonna say that person's one of ours?
I feel like that is what But that is what the Obama coalition was able to bring together so many disparate groups of people under this idea of we can better America. It wasn't under this context of like my oppression is your oppression, or we have a shared enemy. It was this idea of we all essentially want the same things, and there is only a few people, right, the one percent, the greed that is standing away from all of us being able to have just a little bit more.
Right, Obama's so special because he has blackness and whiteness, and he's able to see and feel and discuss these issues in a different way. Right, I mean, like especially, I mean in all of life, but especially in politics. Tone and body language means so much. And just Obama could say things in a way that white people could hear other politicians Black Asian could not hear. And you know, you wonder if you'll ever see anybody like that in our lifetime.
Again, probably not. The last question I have for you goes back to our opening around optimism and realism pessimism. You have kids, right, you have you have teenage Yeah, you have teenagers who are inheriting a planet that is on fire, that is under water that is, you know, unsafe. We had to go inside, you know a couple like go inside again right with mass On because the air was not safe. Why because the earth is getting warmer? Why because of global warming and trees going up in
smoke and the toxins and all of these things. They've seen so much as young people. They've seen George Floyd video. They've heard about Tyree Nichols, they've heard about you know, Breonna Taylor, whether or not you've actually if they've actually
seen the videos, but it's out there, right. They're growing up in a world that is so different and different in my humble appealion as in bad from when I was fourteen and sixteen years old, right, I interviewed, I not interviewed, but I talked to a group of teenagers the other day and I asked them, you know, what are some things you're fearful of? Do you know what? They all talked about, not having enough money to be
able to take care of their family. These were This was at my old high school, majority white school in you know, on Long Island, and all their fear was money and climate change. And so I'm wondering, where are your how are your kids feeling about the world that they're going to inherit are they would you label them as being optimists? We can take this on.
My son is more of a political thinker right now than my daughter, but that could funk. That may partly be a function of age and as she grows should be more. But I mean, he, like many in his generation are are furious about the climate situation and are and feel like, you know, like a direct anger at Gen xers, And I'm like, it's really the boomers you're wren mad out, not us, but like you fucked up
our planet. I mean, just the same way as if if you came home and your house was on fire and and like you know, your little your your mom's sitting there. You'd be like, mom, what the fuck you destroyed my house?
Like I live here, yep, and like that, and the rage about that is.
Palpable, you know. I mean, in my son's mind, in twenty forty, the earth will will cease to exist. I'm like, I don't think that's the future we're headed for, but he's.
Like, that's what I read.
And fuck you for contradicting me, because I'm gonna have to deal with this shit. And you're gonna be dead, old man, Like seriously, he was trying to say that.
I'm like, go to your room.
Fuck you.
He is a cursed But basically so, no, there's there's there's tremendous an you know. I did say to my daughter the other day because she's really only been really paying attention to politics.
For like five years.
Right, she's fourteen, right, and it's been Trump and it's COVID and then you know, the sky is yellow and then like you know, oh, it's it. And I'm like, you know, honey, it's not normally like this, and she's like, like what I mean, like like on Earth, like in America, Like it's not normally like this, Like.
It's usually a little more.
It's been incredibly intense the last like what five six years. It's not normally like this. It's you now. Is that going to change?
I don't. I don't know that that's going to change.
I think like this is where we are now because of the Republican Party, because of the nature of media, because of so many things, the nature of the division in the country, and the entitlement and the empowering of you know, the most fringe and angry aspects of our country. It's much more intense. It seems to becoming much faster. It's much more stressful.
Yeah, it didn't used to feel.
I don't talk about the ten twenty thirty years ago.
We disagreed with the Republicans, but.
I didn't actively think they were trying to kill me though, right, you know different.
I think I mean around Bush and Gore. It started to take a turn. It started to get more intense and nastier. I felt like, wow, this is like the nastiest it's ever been in like terms of like the political climate. I remember I was on a plane and I was reading the Nation and it was something. The article was something I think it was something about Gore, and the stewardess just just being nice, just parroted the headline of like, oh like something something effective, like what
does it say about Gore? And the person across from me was clearly a Bushy and he said something nasty about Gore, and I said something back to him, because we're super anti Bush, right, w was the devil before Trump? Yeah, and and and and like everybody kind of caught themselves and was like, we're not gonna have a fucking intellectual argument on a plane, so everyone's but it was like it's just everyone's so on edge and like fuck you, and and that was the most intense I have felt
it ever was. And around the Iraq War, we were all very angry, and I feel like we're way past that in terms of the intensity and the anger in the country, and I'm not sure how we get it back. And I'm trying to tell my daughter it's not always like this, but like, maybe this is how it is now. Oh that makes me sad, but that's where you live.
I know you live, but I don't want to but honestly, I don't want to believe that that is just like this is going to be her norm. But in thinking about the fact that she's fourteen and the last set five to seven years have been absolutely like so half her life has actually been fucking insanity, it's hard to tell her it's not always like this. And she's just like, really, because I've only been around a little bit, right, and it just doesn't feel like seems bad.
So she's it is better on the other planet that was go back to.
That Earth two does sound nice, not where Republicans are, but Earth too, where our doppelgangers are my friend Tore, thank you for making the time for wok f and a conversation that leaves me wondering. Are we all pessimists, optimists, realists. I think society is making us sad.
I feel you should.
That is it for me today on woke f as always power to the people and to all the people. Power. Get woke and stay this fot