SPEAKER_03 0:00

The biggest thing holding black people back today is us, not the system.

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Nobody should come for me when I say this. But it's us.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

And when I think about the black family, our leaders were attacked first. And that was our black men.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Even if everything is horrible, let's be delusional for a second. I feel like if we do that, things will work out better for us.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

The system is real. I don't think there's no knocking. As the black American, you can't take two suitcases. No, you gotta take everything with you.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Think of the system as a rape chess game. And black Americans are pawns.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

You cannot escape your black skin and what it has symbolically meant.

SPEAKER_03 0:36

We haven't capitalized an organized violence. And organized violence is what? Police force, military forces, right?

SPEAKER_02 0:42

I'm just gonna say we need to stop glorifying the struggle because it just keeps us struggling.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

We have an option to either fight for the life we want to live or fight to live a life worth living.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

It is fascinating to see the lengths this country has gone to try to cap our utterly, utterly fantastic day.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

Yeah. Every memory got a meaning. Every meaning got a mission. Memoirs to millions. You're here because you're looking for a real conversation, not the pot is burden, the one people have at the kitchen table after everybody else goes home. You're looking for people who will say what the believer and then defend it. You want to hear it argued out so you can figure out where you stand. Today, all four of us are taking side on three statements. Number one, the biggest thing holding black people back today is us, not the system. Number two, the church has called to black community more than it has given. And number three, the strong black woman is a compliment that's killing us, and men benefit from it. By the end, you'll know where you stand, and all three. You hear the argument against it, and you might feel a little less alone in the question you've been carrying. So stick around and let's get into the conversation with my awesome colleagues to say good morning, good afternoon, everybody. I know some of us are in different coasts. I know Josh, you're on the west coast, and the rest of us on the, I mean, on the doc is in the south, and uh me and the daisies on the further north here. But welcome back to the M2M Round round table conversation. Good to see you guys' faces. How everybody feeling today? Good. Okay, all right. Well, so the so the first conversation we're gonna talk about, and we love I would love for anybody who can opine their opinion, so to speak, in your first. So the first one is the biggest thing holding black people back today is us, not the system. So who's who wants to opine first? Okay, we're gonna okay. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, go to the Daisy, go to the Daisy.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Nobody should come for me when I say this, but it's us. And here's the reason why I say that. So over the weekend, we were having a conversation around beauty and hair, especially, and the fact that, especially in the United States, the people that own the beauty stores or hair stores or whatever are not people like us. But they're the ones that make all the money, but we make them make all that money. Let's say if you really want to change something, just kind of follow the money, or money kind of thoughts, and money money is really the tool to make a change. Somehow we manage to convince ourselves that we don't have um agency and we're not able to make a change because of the things that have been done to black people over time. And there's a lot of argument for that. But the reality is if you think about what we do day to day right now, we spend billions of dollars supporting people that don't care about us. And at the same time, we attack and tear down black businesses that are trying to make it happen. You know, it's ridiculous. Let's talk about, for example, if you're a startup, every startup wants an exit. That's the whole point. You start your business with, I don't know, $1,000 and you exit at 10 million or 200 million or whatever it is. Um, I've seen situations where black businesses exit and everybody jumps on them that they're sell out. But the reality is how you're gonna make a ton of money to be able to have the money to create the change that you want to see. So I think um it's almost like we we want something, but at the same time, when it comes to using our money to vote for what we want, we don't. So I feel like if we take, I don't know what the numbers are, but if we take that money away from the system and divert it to us, I believe most of what we're going through at this point is gonna go away.

SPEAKER_03 4:41

Anyone wanna jump in with your opinion? anybody Josh?

SPEAKER_01 4:45

The doc I was gonna let the doctor go because you know these women are informed. So I don't wanna I don't wanna take it away from that please. I'm here to I'm here to sit and learn.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Let the fella, you know, let's give some balance.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Okay. I could do that. The system is real. I don't think there's no knocking it. I think the system is real and so is agency. I think the mistake is trying to explain away one in exchange for the other. When both of them impact how we navigate our world. I think, especially for black Americans, you know, there has been literally a system um at the onset in the development of our country that we were impacted by egregiously. And I took this class long time ago, well, not that long ago. I was in my 20s, uh, so it wasn't that long ago. It was called The Sociology of Black Americans, taught by Dr. Albert Black at the University of Washington. And I learned about how there was, especially after slavery, how there was unequal access to the labor force, where, you know, oftentimes white organizations or families would more than or over overwhelmingly hire black women and not black men, right? Black men had a stereotype of being overly sexualized, overly masculine, you know, the big black butt, like all these dominating images that sometimes we embrace to help promote our hip-hop stars. But there is this extreme version of masculinity that created a fear. And so black men wouldn't be hired, but they would hire black women. And so, what what does this do? This creates a divide even within the black household. Woman's being hired for work, man's not finding work, he eventually finds him way to the street corner and some other illegal uh money-making opportunities, and then then he's criminalized, right? So, this is another way to play out, you know, just the the the the hold that slavery had on us, and now men in this new setting where everybody's quote unquote free access to the labor market was restricted based on race, gender, and the comfort level that uh that white folks had with either gender. Now, that that has happened, and it has happened time and time again over and over and over. So today there are real consequences where we can look at each other and be like, why are you not showing up? Where does this come from? We need more of you. Why are you not present, right? And none of that is necessarily wrong. And at the same time, I think we've gotten to a place where we can be so educated that even our ability to be sophisticated and explaining what has happened to us becomes somewhat of an accomplishment. And we stop there. Like, oh yeah, I know what happened. I got this, I got the answer for that. When there are other legitimate things that we could be doing as a community if we used our agency to help solve some of the same issues that we're plagued with in yesteryear as we are today. And um, you know, I don't think this is a black thing either. I think it's a human thing. We look for the path of least resistance, we look for the out. We look for, oh, will that happen to us? Well, this is why we can't, right? We'll look for excuses when there's oftentimes an invitation to be more curious about how to strategically problem solve whatever social economic uh position that we're in. And I think the last thing I'll say to that is I think the system exists, our agency exists, but rarely are we working together to solve our own pain, to solve our own challenges. And I think that's why other even immigrant communities or other others might look at us and go, okay, now what? What are you guys gonna do about it? Because no one's coming to save you. There's not another policy or law that can be passed that's going to make you do the work that you all need to do for yourself. And so I'll stop there because it's it's layered, but I think both are real, both exist, and we're faced with the opportunity. So what are you gonna do about it? Because no one's coming to it, doesn't mean no one's coming to help you, no one's coming to support, but saving when you're unwilling to do the work to save self, highly unlikely that our system, that our access to the system or the way we look at the system is gonna change just because we can, you know, articulate that there is uh an issue with us inside of the system. So that's my that was my quick thoughts, Ashley. I love it, I love it. Um Doc, you ready to talk?

SPEAKER_00 9:28

I feel like Josh sheeted because you were supposed to pick a side. You you weren't supposed to support both.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Oh, did I did I did I did I cop out?

SPEAKER_00 9:37

A little bit.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

A little bit on the cop out. Well, I mean, it's it's okay. I'll say this. I'll say this, and we're gonna force the side. Thank you for this. Now it's getting spicy. You know, I I think deep down, I'm of the of the mindset that whatever challenges are in front of you, it is up to you to solve. And that is not unique to our position in this country. I think that we have been plagued with a lot of things working against us, and we've also been blessed with amazing talents that we spend. This is what it is. I think we spend, Kanye said it best, that made us hate ourselves and love they wealth. That's why Shorty's hauling where the ball is at. And that plays out. I don't care what level you get to. There is this, am I good enough yet, white people? Right? There's that energy, like, have I made, have I made enough money? Have I sold enough this? Have I done enough that? And we um I remember Damon Wayne's, he was on a podcast, I think it was uh Shannon Sharpshea room. He was like, at a certain level, when you get a certain level of money, the colors around you start changing. It's almost like, okay, thank you. Thank you, Venus and Serena's dad. We got it from here. Hey, thank you, thank you, Joe Jackson. We got it from here. Oftentimes there's a a white man that's waiting to take it to the next level, and you're almost like, okay, we we built it to this far, but not that we're not equipped, but there's just a lightning the more successful you get. And I think that goes hand in hand with what we expect success to look like. Even if we consciously can say differently deep down, there's still a yearning for white acceptance. So that's an issue on a whole other level that we need to address as a community. But yeah, I would say we're we have to be responsible for our own freedom.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Thank you for clarifying, John.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Yeah, so you got me there. I got there. There's a long time to get there though, but I got there. See, that just that gentle nudge was I felt felt warm. Thank you. Thank you, Queen.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

I struggle with this, right? I do think this is a hard one to choose because they're so intertwined. But I I can agree that at some point we have to be responsible for ourselves. With that being said, I would I would say change is gonna come from the bottom up. And when I think about the black family, our leaders were attacked first. And that was our black men. And we can see that that's still playing itself out today. And I think if we can restore healing in our black men, if our black men can have more space to be leaders and providers to the best of their ability, I think it'll have a a major impact on our community. With that being said, for the for the families, for black families in particular, the longer we stay broken, if we can't love the people at our house, then I think it makes it harder for us to love the people in our community. So when it says love your neighbor, if you can't love your own children, if you can't love your partner, if you can't love your spouse, I think it makes it harder for us to love our neighbor. And so when we start talking about working together, if we can't work together to raise our family, our own seeds, our own people, then I think it's gonna be hard for me to say, oh, Desire, you have a business, I'm going to support you despite your attitude to sport, despite your difference, because I see the bigger picture.

unknown 13:01

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

And so if we don't know how to deal with that, I think we're not committed to one another. We're quick to, if it doesn't feel good, we're not doing it. And I think we're divided in that regard. And I feel like that's where the work begins. And I think if we do that, then we can change the system. We almost are creating our own system. If we can start from home to community, I think we literally create our own system. And we've seen historically that there have been moments of this in history, and it's been met with adversity in terms of Black Wall Street being burned down, right? We've seen we've seen our people try to come together and support one another. Um, but I think that's where the that's where the movement is, that's where the change is. Um, I don't think you're gonna have a change from top to bottom. I think it starts from from bottom up.

SPEAKER_03 13:45

This episode is sponsored by Live Chinese the Marketplace, the home for hearters who own their stories and their business. Your book, your merch, your audience. One storefront, you keep 80%, you own your customer list, you build a relationship, real relationship with the readers. If that sounds like the way you want to run your business, visit lifechainwisdom.com. Well, I'm gonna go back to the same question about this. But is it us or the system, right? And here are my thoughts. Because I know we are our thoughts, and I kind of when Adais opened up and she talks about it's us, not the system. I'm gonna think that's position that Adeis is taking. And you know, it got me thinking about as Africans, right? Because I think sometimes a person doesn't know you from Africa, or you're from any other place in the world that's that's uh that's black location-wise, until maybe they talk to you deeply, right? So when oftentimes when I first moved to this country and I and I heard the conversation around people are like like locking you up based on your color. I was naive to it until I actually somebody started pulling out and started noticing it. But then maybe think about you know, the folks that from other places that come to the United States and they were able to thrive. Why were they able to do that? Even though they look like most black Americans the same way, right? So then it made me think about is it the way you think? Or is it your way to to ignore certain obstacles or certain way of thinking, a certain way of people looking at you? So I started thinking about those things as well, but I know it's real because I didn't see it until somebody pointed it out to me. But then it was a choice for me to either continue to look at it or I continue to look where I want to go. You know, I'm a snowboarder. You know, something about snowboarding says when you're going on the mountain, man, or you're going to the trees, you know, look at the trees, you look between the trees, you look where you need to go, and you follow that route and you get to where you want to get to. So sometimes the system could be in your way, but if you focus on the system, the system could resist you, or the system could hold you back, or you can focus on where you want to go. So now when you decide where you want to go, sometimes, right, people might say things that offend you, like I can take that personal, or I'm like, no, like, like I'm like a duckbeat, water water on my back, rolls right off, right? I'm getting after the thing I want to get after. So sometimes it's all about how you think about the thing as far as where you want to go after it. And unless somebody's physically in my way, then I think I can achieve the thing I want to achieve if somebody's not physically blocking me. Now they could systematically block you, and that's the part that's kind of difficult because system you cannot see, right? It is there, but you can't see it. But then in order, you know, to affect a system you can't see, that means you got organized. And I think we're going back to what Dr. Renisha was saying earlier, too, about being more organized. Because if you're not organized, then it's hard to change the system. Because what changes system is an organized culture, and culture is how we do things around here. But if you don't figure out how you're gonna do things, then it's very hard to be the system. So I can see both sides, but I've still come back to what Adeza says, it's on us, right? It's not the system. Because I think we can move the system if we organize. And if we don't organize, then it's very hard for us to move the system. So those who are very well organized, that's why the folks that we put, we when Josh talked about, you know, white folks being at the top of certain innovation, then it's kind of hard to push through that if you're not organized enough. So those are my thoughts. Anybody got anybody want to point up pine on that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Yeah, no, it I I agree with you. I think the um, I think where we get caught up is not that we're special for this or that that means we are in a our unique situation is so exceptional that it means that we can't help ourselves in the most traditional way of helping ourselves. But I think we are black Americans specifically are in a very, again, not that this removes us from responsibility, but we're in a unique spot. I would even say that black Americans are in a very unique spot in comparison to our, you know, first or second generation African counterparts that immigrate from directly from Africa here without necessarily being here or your ancestors being here to experience, you know, how this country was built, right? Slavery, Jim Crow. America has constructed a very interesting box that we are continuously trying to climb out of. And I think if it was just as simple as try harder, work together, because it, I mean, if you look at it, any moment of real resistance, we were met by slaughter every single time. Not that that doesn't mean try harder. And there is again, not that this is so unique, we can't help ourselves with the agency we have, but we do have to slow down and really look at what is what is it about the black American that has been met with such obstacles, even when we have shown glimmers of like, hey, we got it, we got it. No, here comes the destruction, here comes the you know, hegemony, right? Being able to control control a bunch of people without major force. It is still something we're figuring out. And I don't think it's because we're not trying hard enough. There's a smarter game that we are that we're not playing collectively together, because that's ultimately what's gonna take. We're gonna have to figure this out for each other. You know, I even think about one of my uh African-American studies professor, he was a West Indian man, um, had this really beautiful accent. But he would always say in class, he says, at the end of the day, no matter what we do, it's gonna take good white people to open those doors. That was almost 20 years ago. Like I said, not that far ago, just like maybe a few years back. But there's something to that, right? There's something about what is it going to take? What metrics are we looking at? What KPRs are we looking at? Because, you know, across the nation, can almost infer struggling in school, probably a single family home, where's dad, parents got divorced young or never even been married. Last thing I'll say, I watch this every weekend. I'm hired a lot by white families to DJ. And I've noticed something, a pattern as I watch these unions on a weekly basis. I was telling my sister, it feels like two kingdoms coming together to continue the lineage of resource management, financial literacy. Like there's a this is passed down. One family, I was at one black uh professional network conference, and he this this uh black gentleman was a wealth manager. He was like, There's clients that I work with, white families that I work with. This property's been in their family for over 200 years, and they're passing this down. And so you're thinking about where these folks starting at versus we just trying to maybe get our credit score right, right? It's just sometimes it just feels so daunting. It's like, damn, will this ever change? Right, in terms of economic power and success. We got it, we got glimmers of hope for sure. And at the masses level, and sometimes it just feels so overwhelming. It's like the same things we're focused on in my lifetime we did when I was a kid, that they did when my dad was a kid, which my grandfather had his own, probably even more in-your-face reasons to to give up. And you know, anyway, going on a little bit of a tangent, but it's that we're in a definitely unique situation amongst other immigrant groups. And again, that is not a license that we are not trying or don't have the antidote to our to our own pain. But at the same time, it is it is fascinating to see the lengths this country has gone to try to cap our if we're gonna speak of it like that. It just feels very intentional at times.

SPEAKER_03 21:24

I am glad you're enjoying the podcast. Before we continue, I have a gift for you. Since 2016, I have read and listened to over 900 books so far. It's gonna be a thousand. And I organized them into a library and I handpicked the top 100 books I recommend to my clients, my friends, and the people in my community. Books on storytelling, language, and personal growth, and building something from your own life. If you're watching this podcast and you're looking for your next great read, this library is your gift. It is free. Go to asheralbertwright.com and check out the One Thousand Book Challenge. This is my gift to you. Now back to the conversation. There's so much in there, Joss. I'll tell you what, this there's so much in there. And we're going to talk about this for a while. I think we're going to close on this topic here. Because this one, you know, every time I hear it, it's kind of, I know that, I know that. It bubbles up inside, right? Because the thing is, like, we're solving the same problem for centuries, and we haven't been able to get beyond that problem to go to a new problem because every generation comes back to stuff trying to solve the same problem. So it's like you're in the same place. And how can you pass something down? So you're talking about it passing on the world. Well, we're passing on the same problem to our kids generation after generation. They're passing on what different world, different issues, right? So it's like we have what we're what are we passing down? Can we pass down some wealth versus with less problems? Right? So we're stuck in the same place because we're not moving beyond the problem. And it got me sometimes I get I get I get fired up. Sometimes I'm like, oh my God, like can we get beyond this thing? And and how do how do we how do we work smarter, right? Smart play the smarter game. It's like, okay, now I'm gonna find a way to not be focused on that same problem because now I'm going back to focus piece, right? So we know the problem exists historically, but can you focus your energy on new problems versus the same problem? Because oftentimes we talk about reparation and all the other stuff, but it's like if I stuck if I'm stuck there, then that problem keeps passing down to my next generation, next generation. Can I can I get beyond that so I can focus on new things to pass down versus the old thing? So I know at Days where you you are an immigrant like myself. I want to hear your thoughts on this a little bit because you're from another place, it's like I am.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

It's interesting. I think when you mentioned that, the fact that it's different for someone who moved here. I moved to the States, I probably lived here for 15 years before I fully understood racism, and it wasn't until the George Floyd thing that happened in 2020. In my mind, I just couldn't understand why people acted the way they did, and in my mind I was literally just bad people because I didn't have context. Um, so it didn't seem overwhelming or something I couldn't overcome because I didn't have context. And that really matters. So just talk about, you know, we're working hard on the same problem, and you also said that we're working on the same problem. I think for now, the fact that I think we should stop working hard, harder. That's not gonna work, it's not gonna help us. And I also think we should stop working on the same problem because the reality is that what you focus on expands. So if we focus on it's a real thing that, you know, the things happening to us simply because we buy. But if we focus on that, that is going to expand. And I was just, as we're having this conversation, I was thinking of I've never met them in person, but we know about the moms that live in some mountain in Asia, and we know how some of them can sit still for like two days. And the reality is that the reason why they can do that is not because they're trying hard to sit still for two days, it's because they're so relaxed, they're not thinking about sitting still for two days. So, all in all, this is just a mindset game. And what has happened over time is that they figured out a way to kind of break it down in your mindset because if I can get you to believe that you can't be different, then you can't, no matter what you do. You can work as hard as you want, but if your mindset is uh stuck in the same place, you will not move forward. I was just thinking of a lady that started a vineyard and a winery. She was on this podcast 10 years in, and she was talking about that the reason why they succeeded was because they had no clue about what the rules and regulations were in a very, very male and white male-dominated industry because there were two black women, two black sisters. So all of a sudden, it was like all of the things that they did when they started their business were things that you shouldn't do. But they didn't know. They did it anyway. So it's like if if they started now that they know all of this, they've probably done things differently and they've probably worked against them. I believe that we should stop working harder and try working smarter, whatever that means. We should focus less on the problem, focus more on what we want. Because that will help us find a solution. If what we want is, for example, to pass down well to our families, as Joshua was saying that I just thought about a friend of mine that they're their own property and in somewhere in New York that have been paid off by their grandparents. And then one day she's like, he's like, he, one of his cousins sold it to all these developers that come and offer you a little bit of money, and then he just sold it. And then I was like, why didn't you call me first? I could have bought it. You know, these are things that we don't have. We don't even understand what it means to keep this property for you to have a property that is paid off for you to know that for the next several generations, nobody in this family is gonna have to pay mortgage or whatever, just pay your property taxes, which can figure out a way to also, you know, walk around, depending on what the county or township offers, right? But all of a sudden, this thing in this family is gone forever. And then the developer develops it, and all of a sudden it's worth 20x and you nobody in that family can afford it again. So that's when you should stop working harder. It's okay, because obviously whoever sold that property was working so hard and saw that money as a way to stop working hard, but that money is finite, it's gonna go away. If they work smarter, the property will still be the family and probably be the family for the next several generations. So I'll just probably say, let's stop working harder, let's stop focusing on the problem, and let's work more on our mindset. Even if everything is horrible, let's be delusional for a second. I feel like if we do that, things will work out better for us. Because, you know, being the fact for the fact that I moved here and I had no idea of what the context was for black people, I was really, I was just doing the thing that I knew to do, and I didn't even think about the fact that somebody was gonna stop me. It wasn't even a thing that occurred to me at all.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

That's so powerful, which you're because I I believe that is our gift and our curse, is how often we talk about our demise and what contributed to it, and having context for it, and then and the complexity is will a portion of us will quickly use that as a reason about justifying why we can't do something or why it's so much harder. And I think our immigrant brothers and sisters come over here without that context, and it's really a gift because you're just looking at it on face value, like, okay, what we got to be great at math, say less. We got to study more because I know what I was dealing with back home in comparison to what the opportunity I have now, eyes are wide open, and you can see the mental impact around certain parts of our community that flourish, especially when we're compared to our immigrant brothers and sisters that are fresh from you know the Ethiopias and the Nigerias and the Ghana's of the world and so on and so forth that come over here and comparing them, their academic success to black Americans, you can see the gap. And oftentimes that deals with the mentality. It is what we are seeing all together that can limit our ability to thrive, survive, and ultimately, you know, move ourselves up the social economic chain. And um that that's one of the the the really unique complexities of being specifically black American and a and and having the full context of things where folks that come over, they don't necessarily have that experience. So they start with a bit more of like possibility. Their delusion can turn into fruit because I believe there's a a horror story or a trauma that got you here that you're not dealing with that black folks are in, they live in, they're trying to climb out of. Even black folks, you know, there's a narrative in our community, we don't trust each other, so sometimes, oftentimes we're getting in our own way. Anyway, yeah, you build you just you raise a very layered perspective that um, like you said, it's not as easy as try harder, work harder. It's it's so much more complex than that. But brother Wright, man, as you will. Yes, you just got me on one, brother. I had to speak on it.

SPEAKER_03 30:03

No, no, listen, listen, we're gonna stay here a bit because I think this is important, and maybe this is gonna help the the entire community because the immigrant mindset, I would say we call it the immigrant mindset. It is a game-changing mindset. Because you think about this, like it's like two suitcases to success, right? I have to leave shit behind to go forward. And because as the as the black American, like traditional black American, you can't take two suitcases. No, you gotta take everything with you. And that's that's a challenge. You're taking everything with you. And we are saying some stuff you gotta leave behind, not to forget it, but you gotta leave it behind for you to move forward. So, can you adopt the immigrant mindset and say, I'm gonna focus on what I can take with me so I can be successful in the next location I'm going. And if you can do that, then you can lay off a lot of that thing that you've been carrying for years because you've been carrying that hill on your back, right? And you can't put it down when you're supposed to be walking up the hill, but you're carrying the hill on your back, right? So, can we do that? Can we can we transition from that? I think that will help a lot of us, and we can organize with the immigrants and the traditional black American and figure out how do we take on this system that a lot of us can't see. Because when I came here, I didn't see it. That means I didn't care about it. I'm going after what going after things I want to go after. But then when you start noticing it, he's like, oh well, this says this thing said I can't do this, and then I'll find a way not to do it. Like, no, I don't care. I'm gonna break the rules, right? Until you know the rules, you start breaking with that. Oh, that's a rules. Well, is it serving me? Oh, it's not serving me. Let me find a way around it, right? But you guys probably know about the rules so much that you talk about the context piece. You guys know too much, therefore you won't you won't move past that thing that's holding you back. Doc, I don't know if we can hear you or not, but um, we go. Can we you want to try again? If not, we'll keep going.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

Can you hear me?

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Yeah, yes, ma'am. Come on now, come on with it, doc.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

So, I mean, I think a lot of a lot of what was said, I I I echo. It's still working, Josh. You okay? You hear what me?

SPEAKER_01 31:55

It's working, it's beautiful. I just it was just uh it was a joy.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

It's like hallelujah.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

Yeah, yeah, it was a joy moment for you, love.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

So, you know, as I sit here and I and I hear what everyone is saying, I'm a very visual person, so I think of this as a rigged chess game. I think of the system as a rigged chess game. And and black Americans are pawns, so they are the majority on the board, but with the least power or the consumers, right? And so you're educating them, you're feeding them, you're housing them, you're placing them where you need them to be for your benefit. But those are the ones that get eaten first. And then when you have black kings and queens that rise up, they're usually quickly destroyed or undermined. So when I think about immigrants, they're the majority in their land. And and I think when they're educated, they're educated from a place of prestige, like their identity is intact. Like there's a lot of pride, like Jamaican pride, there's a lot of African pride. Like if you're from there, you speak the language, there's pride for your land. For black Americans, that is the that has been distorted, right? You are serving a country. And there's people who went to the army, they served a country and then come back and don't have any rights. But this is the land that we love. And for for other nations, it's the land of opportunity, right? And so for someone else who has a country where, yeah, everyone looks alike, we all work together, but we're all gonna go to America to make the opportunity for ourselves to go back and support our country. So a lot of people from you know, the immigrant spaces, they literally are going back, they'll come here, they'll work, and then they'll they'll bring it back to their land. Black Americans don't have that. They don't have that. So it's like, what are you elevating to? So you're playing this game, all become become a queen or king of a game that you'll never win. And the reality of it is technically the big win is to have your own chess game. They're playing a rigged game, it works for them. Tax breaks, you know, passing down generational w wealth. They have coded information that some people don't know. They got to pay millions to have access to because it's not in your normal education world. So they're this is a game that's rigged. You're you're you're not meant to learn some of the things that work for them. They have secret codes to make this game work for them. So the real win is to play your own chess game, but we don't have a land to do that. And then we can't really go back to Africa because we don't speak their language, we don't know their culture, we don't live by how they live. We've been cultivated here to be pawns. That's my perspective of it, where it's it's kind of hard to blame the individual, right? Because there's been countless traumatic experiences in terms of when you watch your leader be at the foot of a police officer and get away with it. You watch your community leader who was standing for something get stripped of their entire economic stability. Here it is, we have football players who's standing for something, whether it was standing for their religion, standing for their belief, and we watch them get undermined. So now you're out of the league altogether because you stood for something you believed in. So I feel like that's the trauma that we're seeing when you watch your father or your uncle get killed at the hands of a police officer. And now your your mother has to figure out how to make a means for the family because this is what it is. We watch people like Nolan Wells, whose mom and father are sitting here trying to prove that this boy did not drown. There's hard evidence that he didn't. But then we watch Lindsay Clancy, where there's full-on evidence and a confession that she did it, and we're watching how the system works in her favor. So then when you see that, how do you tell black Americans, you know, just work hard? Just get your education. You have all these resources and you're just not using them. Like you're lazy, or you're it's hard to tell them that when this is their everyday truth, and it's it's hard to say, focus on something else. Let's turn a new leaf and let's focus on the camaraderie of coming together, but coming together with who? Because we're also killing one another. Right. And I think it goes back to home. So that is my contribution to that.

SPEAKER_03 36:11

If you're enjoying this podcast right now, I've launched a platform, MemoSemillions.com, where I help authors, former authors, our people that want to be authors, write their book, publish their book, format their book, edit their book. It's a whole one-stop shop for your book journey. So go there to memoirsmillion.com and check it out and see you on the inside. Thank you for speaking clearly. Josh, you got something to say, keep going.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Yeah. I mean, there's really nothing else to say. I mean, doc, I mean, and the thing is, nobody's wrong, right? Because somebody could easily go, well, no, you need to try harder. Because we decided we were gonna focus our economics towards this, and we were gonna live in our houses at under these multi-generational ways of existing, and we're gonna borrow, you know, what we've seen our Asian immigrants do as they became the model minority, and then we're gonna do what the South Asians do, we're gonna be really good at math. And like, well, hold on. My mom is working late. I'm work walking myself home. The TV's raising me. Grandma's too old to watch me. I don't, I ain't heard from my dad, and I don't know when. I think he might be locked up or dead. When you just look at the layers of social economic problems that are that combat the traditional black household, right? And you can look at all the numbers that play out education, all that. Again, not that there's not glimmers of hope. And we're not celebrating our our HBCU graduates every June. And, you know, we we can't wait to see one of our own out of hundreds of thousands in the community, one make it to the NBA and feel like, oh, this person's gonna come back and change the landscape and give us more of a pipeline to the NBA. I mean, this is literally something that's happened in Seattle, you know, and not that we're not appreciative of our athletes. And there's so many more of us that don't make it to that elite level, right? Look at how extreme things have to be for us to feel like we've are just even able to compete. I mean, even even our one of our shining uh capitalistic gems in Jay-Z, he can get to a space around other folks that have that generational wealth, and you'll hear it in his music. Like, damn, I'm still not, I still haven't arrived yet, right? I still can get to a level and feel like othered. And what are you doing here? Oh, that's that rap guy. Yeah, what's your name again? Right? And he's I can only imagine his documentary's been out, so it's been fascinating to watch him tell his story. And uh he's got that line from his album 444, the OJ line, where he's like, I'm not black, I'm OJ. Okay, right? It's just this you cannot escape your black skin and what it has symbolically meant as your demise in this country, no matter how paid you are. At whatever level you get to, they're waiting on you to tell you, like, yeah, we let you get here, and we're only gonna let so many of you get here. Because the doc point, they got a system to maintain the competitive economic advantage. Why wouldn't they? Like, think about that. Why wouldn't they? Because if we were in the same position, what do you think we would be doing? Because it's a human thing. And I'm oversimplifying this, Asher. You had the Portuguese Europeans come down to Africa and they didn't lead with a bunch of like force and violence. It was like, hey, we what you think of these uh fam, you could stand right here and shoot somebody way over there. You ain't got these spears no more. They're like, What? How are you able to kill your enemies so efficiently? Well, man, you give me uh two, three hundred of them slaves you just captured in the former war, the tribal war you guys had. Man, I gave you I give you I give you access to some of these guns.

unknown 40:06

Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_01 40:07

Uh-oh. Something I devalue for something I value access to power in trinkets, in things, and we exchanged human life for uh things, artifacts that we believe we needed to protect our our kingdom on our local level. Then a whole ecosystem of human labor was being used to create a new world power. And when you look at it, just absent of just color and whatever your politics are or how you've been how you how you've been raised, when you talk about changing the competitive landscape and looking at what that history of that move, chattel slavery was used to during the African Latin slave trade, just like, damn, you all have outdone yourself. Because we've been paying that whole move, exchanging something, trading something for human life. How much are we doing that today with our own lives? It's consistent trading out who we are for some material thing that ultimately means nothing until we place value on it. And we we're willing to exchange our life for that against each other because they made us hate ourselves and love their wealth. I'm done talking.

SPEAKER_03 41:22

So let's let's go in there. We're gonna talk a little bit because I think I think it's important to bring in the the immigrant perspective, the immigrant mindset in here a little bit, so we can kind of like because I think if we team up, if we team up, I think we can actually crack the code on this. Because no, no, because I'm listening to you guys, right? And I hear everything because it took me a while to understand what you're talking about, Josh, and and Dr. Nisha. Took me a while to get it. And after I saw it, I was like, hmm, interesting. So now, how do we organize, right, the black that comes from other places around the world to America? So you guys got context and you got skills and you got different ways of looking at things. We got different ways of looking at things, but we are black. And we have and we have we have a unique skincare.

SPEAKER_01 42:04

See, we don't we don't know that though, right? Again, there's also been division, even with because I'm gonna keep it real, like African blacks that would move into our neighborhoods, they ain't black. This is my mindset, right? They're like, they ain't they ain't black like that. They ain't they ain't our kind of black. Where you from? You got the accent, you got different culture, you got different religion. All of these become barriers that keep us from aligning and integrating. You know, that's a whole other because we don't even know who we are. I mean, I took 23andme, and I got 75% of it is is Nigerian blood. And I couldn't, I couldn't even tell you, I couldn't even tell you that I couldn't even tell you where Nigerian restaurant is in my neighborhood. Like I don't, I'm just disconnected from it. But it's it's the traditional slave story, right? You got West African blood, some eat some European blood in you, and now, well, you're black. I don't care. You're you're you're just that. It's we can oversimplify you and throw you in this category. And anyone else that comes into your community, even if they look like you, they not you, they're not, and we're gonna tell them not to even partner with you.

SPEAKER_03 43:15

You know, you know what's even interesting? You know, we got that Ukraine battle, right? When they brought a lot of Ukraine over here, you think America says oh they're not white? They bring them in and they pay them, right? So me me like Addis, you from you from Nigeria, I'm from Jamaica.

SPEAKER_02 43:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:31

But when we say you're not black, like are we talking about is black a thing? Are we talking like what is what is what is being black? Is being black just to be trampled up on, or is it just like, hey, man, we look black? Like, like maybe black is a category that's different from being a person.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

Yeah, so first of all, I'm gonna say what um Chimawanda and Nohasen goes because we grew up in the same um campus, apparently professors. She said she didn't know she was black until she moved to the United States. I didn't know I Was black until years after I moved to the United States. That's how bad it is. Because I'm me, like, you know, if you ask me, okay, I'm from my hometown, outside of my hometown, and outside of my state, I'm from outside of my hometown, I'm from a local government, probably. Outside of my state, I'm from my state, right? Outside of the country, I'm from Nigeria. Like it just kind of depends on where you are. But the whole concept of being black, like, what does it even mean? I have no idea. And even when I knew that I was black, I didn't understand what it meant to be black. But I'm still like when something just shared, because I remember the very first year I came to grad school, I came, I moved to the States, I was in grad school, and apparently they were they had this meeting, either shortly after I came or just before, because I mean I had no idea what was going on. I was busy trying to, you know, go about my whole graduate school business. But they had a whole meeting where it was like, you know, the um blacks and blacks that are Americans and then the immigrants, some kind of reconciliation thing. I was like, wait, what's that? Like I don't understand. They were like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's this thing between, you know, blacks, black Americans and blacks from the other place, and they don't see how they and they go, I don't like why. And they tried to, it didn't make sense to me. I was like, well, I don't know. I was have they reconciled, maybe I didn't know, whatever. I moved on. And it took years before I kind of it's still, I don't know that it still makes sense to me. Because right now, I'm an immigrant, so my experience is different. But I'm a mom now that I watch my kids, and I see more of that black American experience in that is gonna play out in their lives more than it did in mine, and they don't have what I had, which is I grew up in Nigeria, you know, with no concept of blackness. I remember first time I went to Nigeria with the kids, my daughter after a while was like, Mommy, everybody here is black. And it hit me because I did not notice that. I I was just whole, right? But but for how that was the first time. And then over here, they're they're the minority everywhere they go. You know, my husband and I try to put some culture, but it's too much for just two people to make a fuck happen. Once in a while, we could go with it to the cousins or go to the grandparents, but it's not enough. They're every day is a different reality. And then something happens in school, and you can tell, even if they're trying really hard, sometimes people do things. You know, there was one time a girl, we got a report which was bogus. A girl didn't show up in school for a couple of days, and then the parents said it was my daughter that she was too afraid to come to school because of my daughter. Well, come to find out she was a bully, she was bullying some other girl, and my daughter told the girl, you know, you don't have to take this. And she got upset. I don't know what happened. This was like two weeks or so later. So when I finally saw the girl, the girl is bigger than my daughter. Taller, bigger. But I kind of get impressive because my daughter is tall, right? For her age. Kind of getting impressive because of my daughter's size, she's afraid. I'm like, but you're bigger than her. But you know, it's all this whole thankfully, the school is at least the leadership in the school is a bit sane. So trying to paint that story of, you know, she's a black girl and big, so I'm afraid for my life. So now I see that, you know, I see that with my son, and I'm like, ooh. I don't know how to deal, I really don't know how to deal with it. Luckily for me, my husband, you know, at least he came here when he was 13, you know, his siblings were younger, they had the experience, so they understand a little bit better and can maybe step in. But for me, it's like I didn't know how to handle, like, I really don't know how to handle this. Because back home, the rule was I had better not hear anything from your teacher. Period. But here, the rule is tell me whatever your teacher is saying because I know, you know, half the time they may not have the best intentions, you know, whether they're whether they're doing it because they're bad people or it's just because something is something that is is just they just absorbed it by being in this place. So it's a bit challenging. But here's what I'm gonna say. I keep going back to I used to read the law when I was a kid. So the Tsars, whenever they were toppled over and killed, or in in the French Revolution, at some point I have to say, uh-uh, like, you know, I remember one of my mentors were telling me, if you're not making money in your business, it's because if you're not getting what you want in your business, clients, money, whatever, it's because you're too comfortable. And I was like, you're insulting me. And he was like, You're too comfortable. But I started thinking about it. Say I want, I'm trying to raise money, for example, for sponsorships, and I make a list of people to call, and I get to start calling, I'm like, ugh, I don't know, you know, and then I don't call. It means I'm not, like, I'm not feeling I'm not in enough pain to get out of the situation I'm in to actually make that call to save me. I have options, so I can postpone that call until probably I'm about to die. So the reality is, I think maybe it's a case of let's give them a little bit and then hold back some things. So you feel it, you feel like, oh, I I think I'm making it, I think things are getting better, I think, I think, and think. And it keeps you in that weird, supposedly comfortable place that you don't do anything. I think maybe for the French Revolution and all of that, they didn't have the you know, let's give them a little bit of you know, reprieve so that they weren't, you know what I mean. So, but I but we may never get to a point where we don't get anything that makes us comfortable. So maybe it's we have to consciously decide that we're not comfortable in this situation and do something about it. And regardless of what the divide is, which we all Americans that are from here, black Americans are from here and the people that immigrated, we're never gonna have the same experience. It's never gonna happen. But the reality is that it gets to a point where it doesn't matter because they'll still see you as black before, for example, you open your mouth, or for us that now have kids that grew up here when they opened their mouth to sound American and they don't care. That's the reality. So, as hard as it is, that's why it pains me when other black people attack black people for I mean, we've seen big companies bring out ads that are very just horrendous, and we forgive them like that, and we keep buying their stuff. You know, a black business owner is delayed your shipping and all of a sudden cancel them, destroy them, kill them, they should never be in business again. We give no zero grace, and it's it's in I think it's inherited because we already told us, somebody already told us you guys are horrible, and then we believe that we're horrible. I don't know what it is, you know. Um the and again I mentioned it earlier, the one that pains me is somebody is trying to have a better life. I remember I don't remember the name of the singer in Atlanta that her daughter was doing an internship in New York City, and she got her daughter an apartment, and everybody went over in arms, like you're spoiling her. You should let her suffer like everybody else. She was like, first of all, suffer like she didn't, first of all, up to this point, she never had that lifestyle. So why would she start now to go and live in a cookroot and rat-infested apartment with eight other people? It doesn't make sense. And for me, an immigrant, it did not make sense. I'm like, there's no way in this world that that makes sense. Like, my parents will never send me somewhere, and if they can provide a certain level of comfort for me, think twice about it. It doesn't, it doesn't know. You know, that's just the way it is. So, and I was like, why is this even a topic of conversation? Right? But if if a white person did that for them, nobody's even gonna talk about it, it's normal. So, this whole idea of everybody has to go through the struggle and stuff, I'm like, no, if you get out of the struggle, keep going. And I I I I hate to see when people make people feel bad. So all of a sudden, now if I'm rich or whatever, I'm hiding it, I'm trying not to show because it just hurts us the most because we're not going to show examples to other people, we're not going to be comfortable living a certain kind of life, and people are not actually going to feel their pain because they see the big difference. You can see the white person is normal. Oh, they all have money and money. But you see a lot of black people, you're like, oh my god, what am I doing here? The pain is you feel the pain more, and that can force you to get out of you know, the life that you're somewhat comfortable with.

SPEAKER_03 52:13

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SPEAKER_00 52:33

Can I just can I just say something really quickly? Is my mic working? Tap tap.

SPEAKER_03 52:38

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 52:39

Yeah, I I I I think again, a lot of what was said is definitely a good point. When it comes to, first of all, I just want to go back. When it comes to immigration, I'm Asher and Daisy. I'm just gonna ask you, right? So when it comes to even Jamaica, you know, you hear people say, oh, Jamaica sold themselves out. When you think about the government, right, there's still a divide whether you want to say, like, I know for Guyana, it's like the the more Indian Guyanese versus the black Guyanese, right? And the Indian Guyanese has this like power and the way they treat black guy. I mean, it's there, and I believe it is in Jamaica as well, where it's like you'll say those who are more I'm trying to, why am I why am I drawing a blank? You're what's the division, Asher, in terms of like black Jamaicans versus the coolie, coolie per se, right? Like you'll kind of have that, right, as a divide. So I think it's still everywhere. And I think the issue is if we and America, this is why I said the system has really been intricately thought of. They own your stuff, they own your land. So yeah, you're there, you're the majority, but you don't make you don't have any power. So, you know, okay, so we're gonna all come to Africa and we're gonna set up shop and we're gonna, we're gonna be this one big great nation. No, they created it in a space where it's like, no, we own that land too. You could be there as long as you want, you could be the majority, but we own that land too. So all your goods, all your all your your produce, or it it it's it's owned by us. So you could try to fight us if you want to, but we'll bomb you in a heartbeat if you guys decide to, you know, cultivate this apartheid of a land. And like so, I still think that's there, but you are able to educate yourself, you're able to do more in that regard to help your mental, but you really don't have any power. Like it's not your land. If you think about it, it's really not. And we sell ourselves out, like Josh said, we sell ourselves out for wealth. So we live literally have done that even in prominent spaces where you had your land was so rich with things that America needed, but they made they were they are were intentional and they might make sure that at the end of the day, they're in charge of those resources, not you. So I just want to put that out there, just in a sense of like, again, how the system is still this rig chess game where it's like, oh, so you thought that if you move all your people over here, that you're gonna have more power and you could beat us. Try it. So I just want to put that out there.

SPEAKER_03 54:56

I I appreciate everybody's perspective. We're gonna wrap up. And I think Doc, you're right. We gotta we gotta have more conversation with so the the rest of the stuff on the doc we didn't get to, which was um we got here, the other the other the other two topics we don't get to those in the next conversation. But this was a lot of thought I shared today, and I I like this because you know I'm not against white people, not against any people, right? It's just like like I'm not against your family. I just I'm caring about my family, right? It's the same thing, right? It's not about the race thing here. It's about how do we address the things that we're noticing that are disadvantaged because at the end of the day, right? It's all about the power game. And whoever's in power, right? You go to other places that are all black, and there's still problems as far as power dynamics, right? So it doesn't matter. But it's just that in America, it's a little different because black, there's no black borders in America, right? You can't say this is the territory just for the black. There's none of that in America, right? You don't have that. So Dr. Renishi is right about you don't have the power because you don't own the land. You don't you don't have the resources under your feet. So therefore I can move you. So we gotta work on the other part, the organized violence. Like we haven't we haven't capitalized on organized violence. And organized violence is what? Police force, military forces, right? They're organized violence forces. We don't really think about that, but we need to we need to organize our force of violence, right? On the continent of Africa, another place in the world, so we can defend. But we can't defend something. It's like like if I come and capture a piece of property, if I can't defend it, I don't want it. You can buy you can buy the property over here, but if he can't if he can't protect it, somebody's gonna take it, right? We're not organized enough, right? And being organized, you have the force of violence, it's well organized if we can defend ourselves. We don't have that, we can't do anything. And that's what the other culture has that we haven't thought deeply about when Josh was talking about. It's like we haven't we have organized the force of violence, we need to do that, or we can do that. That's why I like the I like the um the nation of Islam because they are of a force of organized violence if they want to use it, but they haven't. So, but we gotta think through those lenses. So let's wrap up two to three minutes. Let me get your wrap-up thoughts, starting with you, Josh, and then close out with Dr. Renista. That's what you are or you closing. Biggest takeaway, giveaway.

SPEAKER_01 57:03

My biggest takeaway is um, and I've been I've been sitting with this with a lot of uh different topics to just find, I think internally, right? You can look at this conversation and be overwhelmed by like, so then what do I do? Now what is this is this whole thing, anything that I do, is it is it just a failed effort in the direction of uh of freedom, whatever that may mean to the person. And um I think about the perspective of black immigrants, African immigrants, black Americans, and no one is wrong. It is about how do we use our agency to, in spite of the things that are holding us back, to choose, well, what is the path to come together and integrate and align around what liberation looks like for the darker skinned person walking around this particular part of the earth? What does that look like? How do we choose more votes in the direction of liberation versus the things that we may, you know, temporarily choose for comfort? Like might like leveling up on a you know, wealth-wise, or like, okay, could we better, and you know, that's a layered conversation. So I just think as the more knowledgeable we come about what we can do, taking that next step to doing based on how informed we are about what liberation means for you know the darker skinned person that navigates this society, that is going to require different means than um folks that have traditionally held access to power and resources in this country. They have to choose differently, and oftentimes that means sacrificing our temporary comfort for long-term liberation and actions that direction.

SPEAKER_03 58:43

So anyway, are they in two in two minutes? What's your biggest takeaway, giveaway?

SPEAKER_02 58:48

I'm just gonna say we need to stop glorifying the struggle because it just keeps us struggling. The the terminology, pull yourself by the bootstraps. I'm like, what does that even mean? Like, even the person saying doesn't know what it means, but somehow the people they're telling that embodies it, and it's almost like the grass-to-gray story is just a thing. You know, if you don't have a grass-to-gray story, you're treated differently. In all cultures, in other cultures as well. But I'm talking, we're talking about black people now. If we stop glorifying the struggle, then it loses whatever. How would I put it? Like if I struggle, then there's something exceptional about me. So I have to struggle. But if you start thinking, I really don't have to struggle, then it allows your mind the opportunity to think of what is the way to get around the struggle. Because I feel that the people that get around taxes, that's not the thing. They're like, I don't want to pay these taxes, what's the way to get around these taxes? Right? Um, while some people be like, oh, I'm very okay paying all these taxes. And I'm like, duh, it's open for everyone. Why would you choose one or the other? So I just think not that if struggle comes, whatever, but we stop glorifying it and making it seem like you know, it's this is a rite of passage, and if you don't go through that, then you can't become something. I need to focus our energy on how can I get around the struggle. If everybody's thinking the same thing, I think it will it will unite us more.

unknown 1:00:10

Dr.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:10

Anisha.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:11

I like that. We are we are definitely more than our struggle. What I wrote down just in terms of in reflection, um, we have an option to either fight for the life we want to live, or fight to live a life worth living. And and I say that because we could spend all our days fighting to change a system, or we can live our days fighting to change what's in front of us. Right. And I think um love wins every time. So I'm gonna still say if we could focus on the things that are in our control first, we make more of a movement. You know, I I can't I just keep saying it in terms of the brokenness in our homes, us killing one one another. You know, that that is big division in itself. So I think if we could at least start with the things that we control, we can move the needle more, even with how we support our community and how we show up. You know what I mean? You see someone who was trying to build a business and and they're doing stuff for their community, what can that support look like? What can that love look like? Um, and and to Daisy's point, even in the sense of the grace and forgiveness that we give one another in terms of, okay, you you you your customer service worth the great, but it doesn't mean I'm gonna stop supporting you. Maybe you know, I need to give you just a pointer or figure out how I can support your business, you know, being better as opposed to not supporting it at all. I think we do ourselves a disservice when we tear our leaders down on social media, when we undermine one another in a sense of glorifying people's mistakes and using it as entertainment. Like I think there's a lot of work to be done just to restore healing first before we can unite to take care of a bigger problem.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:49

Well said everyone, and I'll I will close with the word that comes to mind was the comfort crisis that we are experiencing. When I mean by comfort crisis, it's like we we sit in the mindset of victimhood, right? It's comfortable to repeat the victim story, it comes to repeat the story of struggle, right? And it creates crisis for us. And if if we can if we can go away from that, then I think we start having a better way of looking forward and looking at the direction we want to go. Because I'm saying, like I said, we're snowboarding, don't focus on the trees, man, focus on where you want to go. And like, like Adeza says, like, like the way of getting around the taxes is not to pay the taxes, right? You can focus on paying taxes or not, not paying taxes. But either way, it's still a choice. Where you want to focus at? I think if we can find a way to focus on the things we want, I think we can get a lot of the stuff that's going on that's holding us back. So that's my wrap up, guys. Great chat, great conversation today. Hang tight so we can um we can upload a bit that folks make it an utterly, utterly fantastic day.