Black Except When They Go Home

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Jay dot Ill, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, Hi, good people, Hi good people. I'm so hoping that you're well. We are well. This is Jay dot Ill the podcast. This is Joe Scott with my sister friends like st Clair and the Lovely Age of Graden Dons. Hello. Yeah, she that was her lovely voice. Yes, this is my deep I have been running the streets. The streets are calling my name and sleeping. You've been having a good time, I girl, lovely, you know what I'm saying. After a year and a half of straight boom, Yeah, yes, I had a lovely week. I got to see the faces of some people who have not seen in a very long time, and there was plenty of joy to go around. Now. I'm tired, but I'm here. I may be black, and i may be ugly, but I'm here. Okay, I'm here. Always yes to the color purple quotes, yes, however and ever and ever. That's how you know, because we do never that who. I've been trying to figure out, how in the world do you transition into this conversation and what we're about to talk about right now? My goodness, how does one how does one just kind of get into it. You could, I don't know you can. You can blame me if you want to. It's always been a question on my mind. Yes, let's blame, Like, yeah, why not, let's start with the blame. Yes, this is all is fault. Like they had a conversation that we feel like uncomfortable having amongst folks sometimes times baby in our head, or we have it with our girlfriends, and you just be like, I'm just trying to understand because and the truth is, it's still a conversation that we have with our girlfriends. You know, we don't really talk about it that much anymore. It it's still a talk. And if it's a talk, it's more like a you know, at this that's true, you know, that's that's kind of the gist of it. It's in regular life. But then when we talk about and I know, y'all wonder what we're talking about, we're gonna get to it. But when we talk about like folks who are living and breathing this work, then it becomes acause I gotta see this person every day telling me about my struggle in my history, But you're not going home to me. What are we talking about? People? We were talking about our favorite black activists, people in the struggles, speaking on our missions and our history and stuff going home to women who don't look like us. And I don't know, maybe it sounds tedious that some people, but sometimes to be on my spirit because I have rectified with the Everybody can find love in different places, that's fine, but everyday people, but the folks that make a living speaking on our mission and what we do and how we can live more beautiful and how beautiful we are, how dopeful people we are. But why you don't sleep with her? Or him? H? Him? I'm just grious. I just I think it's kind of like, you know, this is a soft metaphor, but it's it's like the chef who doesn't eat meat, you know, but the butcher who doesn't eat meat. Yeah, well that kind of I don't know. It's likely, he'll say the chef, because you know, they gotta they gotta endorsements. They're all over your television, they're um receiving money and of all kinds to go and speak up and speak out about how to make this delicious? You know, beef? I don't know, burning is that a word? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, But it doesn't actually taste it, It doesn't actually eat it. M Well, okay, so here's a here's the vibe. Right, I'm gonna say something that I think you guys are just not going to agree with. Well, let's see. Okay, So here's the thing. To me, I think it is possible two engage romantically with someone who is a support to you and them not really understand your work. And I know we're talking about a specific kind of work around, you know, around racial justice and around a specific kind of experience that you would want your mate to identify is. But I just think typically speaking, your mate doesn't identify with your work no matter what it is. Now right, but see if but this is the issue, This is the issue across the board. I think if if there's an issue around being in love with and being married to somebody who does not understand your lived experience, especially when it comes to race, that I don't think the fact that you do work in that really makes a big difference. I think the difference is just the difference is like, is that something that you can do with having a really conscious mind around racial justice? Period? Because any all of us, as we talked to, even when we talk to Moon with pressure. She's talking about how it's always a pushback, even for black folks, every day pushing back in white supremacy. You have to do it. You have to do it in a personal way. You have to do it in the external way. When you're raising your children, everything that you're doing, that's a constant, that's constant self work. And so if your mate doesn't understand that work, I think the issue lies there not in that whether or not you're uh, you know, Martin Luther King or somebody, or whether or not you're you know, anybody else a little bit more current. I don't know why I went straight from Mirt Luther King, but because touching one right there, you know, let me think of another activist that got a real strong black wom move beside hold on mething about this coming coming. Do you all think that you all think with all of the stress and drain, that's escapism escapism? Do you think that No, I'm sorry, I'm just that was question. That was exactly what was coming out of my mouth. Next, is that maybe you know this is escapism if you're dealing with the monument of stress and and troubles and and legalities that we have to fight through. Maybe this is maybe who you marry is your escape from all of it. But can I just inject this yours y'all know how sometimes when you're connected to your mate so well that like words don't have to be said, even if something's heavy going on and he comes to come home and night, you know, maybe we don't have to discuss it. Maybe it's just a really tight hug and it's like then that hug we've said to each other, I love you, I got you when you ready, I'm here, blah blah, we said it in a hug. You know. Then listen there. Yes, it must be said. When President Obama and the first Lady Michelle Obama, when they gave each other a pound, there was something in me they lifted and sang and did a dancer through. It was something magical about that. I felt that, like yaws. But well, maybe that's part of our issue though, right, But we will take we will take performative backness over people who actually work hard for black people. I'm saying that that omative. What I'm saying is that a fist bump. I'm just saying a fist bump, a fist bump, right, is a specific type of black behavior that we associate with a certain kind of black lived experience right the culture. And I'm just saying, and I'm not saying that they haven't done anything to help black people, but they're not particularly people who are working in black liberation. This we know that's another topic what I'm saying. But and so what I'm saying is that what I'm saying is that on on the level of importance in terms of their mating together, right, that seeing two black people together, that that that image, the image of that the image of their their cultural interaction is something that we that's important to us. But is it as important as the actual work around our liberation Because honestly speaking, I've had some problematic conversations with black men in particular about black liberation that have saddened me and hurt me to the core, about their thoughts around gender, around rays of our rights, supremacy, and all kinds of things. And I can say that having a mate who doesn't have that understanding them being black doesn't make the pill go down easy. No, it wasn't gonna make it going down easy. It's just a communication that we have as a people. I mean, it's just some basis these that's my point. But that what Jill was thinking fist bump, and she was saying fist bump. I was like, I was thinking about phinny other things that the Obama's kind of show black love, even in a touch, even in the way you grabbed my back, even then, there's something in conversation between black men and black women and a rhythm in a way. To me, I don't know, Maybe I'm sure. I actually we agree you're asking right, there is that is a rhythm that cannot be duplicated period. Yeah, And that's why I'm not speaking on just interracial relationship, you know, I'm not talking about that. That's why this is specific to you know, like people like you said, doing during the work and doing that work and then leaving that work at work. It doesn't it doesn't doesn't go down the same though, does it. There would be the big dogs too, he'd be like, damn him, like damn me, do my whole geneology, you know everything about me? Like he know the dopeness of all this, and okay, but maybe at the time when he was young, she was supportive. I don't I mean, but that's that's typically the response. You know that she was there when I had nothing, and you know she was supportive. And who who doesn't want support when you're down at the bottom of the barrel? Who doesn't want that? Anyway? I don't know more conversation after the break. I also wonder about environments that I worry about access I worry about. I think about things sometimes where how we look at activists and intellectuals and people who find themselves in all these different circles. It's like, there's there's always gonna be activists no America where you go. I mean, if there's people suffering, there's gonna be people speaking up for them. But we have a tendency to also elevate people from academia. We elevate people who are from certain flagship organizations, things of that nature. A lot of times they come from you know, Ivy League schools, They come from the middle class upbringings. These are the upbringings that us as black people, have aspired to. And then their children, these young people go off to to Harvard, they go off to University of Pennsylvania, they go off to all these different places. And though their parents might have instilled a sense of of of identity within them, their access to black folks and black folks who think like them. I mean, I don't know. I'm just saying I'm throwing it out there. That's not my living. Yeah, I'm just saying world. The world is planes and trains and and busses and such. You know, you can get what you want. You know, I'm gonna find me some of the two boys. He said it himself. He was just like, listen, I was there, but I know they didn't want me there. I found the black folks and I had dinner with them. Yeah. So my mom always had this argument with her her friends who send their kids off to certain schools, because she's like, you know, I get the elitism of it all, but you know you're already setting your son up to kind of date outside of what because he doesn't have access. And it's just funny that you said that, because I was like, sometimes it starts in It does start in education often times when you see that, that's how you see it. Who meet in college? Yeah, that these athletes who want to have these amazing athletic careers, they got to go to white schools to do that, and so how did you know allegedly I know they're changing that big up to Diana Sanders, And can I also say this, One thing I have noticed, having had a child attend to HBCU and done work with University of Pennsylvania and a lot of the staff with University of Pennsylvania, is that what I will see. What I see is that a lot of times black students who are more involved in black liberation work tend to come out of white schools. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that they're dealing with so much of that kind of on slot of racism. You'll find I hate this term woke, but this is like, you know, because people have messed it up. It used to be a good word. But the point is that it's like most of the wolt kids that that are our next you know, activists, they're coming out of those environments. So unless they picked from the Black Student Union with fifteen people at the at the freaking state school, then who are we talking about? Who are these people? Who? Who where are we at black people cent of the population in the United States of America. So but that's why, again, were you systems that got to change That's why Dion Sander said, I'm going to a black school to teach, you know, to teach to coach football. It's kind of like systems have to change. So I guess it's a process in that way. Let me tell you what got me? Okay, like what got me right? I've had a I would say this, but at first, before I tell you what got me right or what got me in a different place, I won't say right. But you know, I've I've had some experiences like being on an elevator and I was particularly cute this day and I was in an elevator in the l a and the door open and a very attractive black man open comes in the elevator. He's followed by some other some men brothers with him, and um, I could tell that the one that you know walked in first was like and I was like, you know, And then we're standing there and it feels like he's about to say something and the other man says to him, there were two other ones. One of the other two says, you know, we don't do that no more, right, and he was like, yeah, you're right, and they got off the elevator. Then that I'm sorry with the Lord. Yeah. Yeah, uh, I definitely felt that. I definitely felt that that there is a generation or I won't even say a generation of black men that are not dating black women at all, Like it's now a rule like we don't do that, you know, where we're past that or whatever the idea is. I'm not sure, but I know that I've seen quite a bit of that. I've seen quite a bit of that. And you know, if you look at certain groups of brothers that you know, all of them, oh I hate to say, oh, but I know some brothers that they went to to a school and all their friends have all all married to Asian women, you know, like it's a it's a thing, like it's their thing. Yeah. I think that this kind of stuff occurs with with black men. I've seen it. I don't think I know it. I've seen it. I've seen plenty of it, that there's a group think about not dating black women or being married with, you know, black women anymore. Okay, So when I said what got me, I don't know, I don't even know what to call it. I mean, a different mind state is when I met some black men that were married to Asian women and their kids were eating sushi with Kyla greens. You know, it sounds it sounds like, what are you talking about. I'm saying that they're mixing the cultures together in a way where they're not forgetting that they are black because in the world their children are brown and you know, will automatically be assumed black. But also they were acknowledging their Asian descent as well, And I thought, Okay, if relationships go like that, where there's an honor in it, a respect in it, then bully on Bravo. You know, if that's what it is, and that's what it is, like, I just don't like to see this, particular when there's a brother that is married to or is dating a white woman because he does not like himself. Now we have seen this and because he needs a break. I'm we've seen it. We've seen it. Sorry you know that that. Oh no, no, we know what's true. We know what's true. And it goes both ways for sisters too, and they're like me, need my baby to have good hair. I I I you know, I mean we definitely know that it's real. Yes, Like we're not making this off. There are situations in which people are most definitely like existing in a way that's deeply respectful of their culture. But in an example you used, I have to say to me, feel like it's slightly different because you know, out in the world today a person will call an Asian person a person of color and that and it also to to say to say to to say that I am Asian, it is not to say that I'm anti black. To embrace whiteness is to embrace anti blackness. And so if you're going to raise children or you're gonna do liberation work and you are or you're attached to somebody who is attached to whiteness and its committed to whiteness on on any level, then yeah, that's a huge problem. And that's way different. That's way different than than you know it does. It's still toxic to say, oh, I'm only gonna date this type of girl or this type of woman that is not only not black, but specific to a certain kind of you know, trajectory in life. Then I mean, yeah, that's super toxic and and anti black at the same time. But it's just I just think that for us, at the core of it, it's still stings, and I don't I think we need to unpack that part, like why does this still hurt even in the slightest bit, especially when you see it over and over and over and over again. Well listen, I want to see and then defending myself. Years ago, I wrote an article for Essence magazine. It was supposed to be called I'm just saying, but they entitled it, uh Jill Scott on interracial marriage, which was not the topic of the article at all, which was not my intent or position. I was disturbed that they would throw me under the bus like that, you know, to sell magazines. And we we definitely Essence and I have made our way back from you know, never dealing with each other again to where we are now. But I felt so betrayed, so betrayed, and then I ended up being on CNN defending myself, you know, like, well that was racist, and I was like saying that, saying that it feels like a mosquito bite under a sundress. You know, you feel it, you feel it, and then you can still still keep moving and moving forward. And the worst when you know somebody no not no better. Because I don't want to say to you black on black love is better. It is, But what I'm saying, is is that you know this person even and even my favorite has so many it's like, damn, y'all got a black dude like you put you speak on this every day, you speak on our people. You hear you in the struggle, and okay, he keep holding you down, all right? This is mm hmm. I don't know. I guess, I guess. For me, I don't know. I just feel like the proof is kind of in the pudding For me, I don't And I notice is odd for me to say this based on what I would where I would typically be coming from, especially when we talk about safe spaces Agent, because earlier on, you know, when we started to show, we're talking about safe spaces for us and tribunals and how we can trust people, and I'm just like, and I definitely felt like a tribunal and something that's cultural is different, because, like I said, even when you start looking into Indigenous people, they're certain power as you can't go to you can only certain people can go to so in that way, and if they following the rules, like she can't she can't go to the to the to that particular thing. You know, you can't come to the tribunal. Well, well, no, if that's what the culture of it, if that's the culture and that's the culture is accepted by the person who is a part of that culture, then no. But it's no different than like I said, any person like so if if if, if, if you have a ceremony for young boys coming into their mannerod, then know their mama can't go. You know, it's just a part of the way that people do things. And if that's a decided thing culturally, then I understand that that exclusion. But the thing is that people who are fighting is a particular late labor. That's a particular kind of labor. And I want them to have whatever it is they want to have, whatever there and I mean just whatever, whatever love that they have in their lives is fine with me. My problem is if we get to a point where we have to mince our words about whiteness because your mate is white. So that that part of it is And I know some people in struggle work or in liberation work who don't mince any words and don't require anyone else to mince words, But I think that that's the key for me. Yeah, But because you gotta trust that that other in the room when they hear these non mince words, that they don't take them with them and use them incorrectly or weaponize or whatever. Because I was literally gonna say I was dating dude once who told me, and it sounded so crazy when he said it, but he was like, he doesn't allow white people in his house. And I was like, oh, why is that. He was like, because black people seem to get start acting differently, and I wanted everybody to be comfortable in my home. That's why. So he wasn't there for the coast, which right, And so in that conversation, that's where we go back to our activist leaders and everything. I'm like, you're talking about you, like, can you be your full self all the time everywhere you are when your mate is also not doesn't have that live experience. And I guess the argument from that from that man would be that he's, um, you know, he's living past color, but doing this work. I mean, I mean, I'm I'm just assuming. I'm just assuming that that would be the argument that you know, I'm not my color, you know, but I see these issues and struggles in my community, and I'm here to fight for my community. I'll just I'll put this way, I'm put outside of the rhythm that we discussed, which I completely agree with, I just want to circle back to this point. Is that m politically okay and just in terms of just how we think about critically think about race, gender, white supremacy, whatever. That For me, I think a lot of the importance has to be placed on people's kind of you know, political education, because I feel like outside of the rhythm that we had, that is very easy to get into a relationship with another black person who is even less informed. Then let's say a white person who's married to a black person who does liberation work, and that can be really a difficult situation because you know, I find that to be just as problematic. You know what I'm saying, You can really I find that to be just as problematic. And you can have a black person who's literally in the baby stages of their political education, right and they're in a room with a an interracial couple, and that white person is way further down the road than they. However, Asia, I kind of think that's that is definitely possible, and it definitely happens, but that collective is small. These women, your speaking. I don't know how long you say that population is call themselves and allies out loud. Did you know who was married to a white woman? Stop it, I need you to Yes, I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Yes, it didn't know that, Yes it did. Did you know he was by racial himself? Also? What I mean, yeah, most of us are? He was bye bye? I mean, was his parents in love or no? But he received a lot, a lot of privilege because of his skin color. Now privilege considering the time period, because of course, this is a man who survived slavery. Let me put that there, So I have no right to call him privilege, Yeah, I said, in comparison to yeah, okay, the other black people of his time period now understand that. But I also understand that he still didn't take that ship lying down and said what the hell he thought? When he's like saying what he thought? This is true, But he was also extremely establishment. He was very much believed in the constitution, believed in this country. He wanted this country to work, where some of his peers wanted to leave. Of his peers were way more radical now. He even at Harriet Tubman. Yeah, he even talks about how Harriet Tubman that she was the radical that he was in all of her bravery. But so even when you look at a situation like him, you have certain ways that we look at people who are connected to white people in an intimate way. We tend to look at those people as conformists. And it's hard to think, how can you be radical and think outside of that conformity when you want to make a family with you want to be intimate with someone who doesn't have that same lived experience or that same investment in our liberal but if but a white person who understands things, understands their liberation is also tied to ours. Here but who he's like people? I mean, like I said, I know they exist. I don't think that that's his wife and his wife and you like, these are not the wives that I know things are the wives that I've seen it on these men's arms. Uh make me I wanna call names uh over here and sing and specialist person over there and actor actor actor rash over here. I listen, I'm not saying listen. I can't even argue with you. No, I'm not. I wouldn't be willing to say it's more of that I need a break. It's I think it may be a little bit more of that. I need a break, and you need a break from your mama. And Mike do Mike? Could? I guess could could Mike do? Yeah, let me say something bad. But for the women, for black women, being in relationship with black men as a double marginalized person can be very taxing, can be very very TAXI We'll be right back. Have you noticed at all if if you go on TikTok? Like the first time I went on TikTok, I was like, wait, every couple is in a racial like I had to go and change my algorithm. I was like, wait a minute. Every every couple, every couple that popped up on TikTok was it was a black man with a white woman and they had so much to say about so many things. And I was like, wait, okay, oh, y'all know, we know Ti we know TikTok is the land of I don't know. I stay away from the from China, I don't. I don't. This was it was. It was everyone I said, aren't there any black couples on TikTok? Like there are? I mean, but I had to find them, find them. I had to find a whole TikTok and itself in their relationship with Big up to our our young TikTokers start, you know, protesting out there. Going back to Butoana, the king of Butanakoma, he married a white woman in London and almost lost. The respect was out the window from his people, and Mutowana people are are very kind and generous, but this was too much. He went off to school to study, as most Mutawana people do, but then here he comes shows up with a whole white woman that he was like insanely in love with and they were married and he had the country. Uh. Ben then for him the movie to David Owllio made nobody went to go see because he was like, God, paying your white wife. Uh, that very well could have been a portion of it, but I know that that happened. It's it's not just a movie. That's that's reality. I think it would be really nice. It would be really nice if the black man in particular would kind of acknowledge this thing that we all see and nobody talks about that. It's like, okay, if you're famous and you're influential and you're a black man, you are married to a white woman, or you're married to a really light skinned, racially ambiguous looking woman or that has that same look, and it's like, yes, you can love whoever you want. Yes, we want love for you. Yes this is It feels like an old, raggedy conversation. But at the same time too, it's like, y'all, we're not blind, like I'm not blind like blind with Harry and and Sydney did it so kind of like I don't know, they just they started and they kept going right. I don't know. I mean, and big up stair Harry, who was an amazing who is an amazing fighter. Jack Johnson, I think that's his name. Jack Johnson is a fighter. He got well, he got arrested for going over state lines. He had a he had a white woman with him, but he definitely was an advocate for that. He meant that thing he was gonna get him a white woman ain't married one, you know, I don't know. I feel like that's a thing, guys. I know. And then and you know, I gotta say to Asia, you know, if you said that to the black men in Hollywood, especially one, they will hit you back with. But y'all doing the same thing in Hollywood. They will hit you back with well, Shonda Ryn's um started a whole uh revolution, didn't she not. I'm just saying this is what I've heard from black men, like, you know, okay they I mean, listen. I feel like it's a fair conversation either way. I just don't like that we are at this point now we all see it, and we just like, oh wow, we can't say that, Oh don't because I feel like it's keeping us from an important conversation, maybe about colorism, maybe it's a conversation about this or that. I just think it's some there's something in there in that pot that we're not talking about, and it doesn't have to do with your right to love anyone else. I think it's some old ship. It's some old ship that we still carry that that if you are more successful, you know, or you've done better in life, if you you know, if you have a light skin or a white woman, you know. It seems like that's the way, isn't isn't that the way that black men becomes I seen this with him. I say this within the gay community as well. Yeah, with men and women and um so I see. Yeah, I've seen some really women. They are really successful black men who are married to white men. See that's that, that's it's that's like. That's why I told you guys when I was watching this in mind was when I was watching April doing a documentary the thirteenth, and I was like looking at all the men that were doing their thing, and I was like, from gay to straight, I don't think any of these men are with black partners. And she had you know, like gay and straight black men commentating, and I was like, no, not him, not not him, well, just man, because at this point, at this point, you're like, it's not a coincidence, right, no, no, And it's not supposed to hurt us. We're not posted, I mean, and and I've I've changed my I've not changed my mind, but I've tried to put myself, you know, be progressive and be like like it's not supposed to hurt like that. So that's why I refrained this whole thing on activists and people who are doing the work, because I'm working so that the regular as white dude, black dude that I see loving on this white woman don't bother me. Don't we don't bother me like you're used to, m h. But then the ones to do the work and they're just talking about how dope we are and how we stuff and were struggling us just just too much. Well, honestly, you know how I feel. I feel hardly anybody who is not a black woman is advocating for black women. So any man I challenge I'll put the challenge out there right now. Any man, any black man who was doing serious work around black women's liberation, I invite you please come on this show and shut it all the way down, because I honestly don't see it. So I think part of that might be it too, is that we see people doing work, and this work is very male centered, is very black male center. It's not centered on the liberation of black women, and it's definitely not centered around the intersectional liberation of black women. So for me, it's just kind of like, maybe that's really what it is. We just don't believe you mm hmm. Listen, we we talk about this all the time. We say it, I said, I know, I say it often at least, you know, once every other episode. But this is conversation to spark conversation where we're limiting ourselves. You know, we're not We're not being honest, we're not facing ourselves. There's there's something here. It sits in the in the it out of your gut, and then you reach out and you just like, thank you Lord for Samuel Jackson and maybe then Washington and a couple of others, but I want to name some more. But I also am careful not to dig too deep into this moment that I feel because I feel like this, this this aversion to to interracial couples. It is also a characteristic of politics that I can't stay. So it's like, so a lot of other people who think, who are really really have an issue with it. They also have issues with things that to me are are very misogynistic. And you know the quote unquote hotel situations that everybody talks about, you know that whole very misogynistic, very anti woman. So I'm careful not in my mind, I'm like, uh, I want to talk about it. I want to be honest, but I want to be careful not to align myself with politics and spaces that are shared with people who are like deeply problematic for me. Okay, okay, look, look Okay, let me put it on a different playing field. I have I have some white girlfriends that I genuinely love, and I think what I love most about them, obviously is their personalities and their life experiences and the things that that they share with me and I share with them. You know that it's friendship. But what I think works for me most is that they are white women that do not try to act like black women at all. They're you know, they're not my my, my white girlfriend who acts black. You know, it's like, so they ain't that, But but do they understand? Are you comfortable saying everything, saying anything I want to say at any time I want to say it, or we wouldn't be friends. You see what I'm saying, We wouldn't be friends at all. I felt like I had to to bite my tongue about anything. I don't have to do that, and and and neither do they. And I can't imagine having a friendship and not being you know, completely one hunted and authentic with it. I'm saying, like, why I waste my time or why waste my time? But I like, I appreciate that I didn't put Stacy Wilson through the struggle. That did Um, we've been through the struggle. Have you been through the struggle. We've been through the struggle. Let me tell you something and I struggle. I'm gonna tell you for what I'm saying this sense. That's why I don't. I have a couple of white I have a few white girlfriend But as far as me and Stacy Wilson go, like the trust that I have in her as a white woman and not doing and saying certain things because we've had these hard conversations, because she learned how I felt about interracial dating when I was on the radio and I'm living with her and when while she's dating a black man and we had to have these really hard conversations. Yeah, so it's hard for me to true love like white woman one percent because you're gonna have to raise your I gotta know that you will never You don't want to say nigga, you don't feel it. Even in the song, it's it ain't even something. You ain't jealous. You're just like that's just not for me, Like he's no what you're telling. What you're telling me is that because of her close relationship with you, a very informed black woman, that she is a part of that minority of white women who you're saying doesn't exist, because clearly it does. It does. But I'm not the only But I'm only gonna say, but that's because you have the intimate relationship with her. So therefore, these other people have an intimate relationship with somebody who I can't imagine them to have and not not in every search of intimate relationship because they're other white women. That's what I'm saying, Asia, I have other white girlfriends that I love them dearly. However, I also it's just not um, I don't want to. I don't want to. They're not listening. I just can't. I don't trust them as much as I trust her. I don't trust it. But I love them and in their marriage, what I noticed is that the girls on the surface, their children on the surface, don't seem to be very dialed into Black culture. It just doesn't seem where they live, where the whole environment just doesn't seem like that. And and like I said, I'm gonna say, seem like because I don't live with them. Uh, this is just my outside of a pinion. Now, when this past year, when the conversation around at least violence. All this stuff comes up. It's almost like you would have to pretend like you didn't see it in order to not talk about it. And I have black children of any sort to act like you weren't talking about that with your kids. And I noticed that the attempt to engage the children about this tends to come tend to come from like a spiritual space because they're very involved with their church and this kind of Okay, now we have to kind of have this conversation of out blackness with our children, you know, and observing it from the outside, and it's like, wow, okay, So at first I'm a little bit judgmental. I won't even lie. I'm looking at it like really, y'all, like the whole world got to be on fire now for the kids to to be having this conversation, you know what I mean. And then it's still kind of what we are the world, the type of energy, and and I was a little bit, you know, upset to one day my cousin's wife reached out to me and she asked me about her stepdaughter's hair, and she said, Okay, these are my stepdaughters, and I know their mom was also white. May not know everything about this, and I can kind of tell. So she was like, you know, I just want to know, like if you know what I should do, And so I'm like sure, because and then I kind of give her a whole bunch of information and blah blah blah blah bah blah, because these are my you know, they're my cousin's children. But they're like nieces, you know how blacks are anybody younger than you as your niece, anybody older than you was, you know. And so I'm like, these are my nieces. I'm you know, I'm going to help out. I walked away from that situation and thought, wow, And all the time I've known this woman, this is the first time we've ever had a conversation about the fact that she was raising black girls. She was just raising girls. She was just raising girls, right, So this is like my first time doing it. And this is a person who I know deeply loves my cousin. This is a person who I know deeply loves these girls. This is a person who was absolutely comfortable around my family. Who I know. She you know, she attends her church, she's a she's a good, you know, good Christian warman. Man, she's a good Christian woman, but she didn't just didn't dive into anything about black hair, didn't open up a book, you knowhing, But this is our first conversation, even having any conversation about being black at all. She follows me, y'all know how I talk. So it's like no conversation. But this is the first conversation. So what does that say. What is said to me is that people enjoy the bubble that they are in. When they feel loved, when they feel like their needs are being met, that's all that they care about. And I don't think that changes simply because you do liberation work. In fact, I think it increases, you know what I'm saying. And I think that at the end of the day, you talk about things when the necessity comes up. And I think that that's a family systems issue that when you're in a family, when things come up, you discuss it. People are very rarely capable of thinking about things that had of time, And unfortunately, in a place in a country that tells you that you're the most important person in the room and that your race is the default, you're not gonna bring that up. You're not gonna bring that up unless somebody tells you that you should. Abody gives. So that means that she didn't get no black hair books for our little girls to learn how beautiful their hair is because they can do all kinds of things, and no conversations. Just I'm gonna come and put some moose in the ship for the first two years of your life until it gets difficult. I don't know. I more conversation after the break. I see very often the people care more about their ship suits than they do their black children. You see, you thought I said, I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. I see it very often, you know, the little girl, you know, even at church. You know, I'd go into a church and I saw this baby and her hair was it was so mad at and it was like, okay, oh, I'm looking. I'm trying not to look at it, but at the same time, I can't help it, and I'm thinking she didn't get these braids out. They're gonna have to shave her head, like it's it's that bad. So I say to the mom at the church, Hey, how you doing um? And she says, I'm fine, how are you praise the Lord? That's all right? Break, you know, praise the Lord. And then let's say, I hope you don't mind, I'm noticing your daughter's braids. And she was like, I know, and I said, you know, you know what she said, I'm gonna take him out. I'm gonna get them out. I'm gonna get him out. And then I just like, Okay, first of all, you gotta attitude in the church. I'm just trying to help, man, I'm just trying to help. Like and maybe you've heard it a lot, maybe I'm the fifth person today to say it. Then go in the parking lot and started start like you started taking out and start taking the braids out there got the bottoms of let me see some progress, some progress. It matters. It matters because what's gonna happen is she's gonna grow up hating her hair that part because her hair and like her mama hair, right, because my mama hair not like yours mommy. So come on now, of responsibility that comes along with that too, You know that, I promise that to me is just just as bad as the fact that black women a child be to two seconds out the woman, they'll be trying to put a PCJ in their head as a cut jab. It's like, we have a problem with anti blackness in this country and our kids are and our families are deeply affected by it. And to me, it's like, okay, yes, in my mind, my preference is to have my children in in a black community and surrounded by black people and having that rhythm that they would have with black folks at all times. And when you have a parent who's not black, that has to be an intentional thing as the plack parents to make sure that that happens. But that's on period when you got a black husband or wife too, because guess what black folks do, they get super anti black even when they got a black mat one time. No, that could happen. Happens, happens as a matter of culture, because I promise you I posted one time on my Instagram as an elder ever told you something deeply toxic And they thought they were teaching you something but taught you something deeply toxic. It was a telling thread because I promise you a lot of things came up. But we've talked about that before because it always go back to white supremacy and what they like it does. But this is my point at the end of the day, is that the coupling of it all, it's going to drag anti blackness into it no matter what, because that's the type of state we live in. That is the more this, this is the country we live in, the world that we live in. These systems are built on anti blackness, and no matter who we coupled with, will be contending with that, no matter what I am, And yeah, we'll be contending with that in a deep way no matter what. It'll just be different. You know. A black person's anti blackness is going is going to you know, uh, come to the surface in a different kind of way, you know. But it doesn't mean that it's not happening, you know. I don't know. I just know I would you know. We were talking about Ursula Rucke the other day, who got the whitest the white mama's and she bought the black oftiest black person that I haven't, Which is interesting because most of my most of my girls that are have mixed parents usually them their mom is they usually have a black mom, which makes them even more conscious of who they are. So I find that interested about Ursela in that way, like that's dope. I mean so that that's the thing is that it's like it's hard for me to kind of put my finger on I know, I know the feeling that we're talking about, you know what I'm saying, But it's hard for me to pinpoint the union itself as the issue because it's not it's the it's the anti blackness that's the issue, right, It's the anti blackness. To get into the union, right, feel like into that union has to require a certain amount of anti black Yes, I do, because even when we say stuff like well maybe they feel like they need a break because they do the work, I'm like, well, that's anti blackness, isn't it. I don't know, yes, so, but does everybody that's what's saying. I don't know if everybody's thinking that one, right, you know what we have to do when yeah, we have to talk to to several people. We have because we're just because because other than that, we're assuming and it's it's a bunch of conjecture and we don't really understand and we ultimately are based somewhere. I mean, obviously there's information that we're aware of and things me. Yes, I did why because he was fine and we got along he was actually Jewish. I can't say. I mean, when you're talking about dating, it's like, you know, sleeping with or something. None of that ever happened. But we went on a date, and this is it changed everything, quite frankly. He came to pick me up. He had a cabriole and he had a convertible cabriole. I don't know if you guys remember that, but it was super cute. It was very cute. We worked at the ice cream poler together, you know, and he was he was inten was like, I'm coming to pick you up. And I was like, I don't think you should do that. He's like, no, I'm coming to pick you up from your house. I'm coming to pick you up. So that's what he did. And I remember coming outside and my whole neighborhood in in in mid jump brokes everything and everybody stopped and was staring everything on the block. Everybody on the block was looking singing, dude, we it was quiet, okay. And I got in the car and I was so nervous. I was so nervous that you know, somebody was gonna, I don't know, hurt him. He's a nice guy, didn't want anybody anyway, We go um to South Street because that's what you did, you know then, so many many years ago. So we go to South Street and the brothers lost it. They were hollering, screaming down the street. No says no says no, you know what, And it could have done it definitely could have been peer pressure at that moment. But I was like, I don't ever want another black man to feel this way when they see me. I just don't. You don't give him no look when you see uh no, no, what you mean when you see interracial couple, you're saying that you don't want another black men to feel that way when he's on a white woman. I don't want to. I didn't want another black man to feel that way about me. I'm like, we already got so much going on. I don't want them the betrayal, the betrayal. I didn't want them to feel like that. I didn't. I didn't like that. I didn't like how it felt. But what if he was going to teach you real good, Jill? But I mean I can still learn. I don't know what else he could have feel like, the chances are still. I mean, I just did not like that feeling, and it was enough for me. It was enough for me. Black men don't seem to have those feelings because we're also not in the street like no, no brother, No, We're not like just I don't know, I don't don't know that we ever did. I don't know that we did. We didn't. We didn't say no brother when we don't. We didn't feel that empowered. We just gave a look or dirty look or I think it was more dirty looks. I can't a lie to you guys on in social media when people can't When when when when I've heard, when I've seen this conversation happening. You know, a lot of black women are like, this is an outdated conversation. Care be cares who you're married to? Who da da da da? And I think maybe, like I said earlier, we just got to get to the core of what the betrayal is and where why we feel it, because that is a really important conversation. Otherwise we're just tucking it under the rug and pretending to be okay with something that we're not really okay with. And when when At the end of the day, it is other people's personal decision to when they don't need our permission to do anything and their life at the end of the day, that like the numbers are are dwindling, right. So like when I moved to l A, I had two girlfriends that had to have a talk with me out me opening my dating mind because I wasn't meeting anybody, and they're like, like, you got to date out of your race. And I was like, all right, I'm open to it. Like you know, he liked me, I like him. Man, this time I'm single and I'm I'm looking for something, and I was open to it. But what I also realized is that I don't know, maybe I'm not that approachable for a lot of white men because I don't get approached by white man They're not aggressive. And I like a man the cup and tell me how he feels and how I look and all of that stuff, and and he's say, you're fine, motherfucker. Won't you back that thing exactly? And maybe that those white oneings just I think in the South sometimes, like I was in Tennessee a couple of weeks ago and a white man was like, hey, yallow dress. But that was the first time that a white man had hollered at me since I can remember. So I think that from a numbers point to for some single black women out there who do want to date a black man, it even though this is an outdated conversation, it ain't when you start dating and you realize it ain't nothing out there and you're competing, shout up to my girlfriends with your Asian and your white girlfriend because they don't want the day Asian of white men that one. So this is where it becomes not outdated when you are looking for black love and and then there's an argument in the back of your head, well, if you want family, I don't want him anyway. But it's still it's like, okay, but we yea though, But I feel like I feel like and I don't think you do this, by the way, but I think we have to be very careful that we understand black love the way black love just shows up. I think we have a tendency and I and I saw this happen when for Tam and I got started. They're like, why y'all want to talk about your marriage? What you want to talk about that? For? Uh, you know that kind of thing. But then we've seen it grow over the years. Now, black love is like a thing, you know what I mean. It's like hashtag goals thing, right, It's a whole TV show. And so for me, I think we're we're we gotten to this point also to somewhat romanticize it, and I want to see black love be looked at as something that just shows up as it is, you know what I'm saying. And I think we gotta be real careful with that, because when you're out in the dating pool, I can imagine that this this this ideal is competing with your reality and that that is making it harder on black women in particular. Then it has to be you know what I'm saying. On on the TikTok, the black ladies show a look on the tik the black with white dudes. They look happy. White men like to wear the snugly, right, the snuggly, the little thing that the don't sits in and the thing that the baby sits in that attached to the front of your body. A white men like the baby. They like they like to wear the snuggly. That's my one thing and that men like to do that dude ain't doing. It's a joke. It was like a bad racial joke. Sorry, I apologize, I'm sorry. It's sorry. I did on these streets every day, but I finally did get a black dude of l a. I had so many sisters. How you do that? You do that? Like he's gonna sat Louis. I got a preference, and that is what it is, what it is I have. I have many I have many reasons that I don't need anybody else to understand. But I definitely have always wanted to to be with a black man. That's all. That's all I maybe, you know, maybe the girl that fell in love with her dad. You know, hey, what do you what do you want? I get it, I get it. People are gonna love who they love. You already know that ship like you know about it. Listen, we are out here, okay, we're having conversations to spark conversations hopefully revealing some thoughts and feelings and issues concerns. Well, um, help us get to the other side of the road. That's the goal, which is, in fact, screw the road. We're really trying to get to the other side of the sky, you know, trying to understand what this whole humanity business is all about and if you can open your head in your heart and maybe comment you maybe talk about it amongst sure people you know, maybe send us a message. We can get a little further. We're not trying to land at the exact answer, but we do want to go further than where we are. Thank you so much for listening. This has been j dot l the Podcast. Hi, if you have comments on something we said in this episode called eight six six, Hey Jill, if you want to add to this conversation that's eight six six three nine five, four five five. Don't forget to tell us your name and the episode you're referring to. You might just hear your message on a future episode. Thank you for listening to Jill Scott presents Jay dot Il the Podcast. This podcast is hosted by Jill Scott, Layah st Clair and Agr Graden Danceler. It's executive producers are Jill Scott, Shawn g and Brian Calhoun. It's produced by Layah st Clair and me Eves Jeff Cope. The editing and sound design for this episode we're done by Christina Larenger. J dot Ill is a production of I Heart Radio for More podcast from I Heart Radio visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.