This isn’t an episode about who Kira thinks is right or wrong in this case. This is an episode about what Kira thinks is right and wrong about how we’re addressing this case.
This is the FCB Podcast Network. A prais Masoda day that we won't with sath then we won't to say, oh we got it does? No one can take that Oway. This gonna be okay. A prais masodad that we won't with say then we won't to say oh we got it does? No one can take that owayn't say this don't be okay. Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Just Listen to Yourself with Kia Davis. This is a podcast where we take hot topics, hot button issues, and we discussed the talking points on those issues, and we draw those talking points all the way out to their logical conclusion. Today I'm recording this the day after Fox News is Steve Hilton announced his candidacy for governor of California. I am a huge supporter of Steve as a friend and a colleague, and I am the huge supporter of his campaign. Right now, I'm unofficially assisting the campaign, but I hope to make that position official more official moving on in the near future. But for now, we're all really excited about Steve. It's an uphill battle, it's a mountain to climb, and there's going to be a lot of moving pieces. This isn't just an issue of one guy winning the governorship. In order for him to win, We've got to attack a lot of different areas. Our voter rolls is one of them. So there are I know, a lot of it I get. I want to say this. I think I'm moved to say this before I get into our very controversial topic today. But I've moved to say this because every time I talk about Steve or California or change in California, one of the comments I get, without fail is well, I love your passion here, but nothing's going to change in California if the voting system doesn't get fixed, if it doesn't change. And I just want everyone who's I want everyone to know everyone who's said that to me or sent me a message, that you're not the first person to think of that. We do know. Everybody knows that you can't run for office as a Republican and not know that now. In the past, Republicans have known that and still done nothing. But there are a lot of efforts going on right now, simultaneously simultaneously with official party candidates and with grassroots groups across the state to actually audit our elections, to fix our elections, to fix some of the legislation around that. So stuff is going on. But yeah, we're going to have to do a heavy, heavy push to verify our as much as possible our voting system moving into twenty twenty six. Now we have to win twenty twenty six and then to actually implement the permanent changes that we would need to fix the voting system. But first we got to get there. So it's going to be a combination of efforts, and I'm sure Steve will be back on this program to talk about it moving forward. I'm going to join his show in a couple of days as well. So two, in case you didn't know, I'm fully endorsing Steve Hilton for governor of California. I believe he can win, and I believe that he has well I don't believe it. I know because I've known Steve for years and we've talked about this, not governor, but we've talked about how to fix California for years. So I know what his plans are, what he thinks could work to fix our state. I've known it since before he was thinking about running for governor. So I have no qualms supporting him. I think his plans will be what could change California for the better for all of us. All Right, that's my sea of Hilton Push. I won't bother you with that much more. Let's get on to the topic of today. It's a controversial one one that I think is very germane to the mission of this podcast, which is taking hot topics and breaking down talking points. Now, the topic I'm going to talk about today is this terrible tragedy in Texas Frisco, Texas, and I'm sure you've heard of it. A young man there was a confrontation between two young seventeen year old men, Austin Metcalf who was a white teenager at a school in Prisco, and the race is important here or else I would have mention it. And Carmelo Anthony not the basketball player who who was a black teenager. They I'm giving you the details of this quickly. I'll summarize. If you're listening to this podcast in real time, you already know this story. But you might be listening to this you might be listening to the archives down the road. So I'll just quickly summarize it. Carmelo Anthony went to a track meet where Austin Metcalf's school was. I guess they were rival schools. They had a confrontation underneath one of the tents for the track team, I think Metcalf's track team. They had a confrontation. Carmelo Anthony pulled out a knife and stabbed Austin Metcalf in the heart, and young Austin Metcalf died in his twin brother's arms. Carmelo Anthony was admitted to it right there. I mean, I don't think that there that's not in dispute at all. He was clearly upset at what happened and admitted to the cops that he did it. And since then it has been a huge controversy for a lot of reasons, one being the racial angle, which of course we're going to talk about, and then the Anthony family has also made some moves that have concerned people or cause additional controversy. We're going to get into it all. We're gonna get into it all. But I think what I want to say off the top here is that my concern here is not whether or not mister Anthony was justified in murdering his fellow student. I rarely think murder is justified. Although there is self defense and he has claimed self defense, my personal feelings are, no, it's not justified. Yeah, I don't. I from what I've seen, it doesn't seem like self defense. But the reason I'm bringing this up is because that's not what I want to argue today. I don't. I'm willing to wait for the courts to decide that I have my personal opinions, but I'm definitely recognizing that those are my opinions, and that is not what's at issue here for me today, I really don't think so. To me, what is at issue is this is this is a podcast for Black America. This is a podcast for Black America. To me, what is at issue here is what I am seeing as a larger problem in our community with aggression in our young males, which, of course, if you've been a fan of Kirie Davis, it's no secret that I've been saying forever since I've started politics that that is due to a lack of positive, permanent, stable male leadership in Black communities, particularly when it comes to fathers in the home. There's lots of fathers in Black America who are great dads and simply don't live in the same home as their children. That's what we have the statistics seventy three percent of Black children are born into single parent homes. But a lot of my friends on the black conservative side of things like to remind people, well, that doesn't mean that seventy three percent of our children are without dads, So don't take that to mean that. However, I've been doing this job a long time, I've been working with these statistics a long time, and I know that it actually doesn't matter that it doesn't matter if your dad lives with you, or I mean, it does matter if your dad lives with the excuse me, it doesn't. It doesn't matter in the respect of it's it does matter. Let me back up, it does matter. What you think about it doesn't matter. But the difference between having your father married to your mother and in your home and not is reflected in every statistic that's ever been taken over time on this issue. There's no replacement for mom and dad being married and dad being in the home, and it changes everything for a child. And those of us that didn't have that had to work very hard to not be statistics, or we had parents who worked very hard for us to make sure that we're not statistics. I don't see a plethora of those parents in the black community, and we are suffering for it. And so I have spent the last two to four years talking to white America, talking to non black America about the Black Lives Matter movement, about about bringing the heat down, bringing the temperature down, and understanding where people are coming from, even if you don't know where they're coming from. And over these last years, I've had tremendous response from my listeners, my white listeners, who have said, I'm uncomfortable listening to the way you're framing this. I don't agree with everything you're saying, but it made me think. It made me step back, It made me think, yeah, okay, maybe I shouldn't get angry right away, but tried to dig underneath the rage and see if there's anything underneath. I'm not going to relitigate all of that. You can go back and listen to the multiple, multiple episodes that I did on it. I'm being perfectly intellectually honest today as I addressed the other side of this issue. But one of the things that I said back then, I probably said it in My Black Lives my Big Black Lives Matter episode, which is one of my best ones. Black people we do have culpability in this, and we will have to have a conversation about how we contribute to the way other people view our community. But at that time, I said, now's not the time. I'm now, this is what's going on. I'm talking about it, So now's the time. I think, Now it's the time. So we're gonna we're flipping to the other side of this equation. And this case with the with these two boys, really it really disturbed me, and not for the obvious, not just the obvious reasons of the tragic loss of life. Two young men, their lives ruined. One young man is he's gonna go to jail for a good portion of his not the rest of his life, I mean the life that he knew is over. And so regardless of who is to blame, who is right or wrong, it's tragic. But this case is obviously something we need to talk about and something that has been talked about because of the race angle. So we give pretend that it doesn't matter, but that is absolutely not true. It does because people are talking about it and the reason people are talking about it is because a lot of people are saying, look, tragedies unfortunately like this do happen. Young boys do make terrible decisions, young boys can get aggressive, all of that, All of that is true. But I think what we understand, after the last four years that we've been through, after the hell we've just been through, after the summer OBLM, I think what we all inherently understand is that if the rules were reversed, that would be non stop talking about this case, and it would be riots in the street and buildings on fire and peaceful protests intensifying everywhere. You know, That's what it would be. I don't think that's an intellectually dishonest thing to say. I think there are some of you who might be uncomfortable with that truth out there, but that is the truth. So I'm not going to ignore it because it's an uncomfortable truth and it might bring up uncomfortable angles to this conversation. I do believe that's true. I don't see how you can say it's not so that what about ism? If the cables were turned automatically makes this situation, this incident culturally valuable, And I'm sorry to the families of both of these young men for reducing this terrible, terrible event to such a term culturally important, culturally valuable. I don't want to reduce your sons, please note this, But I'm talking about this larger, thirty thousand foot issue. And so what I noticed, or not what I noticed, We've all been noticing it. But what I have felt that I'm no longer willing to set aside for the sake of the conversation, because I think this conversation has evolved since I began it four years ago. I don't want to set aside the weaponization of rights. Now. We've just come through a very hellish period. November fifth was a vibe shift, and the whole culture shifted, and I think we realized some things about what we aren't willing to tolerate anymore. So we've had our time for discussion, We've had our time for persuasion, We've had our time to really think through nuances, and now is it time for I believe declarative truth on issues. So I've been asking our white counterparts to come along with me on this journey and think through some things, and think through uncomfortable things, and for the most part. In my experience, white people have stepped up. They have stepped up, and so now it's time for black people to do the same. We need to have some tough conversations. I think when we've said in the past we need to have tough conversations about race, what we've meant is we need to hear white people apologize more. We need to hear white people admit that there's racism. We need more of that. I rarely hear black people saying, how are we a part of this problem? What are we doing to affect this perception of the black community? Crime in our own community, low education rates, what are we doing? Is it something we're doing with voting? Is something we're doing with our families spiritual wise? Those are the hard conversations Black people need to have, and we're not having them as a community because every time we have an opportunity to have them as a community, we engage in what about ism? And that's what I want to talk about today because the topic for me in this case with these two young men isn't about is Carmelo Anthony. Was he justified and killing a fellow student over we don't know what? Over a disagreement. That. To me, that's not the question, even though there's certainly an answer to that. To me, the question is why is our first response as as the black community. I'm generalizing here because obviously not all black people think like but I'm generalizing, well, why is a first response? This is sort of a corporate public community. The first response is to leap to this young man's defense, the murderer's defense, the self proclaim murder. To not only leave to his defense, which okay, fine, he deserves a constitutional defense as well, not only to raise a million dollars. Okay, a little more questionable, but fine, well, within your rights. Anyone's right to do that if they really deserves this defense. But our first response is to blame everybody else for the responses. The first response of the of the leaders I'm using our term lightly, the leaders of the black community, was to blame us in that Calf was to blame his family. It was to say, while he was aggressive, he was telling Carmelo Anthony, you don't belong here. He was being rude. He may have yelled a racial slur. I have no idea. I really don't, because again, that part doesn't I know it matters to families. I don't want to be little it. That part doesn't matter to me. In this particular discussion that we're having, I was deeply disturbed by our first response as a black community, again generalizing, was to question what this young man did to deserve losing his life, not to stand up and immediately say WHOA. There's certainly more to this situation and meets the eye. But young men out there, young black men out there, we need to know that aggression is never the way to solve our problems. We need to remember. Let this be a good reminder for us that not every battle must be met with some blades, that not there there are different ways to fight battles, that there are different ways to vanquish your enemy, even if it's just at a track meet and he's talking trash to you. But this is not who we are and it's not what we do. Leaders lead, and I don't see anyone in our community leading on this issue. I see a lot of grifters sidling up to the Anthony family after a million dollar go fund me campaign. I do think it's again, So let's get to this point of them what they did with the million dollars or what they may be doing. They've instantly moved into a large home in a gated community. Young mister Anthony's driving around in a brand new car that they have just purchased. There are some people saying, while this, you know, digging into where this money came from and how it was used, and saying, well, look, they didn't withdraw this money from the go fund me campaign or wherever they crowdfunded it. They didn't withdraw the money. Yet, Well, I just I do want to say, by the way, I think it's wrong to shut the fundraiser down. I think they have every right to do that. You don't donate or don't, they have every right to have it. I think, all right, may that point, But some people are saying, well, they haven't spent the money that's in the account. These were probably plans that were already in place before all of this happened. Again again, I think it's really weird that the first the first instinct is to leap. It's a defensive instinct, right, I think it's based in something else than the truth, to be honest, because the first instinct is to leap to the defense of the family of the young man who murdered somebody. Normally we would sort of look on that family more skeptically, right, at least skeptically, But to not even exercise any skepticism to immediately leap to the defense, well, they didn't use this for this, that or the other. I don't know if you know how loans work, but loans are work on collateral. So you have a million dollars sitting in the bank and you go get along for a car. You're going to get the car. So there's that. There's the optics of it. Now you could say, well, this family isn't really thinking about optics right now. They're thinking about their son, all right, Maybe they aren't. I think that's a fair point to make. I think if that my son was going to be on trial for murder, I would be treading very very lightly in the public eye right now, very very lightly. I would be doing everything to make sure that he cuts a sympathetic figure, and they are doing the exact opposite. I don't think what you do is immediately engage in opulent purchases, even if there's a chance that these purchases were already planned ahead of time. I don't understand it. I don't. It's not a good look. It's not a good look. It's an even worse look to defend it, in my mind, and there's nothing wrong with just saying yeah, I am. I do think it's poor judgment. It's very poor judgment. But I'm still gonna wait and see what the details of this case are before I condemn young mister Anthony. Okay, fine, say that, but we don't have any black leaders coming out and saying, Hey, this isn't what we do here, this isn't how we act. This doesn't look good, This doesn't look good for our community, but especially doesn't look good for young mister Anthony and the defense he's going to have to mount moving forward. Well, I found it. I found it very distasteful, very distasteful. And guess what, I didn't find it out of the I didn't find it surprising. I didn't find it surprising. I think it's kind of a hood mentality. I know they don't live in the hood, but they but they're from the hood, right, Because that's what mom said. She said, I was reading an article that she worked she and she said she did. Now he has a dad. I don't know what the dad is I'm not sure if the dad is really his dad. It's my suspicion he's not, which does act by the way a stepfather. A stepfather in the home is very valuable, but it is not the same as the father, and so you will still have all of those same emotional and mental issues even if you have like a stable stepdad, although you have a better shot at it. So I'm not sure if this guy is really his dad. But again, I guess it doesn't really matter. Mom says she worked hard to get her kids out of the hood so she could move to a place where they could go to a good school. But to my mind, what I saw is a hood mentality. Here's this money I never had showing up, I immediately have to consume. Before you get upset at me, go to your nearest all black neighborhood and look around and tell me if we are the pillars of financial responsibility. Let's just get real, because I'm tired of watching us suffer. I'm tired of the same things over and over and over again. I'm tired of having these same conversations over and over and over again. I'm tired of everybody weaponizing the black struggle I'm tired of why conservatives weaponizing it so they can justify all the bad things they've ever felt about us. And I'm tired of black people, conservatives and liberal justifying whatever craziness we do in the name of racism. We're refusing to take accountability for what's going on in our own communities. Why are we asking the people we claim that made the problem to solve the problem. I think at this point it's safe to say we're the problem when something like this happens. Is young man's life is on the line. Now, he took another man's life, and I'm sure he deeply regrets it, regardless of what you see in pictures or what he maybe saying. I'm sure he deeply regrets it because a lot of it. You're a sinner. To you are one heartbeat away, one bad word away, getting cut off in traffic, one time from being that kid. Don't lie to yourself and say you're not. That's where really evil starts when we think we're above it, So you're not above it. Yeah, I do know, people snap. You know women's My parents, my in laws used to do prison ministry and they were going to the women's prisons and my mother in law told me when she was like Kira, I was reading the statistics as I was preparing for our ministry one day, something like eighty five percent of the women in prison are there for crimes of passion. Right that they snapped, They went off their man, cheated on them, went off on the baby mama one time. They're not murderers in their hearts, but for one time they were, and it ruined their whole lives. I don't think anyone's above that. And obviously, you know I'm making room for that for mister Anthony. You know that he snapped. But the idea that our first response as a corporate body is a community, is to excuse it, to blame the victim, to not ask any questions about this money, the mentality of this family, what they're using it for, what it looks like, what kind of defense he's gonna have. They have no concern for the defense a year from now that he's gonna have to mount. And with the state, the case the state's putting together right now. That's those are the leaders that we've had. Instead of men coming out saying we're gonna walk, We're gonna stand by Carmel and Anthony. Because he's he's our he's our son, he's our brother, he's one of us. We're going to stand with him and make sure him and his family have what they need to navigate this truly, truly awful situation by his own hand. But we are also going to remind young black men of what it means to carry yourself with dignity and confidence through this world. What it how This is how we respond to aggression. This is how we respond to to situations, to incidents where we feel challenged or defensive. That this is the response of a black man. That's what a leader does. I don't see I never see that. I don't see anybody in our community out there doing it. I see some people doing it, maybe at their church or guy reaching on the street corner. Even my husband I was, I was sort of fussing at him the other day. I was like, it would mean so much. Like people watch your Facebook feed all the time, We're talking to each other on Facebook all the time. Everybody's got something to say about something. But when this kind of stuff happens, it would make such a it would be it would have such an impact for a respected black man like you to say what you think about things like this, even if it's just you know, I want to remind young black men, and this is not how we solve our problems, that we're gonna stand with this man. If that's what you want to say, that's fine. If we're going to stand with this man and his family, a young black man, let's have a conversation about what it means to be a man and how a man acts in public, and how a man deals with his feelings and deals with situations that challenge him. I don't see those conversations happening on a larger level, a corporate public level in the black community. Every time we get together to talk about race, we talk about why other people are racist and how oppressed we are and what we can do to change other people, and how's that been working out for us? By the way, nothing's changed. Maybe we need to stop asking all those hashtag other people to solve our problems. Maybe we're not asking ourselves the right questions here, which is what I've been saying for twenty years, and I'm tired of saying it. I don't think the I don't think that we're doing ourselves any favor by immediately leaping to the defense of this young man without at least, at the very least without adding context to how we expect our youth to aspect. Here is why this is important to me. Let me get to my notes. I've already run away with the show I had notes. Let me get to my notes. Here's why this is important to me. Leadership matters, and I have never been more convinced of it than I have been since November, and I have been watching President Trump change the face of this country like that overnight. What he said at the Joint Address of Congress State of the Union. Basically he said, you know, for four years, the Biden administration told us that there was nothing they could do about the border, that they needed legislation from Congress to do something about the border. And it turns out that wasn't true. All we needed was a new president, and he's right. All we needed was a leader willing to do what it takes to withstand the challenges that it takes to lead. And because he led, what's happening is everything underneath him is falling into line into liigning, even the weaklings, even the rhinos in his own party, even the people who have been weak and have not been fighting for us this whole time. Even they're stepping up, and you know, you're seeing and be more aggressive. They're using their platforms more, they're being more bold about legislation, about talking to the press. That's the effect of a good leader. Weak men and women thrive under strong leadership, and that's what you're seeing. You're seeing a lot of weak men and women thrive under strong leadership. And that goes across the board. It's the same way in your family. If you have a weak head of household, your family's going to be in chaos. If you have a strong leader, your family will be strong, Your family members will be confident, and your bonds will be strong. Let's look at I use this example a lot. I think it's a great example. Let's look at Bobby Kennedy and the MAHA movement. All right. I was not thinking about Bobby Kennedy before the Trump stuff. I was really listening to him on vaccines or health or anything like that. I just wasn't listening to him. Trump brings him in. He starts suddenly bringing all of these conversations into the mainstream conversations. We weren't having before about diyes and our foods, about the ingredients in your vaccines. Some people were having them, but not on a national scale. Right. That requires leadership. For everyone to be having certain conversations. That requires leadership. We have not been having the conversation as a corporate culture as Americans until Bobby Kennedy got here. So the other night, my husband's inting chips in bed Lord chips in bed before he comes out for the night. He's watching Bobby Kennedy on the news, and somebody asked him about snacks. What's the worst snack food? And Bobby says chips. My husband goes, oh, he looks those bullchips. He's like, oh, no, And then he says, well, I only poured myself a little bull. It's not like I'm sitting here with the bag. I poured myself the ball and enjoy my treat and go back. My point is that he even thought about it this time last year. Is my husband thinking about it if he's sitting in bed with the bull chips watching TV before he comes out for the night. No, he's not. When I open my fridge and I reach for something, or when i'm at the store lately, this has been happened to me. When I reach for something, I'm looking at the ingredients. I haven't always done that sometimes if I'm feeling like a super responsible mom, I will. Most of the time, I just get what I need and walk on. But even for me to stop occasionally and do that, and other people are too. Other people will say things like, oh, you eat that, Robert Kennedy is gonna come get you. You know, we're joking about it. My point is this that just the mere specter of his leadership has changed the conversation. All right, So if Bobby Kennedy can do that simply by walking into this office, what would be different for Black America if we did a full court press with our leadership and started holding young black men to account instead of blaming everyone else for the issues of young black men. And I'm not scolding you for that. What I'm saying is like, imagine, would then do you think the conversation in the black community would change? Do you think behavior in the black community would change if the first thing every time something like this happened, If the first thing we heard out of the mouths of our black leaders were we as Black men do not stand by aggression and violence as is a solution to our problems. And this is why we advocate for hype, for education, for emotional and mental stability in our community, for good health, and financial health. These are all the reasons we advocate for these things because strong young men create strong communities and strong leaders, and then we don't have these problems. I guess what I'm asking our black male leaders to do is normalize normal behavior in our students, in our children, in our community. We're not doing that. Let's just if you could. I know a lot of you you're listening, and you're furious with me right now, and I'm just asking you take the heat off for just a second. Just take the heat off and just consider the question that I've just asked. But what if what if that's what we heard first and foremost all the time, who would we be? The conversations that we have matter, the conversations we have with each other and our children matter. What we normalize matters. Why did Carmelo Anthony's mom say I worked hard to move my kids out of the hood. Again, I don't know why it's her that's working her. She's not saying me and my husband were we it's a her, she said, I worked hard to get my family out of the hood. I wanted my kids to grow up in a place where they could have access to a better education and safer neighborhoods. She sounds like a good mom, She sounds like the rest of us. But why would she say that? She's got a two parent household, right, she's married. People are pointing this out. They're they're some kind of nuclear family, right, so they have this some kind of some kind of stability that people like me say we need, so we have that. Why But still, why would she want to move out of the hood then? Because it's not safe, because you're around other people who will influence your children. That's why we moved out of the hood. That's why we moved out of the hood, y'all. We moved from my husband's childhood home. He grew up there, He spent his whole life there, his whole family grew up there. He moved his family away to the cozy suburbs of California. Why Because no matter how stable we were, we were not going to be the primary influence for our children in a life. A lot of cases, your community is what they see every day is what gets normalized. It's you have to create a different normal for your kids. And so in our unfortunately, in our black inner city communities, which is about a little more than fifty percent of Black Americans live in urban communities, what we might call the little more than fifty percent. So that number is going down, that's good news. But still so that's what we're really talking about, is that when we look around or what's being normalized, what's normalized in the black community? Ask yourself what we normalize Black people? What do we normalize? Because guess what, I live in a white community, largely white and Asian, and when I look around, I got a window right here, I'm looking out the window. When I look around at the families and the homes and the people here who are successful, I look at what's normal to them. And you know, what's normal to them, education, staying out of trouble, extracurricular activities, and a two parent home and a single family home. That's what's normal to them. And so that's the framework they go into the world with. So you don't typically see the same things popping off at our suburban schools that you do in our urban schools. You don't see that because it's not normalized. The responses aren't normalized. The emotional the emotional baseline of our communities. That that's not normalized as something touchy or aggressive, that's not normal behavior. We don't do that here. What do you do where you are? We need to start asking these questions. What do you do? Is this what you do when white kids leave the house. One thing my husband likes to say, Yohai says this, remember who you represent when you're out there, and by that he means a the Kingdom, be the Davis family, that's your framework. Everything you do reflects on us. So you need to consider are the things you're doing bringing us share, bringing us pain, bringing us tragedy? Or are they bringing us pride and prosperity? Are they bringing us motivation to support you? Are they bringing us a good reputation? You know, all of those things. We make sure kids know. You're you're a part of this micro community, the Davis home, and this macro community, the Kingdom of God. You're representing us. So yeah, you know, you can't be ultra aggressive when you go out there. You can't be like everybody else you do have to conduct yourself with dignity. We expect it, and that's what's normal to us, and that is a successful framework. Okay, is that what we consider normal in the black community. I'll let you think about it for a second. Did you think about it? All? Right? Some of you might not be in the black community. Most of you probably aren't. You don't know. I'll answer it for you. No, it's not normal. It's not normal. In fact, it's so oh abnormal. You can talk to any black person who has had any measure of financial or career success and they will tell you that, oh yeah, I got made fun of when I was a kid by the other black kids because I was too nerdy because I like to read, or because I went to a private school and graduated college and or I got married, or I talk white, I talked to white. Oh yeah, I got made fun of that fun of for that. We all have that story. Show me one you know, successful black person who doesn't what is normal? What is normal for us? And this is why this case really got under my skin because immediately saw all of these black leaders, thought leaders jumping to blame the victim or for at the very least simply defend this young man, but no words of what we expect of our young men in this community, and our young men do have a problem with aggression. Why do we commit to such a high percentage of the crimes in this country where twelve percent of the population and fifty four percent of all violent crime against ourselves. By the way, it's mostly us doing this to ourselves, and still we're blaming other people. Before you get heated again, I've challenged you. You go back and you listen to the last four years of my podcasting and what I've been talking about and what I believe. I'm not saying anything that doesn't line up with what I've been saying this whole time. I've already addressed the other side of this issue. So don't come for me in the comments and tell me, oh, well, why don't you have Then you have been listening to my show, and that's another problem. Right, y'all got all kinds of energy for other folks. Why don't you say this to this person? Why do you see it? Why don't you say this to our people? Who's speaking who's speaking positively positively to young black men? When I think about Lebron James a lot for some reason, a lot of money, very successful, and a lot of complaints about how hard it is to be black and what he has to deal with going out there every day into the world as a black man. And he's wealthy, one of the richest black men in America. Now by his own hand right. He has earned that wealth he has. You know, he's he's done. He's done the thing you do. He won the lottery ticket, he worked hard for it. I have no problem with as well. I don't. But what I do have a problem with is him looking at people like you and me, or young mister Anthony or any normal black person out there and going the reason you can't get ahead is because all of these other people have set up a system that oppresses you. It is all of these other people who want to think that you're the problem, and they're really the problem. And we just don't have enough access to wealth, the opportunity to success to make it happen for ourselves. And when I look at that, I look at the combined wealth of lebron James, the Obama, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson's family, Tony Morrison, Oprah, Winfrey Hazy, Sean P. D. D. Combs, who's not Who's going to be out of money pretty soon? Den's out? Washington, Morgan Freeman, like name, pick your block leader, pick them. These people are freaking rich, and they could do for our community in a in a heartbeat, what they keep demanding white people do for us, what they keep demanding the government do for us. They keep saying, if you just drop a lot of money into our communities and open opportunities, we're going to flourish. But they have the money to do it, their combined wealth. They could do it, and you could say, well, Kira, that's their money, Like they don't want to give away all their money, but why not? Why don't they If this is that important, If this is such a life teaching thing for the community, and you think this is a vital and you know, we could change the fate of the entire South Side of Chicago by just emptying our bank account, why don't you do it? They don't do it because a they know it won't home, because they know it's not a money issue. But b they don't do it because they don't want you to know. They don't care. They don't care because they could have solved the problem. Barack Obama never I thought I would never see a black president. Most of the people in my family said the same thing. It was a historic occasion and one I'll never forget. Even if I thought he was a terrible president. I will never forget it. And I remember a lot of what he said. I'm not too old, and I can tell you a lot of the stuff he said about how terrible Americans were, how terrible America is, about white people, about people who live in rural areas, God and God, clinging to your Bible and clinging to your guns. Like I can tell you a lot of stuff he said about this people. But I can count on two fingers the times that he stood up and spoke directly to Black America and said we can do better, and we must do that. He had the bully pulpit for eight years. Imagine what would have changed for our community if he normalized nuclear families, if he normal Hey, y'all, you want to be like me? Whence? When did you? When did you ever see Barack Obama out there telling young black men step by step how you get to where he is? Have you ever seen Barack Obama give a step by step of how you get from the South side of Chicago, which he's not from, but whatever, how you get from the South side of Chicago as a black boy to the White House? Has he the most powerful black man ever? You think he would have a lot to say about how he got there and how we can replicate that, if that's so freaking important to our community. Have you ever heard him? No, he doesn't. Hey, he can't because he didn't earn his way there. He was a pick. He was chosen. So that's that's the real nitty gritty of it. He really didn't earn is that's why he came out of nowhere. It seemed like he came out of nowhere, because he did come out of nowhere. That being said, he has sold us as a savior of the black community, as an intellectual and thought leader in the black community for years, so you would think that he would take his success and replicate that among our young black men. Tell me what Barack Obama has done, Give me the steps that he's done. He has nothing to tell you. Hey, he doesn't care about you, which I think we found out last November. Hey, he doesn't care about you. But b he has nothing to tell you he doesn't believe any of it anyway. That's the lie that I am sick of hearing from our black leadership. And that's why I'm challenging everybody. These people have been lying to us. They don't give a shit about black these black people, these rich black people, they don't give a shit about us. I'm sorry to cuss so much. I don't do that anymore on this show, but this is really what I have come to understand. People have told it to me, but you know, I'm just like, let's see all sides of this issue. Let's dig in, Let's hear the talking point. They could have solved this with their combined wealth. Ask yourself how much money you think it would take fixes southside Chicago Democrats put a number on it, and then ask yourself, who in the black community has that money? Right now? Why why are we still again, even if they don't want to give up their personal wealth. Why isn't Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, frankly, any black leader, wealthy black leader who has the nerve to be out there blaming other people for the problems of Black America, blaming racism and talking about how bad America is for black people. Any black leader who has the nerve to be out there saying that stuff should be telling you how they got to where they are. Was it an accident, what did they do? What school did they go to? Who did they talk to it? You don't know because they don't want you to know. They pulled the ladder up. They don't want you to know because they did the things they don't want you to know they did, which is, they groveled, they kissed asses, they made backroom deals. They sold you all out. They sold us out. They don't care about us, so I don't want they don't. They have so much power they could normalize the way they're living. So fired up about this? How does Lebron James live? How does Oprah Winfree live? How does Jay Z live? Look at them? They're married, well, Oprah's I'm married, but she's got her steady friend. They live in their own homes, right, They own their own businesses, they own their own homes, Their kids have top tier education. It doesn't have kids, but again, they make sure that their kids have the best education. They make sure their kids are disciplined at what they choose to do. I don't mean disciplined behaviorally, because there's issues with that. But like you know, for instance, money James Lebron James. I know there's controversy with what kind of basketball player he is. I don't know. I don't care, but I do know that what his dad did was raised his son who was disciplined enough right to move through the ranks. Why do they never talk to us about doing that for our children? Why do they never want that? They'll come to the hood and they'll do all of these charity I'm gonna give free basketballs to the boys of parents who are in jail. Well, I'm coming to the community. They'll give them the basketballs, but they won't give them knowledge. They'll give them the basketballs, but they won't give them the secret. The secret is finish high school. Get married, stay married. Get married before you have your kids. Stay married, stay married. You've already changed the fate of your entire family by just doing those things. Forget about all the other investments you can make. Leadership matters, Setting standards matters, Setting expectations matters. It's what you set for your family and what you set for your community that makes a difference. And a good leader will know how to inspire and motivate and normalize good behavior black people. Something's wrong in our community. We have not normalized good behavior. Give you another example. When Kamala was losing big time in the end, and she was losing in particular black male voters, right, they sent Obama out there and that was a disaster because all I did was scold our men again from thirty million dollar house in Martha's Vineyard. Come on coming out here talking to black men like they're five years old. They don't care about you, and they don't want your help. They don't want you to be better. They only want you to give them more of your time and money and energy because that's what makes them rich and that's what makes them happy. They don't want to solve your problems. They could, they don't. Anyways, where was I normalize normalizing leadership? So when Kamala was out there at the end and she was losing and she wanted to get the black mail vote, who did she call in? All the celebrities could they bring in? Did they bring in at the end? There was a few. In the beginning of they they trotted out Beyonce. She didn't even put on her dancing shoes, which I knew. I knew Camela was cooked that second when they had people was waiting for hours for Beyonce to come out, and she came out and all she did was talk for five minutes. And by the way, Beyonce is not a great talker, That's why she's a singer. And she didn't even shake one single tail feather. I knew Camala was cooked. Then would they bring up at the end Cardi B j lo that brought all the Hollywood actors, the Hollywood from the pedophilia capital of the world. They brought out trash from our own community, trash. What's Cardi B's Cardi B respect her, I guess as a businesswoman, but what she normalized in the black community. If your daughter is a fan of Cardi B, what's she looking up to? Is she telling you how she wants to own her own business one day? Is that what your daughter's because I know already I can hear somebody you go on, Carti B is accomplished businesswoman and she's had a hit single and she has uh huh is that what your daughter? So when when Carti B comes to your local community, is that what she's there to do. Give your daughter a lecture on business school. Sexy Red you know who that is. Look her up. Look, here's something you want to go down a rabbit hole. Don't blame me. Just do a search for Sean P. Diddy Combs's mother and find out who she is and what she did. Why is it that when we want to send out people, our influential people, to talk to our youth and to and to motivate our voter base, it's always the trashiest of the Trashiat Carti B's best hit selling song is a song called BAP. It stands for wet Ass Kitty Cat. That's to Kamala Harris trotted out to win back the votes of black men. This is what they think of us. Why do they think that that's what we've been allowed to be normalized in our community? And of course that's not I'm married to a black man who's an upstanding father, a good husband, a provider. His father upstanding black man, a good husband, a provider, so we know those people are out there. I'm living that life. But that's not normal. It's not normal to us. It's so not normal that that is the opposite of what Kamala decided to trot out in the waning days of her failing campaign. She didn't trot out the Ebram Kendy's, you know, the black intellectual class. Although I don't know what he the fact that I don't even know what he was out there doing says a lot. They don't trot out those which, by the way, he's still not going to give a message that I think black men need to hear, which is be a father, be a husband, be a family man. We don't normalize that. What do we normalize in our community? Sexy red a wap We got we got a million black boys vying for the three spots in the NBA that are going to be available to them when they come of age. We got a million black boys out there training hard right now for that. But we don't have a whole class of black men who are training to be accountants, pastors, community leaders, businessmen, CEOs. Those aren't the men we're sending to them. They're out there, by the way, but they're not. My husband's not getting calls to go talk to high school classes about this, that or the other, to weigh in on the very controversial issues that affect our community. We're going to basketball players and women who wear booty shorts and bras in public and call it empowerment. We have a normalized dignity in the black community. Now you we could have another discussion about why that is. We can talk about it if you want. There's a history there, sure, But this goes back to my original point what I started the whole show off with. If we want to get better black people, we're not going to get better by starting every conversation off with, well they did this. Somebody's gonna have to lay down their right to be right. Somebody's gonna have to lay down their right to be understood by everybody. We need to lay down this idea that we need to fix white people and then we can fix ourselves. What a bs idea that works for no relationship anywhere. I've been married twenty six years. If you've been married as long as I have, you've definitely been in a counselor's office at some point. If you've been married successfully, either your pastor or a church counselor or a therapist, you've talked to somebody at some point when you're in marriage crisis. You don't start off the problem solving by going, I need to fix my husband first, and once I get him fixed, then I can focus on myself. No therapist can recommend that, No counselor what they're solved, it's going to tell you to do that. They're gonna say, whatever is going on on the outside of this marriage, you can only fix what's wrong on the inside of you and then use that to heal the larger relationship. People, it's the same for us. We are degraded within our community. Our community is degraded, I think intellectually and emotionally, immoraly, we are degraded, and we are not doing ourselves any favor by perpetuating the blame game, never normalizing normal good black men. We don't normalize it. There's no black men on going out there ever going. We don't act like this isn't us. When you see gangs, gangs of black teenagers running around LA on their bikes, we got all kinds of problems. We got smash and grab gangs. We see those photos all the time, we see those videos all the time, and it's a group of black teenagers and we're never allowed to comment on it. We're never allowed to say anything we're never allowed to point out the obvious. I don't care what white people are saying about it. I don't care black people. What are we saying about it? Nothing? Why if we say nothing, then that's what we're normalizing. We're normal oh every time go well, oh, you want to point this out, but here's here's a group of white people doing the same thing. So okay, well, okay, great, white people are bad people too. Now what black white people think themselves? By the way they've been working on it. I don't have you been around for the last four years, but we've had white people kissing people's feet, kissing black people's feet and donating money, and it's been crazy. White folks have been doing all kinds of crazy stuff trying to win this forgiveness that we're never going to give them. Let them deal with themselves. Black people, what are we normalize? We've blown every opportunity we have had to normalize good, solid family framework for our community. We know that's what works. The people who are successful among us, that's how they live, right. They don't live like the way we're living in the hood. They don't live like that. Lebron James doesn't live like that doesn't matter where he came from. He don't live like that. Now, Kobe Bryant didn't live like that. CARDI b don't live like that. I don't live like that. Almost every successful black person I know doesn't live like that. Success actually is a symptom of conservative behavior, and maybe not a conservative mindset or mentality, but conservative behavior. Again, I know I need to wrap this up. I feel I don't know if I said anything worth saying, right, I've just been ranting for an hour. I had some notes here, but I'll wrap this up with this. I think that I lost that thought. All right, let's wrap it up with another. I'm fifteen, now normalize remembering what you were gonna say. No, there is thing to be said for what looks normal about you. Look around you. I think this is the point I was making. Look around you and see what the successful people look like. What do they look like? I don't mean their race or like what they're wearing, but what kind of lives are there living? You're gonna see some patterns. Kids. What if Barack Obama had been the most powerful black man in the world for eight years? What if every time he took the microphone he said, this is Black America. This is who we are if you look black people, we look at pictures. I know we're very fond of talking about how slavery and Jim Crow ruined the black family, but the statistics just are not there for that. We know this anecdotally, even because we look at the photos of our grandparents and great great grandparents from the forties and fiees, and they may not have had much, but they were always dressed to the nines. They were in stable families, they were married, mom, dad, kids, and they had been read traditional values. Very traditional value was normal. Then that's what was normal. What happened? Why don't we normalize that anymore? Why don't we talk about that anymore? Why don't we drive our children towards that anymore? We drive our kids towards the basketball court and the recording studio. And that is like asking our kids to win the lottery. Like talk about hobbling. It's not the white folks that are hobbling our kids. It's us who insist that our only path to success is to wrap about hoes and bitches and guns. God, I sound like my grandmother, but that's what we're pushing them. Towards we're saying that's your key to success? And what are the Asians normalized for their kids? I mean, I'm not gonna engage in that. You you just in your mind, what is the Asian community, generally speaking normaliance for their kids? What is the Indian immigrant community normalize for their children? What's normal? And if you're Indian, what's normal? Ask yourself what's normal in the Indian community as Ask yourself that I would love to hear a Jlty at proton mail dot com. Jlty at ProtonMail dot com. White people are different because white is such a catch all, it's umbrella. There's different factions, right, rednecks got your you know, you got your you got your suburbanites, you got your intellectuals, old money, new money, and all that kind of stuff. North South white people are a little different. But white people from whatever community you are, whatever subcommunity, what's normal to you? What's normal to you. My good friend Andrew Malcolm, who is a rock star in the reporting community and commentating community, uh works over at red State Now. I was at a conference with them once. He said, you know, my dad used to tell me whenever I would do something that was out of line. He would say, no, we don't do that here. And what it did was it set He said, it set the tone for me for my entire life, because then it was written on my heart what we do and don't do as the Malcolm family. Nope, that's not who we are. We talk so much about identity in America today. Why because the left knows that identity is vital. That's why having an identity rooting and something rooted in something that never changes is important. And I think it says a lot about the progressive left that they want you to root your identity and something that is always changing, your gender and your sexuality, and then we talk about how those things are fluid. They want you to root your identity and that you need to root your identity in something that never changes. And that's yahweh, that's the Lord, same today, yesterday, and forever more. We talk so much about identity because it means something, and so black people, we do need an identity and what is it? What is our identity? What has it become? What's our corporate identity? Do we need a corporate identity or do we need a divorce? I don't know. I just thought about that like, black folks, what's our community coming to? Are we going to be split along socioeconomic lines or are we going to still have a sense of bond a community along racial lines. Well, I don't know. That's something to think about, because I'm starting to see a real split in the socioeconomic normalization of things. Right when me and my family go back to Gary to visit, I don't I mean when I was there, life there was normal. It was I mean, I crazy saying it now, but it was normal for me for my neighborhood crackhead and knock on my door at eleven PM and ask could he rake the leaves of my lam for twenty dollars? That was normal. Now when we go back, we look around, we go, no, we don't do this, We don't do this, But Davis is don't do this. I want black people to make success and successful behavior normal, and that means calling out poor behavior when we see it. That means holding our kids to account, not immediately jumping to excuse their behavior, which I feel we do all the time. I don't feel like we're ever I might be wrong. I've got a few calls, a few, but just a few colleagues on this side of the fence, on the conservative side, who will call out that behavior. I thing a lot of us don't want to call it out because we're afraid of it being weaponized. Right, some things that you don't want to say in mixed company because you're afraid it is going to give white people permission to hate us. And I think that's a very real fear, and it's and it is a real thing. It's reality. And again, I don't care like I'm over it. What Let white people do what they want to do and say what they want to say. Nothing we've been doing so far has been helping. Let's try something different. How about we start solving our own problems. Who's helping us? The people that we have sent into leadership positions are not They're not normalizing. We have a problem in the black community. We have a problem with aggression of violence. Again, if your first thought is but this other group, you're part of the problem. Okay, I'm not denying that. This doesn't I am not any I'm black, I'm not white, I'm not Hispanic, I'm black. I'm not gonna tell white people, yep. But to normalize there and all the activists stuff they need to be doing to get their school shooter crowd in line. I mean, I do. I have opinions on it, and that's fine obviously. But what it's not my job to save that community, I guess is what I'm saying. It's not my job to save this community. But I do feel it's my job to speak up for this community. I'm a conservative because of black people. I'm a conservative because I'm black, So I do feel it is it is my duty to speak up for a community because I care about my children, I care about my family, and I care about the community at large. And no, I don't let I don't run my family this way. I don't know why we think it's okay for us to run our larger family this way, that we don't hold each other to account, that we don't demand better from each other, we don't ever look at each other and say, no, we don't do this here. I'm tired of the liars. I don't want to see Oprah Winfrey or Lebron James or any other idiot, rich black person out there tell me how I'm supposed to be living my life and how oppressed they are. They are in their Manhattan penthouses. How oppressed all of us are they and they do nothing for us that all they'll show up at our events, they'll take their little honorarium, and they'll get the photo shoot, and they'll move the f on. Barack Obama is probably still the most powerful black man in the world. What has he done for He lives in a thirty million dollars state in Martha's Vineyard. Meanwhile, people on the south Side, Black people on the south Side are begging their black mare to please don't take their money and give it to the illegal migrants that are squatting in their schools and community centers right now. I'm not the enemy for saying this. They're the enemy for lying to us this whole time, and for making us so angry at other people that we haven't been able to look at ourselves and see what's wrong and see what we need to improve our community and our responses. We say we have Jesus, we say we love Jesus, but we don't act like we love Jesus. If I walk through any random urban black community right now, am I going to feel like Jesus? Is there something's wrong with us? We're failing we're failing our children, We're failing our fathers, We're failing our God. We are failing the institutions that create success. So whether or not young mister Anthony deserves a second chance, whether or not he was justified in stabbing a fellow teenager to death over an argument, whether or not his family planned on buying a million dollar home before their son was arrested for murder or not, whether or not any of that is true. What is true is that there is no leadership from the black community on this issue. And what is true is that we are failing our young black men by continually blaming other people for the problems of aggression, fatherlessness, and miseducation that plague our own community. We have been begging white people to fix it for decades and nothing has changed. And in fact, according to many of you out there, things are worse. I don't know about you, but I'm doing the math on it, and the math ain't mathing. That's another thing we're not good at, and that's normal for us, and we're fine with it. We seem fine with it. It's fine. It's normal to send Cardi b out there to advocate for the first woman president of the United States to win back black men. I'm over it. I'm onto them. And none of those people in the upper echelon of you know, that black celebrity class. They're not on our side. They're not our friends. None of them are listen to anything they have to say about anything. Just consume their music, laugh at their movies. But no, they should have they and I think we proved in November they don't have influence and they shouldn't. They don't care about you. They hate you, they hate us, and they've been doing nothing but laugh at us, at us while we're all just cutting each other's throats out here and stabbing each other in the heart. Tell me what you think. Jlty at ProtonMail dot com. J L. T Y at ProtonMail dot com. Don't forget to go to my substack. Sign up for that. Just here Davis dot subsack dot com. If you're not subscribed to this podcast and you want to help, that's what you can do. A lot of people say, what can I do to help you? Kira? I love your voice, and well, I'm only paid by you. I'm only paid by the click clicks, and I'm not a sensationalist. So you're not gonna see a lot of I don't know. I might get some heated clips out of this episode, but you're not gonna see me out there saying outrageous things just so you'll click and give me money. I don't work like that. I wish it did. But the way you help me and the way you pay me is by hitting the subscribe button or sharing or the life. All of those go into an algorithm. Help me with the ads, help my voice stay free and honest, and that's all I want to do, be free and be honest. All right, I'll leave it there. I hope to hear from you on this. I'm really curious to see how this goes. Drop it in the comment or write to me Jltyatt ProtonMail dot com. I hope to see you again soon. Until we meet again, remember every once in a while, just stop and listen to yourself. Opbreads masodad that we won't with say then we won't to say oh we got it? Does no one get dig that owen with Bay this gonna be okay? Opreaders as that we won't with say then we won't with say oh we got it? Does no one get dig that owen do with may this don't be okay. This has been a presentation of the FCB podcast Network where real talk lifts visitors online at fcbpodcasts dot com.