1:08BWell, we were, um, we were here for free labor. The extent to which did Europeans consider our well-being was for the slavery, but once slavery was ended or useful Right, diminished.
1:21ASo even, even now, to a point, it’s almost obsolete.
1:23BBecause I mean, I mentioned ghettos before, and that’s how the ghettos came about. Because okay, I have this population of black people that are no longer needed, so we’ll just pack them in these ghettos here.
1:33APrisons.
1:35BForget about them. Prisons too. I mean, the prison is even an aspect of slavery, because the point that I always make that we don’t realize, the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, also allowed slavery in the case of Punishment. So, uh, prison is now a business.
1:49AIt’s a business, right?
1:50BYou know, they imprison you and then they force you to work and make a profit off of your labor. And if prisoners are paid at all for their labor, a lot of times they aren’t. They give them a few pennies, right? Nothing significant. So all we were ever brought here for was, you know, free or cheap labor. And to this day, that’s still what we’re useful for.
2:09ABut the, the obfuscations continue. So, for example, blacks are put into the categories of Republican, Democrat, rich, poor, suburban, urban, different religious faiths, Catholic, Baptist, Southern Baptist, Evangelist. These are all obfuscations. These are all distractions that distract us from the fight that we need. These are distractions. That’s why I don’t argue with the Moors with sovereignty. I don’t argue with Christians about Jesus. I don’t argue with Muslims about Muhammad and the Kaaba. I don’t argue with Hebrew Israelites about a God in the sky. None of that. Those are all obfuscations. Those are the survival techniques that people use to try to filter and navigate through life. But the real problem, the real issue, they don’t want to deal with that. They want to stay in the hocus-pocus religious modality.
3:23BYeah, that was actually a topic that came up last week too when we were discussing the Haitian Revolution and We spoke about in terms of religion, and it’s interesting to find that in many instances slaves actually used religion as a catalyst for their uprisings. For example, Nat Turner was inspired by reading the Bible and came up, led a rebellion. So one of the things I’ve noticed with Black people now is that we get into these religions where we don’t even necessarily study them. For example, we don’t read So a lot of black people claim that they’re Christian, but they don’t read the Bible. And in not doing this, they don’t realize that in many ways the message in the Bible is a very revolutionary message. I mean, you look at the person of Jesus. Well, who was Jesus? Jesus was this radical guy that was condemning the rich, condemning the hypocritical religious leaders of his day, condemning the politicians. And ultimately he was crucified by the Roman Empire because crucifixion was essentially a method that the Roman state used to punish to people. assassinate people. So Jesus was killed by the Romans.
4:29AYeah.
4:30BBut we don’t read the Bible in that sense, so we think of Jesus as being this, you know, very peaceful, just turn the other cheek kind of guy that was long-suffering in the face of oppression. But that’s not really what he was. So one of the issues we run into, like I said, with religion is we don’t actually study these religions in a way that’s beneficial for us. We just want religion to make us feel good and make us feel happy, but we don’t want to engage in any kind of activity that will really labor us.
4:56AWell, you know, the Europeans, uh, de-weaponized religion. It’s been de-weaponized. It’s become totally spiritual.
5:09BNot for us, not for them.
5:10AYeah, for them, right. Yeah, um, it’s been de-weaponized. And it’s waiting the by and by, the sweet by and by, when Jesus comes, or whatever, whatever one doubts it. But, uh, it’s not this -- not designed to emancipate people at all. It’s actually designed to put you to sleep unless you’re willing to use it as a battle axe. Like how I see the white Europeans, the white Christians use their religion in the Crusades. They weaponized it to conquer land and territory and people. That’s a good religion, but for us as black people, we haven’t been able to weaponize it for our own liberation.
6:03BThat’s the problem. Well, because it’s not -- that’s not the way it’s given to us. And the first issue with how religion is given to us is that image of a white Jesus.
6:11ARight, yeah.
6:12BSo when it’s handed to us, it’s handed to us with a -- in the face of white Jesus. And as I said, it’s handed to us with these conceptions. For example, you know, to be a good Christian is to be peaceful and to turn the other cheek. That hasn’t gotten us anywhere. And a point that I make very often is when you look at the advancements that African people have made, particularly here in the United States, has never been through nonviolence. The abolishment of slavery, it took violent struggles to end that. Even here in the United States, it took a civil war to end slavery. On the civil rights movement, people think that civil rights was won just by peaceful, nonviolent protesting and singing You Shall Overcome. And they forget there were a lot of riots that took place during the ’60s. The reason why John F. Kennedy got involved in civil rights wasn’t because of the peaceful marching, it’s because Black people started rioting in schools. Stabbing police officers, burning towns. And Kennedy then realized that, you know, this is a serious issue, you have to step in and do something.
7:07ABut he wouldn’t have done anything organically otherwise with people protesting.
7:12BSo even the way we think about our history, if you think of our history in terms of, well, we gained everything through being peaceful and turning the other cheek, you’re reading history the wrong way and you’re taking the wrong lessons. And the dangerous thing about taking the wrong lessons from history that if you try to apply it to a struggle now, it won’t work. I mean, even recent examples we could look at is Ferguson and Baltimore. What happened after the rioting that went on there? Obama sent the Department of Justice and they conducted investigation and it exposed how corrupt the police forces in those cities were. Now, would that have happened if the people there weren’t rioting and lighting cars on fire and engaging in that activity? So as I said, any type of progress or recognition that you find black people getting, it’s through violence, it’s through protesting and rioting and that kind of thing. It’s never through just, you know, sitting there peacefully and allowing oppressors to continue to brutalize us without doing anything.
8:05ABut despite these reports from the DOJ about Ferguson Police Department, no one gets fired. Yeah, yeah, the police chief has his job.
8:17BYeah.
8:17AI mean, all the officers still have their job and they get paid vacations and they go home to their lovely wives or what have you. There’s, there’s no, there’s no ramifications.
8:27BI mean, there’s no serious ramifications. It shows the situation that we’re in. As I said, this investigation that was conducted wouldn’t have even been conducted in the first place if it wasn’t for the riot. And now what would it take to go to the next step of actually, you know, holding these people accountable? Really addressing issues, that we start -- we have to start looking at the techniques. Because like I said, unless we’re rioting in the streets and burning cars and burning up buildings, we’re completely neglected by both, as you said, both the Democrat Party and the Republican Party.
8:56AYeah, those are, again, those are obfuscations. Those are created systems. The politics of America is basically like a church. You in the Republican Church or the Democratic Church? So it’s a church nonetheless, but it’s a powerless church. They’re designed to empower you. If you notice how, for example, when Trump became president, how the church had to go bow to him and kiss his ring, you know, at Trump Towers to appease him. To get certain things done for the church, for the, for the communities, and to build homes, and to build jobs, and create jobs in urban cities.
9:44BAnd it was a shame to see us, uh, graveling for crumbs. That won’t come.
9:51AThat won’t come. But the history is, is full of us doing this.
