History & Repetition Featuring Dr. Marlene L. Daut and Samuel Jay Keyser

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Welcome. I'm Erik Fleming, host of A Moment with Erik Fleming, the podcast of our time.

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Thanks in advance for supporting the podcast of our time. I hope you enjoy this episode as well.

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The following program is hosted by the NBG Podcast Network.

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Music.

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Hello, and welcome to Another Moment with Erik Fleming. I am your host, Erik Fleming.

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And we're getting into season 12 now. This is going to be the second episode.

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And I've got two guests on who are two individuals who are definitely smarter

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than me, but most of my guests are smarter than me.

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I hope that y'all get something out of the conversations.

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One is going to be talking about Haiti and, you know,

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the relevance of its history to where we are now and why we kind of have perceptions

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about people from that country.

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Right. And then we've got another guest who has written a book about repetition

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and the subtle power of it. right?

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And of course, you know, we dive into how it plays in the politics,

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but the book is geared more toward the art, but, you know, there's some relevance to the discussion.

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So I hope y'all listen to that and y'all get some joy out of that.

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Still trying to get 20,000 subscribers on patreon.com slash a moment with Erik Fleming.

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And, you know, we're still going to be pushing that go, you know, throughout the year.

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And I'm not saying that it's going to be easy, but I just believe it's going

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to happen because I know that you are going to do it and you're going to tell

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a friend and you're going to,

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and that friend's going to tell a friend and it's just going to happen.

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And I appreciate those of you who have been sending feedback in and not just

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supporting me, but supporting the guests even that have come on the show,

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because that means that people are listening.

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And so I greatly appreciate that and encourage you to go to the website,

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momenteric.com, to, you know, you can leave those comments on the website.

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Don't send me marketing and spam and all that stuff because that's going to

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get deleted out. That's not going to make it to the website.

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But, you know, sincere reviews, comments, you know, did you like a particular

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guest that you like to show?

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All that kind of stuff. Again, momenteric.com.

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And you go ahead and leave those there. Five-star rating, the whole nine yards.

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You can go to that website and, you know, check out other guests that I've had on, other episodes.

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Yeah, so do that. Support the podcast, patreon.com slash a momenterikfleming. It's only a dollar.

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Subscribe for the whole year. Oh, well, a dollar a month.

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So I guess that'll be $12 for the whole year.

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And momenterik.com is the website where you can link on to do a subscription.

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But you can also, you know, learn a little bit about me, a little bit about

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the podcast and all those things.

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All right. So I've done all that housekeeping and I've got some comments because,

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like I said, this whole thing started with me being frustrated about things.

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And so something happened, a couple of things happened over the last week that

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more than frustrated me.

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It pissed me off, actually. And so, I'll talk about that.

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But let's go ahead and kick this thing off. And as always, we kick it off with

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a moment of news with Grace G.

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Music.

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Thanks, Erik. A shooter killed four people, including a police officer and then

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himself, inside a Manhattan skyscraper, with a note found later blaming the

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NFL for his brain disease.

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The U.S. Central Bank held interest rates steady, and Federal Reserve Chairman

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Jerome Powell indicated that rate cuts are unlikely soon due to inflation concerns.

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Kamala Harris announced she will not run for California governor next year,

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but hinted at a possible presidential bid in 2028.

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North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper announced his U.S.

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Senate campaign, aiming to flip a Republican-held seat after Senator Tom Tillis' retirement.

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A Republican-led congressional committee denied immunity to Ghislaine Maxwell,

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Jeffrey Epstein's associate, who has been subpoenaed to testify privately from prison.

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The U.S. Senate narrowly confirmed Emil Bove, President Trump's former personal

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lawyer, to a lifetime appointment as a federal judge on the 3rd U.S.

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Circuit Court of Appeals.

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Canada plans to recognize the state of Palestine at the United Nations in September,

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following similar announcements from France and Britain.

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The Trump administration issued new guidance stating that federal employees

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can discuss and promote their religious beliefs at work if it is not harassing.

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A powerful magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula caused

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damage and generated a tsunami, which triggered warnings and evacuations across the Pacific.

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Nurses in Nigerian public hospitals held a seven-day warning strike Demanding better pay,

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working conditions, and increased recruitment And around 154,000 federal employees,

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or 6.7% of the civilian workforce Have accepted buyouts this year as part of

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the Trump administration's effort To reduce the size of the federal workforce

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I am Grace G., and this has been a Moment of News.

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Music.

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All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news.

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And now it is time for my guest, Dr. Marlene L. Daut.

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Marlene L. Daut is professor of French African-American studies and history at Yale University.

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She is the author of Barondon Vastay and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism,

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Tropics of Haiti, Race, and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in

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the Atlantic World, 1789 to 1865,

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Awakening the Ashes, An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution,

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and The First and Last King of Haiti, The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe.

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She is also co-editor with Gregory Perrault and Marion Rohrleitner of the volume

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Haitian Revolutionary Fictions, an anthology,

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and with Kama L.

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Glover, A History of Haitian Literature.

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Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest on this podcast, Dr.

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Marlene L. Daut.

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Music.

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All right. Dr. Marlene Daut. How are you doing, ma'am? You doing good?

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I'm doing well. Thank you. Well, it is always an honor to have people smarter than me on the show.

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So I thank you for accepting the invitation. And I want to kind of get into it.

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So what I do is I start off my interviews with icebreakers.

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So the first icebreaker is always a quote.

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So this is the quote I want you to respond to. I'm worried that most people who only know U.S.

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History or have spent all their time in the comfort of living in the United

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States really don't understand the kind of danger they can be in.

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They are more interested in their own personal security, their own personal wealth.

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The entire history that I'm studying shows things can be extremely fragile,

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and all it takes is people not standing up for what's right.

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What does that quote mean to you?

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Well, you know, I think we're kind of those of us living in the United States

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right now, but in many places in the world are essentially seeing what happens

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when people don't stand up for what's right,

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when they are more concerned with the fact that they have a job and they have

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a home where they're not an immigrant,

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that they're not in danger of being deported.

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But when we see injustice happening to people, you know, we have all of our

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great leaders in the civil rights movement explain to us, you know,

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injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

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And so that's what it means to me is that just because maybe a lot of people

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don't really think about Haitians,

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maybe it's an abstract place to them that what is happening to Haiti and Haitians can happen anywhere.

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When you look at the long history of the world, which is much older than all

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of us by thousands of years,

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we have seen every type of civilization crumble and no civilization has been immune to it so far.

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And none of us can foretell the future.

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So all we can do is take care in the moment and make sure that we are constantly

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fighting for justice. Yeah.

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All right. So then the next icebreaker is what I call 20 questions.

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So I need you to give me a number between one and 20.

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Okay, let's say four. Okay.

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How should we balance individual freedoms with the common good?

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I think that first, it helps to define what is freedom.

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And actually, the time period that I'm studying, the Haitian Revolution.

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The aftermath of Haitian independence post-1804, and Haitians defined freedom

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as freedom from slavery, personal freedom,

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and independence was defined as freedom and liberty from a colonial ruling power,

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essentially sovereignty, that they could decide their own government.

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And I think that a lot of people actually confuse those things or conflate those

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things, freedom from slavery and independence.

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And I think partially one of the reasons that happens is because,

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you know, a lot of the circles that I run in and that many of us on the U.S.

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Side are familiar with are the arguments of, you know, kind of U.S.

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Political theorists who really don't make the distinction when they talk about

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the ideals of liberty of the founders.

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They fail to distinguish that actually, for most people, personal liberty meant not being enslaved.

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And independence meant not being beholden to Great Britain, meant creating your

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own government, being sovereign.

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And I think that confusion persists today when I see people talk about how the

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country was founded on ideals of freedom, failing to distinguish freedom for whom and from what.

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And I think if we got back closer to the arguments and understandings that people

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had in the 18th century when these things were being hotly debated.

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In large part because of the Haitian Revolution, we would have a greater understanding

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of why, for many people in the United States.

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That democracy doesn't feel as liberating as it does for those at the top.

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I think of the Langston Hughes poem, right?

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Why, oh, why does democracy mean everybody but me? Mm-hmm.

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Wow, that's pretty heavy. Look, so how did,

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talk to the listeners about how you came from being a little old Haitian American

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girl in California to a distinguished professor at Yale University dropping dimes like that.

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Well, you know, one of my favorite Haitian authors is a historian anthropologist,

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a late historian anthropologist named Michel Votrouille, and he wrote a very

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formative book called Silencing the Past,

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Power and the Production of History, which was published in 1995.

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And in it, he talked about, or rather his family members have said as well,

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that history sits at the dinner table in a Haitian family.

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And so I was constantly hearing about Haitian politics, but I didn't actually

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know that much about Haiti's history, other than I knew the names Toussaint

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L'ouverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Haiti's founder.

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But I wanted to delve more deeply into the deep history of, essentially,

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I say the land where my mother was born.

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It was a way to get close to my mother.

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My grandmother had dementia for most of my life growing up. So she had all the

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stories and she couldn't tell them to me.

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And so I had to go and find them. And I found myself being very envious of other

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Haitian Americans who would say,

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my grandmother told me this, My grandfather told me that, that I didn't have

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that because my grandfather was not with us and my grandmother was not in the

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place to tell me those stories.

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And it's interesting because when I was in graduate school and I decided,

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oh, I want to study the Haitian Revolution, so many people said,

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oh, no, don't do that. Nobody knows where Haiti is.

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It's not mainstream enough. You'll never get a job.

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But the thing is, is that when I went to graduate school, I wanted to be a novelist.

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I went to graduate school because we were in a deep recession and I thought

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I better do something with my time. What am I going to do?

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And I fell in love with also teaching.

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And so that's the reason I became an academic. And I found that people who are

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trying to warn you from doing something, most of the time, they don't have ill intentions.

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I truly think that. They just looked at the past and thought,

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if she does this, you know, she's going to be one of those unemployed academics.

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And I think I just thought, well, that would be okay, because then I'll just

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write my novel. You know, I was still young in my 20s. I'll just write a novel

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if that doesn't work out.

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And in the end, I found that actually when I started to explain the story of

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Haiti's journey from being a slave colony, the most torturous slave colony in the world,

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to being an independent state that is the first to permanently abolish slavery

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anywhere in the world, their ears perked up. Everyone was listening.

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And I talked about how everywhere in the United States in the late 18th and

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early 19th centuries, people knew about Haiti.

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All of these enslaved people and free people of color in the United States were

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inspired by Haiti with the abolitionist movement. White enslavers were terrified.

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Thomas Jefferson was terrified. And so I thought,

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you can't tell me this event is not important and not mainstream if it caused

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people around the world to react, some negatively, some positively,

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to create laws specifically to contain the Haitian Revolution.

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When Great Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, it was not out of the

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kindness of their heart.

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On the floors of Parliament, they're talking about how many Africans had recently

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been transported to the colony of Saint-Domingue, what Haiti was called,

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and how that contributed to the Haitian Revolution and Haitian independence.

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They wanted to stop the importation, forced importation of Africans from the

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continent because they believed they were the more rebellious.

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They were soon proven wrong that that was perhaps a factor, but not the only

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factor, not even the greatest factor, but that's what they believed and it caused them to react.

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And so I'm happy to say, and I think those who warned me against studying Haiti

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are also happy to say that they were wrong. Yeah.

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Well, you have devoted your academic life to the study of Haitian history,

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and you kind of touched on a little bit, but go deeper into why Haitian history

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is significant to African Americans.

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Yes. I mean, the significance to me, you know,

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one of the reasons I wanted to study the Haitian Revolution as well is because

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the first books that I was reading that had to do with Haiti and the United

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States talked about how afraid everyone in the United States was of the Haitian Revolution.

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And in fact, when I started to delve more deeply into Frederick Douglass's engagement

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with Haiti, with Freedom's Journal, the first African-American newspaper,

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with their engagement with Haiti, with Toussaint L'ouverture,

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with the King of Haiti, who, of course, I study,

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I started to get a different picture.

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Was everyone afraid of the Haitian Revolution?

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Because Gabriel Prosser wasn't afraid of the Haitian Revolution when he started

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his revolt and rebellion.

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Nat Turner wasn't afraid of the Haitian Revolution.

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John Brown, a white abolitionist, was not afraid of the Haitian Revolution.

00:18:57.874 --> 00:19:02.154
And these are individuals, anti-slavery activists and abolitionists,

00:19:02.174 --> 00:19:08.694
who have known interest in the Haitian Revolution and took inspiration from it.

00:19:08.774 --> 00:19:13.214
And when I started to see this reflected in the literature as well,

00:19:13.374 --> 00:19:17.674
that there were just references all throughout early African-American literature.

00:19:17.934 --> 00:19:22.734
The first African-American short story from 1828 is called Teresa,

00:19:22.954 --> 00:19:25.554
a Haitian tale. It's about the Haitian Revolution.

00:19:25.854 --> 00:19:31.874
The second known African-American short story from 1837 by a man from New Orleans,

00:19:32.034 --> 00:19:35.214
a free man of color named Victor Césure, is called The Mulatto,

00:19:35.674 --> 00:19:37.674
Le Mulat, because he wrote it in French.

00:19:37.814 --> 00:19:42.174
And it's about a slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue, today Haiti.

00:19:42.434 --> 00:19:52.654
So I knew that it was much deeper than the fear narrative that was really rampant in U.S.

00:19:52.954 --> 00:19:57.294
History. That was the framing, was everyone was afraid. And yes,

00:19:57.414 --> 00:20:00.154
they reacted, but they reacted negatively. And

00:20:00.500 --> 00:20:06.800
And I wanted to show that it wasn't the case that when we talk about everyone.

00:20:07.840 --> 00:20:12.820
Usually people are meaning in historical circles, white everyone's.

00:20:12.940 --> 00:20:19.740
And if we put Black Americans back into the frame, we see it is hardly the case

00:20:19.740 --> 00:20:22.580
at all, and not even all white Americans.

00:20:22.840 --> 00:20:28.040
The most famous speech about Toussaint L'ouverture was from 1861 by a white

00:20:28.040 --> 00:20:31.440
abolitionist named Wendell Phillips. William Lloyd Garrison,

00:20:31.760 --> 00:20:35.580
a white abolitionist who started The Liberator, he was interested in Haiti.

00:20:35.760 --> 00:20:39.000
They talked about it all the time in the pages of the journal.

00:20:39.300 --> 00:20:44.540
And so we have to have a fuller sense of history and look for things that don't

00:20:44.540 --> 00:20:48.640
just confirm what we already believe, but actually look for the stories we're

00:20:48.640 --> 00:20:51.520
not paying attention to because they have,

00:20:51.720 --> 00:20:54.640
in many ways, been deliberately silenced. Yeah.

00:20:55.000 --> 00:21:02.120
I'm dating myself because there used to be a series of Black historical comic books.

00:21:02.800 --> 00:21:09.120
So the first time I ever heard of Toussaint L'ouverture was in this comic book.

00:21:09.380 --> 00:21:15.220
It was a whole depiction about how he led the slaves to revolt against the French.

00:21:16.220 --> 00:21:21.480
And I'm like going, there is no way I would have learned that in school.

00:21:21.680 --> 00:21:25.240
I mean, never even thought about teaching that.

00:21:25.620 --> 00:21:30.780
And so, you know, so that always has always been in the back of my mind.

00:21:30.780 --> 00:21:34.700
I just remember that comic book issue because it's like he's in full battle,

00:21:34.700 --> 00:21:38.600
you know, back then with the hat and overcoat and all that stuff.

00:21:38.600 --> 00:21:42.120
And he's standing with one foot on the heel, you know, you know,

00:21:42.200 --> 00:21:44.260
got the hand in the breast, all that kind of stuff.

00:21:44.740 --> 00:21:47.860
And it's like on this comic book cover and I was like,

00:21:48.815 --> 00:21:52.735
why aren't we talking about this guy? Even the people like, you know,

00:21:52.815 --> 00:21:57.595
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, uh, and Nkrumah, all them guys,

00:21:57.615 --> 00:22:00.135
I never heard them say the man's name.

00:22:00.215 --> 00:22:03.235
Now it's, it's definitely hard to, if you're not fluent in French,

00:22:03.235 --> 00:22:07.355
it's really hard to say, but I mean, they didn't even, well,

00:22:07.455 --> 00:22:12.435
Malcolm alluded to it a little bit abstractly, but nobody really talked about this guy.

00:22:12.835 --> 00:22:15.835
And so this kind of leads into my next question.

00:22:15.835 --> 00:22:18.375
Cause you've mentioned that Thomas Jefferson was one of those,

00:22:18.375 --> 00:22:23.895
white folks that was afraid and he was the president of the United States at the time and so.

00:22:24.695 --> 00:22:28.235
He refused to recognize Haiti as

00:22:28.235 --> 00:22:31.495
a sovereign nation so how did

00:22:31.495 --> 00:22:36.055
that how did how did that contribute how did how much of a setback was that

00:22:36.055 --> 00:22:41.795
to Haitians that the United States wasn't the most powerful nation in the world

00:22:41.795 --> 00:22:46.295
at that time but they were they were they were they were the they I guess.

00:22:46.435 --> 00:22:48.355
They were the new kids on the block. Yeah.

00:22:48.755 --> 00:22:54.355
And they were this epitome of fighting for freedom and they were still in the midst of it.

00:22:54.435 --> 00:22:59.275
And the freedom in the context that you explained that they did not want to be part of an empire.

00:22:59.615 --> 00:23:05.415
How much was a setback for the Haitians not to be recognized by the United States

00:23:05.415 --> 00:23:06.955
or basically any other nation?

00:23:07.455 --> 00:23:10.815
You know, it's interesting. It depends on how you look at it, right?

00:23:11.035 --> 00:23:15.155
So it's not just that Thomas Jefferson and didn't recognize Haiti.

00:23:15.315 --> 00:23:16.755
He actually tried to punish Haiti.

00:23:16.995 --> 00:23:19.775
In 1806, he issued a trade embargo.

00:23:20.035 --> 00:23:24.995
And this trade embargo, actually, it was a huge setback because the United States

00:23:24.995 --> 00:23:28.355
was, along with Great Britain, one of Haiti's greatest trading partners.

00:23:28.735 --> 00:23:35.055
And they would get in exchange for coffee because that's the biggest crop of independent Haiti.

00:23:35.195 --> 00:23:39.655
The biggest crop of colonial Saint-Domingue under French rule was sugar.

00:23:39.815 --> 00:23:44.835
But many of the sugar plantations burned. So coffee is kind of their thing.

00:23:45.015 --> 00:23:51.715
And this embargo actually leads to shortages of flour, of things they need for

00:23:51.715 --> 00:23:53.455
hospitals. And so people die.

00:23:53.675 --> 00:24:00.555
So this was a legitimate setback. The question of the United States not recognizing Haitian independence.

00:24:01.215 --> 00:24:07.095
Haitian newspaper journalists would talk about how they can call us whatever

00:24:07.095 --> 00:24:13.475
they want, they can persist in their fiction that we are still Saint-Domingue and not Haiti,

00:24:13.835 --> 00:24:16.355
but it will be a mere fable.

00:24:17.035 --> 00:24:22.615
And in fact, when 1810 rolls around and the trade embargo is supposed to expire.

00:24:23.315 --> 00:24:28.935
Congress just lets it expire and trade resumes between the United States and Haiti.

00:24:29.095 --> 00:24:33.535
It never stopped between Haiti and Great Britain. And so we see that those Haitian

00:24:33.535 --> 00:24:38.295
journalists actually had a very astute argument that you can say whatever you

00:24:38.295 --> 00:24:42.515
want, but your merchants come to our shores, goods travel back and forth.

00:24:43.108 --> 00:24:47.248
And in fact, Haiti in the 1810s was quite prosperous.

00:24:47.668 --> 00:24:51.188
Now, this doesn't mean that they didn't want official recognition.

00:24:51.528 --> 00:24:56.648
In fact, Haiti's rulers, principally Henri Christophe, who became the king of Haiti,

00:24:57.108 --> 00:25:01.748
he tried to dangle before the governments of the United States and Great Britain

00:25:01.748 --> 00:25:06.388
in the latter part of the 1810s, the idea that they would get a kind of most

00:25:06.388 --> 00:25:10.888
favored nation status in trade if they became the first to recognize Haitian independence.

00:25:11.648 --> 00:25:17.068
Unfortunately, what happens instead is that France's obstinance intervenes because

00:25:17.068 --> 00:25:19.528
this is Haiti's greatest setback.

00:25:19.888 --> 00:25:25.228
It would be France not recognizing Haitian independence would be as if when

00:25:25.228 --> 00:25:30.108
the American Revolution ended, Great Britain for decades said,

00:25:30.208 --> 00:25:31.568
you're still our colony.

00:25:31.568 --> 00:25:35.668
We're not going to recognize your independence. And we're going to threaten

00:25:35.668 --> 00:25:41.688
all the nations that are around you with sanctions and problems and war if they

00:25:41.688 --> 00:25:46.008
recognize your independence, because France and Great Britain are constantly at war.

00:25:46.128 --> 00:25:49.908
And many of those battles are happening in the Caribbean. They're attacking

00:25:49.908 --> 00:25:52.068
each other's ships, sinking boats, sinking.

00:25:52.468 --> 00:25:56.908
So Great Britain has a vested interest in Haitian sovereignty,

00:25:56.908 --> 00:26:02.008
but not in recognizing Haitian independence because they fear repercussions from France.

00:26:02.248 --> 00:26:06.608
And so unfortunately, what happens is by the time France does agree to recognize

00:26:06.608 --> 00:26:14.908
Haitian independence in 1825, they do so only by exacting the price of 150 million

00:26:14.908 --> 00:26:16.768
francs from the Haitian government.

00:26:16.868 --> 00:26:19.728
They say, yeah, okay, we'll recognize you after all this time.

00:26:20.288 --> 00:26:21.828
Essentially because we have no choice.

00:26:22.148 --> 00:26:25.008
We see that you would rather go to war than become a colony again,

00:26:25.168 --> 00:26:26.468
but you're going to have to pay us.

00:26:26.588 --> 00:26:30.868
And unfortunately, again, one of Haiti's rulers, A man named Jean-Claude Boyer

00:26:30.868 --> 00:26:35.988
agrees to this, and it essentially destroys all that prosperity that had been

00:26:35.988 --> 00:26:39.528
created through the lucrative trade with the United States and Great Britain,

00:26:39.548 --> 00:26:41.408
because not only do they have to pay that amount,

00:26:41.708 --> 00:26:44.868
now they have to give France most favored nation status.

00:26:45.368 --> 00:26:49.468
And Great Britain says, oh, well, no, that doesn't work for us.

00:26:49.548 --> 00:26:53.068
And so they lose out on huge amounts of trade. Hmm.

00:26:53.948 --> 00:27:01.128
Well, again, dating myself. Many people in my generation remember Haitians as

00:27:01.128 --> 00:27:04.148
the refugees that were turned back during the AIDS epidemic.

00:27:04.928 --> 00:27:10.228
Then, of course, during the 2024 presidential election, Haitian immigrants in

00:27:10.228 --> 00:27:14.168
Springfield, Ohio, were scapegoated as eating dogs and cats.

00:27:14.877 --> 00:27:21.857
Why do you think Haitian people are treated, stereotyped in such a dehumanizing way?

00:27:22.337 --> 00:27:25.297
You know, it started during the Revolutionary Era.

00:27:26.317 --> 00:27:33.237
Thomas Jefferson, in a 1799 letter, he refers to the revolutionaries as cannibals

00:27:33.237 --> 00:27:34.517
of the terrible republic.

00:27:34.777 --> 00:27:39.177
And of course, he's referring to the French Republic, but in the Caribbean,

00:27:39.317 --> 00:27:45.157
that they are cannibals. And this was very common to speak of the Haitian revolutionaries

00:27:45.157 --> 00:27:49.477
as out for blood, white blood, drinking blood.

00:27:50.017 --> 00:27:54.797
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Haiti's founder, the most famous image of him depicts

00:27:54.797 --> 00:27:57.297
him holding up a white woman's head.

00:27:57.817 --> 00:28:04.437
The phrase he most became associated with in the context of Haitian revolutionary

00:28:04.437 --> 00:28:08.357
history in the early 19th century was coupé tête boulecaille,

00:28:08.357 --> 00:28:11.637
which in Haitian, Kaleo, means cut off heads, burn down houses.

00:28:11.917 --> 00:28:14.237
So he would give all of these speeches.

00:28:14.557 --> 00:28:18.877
His most famous speech to me is the one he gave in April 1804,

00:28:18.897 --> 00:28:21.417
where he says, I have avenged America.

00:28:21.877 --> 00:28:26.957
And yet, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and in certain circles today.

00:28:27.657 --> 00:28:30.637
Dessalines is a tiger out for

00:28:30.637 --> 00:28:34.117
human blood. That was literally one of the tropes they used in the era.

00:28:34.357 --> 00:28:41.497
And there is a through line from that kind of effort to dehumanize the revolutionaries,

00:28:41.677 --> 00:28:45.817
the freedom fighters, by calling them insurrectionists, brigands,

00:28:46.117 --> 00:28:48.997
rebels, and terrorists in their own era.

00:28:49.237 --> 00:28:54.097
That all contributed to the sense that they were not out for freedom,

00:28:54.297 --> 00:28:59.357
that they did not bring war in the name of liberty like the American revolutionaries,

00:28:59.357 --> 00:29:04.377
right but that instead they just wanted to kill white people you know and when

00:29:04.377 --> 00:29:08.477
i teach this history to my students i say what makes more sense that they wanted

00:29:08.477 --> 00:29:11.757
to be free from slavery or that they just wanted to kill white people because

00:29:11.757 --> 00:29:14.817
if they just wanted to kill white people they could have done it all along.

00:29:15.850 --> 00:29:22.330
For 300 years, when the Spanish were there first, they didn't only just wantonly kill white people.

00:29:22.490 --> 00:29:24.850
And even during the revolution, they didn't do that.

00:29:25.170 --> 00:29:29.890
Toussaint L'ouverture was known for saving the family that had enslaved him previously.

00:29:30.270 --> 00:29:34.670
People felt things just as they do now, even for people who had harmed them.

00:29:34.830 --> 00:29:38.610
And I think this is something that's really hard for a lot of people to understand.

00:29:38.610 --> 00:29:42.390
They want it to be a black and a white issue, and the Haitian revolution was anything but.

00:29:42.390 --> 00:29:48.090
And I think that that mentality persists to this day, that when Haitian immigrants

00:29:48.090 --> 00:29:52.670
are framed as wanting to come to the United States so they can eat people's

00:29:52.670 --> 00:29:55.390
pets and commit crimes, what makes more sense?

00:29:55.470 --> 00:29:58.450
That they want to come here because they want to benefit from all this,

00:29:58.610 --> 00:30:02.890
quote unquote, liberty and equality that the United States keeps touting around the world like an ad.

00:30:03.170 --> 00:30:07.090
That they want to benefit from all of this, that they want safety and security

00:30:07.090 --> 00:30:10.150
for their children, that they can go to free public schools,

00:30:10.150 --> 00:30:12.470
which does not exist in Haiti. it's pay to play.

00:30:12.710 --> 00:30:15.570
If you don't have money, you can't go to school. What makes more sense?

00:30:15.650 --> 00:30:18.790
That Haitians want that or that they just want to come here and eat people's

00:30:18.790 --> 00:30:21.170
pets and commit crimes and robberies?

00:30:21.510 --> 00:30:27.330
And I think that when you see the truth juxtaposed with the lies,

00:30:27.490 --> 00:30:31.470
the slanders, the libel, I say Haiti is the most slandered nation on earth.

00:30:31.990 --> 00:30:35.230
People will say anything and can get people to believe anything.

00:30:35.630 --> 00:30:41.250
As you mentioned, the AIDS crisis, that just randomly plucking Haiti out as

00:30:41.250 --> 00:30:43.430
one of the quote-unquote four H's.

00:30:43.850 --> 00:30:46.910
And the medical doctor, the late medical doctor, Paul Farmer,

00:30:46.990 --> 00:30:50.830
in his book, AIDS and Accusations, shows that Haiti actually had the lowest

00:30:50.830 --> 00:30:53.630
HIV rates at that time of any Caribbean nation.

00:30:53.890 --> 00:31:00.210
And so, again, you can just say anything about Haiti and people will believe it.

00:31:00.330 --> 00:31:05.310
And that is that form of what Michel-Wolf Tuyot called Haitian exceptionalism.

00:31:05.310 --> 00:31:08.730
I find that that is what persists today. Hmm.

00:31:11.150 --> 00:31:16.550
1799. That's a long time to carry a stereotype. It really is.

00:31:16.890 --> 00:31:23.350
So how has the history of Haiti led to the current unrest that is happening now in the country?

00:31:24.501 --> 00:31:29.521
I mean, in certain ways, we can see that it begins with Haitian independence

00:31:29.521 --> 00:31:34.281
and what you mentioned, nations around the world not recognizing Haitian independence

00:31:34.281 --> 00:31:36.601
because this puts pressure on the governments.

00:31:37.121 --> 00:31:40.441
France, during this time, it's not like they just sit back and say,

00:31:40.581 --> 00:31:41.961
we're not going to recognize you.

00:31:42.221 --> 00:31:45.741
No, France is repeatedly, throughout the first two decades of Haitian independence,

00:31:46.141 --> 00:31:50.701
trying to restore Saint-Domingue, in quotation marks, which means to bring back

00:31:50.701 --> 00:31:54.421
slavery and French rule. And as I mentioned, only when they couldn't do that

00:31:54.421 --> 00:31:56.241
did they decide, we'll get this money.

00:31:56.521 --> 00:32:00.401
And then a new form of war begins, an economic war.

00:32:01.041 --> 00:32:05.501
Haiti's president enacts these kind of draconian laws called the World Codes,

00:32:05.641 --> 00:32:09.381
which essentially reclassifies all Haitian citizens as laborers,

00:32:09.601 --> 00:32:12.481
says, we have to pay this money so you're going to have to go back to the fields.

00:32:12.501 --> 00:32:16.141
If you're not elite or in the military or you don't know somebody,

00:32:16.301 --> 00:32:17.621
you're going back to the fields.

00:32:17.781 --> 00:32:21.781
And, of course, this creates unrest. And that president, Jean-Pierre Bouillet,

00:32:21.861 --> 00:32:24.481
is overthrown in a coup d'état in 1843.

00:32:24.961 --> 00:32:30.241
And this occasions a series of coup d'états, overthrown governments,

00:32:30.741 --> 00:32:32.001
eventually an assassination.

00:32:32.461 --> 00:32:36.361
And the United States is going to use this turbulent history,

00:32:36.521 --> 00:32:39.661
even though the United States is also, during this entire time period,

00:32:39.901 --> 00:32:40.941
has a turbulent history.

00:32:41.101 --> 00:32:45.621
And so does France, as it keeps bouncing back and forth between Republican monarchies

00:32:45.621 --> 00:32:50.281
of various forms. So this is Haiti's instability during this time is hardly

00:32:50.281 --> 00:32:54.421
an outlier, but Haitian exceptionalist arguments can make it seem like it was.

00:32:54.581 --> 00:33:00.081
And so the United States, by the time 1915 rolls around, uses this history of

00:33:00.081 --> 00:33:02.141
instability to say we're going to occupy.

00:33:02.381 --> 00:33:08.281
And they occupy Haiti for 19 long years. They get they install a puppet president.

00:33:09.351 --> 00:33:12.831
A situation that persists to this day. They control elections.

00:33:12.831 --> 00:33:15.511
They train a brutal police force.

00:33:15.871 --> 00:33:22.331
Haiti had never had a kind of state-run police force whose job was essentially

00:33:22.331 --> 00:33:25.311
to police and harm the Haitian people.

00:33:25.451 --> 00:33:30.391
And in fact, James Weldon Johnson, the great African-American writer from the

00:33:30.391 --> 00:33:35.131
early 20th century, wrote repeated articles in The Nation, the magazine that

00:33:35.131 --> 00:33:39.031
still exist to this day to criticize what the United States was doing.

00:33:39.391 --> 00:33:45.891
W.E.B. Du Bois wrote repeated articles saying, why are white Marines in Haiti

00:33:45.891 --> 00:33:51.471
harming peaceful Haitian citizens who have never damaged any Haitian, any U.S.

00:33:51.631 --> 00:33:56.051
Property, who have never done one thing to the United States? What are we doing there?

00:33:56.531 --> 00:34:02.571
And unfortunately, that history of intervention is considered a watershed moment

00:34:02.571 --> 00:34:08.491
in Haitian history, because when the United States leaves, they don't leave.

00:34:08.831 --> 00:34:14.531
They stick around politically. And by the time we get to the election that brought

00:34:14.531 --> 00:34:19.451
François Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, to power, we see that the United States

00:34:19.451 --> 00:34:23.091
had a hand in essentially disqualifying all of his adversaries,

00:34:23.371 --> 00:34:27.511
disregarding the actual election results and putting him in power.

00:34:27.511 --> 00:34:32.191
And he stays in power as president for four years and then declares himself president for life.

00:34:32.820 --> 00:34:36.420
And when he dies, his 19-year-old son, Jean-Claude Duvalier,

00:34:36.540 --> 00:34:38.460
known as Baby Doc, takes the reins.

00:34:38.800 --> 00:34:44.320
And even though he rules until 1986, when he's overthrown in what's called déchoukage,

00:34:44.440 --> 00:34:49.860
which means uprooting in Haitian Creole, it's not going to lead to less chaos.

00:34:49.860 --> 00:34:53.580
It's not going to lead to less brutality because the United States is going

00:34:53.580 --> 00:34:57.460
to step in once more and say, oh, here's another reason for occupation,

00:34:57.740 --> 00:34:59.540
followed by UN occupation.

00:34:59.660 --> 00:35:02.680
And that's the history of Haiti in the 20th century.

00:35:02.820 --> 00:35:07.600
I could go on and it's just the same thing over and over, rinse, repeat.

00:35:07.940 --> 00:35:11.360
The government says this person's corrupt. They are gone.

00:35:12.020 --> 00:35:17.820
Occupation, natural disaster, occupation. It's a repeating history at this point. Yeah.

00:35:18.320 --> 00:35:25.800
So I guess to sum it up, international intervention is the historical seed that

00:35:25.800 --> 00:35:30.900
leads to where we're at now with the political instability and stuff.

00:35:31.400 --> 00:35:36.860
Go ahead. Oh, no, I was just going to say, I think that instead of being able

00:35:36.860 --> 00:35:41.700
to figure it out, like the other nations that were figuring it out with their instability.

00:35:42.620 --> 00:35:47.160
Haiti was always kind of tampered with, and the path was pushed in a certain

00:35:47.160 --> 00:35:52.820
direction, instead of saying, let them figure it out, like the rest of the world

00:35:52.820 --> 00:35:55.480
at that time was trying to figure it out. Yeah.

00:35:56.380 --> 00:36:02.700
All right. So let me try to get these few questions in. Haiti shares Hispaniola

00:36:02.700 --> 00:36:04.200
with the Dominican Republic.

00:36:05.040 --> 00:36:09.100
Recently, tensions have risen between the two countries to the extent that Haitian

00:36:09.100 --> 00:36:14.440
descendants, who are citizens of the Dominican Republic, had their voting rights taken away.

00:36:14.720 --> 00:36:18.380
Was there a period in time where those two nations had better relations?

00:36:18.680 --> 00:36:23.260
And what do you think it would take for those neighbors to achieve better relations in the future?

00:36:23.660 --> 00:36:28.940
You know what is very interesting? the time period that those two nations,

00:36:29.220 --> 00:36:34.420
which Haiti was a nation, but the Dominican Republic was a colony still,

00:36:34.660 --> 00:36:36.160
or what's now the Dominican Republic.

00:36:36.700 --> 00:36:43.080
During Jean-Pierre Boyer's reign from 1822 to 1844, the year after he was out

00:36:43.080 --> 00:36:47.580
of power, the whole island was Haiti, was the Republic of Haiti.

00:36:47.940 --> 00:36:54.000
And historians like Anne Eller, for example, talk about this as reunification and

00:36:54.335 --> 00:36:56.435
And that this reunification had

00:36:56.435 --> 00:37:00.055
broad support. But there was one group of people who didn't support it.

00:37:00.175 --> 00:37:04.235
And in her book, We Dream Together, she details how Dominican elites,

00:37:04.435 --> 00:37:08.575
white Dominican elites who, you know, sort of painted themselves as Spanish,

00:37:08.735 --> 00:37:12.035
that they are real Spaniards, they never wanted to be a part of this.

00:37:12.035 --> 00:37:15.515
And so when Boyer was out of power, they seized on the opportunity to rebel.

00:37:15.835 --> 00:37:22.195
And unfortunately, those elites shaped the history to the extent that in Dominican

00:37:22.195 --> 00:37:26.435
history to this day, that period of reunification is called colonization.

00:37:26.435 --> 00:37:31.355
And Dominicans celebrate their Independence Day in 1844 as independence from

00:37:31.355 --> 00:37:37.155
Haiti, even though those Dominican elites invited Spain to recolonize them, which they did.

00:37:37.315 --> 00:37:41.355
So they had actually several periods of independence, quote unquote.

00:37:41.835 --> 00:37:48.635
And the stereotypes that Dominican historians and Dominican elite of the 19th

00:37:48.635 --> 00:37:52.115
century created about Haiti and Haitians were kind of of a piece with what the

00:37:52.115 --> 00:37:52.935
United States was doing.

00:37:53.075 --> 00:37:56.715
Oh, they're cannibals, they're criminals. And this came to a head,

00:37:57.135 --> 00:38:03.695
actually, in 1937 under Dominican dictator Raphael Trujillo when he ordered

00:38:03.695 --> 00:38:08.455
a genocide of Haitians living along the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic

00:38:08.455 --> 00:38:10.455
in what's known as the Massacre River.

00:38:10.455 --> 00:38:13.655
And ever since that time,

00:38:13.935 --> 00:38:19.335
there has been, of course, deep animosity and a lot of attempts to kind of reshape

00:38:19.335 --> 00:38:25.035
the history to paint Haitians as the aggressors and therefore deserving of any

00:38:25.035 --> 00:38:28.135
punishment, including stripping them of citizenship and voting rights.

00:38:28.735 --> 00:38:34.415
Yeah. And I think it's ironic that that very river you talk about is kind of like.

00:38:35.323 --> 00:38:40.063
A swap meet or a discount mall now for Dominicans because they'll go over there

00:38:40.063 --> 00:38:42.983
and they'll buy stuff from the Haitians on the river and, you know,

00:38:43.023 --> 00:38:47.743
get it cheaper than what they would get, I guess, in their main cities.

00:38:48.643 --> 00:38:55.603
Yeah. History is amazing. I love it. So you were inspired by Haitian literature

00:38:55.603 --> 00:38:57.723
to become an authority on Haitian history.

00:38:58.083 --> 00:39:02.523
Do you hope that your books inspire future generations? And what do you want

00:39:02.523 --> 00:39:04.443
people to take away from your works?

00:39:05.323 --> 00:39:10.643
Oh, my goodness. Yes. I, you know, was I was inspired by people's writings,

00:39:10.803 --> 00:39:15.523
like the shovel of as I mentioned, silencing the past and Julius Scott's The

00:39:15.523 --> 00:39:21.503
Common Wind that I was so inspired by other people's writing that that's what

00:39:21.503 --> 00:39:25.683
I wanted to do, because I saw how, you know, The Common Wind,

00:39:25.923 --> 00:39:28.943
which is was Julius Scott's dissertation,

00:39:29.203 --> 00:39:31.783
was never published until I think it was 2020.

00:39:32.343 --> 00:39:36.383
And as a book by Verso Press, so it's now available.

00:39:36.643 --> 00:39:40.823
And the common wind, of course, refers to the British poet William Wordsworth's

00:39:40.823 --> 00:39:42.523
famous poem about Toussaint L'ouverture,

00:39:42.803 --> 00:39:45.843
in which he says there's not a breathing of the common wind that will forget

00:39:45.843 --> 00:39:48.943
thee, because, of course, the French are going to kill, essentially,

00:39:49.083 --> 00:39:52.923
Toussaint L'ouverture by deporting him, arresting him, and leading him to die in a French prison.

00:39:53.403 --> 00:39:58.903
And when I saw the effect that that work had not just on me,

00:39:59.103 --> 00:40:01.363
but on essentially all my colleagues.

00:40:01.503 --> 00:40:05.863
Vincent Brown, the author of Tacky's Revolt, talks about it as a mixed tape.

00:40:06.003 --> 00:40:08.863
We passed it around, the dissertation, since it wasn't a book.

00:40:09.083 --> 00:40:11.783
Everyone wanted to read it. You had to get your hands on this dissertation.

00:40:12.063 --> 00:40:16.663
When I see the power of these words written so long ago in the 1970s,

00:40:16.743 --> 00:40:20.343
and there we were in the early 2000s all reading it, and it was just as relevant.

00:40:20.343 --> 00:40:23.243
It wasn't obsolete. It was as if he had written it yesterday.

00:40:23.623 --> 00:40:29.003
I knew that if I could make something that even 10 people would read and it

00:40:29.003 --> 00:40:32.903
would change their mind about Haiti and Haitians, that that would be of value.

00:40:33.143 --> 00:40:37.103
And, you know, my last, my latest two books, Awakening the Ashes,

00:40:37.223 --> 00:40:40.423
which is an intellectual history of Haiti and the first and last King of Haiti,

00:40:40.623 --> 00:40:46.783
I think are where I sort of honed most deeply my craft in trying to tell the

00:40:46.783 --> 00:40:51.963
story of the Haitian revolution and Haitian independence and its aftermath in

00:40:51.963 --> 00:40:57.083
a way that hopefully broader audiences can understand that the Haitian Revolution,

00:40:57.083 --> 00:40:58.663
I always say, is for everyone.

00:40:58.903 --> 00:41:03.643
It involves the story of how everyone got free because it changed the world.

00:41:03.803 --> 00:41:07.543
It embarrassed the United States. It embarrassed France and Napoleon.

00:41:07.863 --> 00:41:11.743
That's why they didn't put it in their history books. That's why I never learned

00:41:11.743 --> 00:41:15.463
about it in any school history book, because this is embarrassing.

00:41:15.663 --> 00:41:20.083
If your argument is that the U.S. founders couldn't abolish slavery because

00:41:20.083 --> 00:41:24.003
nobody thought of it at the time, and it was not the way of the world.

00:41:24.143 --> 00:41:25.863
The Haitian Revolution shows you.

00:41:26.609 --> 00:41:30.929
Many people thought about it. The history of slave revolts and rebellions preceding

00:41:30.929 --> 00:41:34.389
the Haitian Revolution, which is what I talk about in Awakening the Ashes also,

00:41:34.669 --> 00:41:36.869
shows you many people thought about it.

00:41:37.029 --> 00:41:39.929
It's that everyone problem again. Who is everyone?

00:41:40.269 --> 00:41:45.529
And in fact, what I show in Awakening the Ashes is enslaved people in the Americas

00:41:45.529 --> 00:41:47.789
vastly outnumbered the enslavers.

00:41:48.069 --> 00:41:52.729
So it's safe to say that popular opinion of the time was that slavery was wrong

00:41:52.729 --> 00:41:56.069
when we look at the vast number of slave revolts and rebellions,

00:41:56.209 --> 00:41:59.529
not just in the Caribbean, but in North and South America, all over.

00:41:59.829 --> 00:42:03.509
And so with the first and last king of Haiti, the takeaway was,

00:42:03.689 --> 00:42:07.729
here is what Black sovereignty was striving to be.

00:42:08.069 --> 00:42:13.189
He was trying to create a free Black sovereign nation, imagined as a kingdom,

00:42:13.189 --> 00:42:17.049
because that was the most popular form of governance and common form of governance

00:42:17.049 --> 00:42:20.789
at the time, in which Black people would determine their own futures.

00:42:20.789 --> 00:42:23.909
You know, I mentioned that France kept trying to invade.

00:42:24.429 --> 00:42:28.869
Do you know what King Henry did when they did, he'd had the last straw in 1816.

00:42:28.869 --> 00:42:32.309
He said, I'm going to issue a trade embargo against France. We're just banning all their goods.

00:42:32.649 --> 00:42:37.449
This was not a person who was afraid of, well, what would that look like? What will France do?

00:42:37.649 --> 00:42:40.949
He said, the more who come, the more we will kill.

00:42:41.169 --> 00:42:45.849
If they must come, let them come. He didn't say, we're going to go over there and do anything to them.

00:42:46.069 --> 00:42:49.729
If they must come, then let them come. But we're ready to fight them.

00:42:49.729 --> 00:42:56.789
And he created a massive citadel that could house 30,000 soldiers in order to prove to France.

00:42:57.009 --> 00:43:01.829
And you might say that the French were convinced that they couldn't come and

00:43:01.829 --> 00:43:05.349
retake it because they never brought their troops onto the shores.

00:43:05.429 --> 00:43:10.029
They did all kinds of other things to test the waters, but they didn't do that.

00:43:10.149 --> 00:43:14.549
They didn't dare do it again because they knew that they had opposition. Yeah.

00:43:15.449 --> 00:43:21.609
So being the brilliant person that you are, you already answered the last question.

00:43:21.609 --> 00:43:28.369
So how can people get a copy of those books, Awakening the Ashes and the First and Last King of Haiti?

00:43:29.238 --> 00:43:34.238
And how can people reach out to you other than signing up for your class at Yale?

00:43:34.498 --> 00:43:37.378
How can people get in touch with you?

00:43:38.118 --> 00:43:42.898
Yeah, well, you know, I always say my books are available every place that books

00:43:42.898 --> 00:43:46.298
are sold, you know, online and in lots of Barnes and Nobles and all those things.

00:43:46.398 --> 00:43:51.318
I always say, check out bookshop.org. I know people have a reticence to use

00:43:51.318 --> 00:43:56.478
sites that they're familiar with, but bookshop.org supports independent bookstores.

00:43:56.478 --> 00:44:00.738
So even though you're buying something from a company, they give a huge amount

00:44:00.738 --> 00:44:02.798
of their profits to independent bookstores.

00:44:02.898 --> 00:44:05.618
And you'll see the independent bookstores that they partner with.

00:44:05.678 --> 00:44:09.798
You can look for one in your area if you want to make sure the funds go to that particular bookstore.

00:44:10.058 --> 00:44:15.078
And as far as keeping up with me, if you visit my website, kingofhaiti.com, I have a blog.

00:44:15.278 --> 00:44:20.078
I'm trying not to be on social media as much because algorithms and all kinds of things.

00:44:20.318 --> 00:44:25.678
But I am on LinkedIn and Instagram as well. But my website, kingofhaiti.com,

00:44:25.678 --> 00:44:28.058
or my name, MarleneDaut.com.

00:44:28.178 --> 00:44:30.178
Both of them point to the same place. I have a blog.

00:44:30.378 --> 00:44:34.958
And I also, for any teachers out there, have a tab called Teaching Resources.

00:44:35.018 --> 00:44:38.798
I've created a lot of materials because I decided at some point,

00:44:39.098 --> 00:44:43.138
like Toni Morrison told us, if we don't see what we want created out there in

00:44:43.138 --> 00:44:44.598
the world, we can go and create it.

00:44:44.698 --> 00:44:50.478
And so I have videos there for young kids up to high school and college kids,

00:44:50.658 --> 00:44:53.338
lesson plans, essays, essays for teachers.

00:44:53.878 --> 00:44:57.138
I want people to teach, Association Revolution, if they're afraid they don't

00:44:57.138 --> 00:44:58.778
know how, I want to help them.

00:44:59.338 --> 00:45:03.698
So please check it out. All right. Well, Dr. Marlene Daut, I...

00:45:04.959 --> 00:45:08.619
I greatly appreciate you taking the time. And more importantly,

00:45:08.799 --> 00:45:10.739
I greatly appreciate you being a historian.

00:45:10.979 --> 00:45:15.599
I have an incredible affinity for teachers and especially historians,

00:45:15.599 --> 00:45:22.819
because I just feel that if you don't understand what happened before,

00:45:22.819 --> 00:45:25.439
you're going to make the same mistakes.

00:45:26.099 --> 00:45:31.779
And you can learn from your past instead of just repeating it, right?

00:45:31.779 --> 00:45:38.639
And so I just appreciate the work that you've done, and especially dealing with

00:45:38.639 --> 00:45:42.839
a country that even Black folks don't really understand.

00:45:42.839 --> 00:45:48.179
And they really should understand the history of Haiti, because just as much

00:45:48.179 --> 00:45:50.439
as there's pride in the continent of Africa,

00:45:50.679 --> 00:45:56.399
there is an incredible thing right here in the Americas, a nation that showed

00:45:56.399 --> 00:46:00.359
that Black people can govern themselves if they're allowed to.

00:46:01.159 --> 00:46:03.779
And so anyway I don't want to get

00:46:03.779 --> 00:46:06.759
off on the soapbox But I just want to thank you

00:46:06.759 --> 00:46:09.479
For dedicating your life to that

00:46:09.479 --> 00:46:12.999
work And again I thank you for coming on the podcast Well thank

00:46:12.999 --> 00:46:17.919
you so much for having me It means so much to me When people want to talk about

00:46:17.919 --> 00:46:22.919
this history And spread the message Again that right here You know our neighbor

00:46:22.919 --> 00:46:28.879
It matters what happens in Haiti And Haitian history matters too Alright guys

00:46:28.879 --> 00:46:30.619
We're going to catch y'all on the other side.

00:46:31.120 --> 00:46:49.200
Music.

00:46:46.139 --> 00:46:46.279
We'll be right back.

00:46:49.819 --> 00:46:56.019
All right. And we are back. And so now it is time for my next guest, Samuel Jay

00:46:56.319 --> 00:47:00.899
Keyser. Samuel Jay Keyser is a theoretical linguist.

00:47:01.059 --> 00:47:07.899
He is the Peter de Flores Emeritus Professor, an emeritus member of the Linguistics

00:47:07.899 --> 00:47:13.539
and Philosophy Faculty, and former Associate Provost at MIT.

00:47:13.939 --> 00:47:20.259
He has authored numerous books and scientific publications and is the editor-in-chief

00:47:20.259 --> 00:47:22.899
of the Journal Linguistic Inquiry.

00:47:23.539 --> 00:47:27.839
He is also a jazz trombone player, and he lives in the Boston area.

00:47:28.179 --> 00:47:36.279
His new book is Play It Again, Sam, Repetition in the Arts, which is published by MIT Press.

00:47:36.679 --> 00:47:41.279
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest

00:47:41.279 --> 00:47:45.539
on this podcast, Samuel Jay Keyser.

00:47:46.640 --> 00:47:56.400
Music.

00:47:56.416 --> 00:48:00.656
All right. Samuel Jay Keyser. How are you doing, sir? Are you doing good?

00:48:01.336 --> 00:48:05.496
Pretty well. Thank you for asking. Well, I'm glad to have you on,

00:48:05.716 --> 00:48:11.696
and we're going to talk about your book a little bit called Play It Again, Sam.

00:48:12.716 --> 00:48:19.076
And I know this is a book that talks about repetition, and we'll get into all

00:48:19.076 --> 00:48:25.996
that and the science of it a little bit. But this is a political show.

00:48:26.156 --> 00:48:29.836
So I'm going to I'm going to get you into a political conversation,

00:48:29.836 --> 00:48:34.756
not too deep, but I think I think you'll understand where I'm going with it

00:48:34.756 --> 00:48:39.476
once we get there. But but I'm just glad to have you on. And it's really an honor.

00:48:39.656 --> 00:48:45.576
So what I do is on the beginning of my podcast, my interviews,

00:48:45.816 --> 00:48:47.436
I do a couple of icebreakers.

00:48:48.156 --> 00:48:52.036
So the first icebreaker is I want you to respond to a quote.

00:48:52.516 --> 00:48:59.496
And this quote is, we must resist the temptation to regard global perception

00:48:59.496 --> 00:49:02.656
as no more than careless perception.

00:49:02.996 --> 00:49:04.516
What does that quote mean to you?

00:49:05.036 --> 00:49:10.436
Well, I mean, I think that quote is right on. What it means is what you see is not what's there.

00:49:11.176 --> 00:49:16.696
We are creatures that have been shaped by evolution.

00:49:17.436 --> 00:49:20.656
To survive in this particular environment.

00:49:21.857 --> 00:49:28.757
But the best example that I know of that what is really out there and what you

00:49:28.757 --> 00:49:32.277
perceive that is really out there are two different things.

00:49:32.797 --> 00:49:36.057
For example, when you're looking

00:49:36.057 --> 00:49:43.317
up at the night sky, you see tiny little pinpricks of light called stars.

00:49:43.957 --> 00:49:48.897
That's not what the sky looks like. And if you're, you can tell what the sky

00:49:48.897 --> 00:49:53.197
looks like by looking at the so-called radio sky,

00:49:53.477 --> 00:49:59.237
pictures taken of the sky by interferometers that have sensors that are,

00:49:59.377 --> 00:50:02.397
you know, in some cases, a mile long.

00:50:02.657 --> 00:50:06.417
The point is that our eyes are an inch wide.

00:50:06.957 --> 00:50:11.617
If they were much wider and the rest of our body were in proportion with it,

00:50:11.697 --> 00:50:16.797
we wouldn't be able to live on this Earth because of the conditions of the Earth.

00:50:16.797 --> 00:50:19.977
But if our eyes were 100 yards wide,

00:50:20.217 --> 00:50:27.117
we'd be able to look at the sky and see the fantastic array of electromagnetic

00:50:27.117 --> 00:50:31.817
phenomena that's there.

00:50:32.217 --> 00:50:40.837
So every night when I look up at the stars, I remind myself that I'm not seeing what's there.

00:50:41.157 --> 00:50:45.857
And that's what that core is about. It's quite right.

00:50:46.397 --> 00:50:50.757
Yes, sir. All right. So my next icebreaker is called 20 questions.

00:50:51.437 --> 00:50:56.897
So what I need you to do is give me a number between 1 and 20.

00:50:57.517 --> 00:51:00.537
Say it out loud? Yes, say the number out loud.

00:51:00.957 --> 00:51:06.657
Okay. I'll choose 7. Okay. Born on the seventh month of the seventh day.

00:51:07.077 --> 00:51:11.737
Okay. All right. Well, happy belated birthday. Thank you. Yes, sir.

00:51:12.357 --> 00:51:17.117
What do you consider the best way to stay informed? about politics,

00:51:17.417 --> 00:51:19.417
current events, health, etc.

00:51:19.857 --> 00:51:24.557
Well, I think there are a lot of good ways. One thing, don't read American papers

00:51:24.557 --> 00:51:27.777
because they really are biased.

00:51:28.737 --> 00:51:32.337
I remember a quote several years ago.

00:51:34.317 --> 00:51:40.057
Mike Wallace was interviewing the editor of Croft in Russia,

00:51:40.837 --> 00:51:48.297
and Wallace said to him, what's it like being the editor of a paper that's beholden to the government?

00:51:48.977 --> 00:51:52.937
And he said, well, it's just like editing the New York Times,

00:51:52.977 --> 00:51:55.797
only they don't realize it.

00:51:57.257 --> 00:52:02.477
And so I think that one of the best ways to stay informed is to read newspapers

00:52:02.477 --> 00:52:04.357
from outside the country.

00:52:05.837 --> 00:52:11.197
And another way to stay informed is, of course, to read the opposition,

00:52:11.197 --> 00:52:13.577
to see where the opposition is coming.

00:52:13.677 --> 00:52:18.597
You don't want to read things that coincide with your own beliefs because all

00:52:18.597 --> 00:52:19.697
you're hearing are echoes.

00:52:20.804 --> 00:52:24.104
And that's another way. And I think there are many other ways.

00:52:24.424 --> 00:52:30.444
If you have people that you trust, you talk to them, and so on and so forth.

00:52:30.704 --> 00:52:36.084
There are, I think on the internet, there must be, oh, you know,

00:52:36.984 --> 00:52:43.644
a thousand different ways to stay well-informed if you know the right places to go to. Yes, sir.

00:52:44.264 --> 00:52:51.564
All right. Right. So your book explores the way repetition works in what they

00:52:51.564 --> 00:52:56.304
call the sister arts of poetry, music and painting. Right.

00:52:56.704 --> 00:53:03.504
And you are a linguist by training, but you're also a musician.

00:53:03.504 --> 00:53:05.764
You played a trombone. Is that right?

00:53:06.324 --> 00:53:13.104
That's right. So how did you first become interested in this topic dealing with

00:53:13.104 --> 00:53:14.864
being specific about repetition?

00:53:15.824 --> 00:53:21.244
And poetry and music I get as far as the repetition goes, right?

00:53:21.344 --> 00:53:25.464
And you explain it very well in the book, but naturally, you know,

00:53:25.564 --> 00:53:30.044
people kind of get it when you say there's repetition in poetry and music.

00:53:30.044 --> 00:53:33.104
But can you explain what the

00:53:33.104 --> 00:53:39.324
how repetition works in a painting so first explain how you got interested in

00:53:39.324 --> 00:53:44.684
doing a book about repetition and then a repetition in arts and then explain

00:53:44.684 --> 00:53:51.664
how repetition works in something visual like a painting okay well i think i

00:53:51.664 --> 00:53:52.884
to answer your question,

00:53:53.024 --> 00:54:01.084
I'd have to say that in my mind, this book is the second book in a duo.

00:54:02.004 --> 00:54:07.224
The first one is a book I wrote in 2020 called The Mental Life of Modernism.

00:54:07.624 --> 00:54:16.344
And just to cut to the chase, what I argued in that book was that at the turn

00:54:16.344 --> 00:54:21.644
of the 20th century, a remarkable thing happened in poetry, painting, and music.

00:54:22.324 --> 00:54:29.144
Namely, they cease to be, they abandon typical formats for making art.

00:54:29.544 --> 00:54:33.764
In the case of poetry, meter and rhyme were given up.

00:54:34.044 --> 00:54:39.804
In the case of music, tonality was given up, that is to say the kind of music

00:54:39.804 --> 00:54:41.424
that is centered around the.

00:54:42.797 --> 00:54:47.337
Tone, a particular tone, and a scale associated with that tone,

00:54:47.337 --> 00:54:51.237
and chords associated with the scale associated with the note, that sort of thing.

00:54:51.597 --> 00:54:55.577
That kind of thing is hardwired, sort of built into us. We sort of naturally

00:54:55.577 --> 00:54:57.077
listen to that kind of music.

00:54:57.537 --> 00:55:03.757
And it was replaced by atonal music, which was music built on an arbitrary 12-tone set.

00:55:04.617 --> 00:55:07.757
And the rules were, pick 12 tones, any 12

00:55:07.757 --> 00:55:10.937
notes you want and make music

00:55:10.937 --> 00:55:13.957
out of that but here's a constraint you can't repeat

00:55:13.957 --> 00:55:16.697
any of the notes until you've used them all

00:55:16.697 --> 00:55:21.977
up so there was kind of built into this a kind of an anti repetitive notion

00:55:21.977 --> 00:55:29.057
and with respect to painting well most painting before the 20th century was

00:55:29.057 --> 00:55:34.357
really aimed at representations of the natural world.

00:55:35.697 --> 00:55:41.037
I mean, to caricature, it was photography before photography.

00:55:41.857 --> 00:55:46.777
But, of course, that's much too simplified, but it's an easy way to get at what I'm saying.

00:55:46.917 --> 00:55:53.977
So what happened was that these three art forms abandoned all of these predilections,

00:55:53.977 --> 00:55:59.577
all of these art forms that appeal to natural predilections of the brain,

00:56:00.517 --> 00:56:07.597
forced art to find new ways of thinking about making art.

00:56:08.577 --> 00:56:16.017
And the point of the first book was that particular forcing of people to think

00:56:16.017 --> 00:56:18.217
differently was not new.

00:56:18.637 --> 00:56:20.777
In fact, it had happened...

00:56:22.758 --> 00:56:31.838
Oh, let's see, about 300 years earlier, in three to 400 years earlier, with Isaac Newton.

00:56:32.278 --> 00:56:35.618
When Isaac Newton came up with the notion of gravity,

00:56:35.958 --> 00:56:43.398
that was earth-shaking, because basically what it said was that any theory about

00:56:43.398 --> 00:56:49.998
the world could no longer be seen as a mechanical theory in the sense that the

00:56:49.998 --> 00:56:53.878
universe was really like some incredibly mechanical device.

00:56:54.498 --> 00:57:00.518
Why? Well, in a mechanical device, every part of the mechanism has to touch

00:57:00.518 --> 00:57:02.698
some other part of the mechanism.

00:57:03.138 --> 00:57:11.038
And what Isaac Newton showed was that it's possible for two objects to influence

00:57:11.038 --> 00:57:15.358
one another, even when they're billions of miles apart and not touching.

00:57:15.658 --> 00:57:20.198
I mean, that was really news, but it worked.

00:57:20.218 --> 00:57:23.898
It explained too much to be sort of hoo-hoo.

00:57:24.098 --> 00:57:26.178
You had to accept it if you were a scientist.

00:57:26.478 --> 00:57:31.778
But if you accepted that, you were forced to think about the world in a different way.

00:57:32.118 --> 00:57:38.778
The world was no longer made up of theories based on common sense perceptions of the world.

00:57:39.478 --> 00:57:42.318
Remember now, this is what your first quote was about.

00:57:42.698 --> 00:57:49.178
The world was not the way you thought it was, but rather what science was now

00:57:49.178 --> 00:57:52.078
about was about theories of what the world was like.

00:57:52.418 --> 00:57:54.698
And that's exactly what happened to the arts.

00:57:55.518 --> 00:57:59.958
And so my view is that the shift that

00:57:59.958 --> 00:58:05.078
took place in the 20th century that we call modernism was simply this shift

00:58:05.078 --> 00:58:11.518
away from what the brain did naturally to ways of the brain having to construct

00:58:11.518 --> 00:58:18.078
habits of mind to account for a world that we know is not like what we perceive it to be.

00:58:18.938 --> 00:58:20.798
Now, in the course of that.

00:58:22.002 --> 00:58:27.682
I had a footnote about repetition, and I had talked about repetition when I

00:58:27.682 --> 00:58:30.402
talked about music in that particular volume.

00:58:30.702 --> 00:58:39.922
And I said something about repetition, what it might do, but I just sort of was really commenting.

00:58:40.122 --> 00:58:44.422
It was not a very deep comment. It was just noting that there is such a thing

00:58:44.422 --> 00:58:48.042
as repetition, and one ought to think about what it means at some point,

00:58:48.262 --> 00:58:49.882
but I couldn't in this book.

00:58:50.202 --> 00:58:58.062
And then after I finished the book, I started doing sort of collateral reading.

00:58:58.342 --> 00:59:07.702
And I came upon a comment by Leonard Bernstein, whom I have great,

00:59:07.722 --> 00:59:12.902
great admiration for as a musician and as a conductor and a composer.

00:59:13.482 --> 00:59:20.182
And he had said, The reason why so little progress had been made in musical

00:59:20.182 --> 00:59:26.742
theory is because theoreticians paid no attention to repetition.

00:59:27.262 --> 00:59:30.342
And that got my attention. I said, well, you know, that's right.

00:59:30.442 --> 00:59:34.682
I wasn't paying that much attention to repetition. Maybe I ought to think about it.

00:59:35.142 --> 00:59:40.602
And then this was the other shoe drop in.

00:59:41.519 --> 00:59:46.539
Friend of mine called my attention to an experiment that had been performed

00:59:46.539 --> 00:59:52.719
by a woman named Elizabeth Helmer Margulis, who was a musicologist at Princeton.

00:59:53.219 --> 00:59:58.739
And this experiment was a very simple experiment, but it was really telling.

00:59:58.959 --> 01:00:02.919
And here's the experiment. I'll tell it to you because it's not complicated at all.

01:00:03.139 --> 01:00:11.519
She took music by two masters of atonal music, Luciano Barrio and Elliot Carter.

01:00:11.799 --> 01:00:15.099
And she deliberately doctored the music.

01:00:15.479 --> 01:00:24.039
And the way she doctored it was just using a computer's brute force copy and paste functions.

01:00:24.359 --> 01:00:30.959
She copied a bit of the music and inserted it again later on in the same piece.

01:00:31.399 --> 01:00:39.459
And she did it when the two pieces were next to one another and when they were farther apart.

01:00:39.819 --> 01:00:44.919
So think of it like this. Let's call the piece that she copied segment one.

01:00:45.399 --> 01:00:52.039
So let's say the music can be divided into five segments, one, two, three, four, five.

01:00:52.579 --> 01:00:56.959
The first doctored segment, which she called immediate repetition,

01:00:57.259 --> 01:01:00.699
came out one, one, two, three, four, five.

01:01:01.139 --> 01:01:06.559
The second doctored version came out one, two, three, one, four, five.

01:01:07.099 --> 01:01:11.339
So now she had four pieces of music, the originals and doctored versions,

01:01:11.679 --> 01:01:15.779
which by brute force only, no artistic considerations at all,

01:01:15.939 --> 01:01:19.439
just plain brute force copy and paste.

01:01:19.739 --> 01:01:22.219
She played it to two different audiences.

01:01:22.579 --> 01:01:29.099
One was an audience of ordinary listeners, students who liked music but had no special training.

01:01:29.499 --> 01:01:35.439
And she asked them which of the versions they liked best. And they replied they

01:01:35.439 --> 01:01:37.559
liked the doctored versions best.

01:01:38.746 --> 01:01:43.646
And she took the same experiment to a conference where the attendees were all

01:01:43.646 --> 01:01:46.746
PhDs in music, music theorists.

01:01:46.986 --> 01:01:50.046
She did the same thing, and she got the same result.

01:01:50.666 --> 01:01:56.926
So what she concluded, and the conclusion that she came to seemed to me to be unavoidable.

01:01:57.586 --> 01:02:04.786
Namely the mere addition of repetition itself without any artistic goals or

01:02:04.786 --> 01:02:10.586
plan or format at all, the mere existence of repetition enhanced the pleasure

01:02:10.586 --> 01:02:12.306
of a particular work of art.

01:02:12.846 --> 01:02:17.026
So given that, I thought, ah, I think I got it now.

01:02:17.366 --> 01:02:22.526
So then what I did was I went back and looked at the three art forms that I

01:02:22.526 --> 01:02:28.126
know best, poetry, painting, and music, known as it happens as the sister arts.

01:02:28.586 --> 01:02:32.006
And I examined how repetition worked in all three of them.

01:02:32.326 --> 01:02:35.386
And I found that was my book

01:02:35.386 --> 01:02:38.486
and what my book is really about was how that

01:02:38.486 --> 01:02:43.466
worked yeah so you

01:02:43.466 --> 01:02:51.006
said that when she did the experiment that both the ordinary music listener

01:02:51.006 --> 01:02:57.766
and the actual music theorist theorist liked the doctored version better the

01:02:57.766 --> 01:03:02.566
one that that like you said through brute force put repetition in the piece.

01:03:02.986 --> 01:03:09.506
Why do you think that repetition pleases us? Why do you think we react to it like that?

01:03:09.986 --> 01:03:14.226
Well, can I begin by saying that's a great question? Okay.

01:03:15.066 --> 01:03:22.066
And now I'm going to try to give you an answer. It turns out that there is a certain phenomenon.

01:03:22.526 --> 01:03:26.406
Well, let me put it differently. Let me start over here.

01:03:26.866 --> 01:03:31.986
In order to tell that something is a repetition, You have to ask yourself,

01:03:32.126 --> 01:03:35.726
what does it mean to be able to say that A is a repetition of B?

01:03:36.286 --> 01:03:41.426
Well, it turns out that you have to have the ability to do two things.

01:03:42.146 --> 01:03:45.966
One is to tell when they're the same, when they're identical.

01:03:46.446 --> 01:03:49.086
And the other is to tell when they're different.

01:03:49.846 --> 01:03:54.426
And these kinds of detectors, it turns out, are hardwired in the grain.

01:03:55.446 --> 01:04:01.046
Psychologists have shown and neuroscientists call these things pomps.

01:04:01.326 --> 01:04:06.446
And these pomps are hardwired into the brain. The human being has this ability.

01:04:06.906 --> 01:04:12.046
It's something that we can do naturally. Like, for example, we can walk naturally.

01:04:12.546 --> 01:04:17.486
We can see the world in colors naturally, in 3D naturally. There are things

01:04:17.486 --> 01:04:19.066
that we just do very well.

01:04:19.586 --> 01:04:24.346
One of the things that we do naturally is to tell when something is the same

01:04:24.346 --> 01:04:25.746
or when it's slightly different.

01:04:26.980 --> 01:04:33.280
Fact, there's a game that children and adults like to play called Spot the Difference.

01:04:33.980 --> 01:04:38.160
And when you were a kid, you probably played this. You were given two pictures.

01:04:38.800 --> 01:04:42.340
One of them would be the so-called the original.

01:04:42.540 --> 01:04:48.580
It would have maybe a house and a park, a tree, a moon, maybe stars,

01:04:48.800 --> 01:04:51.860
maybe a bench, maybe two people walking.

01:04:52.400 --> 01:04:57.780
The second picture would be just like the first picture, but you have to find out what's different.

01:04:58.180 --> 01:05:01.260
And it could be that the second picture is just like the first,

01:05:01.400 --> 01:05:03.680
except only one person is walking.

01:05:04.160 --> 01:05:12.500
Or the second picture might differ from the first, except that the moon was orange instead of red.

01:05:12.840 --> 01:05:15.900
And of course, the more complicated you make these pictures,

01:05:16.620 --> 01:05:22.100
the harder it is to find the difference. And when you find it, you get a kick.

01:05:22.300 --> 01:05:24.460
And that turns out to be pleasurable.

01:05:25.260 --> 01:05:29.740
Why should that be so? Well, here's a possible story.

01:05:29.840 --> 01:05:34.660
And remember now, this is speculation because I'm very, very dubious myself

01:05:34.660 --> 01:05:37.400
of just those stories about why

01:05:37.400 --> 01:05:43.600
evolution puts things into our brains in a particular way. But in 1968.

01:05:45.192 --> 01:05:52.352
A social psychologist by the name of Robert Zients discovered a phenomenon which

01:05:52.352 --> 01:05:55.312
he called mere exposure.

01:05:55.652 --> 01:06:01.992
And what he showed was this, that if you take a subject, for example, an infant,

01:06:02.392 --> 01:06:09.812
and you expose that subject to the same image over and over and over again,

01:06:10.172 --> 01:06:15.952
the subject will develop an affectionate bond with the image.

01:06:16.652 --> 01:06:19.532
That's a fact. That's what he was able to show.

01:06:19.912 --> 01:06:25.092
Now comes evolutionary storytellers. And here's a possible and not unreasonable

01:06:25.092 --> 01:06:26.652
story that I've heard told.

01:06:27.072 --> 01:06:30.972
The goal of evolution is not to create a loving couple.

01:06:31.512 --> 01:06:38.152
It doesn't want to make a mother and a child in a beautiful relationship.

01:06:38.612 --> 01:06:39.992
That's something we do.

01:06:40.492 --> 01:06:45.452
But what nature wants to do is make sure that the gene pool is contributed to.

01:06:45.772 --> 01:06:51.532
It wants the best possible set of genes to be passed on, according to Darwin.

01:06:52.192 --> 01:07:00.132
All right. So, you can see why this particular phenomenon would be hardwired

01:07:00.132 --> 01:07:06.672
into the brain, because it would make an infant, it would bond an infant to a mother.

01:07:07.132 --> 01:07:13.492
And what better bond is there to give the infant the best possible chance of

01:07:13.492 --> 01:07:18.752
survival in the early months and years of its life than to be bonded to the

01:07:18.752 --> 01:07:24.972
creature who is going to do everything she possibly can to make sure that that infant survives?

01:07:25.752 --> 01:07:32.652
That's reasonable, might even be true. But the point is, that particular circuitry is there.

01:07:33.092 --> 01:07:39.672
And my claim, and this is the buffo ending, my claim—.

01:07:42.015 --> 01:07:47.255
Is that artists have co-opted that hardwired,

01:07:47.535 --> 01:07:54.495
built-in propensity to extract pleasure from repetition into their art forms

01:07:54.495 --> 01:07:59.155
to make sure that their art has an element of pleasure in it.

01:07:59.575 --> 01:08:03.595
And they've done that in those three art forms, and I suspect many others.

01:08:04.055 --> 01:08:08.915
I'm now reading, trying to educate myself in the field that I knew nothing about

01:08:08.915 --> 01:08:10.855
at the time, but I'll bet you it's there too.

01:08:11.115 --> 01:08:13.515
I just got to figure it out. It's architecture.

01:08:14.835 --> 01:08:20.235
Why buildings look the way they do. Anyway, you got that? That's the story. Yes.

01:08:20.855 --> 01:08:25.995
So let's dive into this a little more because since it's a political show,

01:08:26.275 --> 01:08:33.035
I want you to take that same theory about repetition and explain how is it used

01:08:33.035 --> 01:08:34.535
to good effect in politics.

01:08:34.535 --> 01:08:39.255
And you introduced the term to me in the book called structural priming.

01:08:39.475 --> 01:08:42.475
So kind of talk a little bit about that.

01:08:42.655 --> 01:08:49.635
How does repetition or how can repetition be of good use in politics based on

01:08:49.635 --> 01:08:54.775
what you were able to study and a little bit about structural priming?

01:08:54.875 --> 01:08:59.575
Because the example you used in the book was Churchill's speech.

01:09:00.495 --> 01:09:02.115
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

01:09:02.765 --> 01:09:08.525
Well, first of all, remember, Churchill's speech is, he used a rhetorical advice.

01:09:08.645 --> 01:09:10.605
We shall fight on the landing grounds.

01:09:10.865 --> 01:09:12.685
We shall fight on the beaches.

01:09:12.985 --> 01:09:17.125
We shall fight in the streets. We shall fight in the alleys, whatever.

01:09:17.465 --> 01:09:26.405
That repetition automatically makes the speech attractive because you've heard

01:09:26.405 --> 01:09:29.245
that before, and you've heard that before, and you've heard that before.

01:09:29.805 --> 01:09:33.065
So that's what I was talking about in the book. Now, you are,

01:09:33.225 --> 01:09:34.725
because it's a political show,

01:09:35.045 --> 01:09:43.085
you're really asking me to sort of think off the top of my head about how repetition

01:09:43.085 --> 01:09:45.005
might be used politically.

01:09:45.445 --> 01:09:50.645
And because I'm a nice guy, I'm going to try to accommodate you instead of saying

01:09:50.645 --> 01:09:53.305
to you simply, hey, I don't know anything about that.

01:09:53.825 --> 01:09:56.285
But let me show you an example.

01:09:56.985 --> 01:10:00.245
Why do companies like coca-cola

01:10:00.245 --> 01:10:03.365
and pepsicola and fedex invest a

01:10:03.365 --> 01:10:06.165
lot of money in just putting their name on the

01:10:06.165 --> 01:10:09.025
ad because if you see the

01:10:09.025 --> 01:10:16.425
name over and over and over again then you develop an affection for it and the

01:10:16.425 --> 01:10:22.205
again the the just so evolutionary storytellers would say well what's that is

01:10:22.205 --> 01:10:28.825
doing is that's showing the subject that to see the name is a safe environment,

01:10:29.505 --> 01:10:31.885
because you're seeing it, nothing happens to you.

01:10:32.145 --> 01:10:34.445
And so when you see it again, you welcome it.

01:10:35.005 --> 01:10:37.965
Well, what does that sound like? Well, it sounds like a big lie.

01:10:38.485 --> 01:10:45.785
I mean, people have often noticed that you say a lie enough times and people begin to believe it.

01:10:46.305 --> 01:10:51.265
Well, I think that there is a very strong possibility that to a large extent

01:10:51.265 --> 01:10:55.645
we're hardwired to believe things that we hear over and over and over again

01:10:55.645 --> 01:10:58.865
that don't cause us any harm unless we think about it.

01:11:00.146 --> 01:11:05.046
Yeah. And that's, that's good because I, you know, when I was thinking about

01:11:05.046 --> 01:11:11.206
your, your, when you were explaining the bond between a mother and a child,

01:11:11.226 --> 01:11:14.606
it's, it's like the, the,

01:11:14.826 --> 01:11:19.906
and, and in the branding, like for, for products, it's, it's a trust thing.

01:11:19.906 --> 01:11:22.826
Not only is it does it it gives

01:11:22.826 --> 01:11:25.686
us pleasure to trust in something if if

01:11:25.686 --> 01:11:29.046
if i constantly you know and i've run follows

01:11:29.046 --> 01:11:33.866
before so if i constantly throw my name out there whether it's on billboards

01:11:33.866 --> 01:11:41.646
or tv ads or radio spot whatever right the yard signs the repetition of my name

01:11:41.646 --> 01:11:45.206
is supposed to give you a pleasure and supposed to give you a trust it's like

01:11:45.206 --> 01:11:47.546
that's the person i need to vote for?

01:11:47.846 --> 01:11:53.866
Am I getting the gist of what you're saying without being too simplistic about it? Yeah.

01:11:55.286 --> 01:12:00.306
You're sort of using the hardwired propensities of the brain for a result.

01:12:00.766 --> 01:12:04.606
The fact of the matter is we all ought to simply think about things.

01:12:05.086 --> 01:12:10.726
We ought not to let the automatic mechanisms of our brain take over.

01:12:10.946 --> 01:12:16.006
But any particular proposition, we ought to think about, and whether it's true or not to think about.

01:12:16.846 --> 01:12:21.226
Unfortunately, that's hard to do. It takes work.

01:12:22.166 --> 01:12:26.566
And people aren't inclined to think so much as they are to react.

01:12:27.126 --> 01:12:33.566
And that's just who we are as a species. It'll probably kill us.

01:12:35.687 --> 01:12:42.687
Well, I'm not trying to get into any Armageddon thoughts, but I do understand the concern.

01:12:44.607 --> 01:12:52.927
Take a look at these recent results on Chatbot, where people use Chatbot to write essays.

01:12:53.267 --> 01:12:53.947
Yeah.

01:12:54.507 --> 01:13:00.287
And they developed, I think, the format for the experiments.

01:13:00.287 --> 01:13:06.447
I haven't read this stuff carefully, and I urge you and your audience to fact-check

01:13:06.447 --> 01:13:11.207
me on this, because I may be getting it all wrong, and that's why you've got to think.

01:13:11.687 --> 01:13:20.647
But I read a recent story about some research that was done in a nearby institution.

01:13:21.247 --> 01:13:23.347
Reputable institution, and

01:13:23.347 --> 01:13:27.107
what they did was they had a group of people write a paper using chatbots.

01:13:27.107 --> 01:13:30.847
And then they had a group of people write a paper using

01:13:30.847 --> 01:13:33.527
only chatbot for references and then they had

01:13:33.527 --> 01:13:38.707
a group of people write a paper and they were not allowed to use any artificial

01:13:38.707 --> 01:13:44.067
means at all and not surprisingly the people who used chatbot for the paper

01:13:44.067 --> 01:13:49.547
and references couldn't remember a damn thing they'd written a week later and

01:13:49.547 --> 01:13:52.607
the the ones who used the references were a little

01:13:52.747 --> 01:13:55.487
better but the ones who had thought about it

01:13:55.487 --> 01:13:58.927
themselves remembered a great deal and

01:13:58.927 --> 01:14:02.267
so the the use of these robotic devices

01:14:02.267 --> 01:14:05.047
in order to as a kind of

01:14:05.047 --> 01:14:08.307
a crush or an aid you

01:14:08.307 --> 01:14:14.407
might say as an aid can do you real damage because it can simply appeal to the

01:14:14.407 --> 01:14:18.247
passive side of your brain which says oh it's so much easier to let somebody

01:14:18.247 --> 01:14:24.247
else do it or something else do it and that's the And I'm afraid that there's

01:14:24.247 --> 01:14:25.627
no substitute for thinking,

01:14:25.867 --> 01:14:29.727
and that our ability to think is an incredible,

01:14:30.047 --> 01:14:32.987
incredible gift of nature.

01:14:33.607 --> 01:14:36.287
Why we don't take advantage of it more, I don't know.

01:14:37.361 --> 01:14:40.181
Into that as as we say in the southern

01:14:40.181 --> 01:14:42.981
church and i've used it many times on the

01:14:42.981 --> 01:14:47.081
podcast it's like those are the kind of points you need to say a little louder

01:14:47.081 --> 01:14:54.221
so the folks in the in the back can hear it i don't know you know there comes

01:14:54.221 --> 01:15:01.781
a time when oh well i think to myself i'm i mean you know I'm in the end game,

01:15:02.321 --> 01:15:05.481
Eric I mean, there comes a time when,

01:15:06.181 --> 01:15:12.261
you no longer want to yell so the people in the back can hear because you don't

01:15:12.261 --> 01:15:16.461
have a breath I got you Alright,

01:15:16.581 --> 01:15:22.601
so last question Do you have any concerns in this political climate about the arts?

01:15:24.601 --> 01:15:32.321
Well, it's a very good question, Erik And I think the knee-jerk reaction is, oh, yeah,

01:15:32.701 --> 01:15:40.321
I do, because of the notion of repression, of the notion of enrols on free speech, and all of that.

01:15:40.701 --> 01:15:48.201
But I'll tell you something. I visited a country, Cuba, and saw the art scene

01:15:48.201 --> 01:15:54.621
in Cuba, which had developed during a period, a similar period, of social control.

01:15:54.941 --> 01:16:01.581
And the art was fantastic. I mean, it was so inventive, creative,

01:16:01.981 --> 01:16:06.401
alive, active, engaging, whatever you can think of.

01:16:06.861 --> 01:16:12.521
I think that there's something about the human spirit that is just like the

01:16:12.521 --> 01:16:16.721
blade of grass that grows up in the middle of concrete.

01:16:17.541 --> 01:16:23.361
So I think the arts will always survive because as long as there are human beings,

01:16:24.501 --> 01:16:30.901
because the ability of the drain to create is its greatest property.

01:16:31.601 --> 01:16:37.601
And you can decide not to choose it, not to use it, which is what so many people do.

01:16:38.081 --> 01:16:40.541
But there will always be people that will use it.

01:16:41.121 --> 01:16:44.341
And if they use it, there's no way to stop it. Some stop them.

01:16:45.701 --> 01:16:50.021
Yeah, when you said to use that blade of grass through concrete,

01:16:50.021 --> 01:16:56.661
I was immediately, the song by Aretha Franklin, There's a Rose in Spanish Harlem, right?

01:16:57.121 --> 01:17:02.721
And yeah, and I think that's a great, great analogy.

01:17:03.281 --> 01:17:10.181
So if people, before you say the next thing, let's just say Aretha Franklin was one of the greatest.

01:17:10.701 --> 01:17:16.641
I mean, she was just an amazing singer and influenced so many singers after her.

01:17:16.801 --> 01:17:19.781
But she was just extraordinary.

01:17:20.021 --> 01:17:25.081
I'm sorry to interrupt no that's okay that's okay you know praising the queen is always good,

01:17:26.199 --> 01:17:30.999
Where can people get this book, Jay? Play it again, Sam, the repetition in the

01:17:30.999 --> 01:17:32.799
arts. They have to find out.

01:17:39.539 --> 01:17:42.599
Well, let's see. Where do you usually get books?

01:17:42.759 --> 01:17:48.619
I guess two places come to mind, a bookstore or a library.

01:17:49.279 --> 01:17:53.719
Okay. And I think the cheapest way to do it is to get your library to buy it.

01:17:54.159 --> 01:17:56.939
Okay. And so that's what you can do.

01:17:57.119 --> 01:18:02.479
It's available, I'm sure you can find it online, Amazon or something like that.

01:18:02.619 --> 01:18:04.999
But it was published by MIT Press.

01:18:05.799 --> 01:18:11.219
And so if you have this, you know, just a modicum of skill, you can just put

01:18:11.219 --> 01:18:16.859
in my name and the title of the book, Play It Again, Sam, and you'll find some

01:18:16.859 --> 01:18:17.939
place where you can buy it.

01:18:18.479 --> 01:18:24.239
Yes, sir. And if people want to reach out to you, how can people get in touch with you?

01:18:24.899 --> 01:18:29.019
Well, I'm on Facebook. I don't know. I guess you can do it that way.

01:18:29.159 --> 01:18:34.679
I'm in LinkedIn, and you can do it that way, and that's pretty good. Yeah.

01:18:36.059 --> 01:18:38.819
Okay. All right. Well— I don't have a webpage.

01:18:40.559 --> 01:18:46.119
I made one, but it seemed it was just too much to keep it up. I understand.

01:18:46.859 --> 01:18:51.279
Well, Samuel Jay Keyser, I greatly appreciate you coming on, sir.

01:18:51.899 --> 01:18:58.559
And I encourage people to get the book. I told him it was taking me back to

01:18:58.559 --> 01:19:03.219
school, but it's detailed and it flows.

01:19:03.939 --> 01:19:07.759
There's a flow to it where you can pick up where it's coming from.

01:19:07.959 --> 01:19:12.819
So I encourage people to get it. And I thank you again for taking the time to

01:19:12.819 --> 01:19:18.059
come on the podcast. I appreciate it. The gratitude is,

01:19:18.934 --> 01:19:23.414
the other way. Thank you for giving me some time to talk to you and to your

01:19:23.414 --> 01:19:26.534
audience. You're doing me a big favor. Thank you so much, Eric.

01:19:27.134 --> 01:19:30.294
Yes, sir. All right, guys, we're going to catch y'all on the other side.

01:19:31.600 --> 01:19:42.160
Music.

01:19:41.974 --> 01:19:45.254
All right, and we are back. So I want to thank Dr.

01:19:45.694 --> 01:19:53.354
Marlene L. Daut and Samuel Jay Keyser for coming on to the podcast.

01:19:54.154 --> 01:20:00.534
Please get their books and, you know, just let me know again.

01:20:00.854 --> 01:20:02.454
Let me know what you think about everything.

01:20:02.794 --> 01:20:10.014
It's really, really cool to just talk to people that are smart and,

01:20:10.014 --> 01:20:17.634
you know, you know, seen some things and appreciate the history of things, right?

01:20:18.474 --> 01:20:25.774
And, you know, there's wisdom in conversation. There's wisdom in collaboration.

01:20:26.414 --> 01:20:30.714
And there's wisdom in compromise, right? And so,

01:20:31.134 --> 01:20:37.934
you know, I just really appreciate the opportunity to talk to intelligent people,

01:20:37.934 --> 01:20:41.654
and I really appreciate having this platform to do that.

01:20:43.074 --> 01:20:49.814
And I also appreciate this platform as, and you've heard me say it many,

01:20:49.934 --> 01:20:55.254
many times, as a form of therapy, as a form of catharsis, as a form of release,

01:20:55.834 --> 01:21:00.274
right, to deal with what we're dealing with in this world. So,

01:21:00.514 --> 01:21:01.854
again, thanks to my guests.

01:21:02.514 --> 01:21:05.674
Really appreciate y'all coming on. And thank you.

01:21:06.377 --> 01:21:10.957
Let me just get into it, right? So there was two African-American men.

01:21:11.437 --> 01:21:21.137
One, I have talked about his mistreatment before, but now it's just continuing on.

01:21:21.417 --> 01:21:26.457
And then a new brother who is emerging on the political scene.

01:21:27.437 --> 01:21:36.597
And they're dealing with these people who are really not intelligent people. They're crafty.

01:21:37.237 --> 01:21:44.537
They're devious. My favorite word is invidious, right? But they're not intelligent people.

01:21:45.337 --> 01:21:48.077
They're very base in what they do.

01:21:49.217 --> 01:21:54.117
And it's very easy to say, oh, well, you know, you're being partisan and all that stuff.

01:21:54.257 --> 01:21:57.337
And it is true because it's partisan.

01:21:58.077 --> 01:22:03.437
And I say this, and I have to throw this disclaimer out every time because I

01:22:03.437 --> 01:22:05.037
grew up around Republicans.

01:22:05.837 --> 01:22:13.537
I know Republicans. I've had beers with them. I've smoked cigars with them. I've partied with them.

01:22:14.877 --> 01:22:20.497
I've worked with them. I've lived my life around people. And then this crap happened.

01:22:21.337 --> 01:22:27.517
And I say that it evolved and took a whole new life.

01:22:29.577 --> 01:22:37.317
And my explanation of it is the last gasp, the last breath of white supremacy in this nation.

01:22:37.797 --> 01:22:42.357
And they're going out with a fight. They are not laying down and surrendering.

01:22:42.457 --> 01:22:44.297
They're trying to do some damage.

01:22:46.643 --> 01:22:51.403
These people, you know, right now have taken over the Republican Party.

01:22:52.343 --> 01:22:58.903
And to the degree that it's like, you know, there are folks that try to be smart,

01:22:59.423 --> 01:23:05.943
Alec, and say that, well, you know, it's the Republicans that freed the slaves and da-da-da-da-da.

01:23:06.023 --> 01:23:12.623
And I said, yeah, this party is not that Republican Party.

01:23:12.623 --> 01:23:18.843
As a matter of fact, this Republican Party is, this current one is more like

01:23:18.843 --> 01:23:24.003
the Democrats back during slavery or the Democrats during Jim Crow,

01:23:24.143 --> 01:23:25.083
especially in the South.

01:23:25.603 --> 01:23:31.023
That's what this Republican Party is. And if people get offended by that, so be it.

01:23:31.303 --> 01:23:38.263
As a black man who understands his history and who has experienced certain things in life,

01:23:38.423 --> 01:23:44.063
especially in the political world, I can stand 10 toes down and say that this

01:23:44.063 --> 01:23:51.423
Republican Party now is or would be comfortable having a Bull Connor or George

01:23:51.423 --> 01:23:53.703
Wallace or Strom Thurmond.

01:23:53.703 --> 01:23:57.543
And as a matter of fact, Strom switched over to the Republican Party, right?

01:23:57.843 --> 01:24:00.843
Those guys would feel right at home right now.

01:24:01.643 --> 01:24:04.963
And some of their crazy cousins. That's where we are.

01:24:05.503 --> 01:24:10.163
Now, history is history. Yes, the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln,

01:24:10.743 --> 01:24:16.463
party of Thaddeus Stevens, the abolitionists, Frederick Douglass, all those guys, right?

01:24:17.123 --> 01:24:22.523
But the Republican Party now is more like Stephen Douglass, right?

01:24:23.103 --> 01:24:27.903
That's where we are. And that's the way they're acting, especially toward people

01:24:27.903 --> 01:24:31.303
that look and sound like me, right?

01:24:32.103 --> 01:24:40.283
And it's one thing to go after me, you know, I've seen a few sunrises and sunsets, right?

01:24:40.843 --> 01:24:44.783
But these young brothers you're going after, now they can hold their own,

01:24:44.943 --> 01:24:51.383
but it still pisses me off that they have to experience what they experience.

01:24:52.063 --> 01:24:55.943
Take, for example, Isaiah Martin. He's 27 years old.

01:24:56.103 --> 01:25:01.483
He's a young man in Texas, wants to run, I think, for the 18th congressional district in Texas.

01:25:01.983 --> 01:25:07.523
I don't know who's in that seat now, but I didn't bother to do Ballotpedia or Google it.

01:25:07.703 --> 01:25:11.043
But I just know that he's running for office. So he came.

01:25:12.535 --> 01:25:20.375
To the state capitol in Austin, I think, because they are having hearings throughout the state.

01:25:20.875 --> 01:25:23.735
And if you're not familiar with what I'm going to talk about.

01:25:23.935 --> 01:25:29.275
So Donald Trump, the president, reached out to the governor of Texas,

01:25:29.595 --> 01:25:34.135
Greg Abbott, who, let me just say this, right?

01:25:34.975 --> 01:25:41.455
It's news. It's not nice. It's not kind to talk about people who suffer a handicap, right?

01:25:42.535 --> 01:25:46.675
But if there's going to be an exception in this world, it is Greg Abbott.

01:25:47.195 --> 01:25:51.195
I forget how he got his injury and why he's in a wheelchair and all that.

01:25:51.335 --> 01:25:57.235
But, you know, when you're as evil as he is, you shouldn't be offended that

01:25:57.235 --> 01:25:59.455
somebody calls you Hot Wheels or anything else.

01:26:00.235 --> 01:26:04.655
Y'all want to rally around him. That's fine. That just shows that y'all just as evil as he is.

01:26:05.335 --> 01:26:10.075
Because all the stuff he's doing, I mean, people have died because of him.

01:26:10.375 --> 01:26:11.875
People have frozen to death.

01:26:12.535 --> 01:26:17.115
People are being washed away through floods because of him.

01:26:17.495 --> 01:26:21.975
He is a harbinger of tragedy and pain.

01:26:23.855 --> 01:26:30.915
And his partner in crime, Ken Paxton, I think he's got some kind of disability too. I don't know.

01:26:31.115 --> 01:26:33.955
But both of them are very, very evil people.

01:26:34.295 --> 01:26:39.135
And I don't throw that word around lightly. I know a lot of people were sensitive

01:26:39.135 --> 01:26:45.055
about that or the fascist word or the Nazi word. I'm like, bruh, it is what it is.

01:26:45.495 --> 01:26:49.555
Even Paxton's wife of umpteen years finally said enough's enough.

01:26:50.015 --> 01:26:50.995
You know what I'm saying?

01:26:51.675 --> 01:26:58.475
At least she stuck it out for 30-something, you know? I'm just saying, I don't...

01:26:59.878 --> 01:27:03.738
Care for these people, right? And they're all in the mix.

01:27:03.858 --> 01:27:09.298
So President Trump reaches out to Governor Abbott and says, I want to keep this

01:27:09.298 --> 01:27:15.158
majority in the House because the way it's going right now, we're going to lose it.

01:27:15.478 --> 01:27:19.358
So the only way we can do it is we got to alter the numbers.

01:27:21.238 --> 01:27:28.458
So I need y'all, since there's some concerns that were brought up by the previous

01:27:28.458 --> 01:27:33.758
Justice Department about how you redrew the lines, this would be a good time to go ahead and.

01:27:36.018 --> 01:27:41.898
Redistrict the district, but make it so that we get more seats.

01:27:42.818 --> 01:27:49.778
Now, when the census came out in 2020, 2021, Texas was supposed to get four

01:27:49.778 --> 01:27:56.038
new congressional districts, but the growth came in the Latino community primarily.

01:27:57.398 --> 01:28:04.118
So there was supposed to be, based on the census data, the potential for three

01:28:04.118 --> 01:28:08.538
new districts that would be represented by somebody from the Latino community.

01:28:08.898 --> 01:28:13.678
And then one probably to be majority black, right?

01:28:14.378 --> 01:28:23.178
So when the legislature in Texas redistricted, somehow, someway,

01:28:23.438 --> 01:28:25.898
they got more white districts out of that.

01:28:26.038 --> 01:28:32.958
And somebody broke it down as like they created 23 districts that eventually

01:28:32.958 --> 01:28:37.018
supported President Trump in the election, right?

01:28:37.378 --> 01:28:43.958
So now the plan, the map that they've revealed is that they want to create,

01:28:44.458 --> 01:28:46.498
increase that and make it 30.

01:28:47.738 --> 01:28:52.398
So basically, by the way the districts have been drawn and all that stuff,

01:28:52.698 --> 01:28:54.598
it'll be a net gain of five.

01:28:55.678 --> 01:28:59.178
And I know the numbers would say seven based on what I just gave you,

01:28:59.298 --> 01:29:03.778
but as far as actual districts, the way that they want to draw them, it'd be five.

01:29:04.598 --> 01:29:08.738
New districts with a couple of districts that may have supported Trump, but,

01:29:09.924 --> 01:29:15.464
swung for a Democrat, right? So, you know, first of all,

01:29:15.824 --> 01:29:20.464
who was the president of the United States to tell a state to redraw their map

01:29:20.464 --> 01:29:25.224
and, you know, so we could get more people? Because it was that easy.

01:29:25.644 --> 01:29:29.424
Barack Obama could have done that in 2010, you know?

01:29:30.284 --> 01:29:33.364
I mean, he was trying to get the Affordable Care Act passed,

01:29:33.564 --> 01:29:36.424
and he was trying to get a budget still done.

01:29:37.104 --> 01:29:41.984
So it was like, it had been advantageous of him to say, hey,

01:29:42.344 --> 01:29:47.564
New York, California, wherever that the Democrats don't have independent redistricting,

01:29:48.124 --> 01:29:54.064
why don't y'all go in and redraw the lines so we make sure that we can keep the majority?

01:29:55.704 --> 01:30:00.224
That's not the president of the United States' job. That's, you know,

01:30:00.724 --> 01:30:04.344
It's a violation of, I believe, the 10th Amendment.

01:30:06.204 --> 01:30:14.944
So that. But then you got a Governor Abbott and a Ken Paxton who say, oh, yeah, we'll do that.

01:30:15.724 --> 01:30:20.404
That's why I can say evil, right? Because there's nothing good out of that.

01:30:21.164 --> 01:30:24.444
You can't win it on the merits. You can't win it on the policy.

01:30:24.444 --> 01:30:29.184
So you can't win it on what you've been doing these first years,

01:30:29.184 --> 01:30:32.484
you know, of the second Trump administration.

01:30:33.124 --> 01:30:36.764
So you got to cheat because that's all you're doing. You're cheating.

01:30:37.164 --> 01:30:39.544
You're trying to change the rules in the middle of the game.

01:30:40.324 --> 01:30:44.844
You're only supposed to redraw the lines after the census. Now,

01:30:44.924 --> 01:30:47.824
if the court tells you to redraw the lines, that's one thing.

01:30:48.524 --> 01:30:53.284
But the president of the United States, and then he drew the map for you, right?

01:30:53.744 --> 01:30:57.184
Somebody in Washington, D.C. drew the map for the Texas Congressional District.

01:30:58.671 --> 01:31:03.951
Cool with it. I'm just saying, if you live in Texas and you hear this,

01:31:04.291 --> 01:31:08.891
you might want to reconsider your leadership, especially on the Republican side.

01:31:09.611 --> 01:31:14.211
Just a thought. Anyway, there's his brother, Isaiah Martin, and he,

01:31:14.811 --> 01:31:19.431
like other citizens, decided that he was going to show up at this hearing.

01:31:19.531 --> 01:31:22.551
Now, when they were doing the hearing, they didn't have the map,

01:31:22.571 --> 01:31:25.411
or if they had it, they weren't letting the people see it.

01:31:25.911 --> 01:31:28.431
They were just telling folks, this is what we're going to do.

01:31:28.671 --> 01:31:30.831
And it's been covered by the national media.

01:31:30.971 --> 01:31:34.231
So it's like people have a gist to what they're trying to do.

01:31:34.551 --> 01:31:37.371
Especially the president came out and said, yeah, we're going to get five more

01:31:37.371 --> 01:31:41.231
districts in Texas. Really? You are, Mr. President? How's that going to happen?

01:31:41.791 --> 01:31:44.311
Oh, they're just going to call a special session and redraw the line.

01:31:45.351 --> 01:31:49.071
So needless to say, people are upset in Texas.

01:31:49.291 --> 01:31:54.471
And so Isaiah Martin, who wants to be a member of Congress, decided to speak.

01:31:55.171 --> 01:32:00.591
The people at the hearing didn't like what he was saying. or I guess he went

01:32:00.591 --> 01:32:04.511
over his time because they only gave people like two minutes to speak.

01:32:05.211 --> 01:32:12.191
So they physically arrested him for going over his time, not squirted him out

01:32:12.191 --> 01:32:13.851
of the room or got him out of the chair.

01:32:14.091 --> 01:32:20.331
They arrested the man, put handcuffs on him because he went over two minutes and he was like.

01:32:22.618 --> 01:32:29.498
Say, he came back the next day because magically the charges got dropped.

01:32:30.318 --> 01:32:34.438
He came back the next day and gave him peace of his mind, which he should have, right?

01:32:35.238 --> 01:32:38.278
He arrested a man because he went over the two-minute limit,

01:32:38.738 --> 01:32:40.778
plus he didn't like what he was saying to you.

01:32:41.658 --> 01:32:45.918
Then, the other gentleman, he's 29.

01:32:46.858 --> 01:32:52.478
He's one of the two Justins from Tennessee, and this is Justin Jones,

01:32:52.598 --> 01:32:59.818
you remember him and the other member who were kicked out of the Tennessee legislature

01:32:59.818 --> 01:33:03.878
for speaking out gun control.

01:33:04.038 --> 01:33:08.518
This was right after the school shooting in Nashville, where a friend of the

01:33:08.518 --> 01:33:10.438
governor's got killed, right?

01:33:12.438 --> 01:33:18.038
And the Speaker of the House, I think his name is Sexton or whatever, they kicked him out.

01:33:18.198 --> 01:33:23.798
They voted him out of the session. But the rules in Tennessee favored the two

01:33:23.798 --> 01:33:27.758
Justins, and they got back in, right?

01:33:28.638 --> 01:33:33.898
And so now they can't do that anymore in Tennessee.

01:33:34.098 --> 01:33:38.318
They're trying to figure out a way to fix that, but they can't do that anymore.

01:33:38.458 --> 01:33:43.818
But anyway, Justin Jones, who represents Nashville, the capital city,

01:33:43.938 --> 01:33:50.998
he's one of the representatives there, He found out about a state event sponsored

01:33:50.998 --> 01:33:53.158
by the Department of Transportation in Tennessee.

01:33:53.658 --> 01:33:58.518
Now, you know, it was some private, some lobbyists behind it.

01:33:58.858 --> 01:34:01.838
You know, a lot of things happen like that.

01:34:02.478 --> 01:34:05.618
State government of the state will say this is our event, but,

01:34:05.658 --> 01:34:08.258
you know, it's sponsored by such and such.

01:34:08.418 --> 01:34:13.738
And, you know, that happens. But if you're having the event in the district,

01:34:14.138 --> 01:34:14.858
you're going to have a lot of time.

01:34:15.596 --> 01:34:24.276
Jones, regardless of what political affiliation he is, he should have the right to refusal, right?

01:34:24.836 --> 01:34:28.896
So we were having a big thing and I got, you know, like in Clinton,

01:34:29.096 --> 01:34:33.936
for example, we were having a big thing in Clinton and, you know,

01:34:34.036 --> 01:34:36.216
so like ribbon cuttings.

01:34:36.916 --> 01:34:42.036
So everybody in Clinton, when I was, you know, in the state legislature,

01:34:42.256 --> 01:34:44.896
everybody in Clinton was a Republican And as far as municipal,

01:34:45.016 --> 01:34:49.596
the mayor, the at-large council people, and the councilman, the regular council,

01:34:49.716 --> 01:34:50.916
they were all Republican.

01:34:51.596 --> 01:34:56.776
And so they would have like events, ribbon cuttings and all that stuff.

01:34:57.276 --> 01:35:01.076
So they would invite me to come because I was one of the representatives of Clinton.

01:35:01.596 --> 01:35:04.676
As a matter of fact, Clinton had a distinction because of redistricting.

01:35:05.596 --> 01:35:09.896
They had six of us that got a part of Clinton, right?

01:35:10.316 --> 01:35:16.116
But only two of us actually lived in the city. So it was me and his other representative, Philip Gunn.

01:35:16.316 --> 01:35:20.736
And Philip later became the Speaker of the House after I was no longer there.

01:35:21.636 --> 01:35:28.516
And I was, I guess, the senior member of the two because I was already in the

01:35:28.516 --> 01:35:29.836
legislature when the field came in.

01:35:31.236 --> 01:35:34.936
And so when they would have these ribbon cuttings, I would come,

01:35:35.136 --> 01:35:37.396
and then Philip wouldn't be there.

01:35:38.656 --> 01:35:44.116
And it got to a point where they were saying, A, you know, tell Phillip that

01:35:44.116 --> 01:35:47.516
he needs to start showing up to these events just like you are, right?

01:35:47.696 --> 01:35:50.096
And I was like, okay, you know.

01:35:50.476 --> 01:35:55.676
But Phillip made that decision that he was not going to those events,

01:35:55.676 --> 01:35:58.916
whether he had a conflict at work or whatever was going on.

01:35:59.276 --> 01:36:03.256
He had the right to refusal because he was invited because it was happening

01:36:03.256 --> 01:36:06.316
in his district, right, in his city.

01:36:07.990 --> 01:36:13.330
Jones, his district incorporates the airport in Nashville.

01:36:13.850 --> 01:36:17.490
So the Department of Transportation was having an event. It was sponsored by

01:36:17.490 --> 01:36:19.930
some business people, I guess, or whatever.

01:36:20.450 --> 01:36:26.490
And so Justin is like, okay, well, we got this event in my district.

01:36:27.230 --> 01:36:31.850
I'm going. So it's like they say, well, he wasn't on the list.

01:36:32.670 --> 01:36:37.770
It's like, well, if it's a state event, you know, I just want to come and see

01:36:37.770 --> 01:36:39.210
what's happening. Yeah.

01:36:40.250 --> 01:36:44.610
Now, in Mississippi, people played a partisan game just like anywhere else.

01:36:44.790 --> 01:36:49.210
And, you know, I assume other states do the same thing, played a partisan game.

01:36:49.370 --> 01:36:50.730
I'm sure here in Georgia and all this stuff.

01:36:51.350 --> 01:36:55.030
But usually, well, at least in my time.

01:36:55.290 --> 01:36:58.070
Now, remember, I haven't been an elected official in almost 20 years.

01:36:58.070 --> 01:37:03.290
So, in my day, you could crash an event, right?

01:37:03.690 --> 01:37:07.030
You could show up and say, well, we didn't expect him to be here,

01:37:07.110 --> 01:37:13.490
but since he's here, you know, we kind of like are in his district.

01:37:15.190 --> 01:37:20.390
Okay, we'll allow that to happen. But now I guess it's different because it's

01:37:20.390 --> 01:37:25.430
like they showed a woman who was a state senator.

01:37:26.450 --> 01:37:32.370
She was not on the list. Well, because she was Republican, they let her in.

01:37:32.550 --> 01:37:38.370
And then she later told somebody that was covering what was happening with Representative Jones.

01:37:38.690 --> 01:37:41.970
She said, oh, well, I'm representing Lieutenant Governor.

01:37:43.881 --> 01:37:47.901
If that was the case, then you would have been on the list, right?

01:37:48.521 --> 01:37:51.941
Because it would have said, okay, Senator so-and-so is going to represent the

01:37:51.941 --> 01:37:53.641
lieutenant governor, let her in.

01:37:54.101 --> 01:37:58.601
She had to stop, and they had to make a few things, and then they let her through.

01:37:58.781 --> 01:38:05.641
Meanwhile, Representative Jones is being stopped by white men in suits and police officers.

01:38:05.641 --> 01:38:12.001
And the nicest people of all of them were the police officer because the state

01:38:12.001 --> 01:38:15.121
troopers realized, yeah, these folks vote on our budget.

01:38:15.721 --> 01:38:19.801
And I don't want that man giving a speech about why we shouldn't get our money.

01:38:21.021 --> 01:38:25.421
I don't want to be the guy responsible for that legislator getting the Black

01:38:25.421 --> 01:38:27.841
Caucus to vote against our budget. Right.

01:38:28.481 --> 01:38:32.361
Because even though the Black Caucus is not the majority in that in that building,

01:38:32.361 --> 01:38:37.941
And when you start seeing all those votes going against your particular agency, you got questions.

01:38:38.881 --> 01:38:42.521
You got some issues that you need to address. I've seen it happen.

01:38:43.301 --> 01:38:46.501
We did it. Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks.

01:38:47.181 --> 01:38:50.401
It's a particular representative that was not happy with what was going on there.

01:38:50.501 --> 01:38:54.461
And he informed us of what was the problem, primarily dealing with black folks

01:38:54.461 --> 01:38:55.821
being hired as game wardens.

01:38:56.561 --> 01:39:00.461
So once he hipped us up to what was going on, we was like, all right,

01:39:00.561 --> 01:39:03.861
brother, we're going to be in solidarity with you. So when the first time their

01:39:03.861 --> 01:39:06.421
budget came up, about 40 of us.

01:39:06.721 --> 01:39:11.381
So now you're seeing 40 no votes popping up on an appropriations bill. What?

01:39:12.281 --> 01:39:15.701
Now we got to ask some questions. Why are all these people voting against our budget?

01:39:16.921 --> 01:39:23.401
What's happening? Because if you start with 40, you make him pick about 20, 22 others.

01:39:23.621 --> 01:39:25.721
And then you don't have a budget.

01:39:26.581 --> 01:39:32.261
Nonetheless. So the trooper was the nicest one of the white folks to Representative Jones.

01:39:32.661 --> 01:39:35.881
But these other folks were coming out here and they were, one of them,

01:39:36.141 --> 01:39:38.601
I guess, was just going to try to manhandle them.

01:39:38.761 --> 01:39:43.421
And the trooper even kind of said, yeah, that's Representative Jones.

01:39:44.621 --> 01:39:47.481
And that's all he said. He didn't say anything else. He said,

01:39:47.601 --> 01:39:48.281
that's Representative Jones.

01:39:49.721 --> 01:39:54.841
Meaning, if you physically do something to it, I'm going to have to arrest you. Right? Right.

01:39:55.801 --> 01:39:58.861
Regardless of what's going on here about whether you should be at this meeting

01:39:58.861 --> 01:40:02.081
or not, if you assault a state representative of my presence,

01:40:02.501 --> 01:40:06.881
I might have to put the handcuffs on you and I'll deal with my commander or

01:40:06.881 --> 01:40:09.421
whatever at that point afterwards.

01:40:09.801 --> 01:40:13.161
Because you're not an elected official. You're just some dude,

01:40:13.161 --> 01:40:17.981
I guess, that was part of the party. You know, but he caught the hint right

01:40:17.981 --> 01:40:22.621
away and he stopped physically touching Representative Jones at that point.

01:40:22.701 --> 01:40:25.981
But they were trying to they were telling this man that he couldn't come to this meeting.

01:40:26.541 --> 01:40:30.041
And then, of course, he went to the sister and the sister said,

01:40:30.081 --> 01:40:31.741
you know, Department of Transportation.

01:40:32.361 --> 01:40:35.381
Also, the Department of Transportation is sponsoring this. And I,

01:40:35.481 --> 01:40:37.801
as a state representative, can't come in my district.

01:40:39.462 --> 01:40:45.142
Deal was Elon Musk wants to build a tunnel under the airport,

01:40:45.542 --> 01:40:49.662
kind of like the experiment he's doing in Los Angeles. He wanted to do the same thing.

01:40:50.362 --> 01:40:56.102
And I guess the folks in Tennessee like, oh yeah, you could do it under our

01:40:56.102 --> 01:40:57.082
airport here in Nashville.

01:40:57.502 --> 01:41:03.242
So you know there's been some envelopes passed. There's been some hands shook.

01:41:03.402 --> 01:41:07.022
There's been some wink, winks, nod, nods. You know something's going on.

01:41:07.182 --> 01:41:10.342
Because that's how these people operate. They're very transactional people.

01:41:11.102 --> 01:41:16.202
Right? And so, they're talking about building this tunnel.

01:41:16.882 --> 01:41:22.342
But you don't want the representative of that district to be in on the meeting,

01:41:22.522 --> 01:41:24.202
even if he's not in favor of them.

01:41:25.002 --> 01:41:30.622
Right? I mean, we had a situation with the Port of Gulfport.

01:41:31.202 --> 01:41:35.202
When we were trying to decide how that money was going to be spent, right?

01:41:36.022 --> 01:41:39.442
The Democrats, Republicans, the chair of the committee was a Democrat.

01:41:40.122 --> 01:41:43.142
He wanted to know what y'all were trying to do. And, you know,

01:41:43.282 --> 01:41:48.102
you got George Bush sending the Secretary of Hud saying, well,

01:41:48.122 --> 01:41:49.942
we want to build some condos or whatever.

01:41:50.442 --> 01:41:53.862
And we're like, don't we need to fix the port first?

01:41:54.342 --> 01:41:58.862
I mean, we were having these discussions and we were not excluded from it.

01:41:59.442 --> 01:42:03.482
You know, the port wasn't in my district, but I was on the committee,

01:42:03.482 --> 01:42:06.682
so we went down to the port.

01:42:07.062 --> 01:42:09.362
They didn't tell us, y'all can't come in.

01:42:10.122 --> 01:42:14.722
When they were having the meetings trying to sell us on building the condos,

01:42:14.962 --> 01:42:16.902
it wasn't just Republicans only.

01:42:17.362 --> 01:42:19.742
They had to let us in, right?

01:42:20.242 --> 01:42:25.982
So whether you agree with the person or not, whether you are the same political,

01:42:26.202 --> 01:42:29.942
you can't build nothing in that man's district without his say-so,

01:42:29.942 --> 01:42:32.402
his sign-off, his input.

01:42:32.862 --> 01:42:40.142
That's just damn disrespectful. Because I'm sure, as God made the grass green,

01:42:40.462 --> 01:42:46.082
that wherever Sexton represents, I forget where he, I had that knowledge before.

01:42:46.622 --> 01:42:51.982
I know it's not Nashville. But wherever he is, if the shoe was on the other

01:42:51.982 --> 01:42:55.662
foot, and Representative Jones and the Democrats were in charge,

01:42:55.802 --> 01:42:59.382
and they decided they're going to build something in his district,

01:42:59.642 --> 01:43:01.142
he'd be all up in the meet.

01:43:01.242 --> 01:43:07.802
He wouldn't give a damn if you had the SWAT team from the state troopers of Tennessee in his way.

01:43:07.942 --> 01:43:13.222
He was getting in that meet because this is my district and you can't tell me

01:43:13.222 --> 01:43:17.502
where I can and can't go in my district. He would have acted a plumb fool.

01:43:17.962 --> 01:43:23.382
But he thinks that since he's in charge and the black folks aren't,

01:43:23.382 --> 01:43:26.902
that he can treat, and especially a black person he really hates,

01:43:27.822 --> 01:43:29.162
he can treat him any kind of way.

01:43:30.856 --> 01:43:36.956
Tell you is that's a bad strategy. From this point forward, I just want y'all

01:43:36.956 --> 01:43:38.976
to understand that's a dumb idea.

01:43:39.676 --> 01:43:44.616
These folks, people thought that I was a little bit aggressive.

01:43:46.556 --> 01:43:51.816
These young folks in politics now don't give a damn, right?

01:43:52.216 --> 01:43:59.636
They don't have a concept of power as like, I don't have the numbers to do and I need to strategize.

01:44:00.436 --> 01:44:06.596
These folks right now, they're learning from the elders about restraint, right?

01:44:06.796 --> 01:44:10.516
Okay, you can't punch that guy. You can't beat them up.

01:44:11.716 --> 01:44:17.516
You can't cuss them out all the way. You got to show some restraint, right?

01:44:17.876 --> 01:44:21.436
And they're teaching them the tactics, but their mindset is,

01:44:21.676 --> 01:44:24.856
I'm about to tear this crap up.

01:44:25.316 --> 01:44:28.016
I'm about to blow this MF down.

01:44:29.796 --> 01:44:34.576
If we can't have access to it, then it doesn't need to exist. That's their mindset.

01:44:35.436 --> 01:44:39.096
If you're not going to let me have a say-so about the district that I want to

01:44:39.096 --> 01:44:42.716
run in, if you're not going to let me have a say-so about a project you're building

01:44:42.716 --> 01:44:45.336
in my district, then we'll shut it all down.

01:44:46.076 --> 01:44:50.836
And I'm not going to discourage them from doing it. Because I think that's the right attitude.

01:44:51.796 --> 01:44:59.416
Because the way that politics is now, you can't have intellectual discussions with these people.

01:44:59.436 --> 01:45:04.376
You can't have respectful discussions with these people because they don't have

01:45:04.376 --> 01:45:07.556
any respect for us. So, you know,

01:45:08.477 --> 01:45:13.497
is I can show you better than I can tell you. What I would advise the Republicans to do,

01:45:14.357 --> 01:45:20.117
is let Donald Trump be Donald Trump and the rest of y'all stop impersonating

01:45:20.117 --> 01:45:25.197
him because whatever Teflon he got going on, you ain't got it.

01:45:25.997 --> 01:45:32.037
Whatever aura he has where he doesn't go to jail or he doesn't get in trouble, you ain't got that.

01:45:33.037 --> 01:45:38.417
And if you keep messing with these black folks, especially these black men who

01:45:38.417 --> 01:45:43.397
are wired to say, hell no, you're going to find out.

01:45:43.717 --> 01:45:47.817
You're going to find out really, really quick, and it's not going to be pretty.

01:45:48.457 --> 01:45:53.637
And I'll be in the bleachers along with other folks of my generation,

01:45:53.857 --> 01:45:55.917
like, go get them, young buck, sick them.

01:45:56.677 --> 01:46:02.157
Because disrespect wasn't tolerated with us. And who do you think raised these

01:46:02.157 --> 01:46:06.637
young men, my generation, or the generation right after us.

01:46:07.177 --> 01:46:13.977
We didn't raise our children to capitulate to white folks, to white supremacy, to evil.

01:46:14.257 --> 01:46:17.237
We didn't teach them that. We taught them to be men and women,

01:46:17.477 --> 01:46:20.797
to stand up for what they believe in, to fight for what they believe in.

01:46:21.417 --> 01:46:28.017
We just was hoping that they would be in a more receptive society and they didn't

01:46:28.017 --> 01:46:30.037
have to utilize those skill sets.

01:46:30.517 --> 01:46:36.937
And if they did with the technology, they could find some creative ways to get around it.

01:46:38.815 --> 01:46:42.595
Sometimes history will dictate that the old is new again.

01:46:43.135 --> 01:46:47.735
And if people are going to be disrespectful for you and your positions,

01:46:47.735 --> 01:46:56.015
they want to shut your voices down, they want to deny you access to stuff, tear it up. Tear it up.

01:46:56.815 --> 01:47:01.295
Once they get tired of you tearing it up, then maybe they want to sit down and talk.

01:47:01.875 --> 01:47:04.995
But the only way you can stop evil is to resist it.

01:47:05.695 --> 01:47:08.895
Now, Dr. King says the best resistance is love.

01:47:09.655 --> 01:47:15.095
No argument about that. The best way to end darkness is light. No argument about that.

01:47:15.795 --> 01:47:21.055
But you got to light a match in order to get light, right?

01:47:21.815 --> 01:47:26.655
You got to generate some feelings, some passion to love.

01:47:27.275 --> 01:47:31.955
And anger, from what my parents taught me, is an expression of love.

01:47:31.955 --> 01:47:35.135
Because if they didn't care, they wouldn't say anything.

01:47:35.815 --> 01:47:37.375
So it's all right to get angry.

01:47:38.135 --> 01:47:42.715
It's all right to push those buttons. It's all right to challenge things to

01:47:42.715 --> 01:47:43.875
people that are disrespectful.

01:47:44.635 --> 01:47:48.935
If you want to win the battle, if you want to stay in charge,

01:47:49.615 --> 01:47:51.095
you need to be respectful.

01:47:51.615 --> 01:47:57.255
Use your power respectfully because if you don't, it'll be taken away from you.

01:47:57.675 --> 01:47:58.815
Period, end of discussion.

01:47:59.555 --> 01:48:04.935
I'm not advocating a particular way to do it. I'm just telling you that's how it's going.

01:48:05.215 --> 01:48:08.915
And if you keep messing with these young black men, you're going to find out.

01:48:09.575 --> 01:48:15.795
I just know that when I was their age, disrespect was not an option.

01:48:16.395 --> 01:48:20.255
So I can only imagine how they feel, right?

01:48:20.535 --> 01:48:25.695
The only difference between me being 29 and them being 29, 27,

01:48:25.975 --> 01:48:30.195
there wasn't any internet, wasn't camera phones, right?

01:48:31.855 --> 01:48:34.735
So they're trying to be restrained because of that.

01:48:35.375 --> 01:48:41.695
Outside of that, and I don't want them to accept that.

01:48:42.115 --> 01:48:46.755
I want them to continue to be men. I want these sisters to be out here.

01:48:46.975 --> 01:48:52.075
Don't let these folks try to put y'all in the place in their mind.

01:48:53.135 --> 01:48:56.655
Don't let them do it. Stand up for what you believe in.

01:48:57.395 --> 01:49:01.075
Stand where you're supposed to stand. Sit where you're supposed to sit.

01:49:01.315 --> 01:49:02.855
Speak where you're supposed to speak.

01:49:03.295 --> 01:49:08.495
And don't let anybody, anybody deny you that opportunity.

01:49:09.495 --> 01:49:15.035
All right. Glad I got that off my chest. Thank you all for listening. Until next time.

01:49:16.720 --> 01:50:03.046
Music.