what was just so amazing about is you being so vulnerable and so transparent with everything with your journey and that journey includes you know being able to overcome in turn allies oppression to racism being able to overcome your own  any being able to overcome your own homophobia being able you know to arrive at this point where you are able to navigate this world that is so entrenched in white supremacy and patriarchy and way it is i'm a black boy who became a black man in america and i got the chance to ask myself what that means it's a process of self creation in a society that has already defined you i resisting that definition because it denies your humanity is fighting to live long enough to recognise your own humanity is fighting for the freedom to find yourself on your own terms is learning that freedom comes with responsibility is learning to bend in the places where yourself definition begins to deny others the freedom to define themselves it's letting go of the old ideas that helps you survive in embracing new ones to help you and everyone around you thrive it's recognising that the process is never complete it's knowing the fight won't be easy but will be worth it it's reminding yourself of what of that it would be much easier to give up it's going to give up every day is loving yourself enough not t reflection goes to die what made you ask yourself that question thank you for that i would start with where you started and say that i haven't overcome us before this before george zimmerman killed in all of us everyone is interested everyone wants to know who this boy was everyone wants to know about his past  what could have caused what in his character could have caused this to happen we're dissecting this boy's life and it's it's a matter of  noting that we're doing all of this for a dead black boy we don't do that for the for those of us that do somehow survive it and what we lose is the ability to simultaneously broaden the conversation about black male life in america but also dig into the nuances of what that means and what we do is we flat and the experiences of boys like trayvon martin like michael brown like jordan davis and so on and so forth in that we turn them into i mean they become martyrs for us but they become the symbols we project upon our own political ideas and we in an effort to sort of save them from the narrative white supremacy we impose a new narrative that still denies them humanity  but i mean it's tricky to ask ourselves to do more than that simply because they're no longer here but that was my question is for those of us who are here how do you how do you deal with that how do you know of agape that how do you produce yourself as a black man given that experience but also given that we are no we are living through not just the effects of white supremacy on our psyches not just on the shaping of identities but patriarchy homophobia transphobia capitalism all of these different the different elements that make up one's identity how you shape and respond to all of these forces all of these systems and what i wanted to do  for this book was use my own experience to any of us but to provide sort of a blueprint for what that self interrogation looks like it's taking account ideas that you've inherited been passed down to you to say are these the things that make me the human being kind of human being that i want to be and  it's for me in the particular context of being a black man because that's who i am and i don't want to race that at all i'm happy to exist in that body it's just a matter of questioning the world that produces someone like me you talk about me when you talk about sort of the self inte america's most reliable source of exploited labor the nigger generates profit that america feels no obligation to share the niggers reminded of its possession at the bottom by being shut it off in the worst neighborhoods with the least amount of resources while being told to be grateful for america's benevolent and so long as the niggers persist americans can say to another exploited populations at least you aren't the nigger because we have here in the united states a system of hierarchy and in order for someone to be at the top someone else has to be at the bottom in other groups are exploited through the route to history but one thing that continues to happen is that other groups are afforded the opportunity to be folded to be it's not to be offered and yes that has a psychological effect so always know that no matter what happens no matter how any quality produces itself in this country there's a for the nigger to no longer exist as you say and then this system has to be destroyed you know i was reading an article today and talked about how half of america still believes reverse racism is an actual things and it when when you know he uses example like when the enslaved populations were rising when they were burning down plantations when they were always in the master's food lay the groundwork for that was laid a long time ago the people that laid the groundwork have not seen the fruits of that labor and we have to understand that we have to understand that we're doing this work now in front of an audience of people who do believe that there's persecution of whites in such a grand scale and they are going to hold deeply to those beliefs and the system is going to reproduce itself on the basis of that belief on the basis of the idea that simply extending rights to other people somehow means that you are being denied something your own right there could those people are going to mono someone is listening to janet mock someone's hearing melissa harris perry and something's clicking something's changing for them and they're passing that lesson down and they're  altering the ways in which they're altering the patterns of learning for the next generation somewhere teachers in social workers and artist and all these people who do work who do work that impacts our consciousness are interested in these ideas interested in pursuing these ideas and finding ways to engage t public and discussion around these ideas and it may it may not feel immediately like that progress is being made but  short of like an actual revolution like in the moment like an armed revolution they are probably not going to see the kind of change you want in your life so you do the work knowing that  it's black males we've forgotten those that we oppress and you talk about how hard it is for some people at times to they're so busy trying to get the foot off their own neck that they forget it the foot their own feet that they have on other people's necks and so one of the things that that i just thought was just so wonderful about your book is that you bring up and obviously other scholars have to is about sort of this history within black liberation movement civil rights movement of strong powerful you know women who have led and continue to lead and sort of have to make way for this charismatic male figure when it comes to  like how do we often i guess we're sort of the default for us you know grown up in history is this charismatic black man who is supposed to be the leader and so how our ability to be men and then very narrow definition of what that looks like it is being the breadwinner it's been the head of household being the disciplinary and   and that's that's been shortsighted in that we think that because that been that's been the dominant culture that's the way that they've operated that's what we've been denied access to formations of family and then we've also done is convince other from vents people of the deficiency of the family structures that we formed in ideas of what that family structure can look like and what the care in the communities can look like well we've then just told the people forming those structures for their survival that somehow that's deficient that somehow you're missing something even if all the love and care is there because the man is not there you're missing something and now i'm bajan being told as a child that you're missing something and that your family structure is deficient you believe that you yourself are deficient and inherently something's wrong with you right so those are the lessons that we're passing all and but also there's so many structural issues there around big if what we want when we when we talk about black men returning to the head of household part of that is an economic issue right because point to how  single parent households where the woman led households are more likely to experience poverty well that is the do with the fact you know pay women black men with jobs if you look at unemployment numbers for black men they are consistently in the are we talking about it doesn't take into account other ideas about ideal then yes you've tried to replicate it in movement spaces as well by like having sensually a father figure lead you this messianic father figure is going to lead you is going to be the patriarch of the entire movement right and what that is done not only does it make us reliant on the existence of that single charismatic story to the point that we have and we have no narrative for what black women's participation looks like except that they're the backbone like they do all of the work that makes makes these things  possible and in response to that i think that what you're seeing now with this generation of activists in intellectuals particularly like black labs matter movement is at the same time it highlights the deaths of black males many times over those of like women and those from hue community yeah so how i mean so it seems like how do  right now yeah so so that's certainly true that what garners the most attention is when we're talking about the deaths of young black men i think in movement spaces you'll find that people are doing the work of inclusion and just inclusion of like this depressing list of names that we have of the issues that affect all  as an organizing tool people respond to the narratives that they're already familiar with so we don't have a script right now for what it looks like to be a black woman and be sexually assaulted by a police officer and what the risk what the community's response to that is supposed to be we know it happens well we know it happens now particularly with what happened with office a whole school in oklahoma city read like a thirteen trans woman right like we know that this happens we don't have is an established script that media is able to latch on to to understand the issues and to push that forward we have that for black men because we have a long tradition of pushing that narrative forward of writing about it of producing literature around it of producing rallies and movements around it we don't have similar  we don't have similar infrastructure for how to include those stories in the broader conversation and so we're working on doing that but i mean how can we be i guess more intentional about that in the sense  times put them into environment that is retriggering the two that's wrong and that you know it's told sort of deal with that later and it's like no i want to deal with it now because i need to deal with it now i can't continue to suppress this right stop doing that to stop responding to it in the callous way we can we can no longer afford to write off the oppressive behavior of black men simply because of our experience of white supremacy that they simply because you experience one form of oppression does not give you license to enact another and i think that has escaped us  multiple facets of their identity i think that black men have to understand particularly in these movements spaces that politics that that seeks liberation for oneself is not liberty tory that's a politics of selfishness growing up as you know a sexual man who is constantly you know attempting to run away from any any sort of connotation that you may be  in it was like you know a slam dunk contest in terms of how can you top this with you know the bigotry of of the comments that were said and you know just thinking oh my god like this is  you know this is like just horrible this is and how we have sort of you know even in our oppression as you were saying that we continue to oppress others and the language that we use called you know coming out of the name and so forth some black nationalist circles that homosexuality is a white thing that black men who identify as gay are aligning themselves with an unnatural white creation meant to undermine our collective manhood black gay men we deceptive traitors invisible yet they have been continue to stand up for a black liberation that has failed to imagine them we believe in liberation dannielle more rights black liberation is love and love is the radical act of removing any barrier that keeps us apart we will in fact never collectively get free if our politics are weakened by love of mine who was in you know organizing space and you know attempting it tempting to sort of deal with some of the things that he had his own home for you know his own transfer of view and he's saying i'm like he's on the verge of tears and i am trying in the way we use the word the way in which we will deploy that word to describe everything in our lives that is distasteful everything becomes gay if we don't like it  and then later in order to separate yourself and distance oneself from the idea that you may be gay we employ things like no homo like pause the games that we play we say are harmless right like it's just about you know sexual i like like it's funny because you know the connotations of some things that may slip out of your mouth someone would say no homo after that  express that part of their identity so what does it mean to live in that kind of fear and i think that in the particular context of talking about black gay men the passages you read  idea of asserting one's own masculine identity on the basis of denying another humanity right so do we really want that to be the center of who we are and i think that that's the question that we realize or take account of the ways in which we have been interrogated the language language used we haven't incorporated many of the social media has been so vital because if you were to press me eight years ago before twitter was like of incredibly vital part of my life unlike my media diet i probably would have told you all kinds of trans phobic jokes and i wouldn't i would have thought they were hilarious and you would have laughed read along with me but in the age of social media it's a around sexual affirmation surgery rate and then understanding that not every trans person goes through surgery or medication like the role of presentation like all of these things that i just had access to  that like being put to put in front of me now and you have given what it would do is make you deeply uncomfortable and i think that that's the seed of change is when people are very uncomfortable because because you look back on your own behavior and you should be appalled you know and then you should and the next thing that you do is say how do i get better and it's a learning process continually it's an unlearning process because so much of it isn't doctrine it in you as a means replicating the what you want you've got and uncomfortable and someone is unseated you from that from the comfort of privilege what are you willing to do to change that and what are you willing to organized religion but i'm there because he asked me to be and you know other ministers going on with praying and everything for pastor and everybody else but then he comes up to  that you know they'll be somebody at that price for a lot that will save them and get them you know get him healed in by the way there's this petition to repeal you know the open bathroom law that we have in washington state because it's going to be some grown man who's coming people do you get people to become educated i mean how do we force that within i mean you make people uncomfortable but telling the truth like you in that moment you hear those things  and you stand up and you tell the truth right back in the face of the people telling the lie and that that comes with considerable risk and that's what i mean when it's like what are you willing to lose you would like if you were sitting in your home church the place that has offered you support and love through the good in the bad where maybe your children were baptized as well you got married all of that and you're hearing that are you willing to stand up in that church rebuke that and risk losing your church family the people that you know the people that have cared for you are you willing to lose that and i mean that's part of the problem is that so many of us are willing to lose anything and we're not willing to stand up and we're not willing to tell the truth and the difficult situation we have to recognize is that where change happens the truth is going to make people uncomfortable idea of others equality is going to make people uncomfortable but we have an obligation to fight on what is just and we have an obligation particularly of wimpy when we  speaking from positions within our identity that bestow power and privilege upon us to say that we would we don't want that power and privilege at the expense of someone else's humanity a member growing up believing similar to you i guess when you going up that that was the only way you could really change things it was going to work twice as hard to be considered you know have to you know be accommodating to not be the angry to not be rage feel and because because if you were you know that that was that you you know doing your movement doing anything else like could you just talk a little bit about you know where you see to describe was a tactic used by organizers to say essentially that you can't give any they can't lend any credence to the lies that white supremacy is going to tell because if we embody the opposite then it no longer has any leg to stand on right if they say that you're lazy but you work hard then you the fallacy then no longer can the are living proof that it's a lie then how can it continue it just doesn't take into account the way in which oppression works particularly when we're talking about racism because what happens is you just alter the rubric for what is deemed respectable and when blackness itself is already tomorrow today they say like well you just need those kids would pull up the pants and they would learn proper english and they got haircuts and then they got the gold teeth out the mouth all or whatever they stop listening to that rap music whatever and they would just have they would have so much more success they would be so much better off with you know what happened tomorrow if every black child in america had a three  behavior is just one that doesn't hold up to our history and so respectability politics essentially that belief put into work is that  labor built the infrastructure on which this country's wealth is built you know just the idea that we coming to the finish line in terms of opening up the questions to everybody but i do want to talk especially because you know town hall is known for white woke white progressives come  you don't have to sacrifice anything and that's and that's the problem that's what i was getting back to earlier about how we are unwilling to lose anything you know in the pursuit of justice we don't we don't want to we want everything the remain the same but we wanted to change well what it was more interested in in what way as someone who experiences like ideas of equality and justice know that we are beneficiary in ways of systems of oppression and decide to divest ourselves from those systems and that's what an accomplice disrupting of that and being an accomplice means that we're going to lose like people are going to lose jobs because we have systems built and the oppression of other people they are willing and that's and for a well that's what the restructuring of everything it's to ensure that when people lose the oppressive jobs are replacing those with things that are focused on the principles that we espouse i think that people don't see that other stuff you know and are willing to do the work to get there and so you scream and shout your support from the sidelines and you're not willing to accept the bumps and bruises and the  people's understanding of what the issues are who the players are and what they need to do in building alternative narratives to the dominant one people something we have to offer other ideas to people or else we rehash the same old ideas and try to expect new results if i'm not mistaken that's like close to the curious what your thoughts are and doing the work and having those one to one conversations and sometimes experiencing the pain when you realize someone just doesn't get it have you had that experience and what do you say to people who try and fail someone who go run i try to watch my soul intake and i don't read the comments on my articles like i got i was right i'm trying to take care of my own health so if i'm out and just talking to a brick wall you