Episode #15: O'Shea Jackson (Ice Cube) and the Ethics of "Stepping Up"

 

The brothers discuss Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson) leaping into Black political leadership at the last minute with his Contract with Black America. Many people have focused on some fairly amateurish media maneuvers Cube made in relation to the professional liars at the trump campaign. But to do so is to take some needed focus off of something more deeply concerning: Cube's obvious embrace of both Black capitalism and an anti-PanAfricanist movement for reparations called the ADOS movement. After meeting with Cube and explaining how trump is an existential threat to her and others working for Black lives, Alicia Garza of Black Lives Matter said, "ain’t no movement on an agenda without a movement. justice isn't a business transaction.." Regardless of what side one comes down on, this whole situation has many lessons for us to learn, including lessons about the importance of consulting with those who have already been doing the work, the timing of when we meet with our enemies, and how we enter the field of Black leadership.

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Episode #14: Is Django Unchained "Working Class" and 12 Years a Slave "Middle Class"? [Part 2 of 3]

In part 2 of their conversation about slavery films Django Unchained (2012) and 12 Years a Slave (2013), G & O continue by comparing the politics of Black working-class political demands versus Black middle-class political demands in the two films. O describes his concerns about Django's individualism serving as a fantasy of resistance to slavery. "Whose fantasies," O asks, "is Django responsible to?... We have to be critical both of the film and of our enjoyment of the film." G argues that finally having this kind of heroic action fantasy in the genre of slavery films, while problematic, is "useful" to the Black political imagination of freedom as well as to our individual Black lives. O and G also talk about the difference between a film like Django that fetishizes the violence of slavery versus one like 12 Years a Slave that handles it a manner that is more "responsible to Black suffering"-- but also deeply disturbing and heavy. TO BE CONTINUED... 

PART 1 OF THE CONVERSATION IS HERE

PART 3 OF THE CONVERSATION IS HERE

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Episode #13: Black TV Is Showing Up for Us Just in Time for the Fight!

"If you're a Black person in America, you've been seeing the way the world really works but it was never reflected in any sort of a broad way. It can always have the effect on you of making you feel like you were seeing something and it was only you that saw it. You're kind of wondering is there something wrong with you that you're only seeing how crazy this is or how violent that is or how racist this country is. And so you're going along sort of -- you and your network of people you can speak frankly with are the only ones who know those feelings, right? I'd say since The Wire there's been sort of an exposure of American society that, growing up in my generation, I never thought would be reflected on television the way it is."
--G, this episode

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In this episode, the brothers briefly discuss three TV shows -- The Wire, Underground, and Lovecraft Country -- Black stories that are really speaking to some concerns Black radicals have been raising for decades, shows that can be used to educate our movements, shows that make significant artistic contributions as well. **** NOTE ON SPOILERS!!*** We won't spoil Lovecraft Country for those who haven't seen it, but beware of spoilers in the first 3/4 of this podcast episode regarding The Wire and Underground if you haven't seen them yet!

Episode #12: This Is Not Unprecedented! Black Thought's Lessons for the Present (Fascist) Moment

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In South Africa, the white supremacist apartheid government spread quaaludes in the Black community to stifle the freedom movement. The CIA spread cocaine in the Black community in the u.s.a.

Oppressors share technologies for oppressing. There's a lot that is new and shocking about this moment. COVID in the air. Fascists and police collaborating to kill and hurt Black and Indigenous people. (Never mind the human-caused collapse of the global ecosystem our species needs to live.)

But some of what is being called "unprecedented" -- totally new and never before seen -- we have in fact seen before. To be as prepared as possible to resist what's coming, we must study the histories that hip us to how oppressors get down.

In this episode, G & O urge folks to check out Agents of Repression by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall and other radical histories that are rich with lessons our Black/Indigenous past offers us right now. These books, articles, and videos offer important insights into how oppressors try to crush the freedom movements oppressed people use to survive the onslaught of white supremacist fascism.