My Kids Are Too California For Tennessee | Trae Crowder

[00:00:00]My whole life growing up poor, rural Tennessee, whenever I heard others talk about white people, in my head that was always like Connecticut, yacht club, like dill Is this Is that dill? [ __ ] white people, right? Like Like white people.

[00:00:18]And and I didn't know what I was, but I knew I wasn't the same thing as them, and it was very confusing to me as a young man. Now that I'm an adult, it couldn't be more clear. I'm not white, I'm white trash, right? And it's like And it is different. It is different.

[00:00:34]There's a whole list of differences.

[00:00:36]Like white people got a trust fund, white trash people got trust issues, right? It's like White people got a sister who's secretly a lesbian, white trash people got a sister who's secretly their mama.

[00:00:51]White people play golf with their boss on the weekends, white trash people play scratch-offs with their rent money on payday, right?

[00:01:00]Different.

[00:01:03]The way they have kids is different.

[00:01:05]Nowadays, white people wait till they're 35 to have kids. They got in vitro clinics, ovulation calendars, fertility stuff. White trash people more fertile than a Amish cornfield, baby. You can't can't stop us from having kids, no matter how hard you try.

[00:01:20]The way they name those kids is different. White parents like, "Brayden, Paisley, it's time for your piccolo lessons, right?"

[00:01:29]White trash parents like, "Remington, bass master!

[00:01:35]Quit floating them frogs, get in the goddamn house!"

[00:01:38]>> [laughter] >> It's different. I know I know I have kids. Of course I have kids. I worry about my kids all the time on account of this trash blood I gave them, you know?

[00:01:53]Like Like I try to raise them right, but I worry at the end of the day my trash blood will be too much for them to overcome, you know? Like Like nobody should be forced to be given my blood, dude. Like the Red Cross looks at my family history and they're like, "We're good.

[00:02:07]>> [laughter] >> Thanks, though."

[00:02:10]Right? Like thank god for my wife for diluting it with hers a little bit, you know? But like I love my wife cuz she's from a different town in rural Tennessee. Like her blood ain't top shelf for nothing, you know? Like let's be honest. Like my wife's blood is like boxed wine, you know? It's like it's nobody's favorite, but people can handle it in a pinch, you know? My blood's just moonshine made in a radiator, dude. Like it's just it's just poison.

[00:02:39]That's all it is.

[00:02:41]Right? So I worry all the time about how my kids are going to turn out, right?

[00:02:44]But believe it or not, living in Los Angeles has kind of helped me with this cuz like you live in LA, you look around, you see plenty of rich white kids that are all [ __ ] up, too, you know? And it makes me feel better. I'm like, "Oh, well, maybe it's not about the blood. Maybe it's just a crapshoot either way, right?" But I got to say I feel like that's another way in which they're different is childhood trauma.

[00:03:04]Cuz like rich white kids are like, "Yeah, my mother was never very emotionally available, and I've got a lot of residual psychological scarring from that." And white trash kids are like, "I got beat with a tire iron."

[00:03:19]I have actual scars from that.

[00:03:21]>> [laughter] >> Like you see that? That's That's a tire iron scar.

[00:03:27]That's what that is.

[00:03:29]>> [laughter] >> I believe that's not You shouldn't do what I just did. You shouldn't like diminish other people's trauma just cuz you didn't personally experience it, but it's a whole thing with poor people.

[00:03:38]It's so hard for poor people to believe that rich people went through any kind of genuine adversity, no matter what the circumstances were, you know? Like when all that Epstein [ __ ] was coming out, I guarantee you there was people in trailer parks all around this country watching that like they got to go to a island?

[00:04:01]I was in my uncle's El Camino. What the [ __ ] >> [laughter] [laughter] >> Yeah, that one's rough. I know.

[00:04:18]>> [laughter] >> But yeah, I don't know. Obviously I'm just I'm just trying to be a good trash daddy. That's all I'm saying. Trying to be a good trash daddy.

[00:04:29]Sometimes I worry I've overcorrected.

[00:04:30]Sometimes I worry that mine are too California-y, you know, like like my older son he's a vegetarian for moral reasons, right? Which I That's fine with me, but you know what my papa would say about that? [ __ ] he could get canceled for it. I'll tell you that much. He wouldn't be good.

[00:04:44]>> [laughter] >> I don't I just look at him sometimes and I'm like, man, these kids are soft.

[00:04:48]They're [ __ ] soft, right? But I realized I'm such trash that what I think is soft is actually just a standard middle-class American upbringing, right? Like I saw what it is.

[00:04:59]Like like my wife went school clothes shopping for them and she let them pick through what she brought home and she told me she was like, yeah, they don't like anything in this pile, so I'm going to return those tomorrow. And I was like, what do you mean they don't like anything in that pile?

[00:05:14]What does that have to do with anything?

[00:05:18]They know when I was a kid school clothes came in a garbage bag after my older cousin went back to juvie.

[00:05:28]I've been a Raiders fan for 30 years cuz that [ __ ] Who gives a [ __ ] what they like, right?

[00:05:40]I'll try to roast them some fresh vegetables. I didn't know you could get vegetables not in a can till I was 28 years old, right? Like, blew my mind.

[00:05:49]Blew my mind. I try to share this wondrous revelation with my children.

[00:05:52]I'll roast them some fresh broccoli, cauliflower. I'll church it up, put some balsamic drizzle on it, whatever. They just don't me don't matter. They're just picky. They just won't eat it. They just don't want it. I'm sitting there like, I ate squirrels, god damn it.

[00:06:07]Who the [ __ ] DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

[00:06:11]THE OTHER DAY MY 11-YEAR-OLD got cold in the house, so he just went and turned the thermostat up a little bit, like didn't ask somebody nothing, didn't say nothing to nobody, just walked over there and just turned it up. I could feel the souls of my ancestors telling me to slap his ass.

[00:06:33]But I didn't do it. I didn't do it.

[00:06:36]Trying to be a good trash daddy. I am.

[00:06:40]I am definitely white trash. I want to tell y'all what I think is the single most white trash thing about me. This is a 100% true story. So, my parents got divorced when I was seven, and I know you're like, yeah, we figured.

[00:06:53]Can't believe they were married at all.

[00:06:55]Yeah, they were.

[00:06:56]They were. They got divorced back then, early '90s, rural Tennessee, parents get divorced, mama just kind of got custody by default. That's just how it worked, you know. So, my mom got custody of us, but my dad was like, okay, but they're going to live with me, though. And the judge was just like, ain't you got a Camaro to work on or something? So, just let her have them, bro. Right? But we lived with my dad, and because we lived with my dad, he didn't pay her any child support, cuz in his eyes, that was [ __ ] And apparently, that was [ __ ] is not a formally recognized legal defense for not paying child support, right? You can't just plead that some [ __ ] as it turns out.

[00:07:38]So, my dad accumulated all this debt to the state over the course of his life.

[00:07:42]When he dies years back, I had to reconcile all that, which I didn't know was a thing, but it is in the right circumstances. For example, if you owe money to the state. It's like everything with money works the same way, really.

[00:07:53]It's like, you know how like if you got a lot of money in the bank, the bank will give you more money for having all that money in the bank, but if you ain't got no money in the bank, the bank will charge you money for not having no money in the bank, right? Like everything works that way with money, including inheritance. It's like if you're rich and your parent dies, you're sad, but you got a new lake house or the throne of England or whatever. Like there's there's upsides to it. You know, but if you're poor and your parent dies, you're just you're poor plus they're poor. And I'm generationally poor, dude. I come from old no money.

[00:08:27]>> [applause] >> So, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do. My friends see this, they become concerned. They're like, "Damn, man, who you owe money to?" I was like, "I got to pay this [ __ ] child support, man." They're like, "Heard that, but I thought you had both of your kids." "No, not on them, on me."

[00:08:44]I'm so white trash, I got to pay my own child support.

[00:08:51]And the worst part is, I can't stand this old [ __ ] Always laying around my house, eating up my food, starting fights with my wife, talking [ __ ] about me in my own head. He sucks.

[00:09:03]>> [laughter] >> So, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do, and uh I finally get a call from the state of Tennessee one day. They're being very helpful. They're like, "Is there anything we can do to help? Like, are there any assets you can liquidate?" I was like, "What?" They're like, "Is there any [ __ ] you can sell?"

[00:09:18]I was like, "Oh, yeah."

[00:09:21]I was like, "Well, there's the house I grew up in where my mama still lives."

[00:09:25]And they're like, "That's perfect. So, what you do is you sell that house, use the proceeds to pay us off, do with the rest as you see fit." And it all kind of clicked for me in that moment. I was like, "So, you're telling me that I need to sell the house I grew up in where my mama still lives so I can pay y'all my own child support? And she was like, "Can we call you back?"

[00:09:48]And I got a call a couple hours later from her manager and he was like, "Yeah, listen, don't worry about that. We wiped all that out. We took care of it." And that's the first time in my life that I was like, "Damn, maybe I am white."