OFFICE HOURS: Sociolinguist Sunn m'Cheaux on Language, Race, and Culture

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:13]Peace family. This is your brother Mark Lamont Hill. Welcome to office hours.

[00:00:18]Every week here on the Mark Lamont Hill official YouTube channel, we hold night school. In fact, we hold it every night where we break down the most controversial subjects, most engaging debates, the most interesting topics going on in the world today. And then at the end of the week, we have office hours. That's where we not just uh talk about issues, but we do an intellectual deep dive just like you would in school.

[00:00:39]And we do it not just amongst each other, but we also pull in one of the brightest minds, one of the most interesting or creative or controversial voices in the world. Uh and get their expert opinion on issues that we care about. And this week we are blessed.

[00:00:55]Man, this brother is fascinating. He's smart. He's insightful.

[00:01:00]He is an expert on socio linguists.

[00:01:04]Social linguistics is late, y'all. I'm sorry. He's an expert on socio linguistics. Uh he's an expert on Galaguchi culture. He is a Galaguchi native. Uh he has to my knowledge been the only person to teach uh at Harvard University a course on on uh Gichi Galagichi. and he uh has an internet presence that I think is incredibly interesting and fascinating.

[00:01:28]He talks about language, he talks about race, he talks about politics and their intersections. And so when you see these dope 30-cond or 60-second videos or you know clips talking about all kinds of fascinating things that are going on in the world based on the news cycle or that are enduring themes, you know that you are with this brother. His name is son Michelle and he is one of the smartest, most interesting social linguistics on the planet today and certainly one of our greatest minds on black language, black culture, black politics and Gulligi culture and politics as well. Man, let's bring him on to the show, my brother. It's so good to see you.

[00:02:05]>> Peace, peace, peace. Likewise. It's very good to see you as well. Been wanting to rap with you for a minute, for a hot minute.

[00:02:11]>> Yes, me too. Me too, man. It's it's a blessing to do it here. uh talk to me h about um your journey >> first of all into this space because one day I looked on my phone and I saw you and I saw the repost and the retweet.

[00:02:27]You know you're doing well when people start bootlegging your stuff. I started seeing people ripping the videos and I said, "Oh, he's on to something here."

[00:02:35]Um >> yeah, >> but you don't just pop up on the internet one day. What's What's the journey?

[00:02:40]Um the the journey um started ultimately um and and I I hate to go too far back but but it but it legitimately does start um at a very very early age.

[00:02:54]>> Um my father was um growing up my mother was a minister and my father was excuse me my mother was a missionary my father was a minister in the Pentecostal holiness church and so I grew up around Yeah. Yeah. So, I I I grew up around the word. Um, and my father was a very charismatic um, you know, figure, very, you know, good-looking man's foots on his feet and just great with words. Um, but largely self-educated.

[00:03:25]Um, and so his approach to, uh, educating and enlightening the masses was always this very he spoke in parables. Um, he spoke an accessible language. um use very creative uh ways of of communicating an idea so that uh regardless of how well educated or not a person was the information was able to connect and uh that was very influential on on me uh growing up um so that when I started to encounter some things that let's just say uh turned me into an at risk um sort of you know problem child um I was very intelligent um but also had um issues that I I had issues uh articulating. So I would do that through creative uh ways whether um through music and poetry and writing and just things of that nature um creatively. Um and so being able to communicate creatively and also having that influence of really strong powerful messengers in my immediate family began uh forming the the the person that I would end up becoming. Um, but a lot of it was, you know, forged by fire, you know. Um, you know, even the way that this right here, this ain't even my my regular accent. This my accent, you know, I've been shut down.

[00:04:43]So, being able to close switch, I came by that uh by by that by trial by fire.

[00:04:48]Um, being able to see how differently I was treated when I use my regular accent, what sound like a franch or when I switch up into something that sounds a little bit more stretched like this. um how you were treated differently, how that that the way that you sounded was associated with innocence or guilt. Um the way that we that I presented myself articulating myself um came with a lot of strings attached that I had to find out the hard way. And so as time would go on um as a creative um and just a person who just had a a strong compulsion to to speak, I felt like I was walking around all the time with this hive in my chest that I could just explode and only the skin was keeping it contained. And so I had to find ways of communicating that. And so I just uh fell in love with words. Um I when people would ask me what I wanted for a gift, I would say like a thesaurus or a dictionary. You know, I was uh reading and you know like Greek, you know, mythology and Asop's fables and things like that. When I was like four years old, I started songwriting. And so I was way ahead of my time as far as communicating was concerned. Um, and just being immersed into words, the way that typography, the way that words looked together on a sign, the way that they sounded together, uh, diff thongs, the way that two letters could come together and make a sound, all of this stuff was stuff that before I knew what it was, um, it presented itself to me as a pathway uh, going forward. And so, uh, fast forwarding to the opportunities that I I I had as an artist and an entertainer and a writer, a slam poet, someone who used communication for a living. Um, I would be encouraged to, well, I I should actually say the other way. I would be discouraged from using my native tongue. there there are lots of people who would say that you know I I was too smart to talk down that way.

[00:06:48]um and that I shouldn't when they would hear me be able to articulate like these really great eloquent um passages and Shakespearean um you know u monologues and things of that nature and then switch over to my my regular accent that even the people who look like me especially the people who look like me encourage me to let it go to cut it loose don't talk down um that way that uh me being uh a Charleston Gulligi u would hinder my um success and I became committed to the idea that I would not be successful despite being Galagicha but I would be successful because in part largely in part because I'm I'm Giggichi and that opportunity eventually presented itself for me to uh to do exactly that. But once I got to that point I realized it wasn't about just me anymore. It it wasn't my my path anymore. my my my community and everyone who looked and sounded just like I did.

[00:07:49]Um, and hearing stories about, you know, people having their kids brought in for parent teacher meetings because they were have they had speech impediments when in fact when you get to the teacher meeting it's just their accent. You know, they felt like the entire dialect and accent was was an impediment. So once I was able to get on at at um Harvard and represent that lifelong journey of coming into my own linguistically um I just felt an obligation to take all that I had learned um all the the lessons that I learned the especially the ones that I learned the hard way and put them out for the world. number one first and foremost for my own community to be inspired to be to be inspired to be informed to be enlightened to not only know how to speak the language but to know about the language that was our own I wanted us to be affirmed first and foremost even um I end all of my uh videos with wait and that's because I I want the community to know first and foremost when I shine you shine we shine together um there are certain times when I'll end a very blistering ing segment um with a wink and people think that I'm that I'm flirting like I'm trying to be cute but that's not actually what I'm doing. There's sometimes when you know you just made a couple moves and you know or you finesse the opposition and that is for if you know you know sort of like yeah we got this that's that's me doing this to the people who know that um that we in here and so that was one of the things that I wanted to do is like the the journey to being to social linguistics um before I even knew that it was a field was taking a look at how my language language lived and breathed in the world in a very real sort of tangible way. How that was impacting my life, how it was impacting other people's life, the power structures around it. The fact that the more I learned about the way that language worked, the more I realized it was more of a a structural concept than it was a real tangible sort of um objective empirical thing like mathematics. Um it it wasn't like that. Um, but unlike science, which people think of as an objective thing, it doesn't improve itself. Language for the most part adheres to the the the whims of the power structure, those who are in in control. And that's something that I felt like needed to be con deconstructed, but I couldn't do it from the outside. So, I had this sort of spook who sat by the door uh mentality that if I could get on the inside, I could possibly make a change from the inside of academia. as someone who was essentially shut out of academia. I wasn't a great student. I was a brilliant student. I was an intelligent student. I tested very well. But as far as my day-to-day life living as a student in classes, I was very disconnected and I felt like there was just another way. There was a better way. There was another way. And it all began with the way that we communicated.

[00:10:51]And so that's what became essentially I I used to say it was my my purpose, but to me I feel like it's it's my dharma.

[00:10:58]Um the thing that that that feels like it's a whole body um immersion of the outside and the inside coming together as one and making things make sense that before um I I I simply could not. But now I want to help it make sense for other people who are in the position that I was in.

[00:11:17]>> I got a million questions for you. But but but just for for election purposes, what are some examples of things that you've helped make sense of for people?

[00:11:26]>> Um there there are a few uh there there there are many. Um first and foremost, I think people have the idea that language is this this sort of benign thing. They believe that languages passed down uh by way of dictionaries because these scholars a long time ago somehow captured these words and decided these would be the ways that we would express these thoughts and that was simply the way that it that it was. It was just passed down like heirlooms and every now and then scholars would give us more words that we could use. But that's far from the truth. That's that's not how words come into existence. Um, the whole concept of real words versus fake words. There's no such thing as a real word versus a fake word. All words words. It's all expressions of of thought don't necessarily have to be uh a a word that has a long animology. If you think of a word right now off the top of your head that nobody ever heard before that communicates an idea, I pick up on that word to understand the concept that you'll communicate. It's real there. There it is. that that word is just as valid as a word that's a thousand years old. So, so the word real then is doing a certain amount of political work and and and socioultural work because it's not about you know if if I mean just to to make it clear I mean if I call this a bottle >> right >> um a lot of us call this a bottle >> right >> and so if I said pass me the bottle >> you understand that >> right >> but if I decided today to call it a cooaka >> and tomorrow I said yo pass me a coojiwaka and you did yeah >> it has it has no This is about between the the the signifier and the signifier. This is about this this is about meaning and establishing meaning and and a shared meaning. Language is a social practice.

[00:13:16]>> And so it's about the meaning that's shared. But the problem is >> this is what I'd love your insight on.

[00:13:22]>> You know, when it come to black folk, it's not just black folk, but but I'm I'm primarily concerned with black folk.

[00:13:28]When it comes to black folks, so many of the ways that we engage the world, so much of our language that is used, altered, reimagined, reshaped, recrafted, whatever, um, it's not seen as a as a sign of our ingenuity, our genius. Right.

[00:13:43]>> Uh, there's no taking account for the reasons why we do it. They just say stuff like irregardless ain't a word.

[00:13:50]>> Right. Right. Despite the fact that irregardless is 231 years old and has been standardized in the dictionary for 114 years old. How long does the word need to be fake but in general use before it becomes real? Like what would determine that? Do you see what I'm saying? Like at some point in time like English itself, people talk about proper versus improper English. At one point in time, English itself as a language was improper. It was a gutter language. It was not a language prestige. And so when the entire language itself is considered not proper, it's considered a a language of of lowerass people, it's not Latin.

[00:14:32]um it doesn't have the same general rules as Latin to the point where the founding fathers of English scholarship as a language started borrowing from Latin and French and other rules in order to make English seem a lot more legitimate to make it seem as in alignment with these other prestigious languages. Um, but English the entire time had not only been borrowing words, borrowing rules, but also borrowing words and grammar and all these different things to compose itself. But it still wasn't considered a prestigious language until English imperialism, English colonialism. It was when they said, "No, no, no. That's how you say it." Like, "No, no, no, no. That no, maybe I didn't make myself clear. this is the new word >> and the rest of the world's like, "Hey, hey, hey, you got it, man. You you got it.

[00:15:28]>> It's not tomato anymore. It is tomato.

[00:15:30]You got it.

[00:15:31]>> Hey, hey, you got it." And even when it came to the colonial um rephrasings and respellings of word, it was very intentional. They're they're they intentionally miss well, I would say, well, respelled. when they do it, they're respelling, restandardizing the words in order to make it look different, in order to make it sound different in in in in pursuit of revolution, in pursuit of liberation, you have a group of people who I think many people forget when they talk about, you know, how uh the differences between Americans and say to say the British, I'm like, you you know, you are the former they are formerly British like y'all y'all brought yourselves here and and had a a dispute amongst yourselves that led to a fracture between them and those here.

[00:16:25]Notice I didn't say them and us, them and them and they. The these two factions had their beefs with one another. Um, and they intentionally changed these words. They intentionally changed the phrasing. They intentionally changed their accent. But that even happened in England itself when it comes to like the Queen's English, the the Queen's sort of posh accent. Some some of those accents were just made up because they wanted to sound different from commoners. And the more the commoners sounded like them and took on their accent, they would then again change their accent because they wanted distance between themselves and the commoners. And that sort of happened in reverse in the states except that it was a part of distancing themselves from their motherland by saying things differently. So an so tell me this then what really is the determining factor of standardization if you have an entire colony of people who are intentionally in their reference books in their dictionaries respelling words changing the accents doing these things on purpose in order to make a distinction between them and their mother form of English which there's varieties of English versus the people who to whom for whom English was imposed on No, I was say it reminds me of that old uh witicism, a language is a dialect with an army and a navy, you know, >> right?

[00:17:51]>> You know, and and and when we think about that in this context, it makes sense then that black people who have been so disempowered >> would always have um our linguistic practices called into question. the legitimacy of our language is always going to be uh questioned or or or or undermined because we've never had the political power, >> right, >> or the social position to have it elevated.

[00:18:20]>> Um but even beyond that, in some ways, it it it's being used to as a signpost of our lack of intelligence. So, it's not just y'all have substandard language, it's y'all are substandard people, and people itself might be generous. And the evidence of it becomes look at how they talk. Right. Right.

[00:18:38]That's that's and see that's the part of uh one of the things that really fascinates me and and really um impassions me about uh social linguist social linguistics because um you start to peel back the layers you're what with social linguistics um versus say linguistics. Linguistics is talking about basically the anatomy of language.

[00:19:00]Whereas social linguistics is more about not only the anatomy of language but how language engages and interacts with social factors that influence uh the development of language, how we use language. Uh denotation versus connotation and how semantics can inform um the distance between those two things. And so with me, when you start to realize that's not just a phrase, that whole dialect is just, you know, basically, you know, with an army and a navy like that, that's that's not actually just a uh a figurative uh thing. That's a that's a very real thing. Linguistic imperialism is a thing.

[00:19:37]>> When imperialists take over a people, when they colonize a people, the first order at the top of the list, the first order of things that they typically do is strip them of their language. They don't want them speaking their language.

[00:19:50]They stigmatize and even ban their language because if you have your own language, especially a language that the colonizer doesn't speak, um you can organize, you can come together. There are things that you can do right underneath their nose that they don't want you to be able to do. Um and so they'll ban the language. And you we've seen this take place in Hawaii. We've seen this take place in South America.

[00:20:12]We've seen this take place in the Caribbean. We've seen it take place everywhere. you you've even seen it take place in Ireland um in in in in in the UK where they once again would go to war and colonize these people, ban their language um you know Scots, Gaelic, you know, Irish uh and force them to speak English in a way that would allow them to keep their thumb on the pulse of those people. You can never truly articulate your liberation from your colonizer if you're forced to articulate your liberation in the tongue of your colonizer.

[00:20:46]>> Right?

[00:20:47]>> And and so it's to some degree the oppressor will always have um at least one pinky toe on the scale in in their favor. And so the idea that how you speak like the the whether you've mastered this variation of English having anything to do with your level of intelligence makes no sense whatsoever because you could be someone who's a who's a genius who just simply doesn't even speak English. um they'll take I've seen it happen many of times before where there are uh monilingual you know Americans who only speak English barely but only speak English and they'll take someone who's you know multilingual someone who's speaks Spanish and English but the English isn't so great and they'll say that that person's unintelligent but you can't speak Spanish >> right >> you know there so what are we even talking about here and also that's not a measure of intelligence Articulation is not a measure of intelligence in regards to what you know. There are so many different reasons as to why a person may communicate in a particular way that has nothing at all to do with how smart you are or are not. And having all those things tied together to use those as a measure of a person's intelligence, of a person's character, of a person's culture. The best way that you can achieve this is not by forcing the issue yourself as the oppressor. The most effective way is to make these people believe that it's their idea.

[00:22:22]>> Yeah.

[00:22:23]>> It's it's the most effective way so that when you hear black Americans, for example, speaking with eiuba, you know, grammar like the gram the heritage languages that at one point in time our ancestors speak. If you're forced to take the English and put it on top of that and they move it around into where I know this is a verb, this is a noun and verb tense um agreement has to be a particular way in my mother tongue.

[00:22:53]When I apply that to English, it now moves those words around in places that >> and I'll give you well I'll give you an example like for example what probably one of the clearest examples would be um if in the event that we have like B verbs are am um you know I am going to the sto okay and say I going to the sto that point if I say hey I go to the store you want something at that point in time you're going to be like I don't I don't understand what you mean. I go into the stoic, you know, what is you know exactly what I mean if I take it out if I don't need it in that sentence.

[00:23:30]And there's sometimes where those those B verbs just they just don't exist in your mother language. They don't they that's not how we said uh the habitual be or the the the um >> yeah that's that's it's simply we don't need it. So there's are many of the languages just aren't wasteful. And so you remember now with English that's not always one set of rule like one Germanic because English is originally a Germanic language. We're not all together using just Germanic grammar and we're putting on English on top of we're also borrowing from uh two one-third uh Latin oneird French. Uh, so it's two-third Latin and French, English vocabulary.

[00:24:11]Two-3s Latin and French and only about maybe 20% of it, 22% of it is like Germanic words and the rest of it is like languages that have been um filler.

[00:24:20]Now, now I I would argue that while we don't have as many lone words from the ancestral African languages, that's where a large portion of the influence, the X factor in our way of speaking is coming from. Well, that's what I was thinking when you were talking about the habitual be or the zero copular like the the idea of because when we're taught proper English, you know, if I want to talk about a habitual action, I say, you know, I go to the store or I go to the store regularly. I can say something to make that clear like I'll be going.

[00:24:56]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:56]>> I'll be going. And to me, that's very clear.

[00:25:02]>> Mhm.

[00:25:03]um prec analytically and it's very specific and precise linguistically it conveys a very specific idea >> and when I think about retentions as I understand them >> from from the mother tongues of Africa many obviously >> that s it's not a coincidence that people on the continent use the habitual be >> in various West African languages and that we use right here in black English, black American English.

[00:25:35]>> Right. Right.

[00:25:36]>> Irrespective of of of where you are geographically located, you know, I mean, there are people in Alabama and people in Chicago, although that's not really that different, but people, you know, people all over the country who wherever they were geographically located, there were a lot there's so much similarity in our English or in our language and it ties back to Africa. I'm fascinated by that.

[00:25:58]>> How that happened, >> right? And see there's there's I I I feel like I have to say this because we're on the internet together. So we're on social media together. So I I already know if this part of the segment is seen, there's a there's a section a subset of people who will say it ain't come from Africa. It ain't got nothing to do with Africa. We you know they're going to say that. They're going to say that, you know, we're the the original um indigenous people of this island. Somebody told me the other day that we our mother tongue is actually English and we taught it to the Europeans. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that's out there and I like to make us feel good. I like to make us feel affirmed when possible. I I I I really do. But there's some things I just not gonna be able to do it. I'm I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to affirm everything that feels good to hear. Um, and one of those things is I'm I'm just not with the whole we have nothing to do with Africa. None of our language came from Africa. Like we're just completely separate from Africa. Like come on, bro.

[00:27:06]And and I don't I don't mind.

[00:27:07]>> Wasn't that refuted in there? Like >> Yeah, it Yeah, it was thoroughly refuted. it it but I I think we're in a space now with this and see this doubles back goes back to the the uh question that you asked before about um telling people something that they they may not know. Um what what is it what are some of the things that you know that you introduce them to may not know?

[00:27:27]This is where that comes in handy because when you can show that the um habitual be exists here and there. When you can show that gumbo is a word and what it means and and it you know for okra like it exists there and here when you can show that the red rice here the jumbolaya there and the you know jolaf there you know have similar ingredients here and you know that that there's a connection there cuisine wise I think I think a lot of Mexicans are having a rude awakening now when they see how much of their cuisine was influenced by Africans um as well and and some of them are having to come to terms with that um and it seems thing with language, you have these uh linguistic breadcrumbs that trail from point A to B to C. And you have to ask yourself, how does that happen? Like, and and I think that what we're talking about when we talk about people who um want to deny the existence of the connection, again, that's for social political reasons. You you just don't like the way that history has has unfurled and often times it feels like it's not in your favor. um you don't like the way that people engage. Um you you don't you don't have an affinity for one another when you're put in these communities and sometimes there's rivalries within the same communities. Um and so after a while these feelings stir up into an ideology that you will stand 10 toes down on, but it's hard to get an academic to agree with it. Well, it's it's impossible to get a credible academic at least um to agree with it.

[00:28:58]And so that kicks in with this whole sort of anti-intellectual um you know discourse uh that piles on uh these these inconvenient facts that the language kind of is what it is and why the language came to be what it is.

[00:29:14]There are some other academics who will say, "Oh, well, uh, one in particular who always comes up whenever there's uh a, you know, some racist dope who's trying to delegitimize uh, black English, they'll mention this guy's name and say, well, he said that black English is just poor white dialect."

[00:29:38]Like, you just got everything from poor white English people. Um, and it does really have a distinction of its own.

[00:29:45]This accent, these words like in it and all these other things just came from poor white people because those were the people that you uh were in close proximity with. Now, to some degree, there's some truth to that for obvious reasons.

[00:29:59]>> I can't be 100% wrong, but that's not the point. Yeah, please. No, no. There's be in in order for that to be true, you have to treat the ancestors minds like a hard drive that you wiped completely clean and just installed poor white English in the brain with no influence whatso like what happened to the languages that were already in their brains?

[00:30:26]Where did they go? Where did the influence of those languages go? Are you under the impression that these people who were various ages old, adults, children, whoever, um, and also had thousands of years of experience of creating new languages in as people who were trading with one another. they come together and create a a new language in order to be able to engage in trade or in war where one uh you know nation would take over another and bring in those people as as members of that nation and now they have to figure out how to communicate. So it's not like we don't know how to adapt language wise.

[00:31:06]It's not like we haven't had any experience with this before. This just happens to be under duress and we're not uh and we're banned from being literate in writing um in these new languages.

[00:31:16]But we certainly know how to grow a language. We've been doing it. And so when you say that the African language, the the African linguistic lineage just disappeared, where has that happened?

[00:31:32]What what evidence has is there that that has happened? How has that even jived with what we're currently seeing?

[00:31:39]So you think that the people who's who are currently still responsible for many of the pop culture terms, the keeping the slang alive, many of the common terms, the way that we use language is is so unconventional. Some of the terms that we do use hadn't even really been used that way. Like the language that we use to be cool, like cool or the term crazy, but as in good or crazy as a man, that's crazy. Those are are are adaptations by by black people. Even um with Cap Callaway with this He's dictionary that was at the turn of the century and and things like you know like the the term cap that we use now like no cap that that derived from hat high hat like high cap high hat was a term that was used back then for somebody who was just putting on airs pretending and now again it still means all these years later um over 100 years later it means the same thing and that's back in our greatgrandparents generation creating words that are still in use today in 2026. And you're telling me that these people, as innovative as they are and as innovative as they were, you just install the language in them by ear and they forgot all of their basic construction that they were currently speaking before. That it just doesn't make sense.

[00:33:05]>> In the early part of the 20th century, the debates between uh E. Franklin Frasier and Melville Herskovitz. Um, for those watching, you know, E.

[00:33:14]Franklin Frasier, very prominent black sociologist, uh, Howard University. My wife will make me shout shout that out.

[00:33:21]Uh, and, uh, and Mel Herskovich was a white uh, Jewish uh, anthropologist.

[00:33:30]And interestingly enough, the debate was whether or not there were retentions, whether or not there were African retentions uh that formerly enslaved folk held on to or whether to, as you just said, we were kind of just rebooted and suddenly were black people doing stuff. It was it was Herskovitz who was arguing, nah, they they black folk held on to stuff, whether it was water emergent rel uh religions, whether it was linguistic stuff, whether it was ways of worship.

[00:33:59]He was like, "No, there's plenty of Africa in in these people still."

[00:34:03]>> Right. Right. Right.

[00:34:05]>> And so it's interesting even here 100 years after that now people are almost reigniting those debates. But I think people find it back then and and certainly now easier to to believe or to understand people holding on to practices, cultural practices, social practices. Oh, this is how you worship.

[00:34:23]Oh, this is how you engage uh the spirit. this, you know, when Dubo goes in and souls black folk when Dubo goes into the Tennessee backwoods and watches the what he calls the frenzy, which was really very much what you would call, I'm sure, >> um, a a just a normal church Sunday, you know, 12 hours long, >> you know, you know, people getting filled with the spirit, people are shouting, people are engaged in uh, he I mean, he called it like a a a demonic possession, but, you know, So which you know but >> it it was how it was it was how he was making sense of um spirit possession. It was how he's making sense of glosselia, you know, people speaking in tongues, >> you know, all of these things just look like church to a whole bunch of folk, >> right?

[00:35:13]>> And um but it looks different from the outside. But people can make sense of that regards to their judgments about it.

[00:35:20]>> But language gets more complicated because people will just say, well, you didn't speak English on the continent.

[00:35:26]Wherever whatever country you came from, you didn't speak English. Now you are.

[00:35:31]So whatever English you're speaking was given to you not understanding the complexity of cultural memory, not understanding the complexity of of of sort of linguistic conversion. I mean you can absolutely learn a new language and still speak it or or or dip it in the waters of your own right >> cultural history, >> right?

[00:35:48]>> That happens all the time.

[00:35:50]>> We see that with >> Yeah. We see that with standard standardization. what what what you're talking about um under underneath all the layers of what we're talking about is like standardization. Um it is a question of what is a legitimate expression language wise. What what is a legitimate versus an illegitimate expression? Um even in dictionaries they'll say, "Oh, it's informal." Like you couldn't just put it in the dictionary. You had to make sure that you put that it was informal. Um so that people would know that, yeah, it's in there, but is it in there? you know, sort of thing. Um, look, either it's a word and it's in a dictionary or it's not. I don't need you to to tell me whether it's formal, informal, or not because these things happen to happen to evolve.

[00:36:32]>> Dictionary though, help me understand it. Just again, I want the audience to understand because I think some people I'll be on Joe Button podcast sometime and we'll be debating something >> and I'll and I'll be making a claim and then they'll say, "Well, let's look it up and find out the truth." So, the dictionary becomes the ultimate court of appeal.

[00:36:48]>> And I'm like, "That's not what dictionaries do." That absolutely is not what dictionaries do. I want you to think about a dictionary like it's a photo album. Um or or if anything, think of it like even if it's a a a yearbook and it's like you on the Joe Button Pod podcast and you're having a debate about what a person looks like, like a a specific individual, what that person looks like, and you say, "This person looks like they do in 2026." You say, "Well, you know, I know that guy." he has a beard. Um, he was kind of balding at the top and they're like, "No, no, no. That's not what he looks like." And they said, "Well, let's go to the yearbook and see what he actually looks like." And they pull out a yearbook and they show him in high school. And you're like, "But that's what he looked like in in high school. That's that's not what he looks like today. I'm telling you, this is what he looks like today." And they're saying, "No, no, no. The way that he looks like today is not legitimate because this is what he looked like years ago. And what came first is the only thing that's proper."

[00:37:49]Like that wouldn't make sense if you're talking about a photograph of a person and that person getting older. Well, what a word meant a hundred years ago, 200 years ago, it might have grown and evolved since then to have different meanings. The connotation might have changed by then. If somebody asks you, "What is a mouse?" Okay, you got a couple of options.

[00:38:13]Either a piece a tech device or a rodent. At one point in time when the word mouse was invented, there was no technology to associate it with. If someone asked, you know, what's what's, you know, five carats, are we talking about five carats? Are we talking about a diamond?

[00:38:31]>> Like there, you know, so what are we really talking about when we're saying that what a word means is the way that that word was captured x amount of years ago? Because that is still subject to change and evolve over time. A dictionary is essentially a snapshot of how a word has been being used up to that point in a particular society.

[00:38:53]>> And it's descriptive largely, not prescriptive. It's telling us 100% descriptive, >> right? And people use it as if it says, "No, this is this is what it's this is how you're supposed to use it."

[00:39:06]>> I'm like, "No, the dictionaries are trying to keep are trying to catch up to us, >> right? Not the other way around.

[00:39:11]It's it's you know dictionaries do not create words for people. People create words for dictionaries. That's >> yes >> that's fundamentally what it is. It's telling us how these words have been used up to this point and how they these words can be used not how these words must be used. But there's also a space that's left for how these words can grow depending on how you particularly use them. Like say for example in the Gulla language um we use the word monkey in a lot of different ways. Monkey can either be first of all the actual animal the monkey um or the monkey can be everything from a body part to yeah everything from a body part to a heat stroke. And so if somebody's you tell you it's either a noun or a verb and as a heat stroke it's a it's a it's a verb. If somebody say don't go out monkey in the sun then they're telling you don't go out and have a heat stroke.

[00:40:12]Be careful don't throw monkey out there.

[00:40:14]Monkey would be a a verb or a heat stroke. And so in that instance you need connotation. You need context in order to be able to understand what it means.

[00:40:26]And and and that's what I say when people talk about gatekeeping.

[00:40:30]they're doing it wrong. Like you're when we talk about gatekeeping black language, when we talk about gatekeeping African African-American English, uh often what we're trying to do is we we think that oh, the gatekeeper is the is the keeper of the secrets. They're the person who gets a lock box, put all our stuff in it, and make sure nobody has access to it. That's not what gatekeeping is. Gatekeeping in a very literal sense is the person who's at the gate, that controls the flow, the in and out, the access uh on either side of the gate. Now, the reason that that's important is you have to let certain things out just like you have to let certain things in. It's your judgment to determine which way these things flow.

[00:41:10]It is not keep the the gate shut because that won't give the people on the inside of the gate room to grow, room to expand. You need to be able to expand.

[00:41:21]When we get to the point where we're talking about standardization and and confining our own language, which is based on like jazz music, it's the art of improvisation in but in language form. And when we start to stifle that in order to gatekeep it under a lock box, then that defies the very the the thing that brought the language into fruition and turns it into the thing that we're trying to oppose.

[00:41:45]>> And so that's that's not what gatekeeping is in a sense. You gatekeep by having strong community. You gatekeep by holding on to context. You gatekeep by having people who are trusted, informed, enlightened educators, people who can teach the language pass it on, okay? And trust their judgment as to how that language can be grown. Because if we simply stop speaking it, if we simply start saying we're going to keep it a secret and don't tell anybody anything, first of all, the language is going to die out. It that's that's one of languages do die. And people have this misunderstanding that languages just kind of stick around forever as long as the people who speak it stick around forever. But the people who speak it have social factors in their lives that determine the way that they speak on a day-to-day basis. And just because you're still here doesn't mean that the way that you spoke 20 years ago is still going to be the way that you'll speak 20 years from now. And so languages can die. Most instances when languages die, they didn't just die. They were murdered. They were murdered by the powers that be that created these very strict constraints as to how you can express yourself and ascend and be in be, you know, affluent to gain things in life. You have to be able to express yourself in particular ways. And over the course of time that way of speaking becomes more of a liability than an asset. And so the language dies a long death by way of strangulation.

[00:43:18]So when people are like speaking Dutch, >> right?

[00:43:24]>> There are many people would argue that's not that that language isn't on the upswing, >> right?

[00:43:30]>> Latin obviously died as as a spoken language.

[00:43:35]>> Yeah. in and in and it's still used in Cath Catholicism and and science and and it's still used in in certain ways but as a day-to-day language >> spoken not as a spoken language you know I I I've studied Arabic for decades and you know formal mo formal you know classical Arabic or even modern standard Arabic is not a spoken language is used in very specific contexts >> right >> um >> and so you can watch languages die or watch or you can watch languages shift in terms of how and where they're used, >> right?

[00:44:09]>> I'm I'm trying to think about this Gulla language thing though >> because there's so much of what you've talked about is embodied in in in Gull language. First of all, >> there are people out there who don't know what Gulla >> or Gichi culture is. Can can you break that down?

[00:44:25]>> I I want to know because growing up in North Philly, we had some transplants. My parent my family came from Georgia. Um, very small town in Georgia, but uh, when they moved, there were a lot of South Carolina people. And my aunt, so my aunt Sarah lived around the corner from us in North Philly. And she would sit on the porch and talk to this lady, Miss uh, who was Miss Lillian.

[00:44:52]And I thought Miss Lillian talked a little different, >> but my whole family's from the south, so everybody sounded country to me, >> right?

[00:44:59]>> But Miss Lillian did sound like the other country folk, >> right? and she would use uh her uses of pronouns and and and and just her her language was very like she wouldn't say she she would say her sometimes she would she would do things that were very just distinct from what I was used to even with black English and I didn't think much of it I just literally talked a little different >> and as I got older I remember my mom or my family members including my mom people neighbor would be like yo we shi But they would say it very disparagingly.

[00:45:36]>> Yeah.

[00:45:39]>> She talk, you know, she talk Gei. They say she is GI or she talk Geeki.

[00:45:42]>> Yeah.

[00:45:43]>> And I didn't know what Gei was.

[00:45:46]>> I just knew it was something you ain't want to do.

[00:45:48]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that interestingly that even uh existed in the Gulligi community. So either in the goi community our own identity was used as a measure of of of of having arrived or being deprived like even in our own community.

[00:46:07]>> Okay. So so break it down for us. give like me a proper, you know, mom my mom said like she from the islands, you know, there' be all these ways that they would describe her that didn't quite make sense and I only >> as an adult who read realized, oh, she was Gei. Oh, she and I just started to piece it together.

[00:46:27]>> What is Gulligi as a community, as a culture, and and and including the language piece of it and and and why do you study it? Um the the the the first I want to give it this a shout out to Lorenzo Da Turner.

[00:46:46]Lorenzo Da Turner um is the the godfather of Gulla um academia is Gulla Academics. Like he's the he's the first person to hear the language at South Carolina College which is now South Carolina State uh University. And um at the time he would he was uh you know a professor there and he was he was hearing the students speak in a way that sounded so familiar to what he had come to know as African languages. And it was like nothing he had heard in communities in other parts of the country from black people. And he was wondering how is this happening? Uh what is the immediate influence? It just really piqu his curiosity to know more about it. and he ended up writing um the this the first manual like linguistic you know really uh intensive manual on the language unpacking the linguistics the Africanisms in the Gulla language um and that takes us a little bit further back to Gulligi people as a people um are believed to be West African predominantly West African from the Sierra Leone region in um in in in that area, West African uh people whose ancestors were brought over um to the Americas and deposited in the barrier islands off the coast of uh North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida from about Wilmington, North Carolina, 35 miles inland going down to about Jacksonville, Florida roughly. Um, and and I don't want to say that's a hard uh line because there are people who live outside of those those lines and some who migrated as far as Phil and other parts of the country, but that's where they're mostly where where we're mostly concentrated. Um what's unique about the barrier island and main um the coastal island uh Golichi people is because of the these where it was a very harsh um land in the marsh uh growing rice and things of that nature and also the lack of a bridge. Uh because of that they had what they would call free time. um they needed very few like fewer overseers in order to be able to watch a group of or a community of Gulligi people who had a lot more time in isolation to hold on to to retain a lot of our Africanness. So, Galaguchi people are regarded as a subset of African-Americans who've retained more of their Africanness than linguistically and culturally than anyone else largely due to um you the conditions that we were developing our culture in. I want to be sure that I I point out that some people take that as, "Oh, you think y'all blacker than us?" Like, no, that's that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that as it pertains to traditions, food ways, uh, culture practices, things of that nature, because we were doing these things in isolation and we were further away from influences um, or you know, outside influences with the exception of indigenous peoples and whatever whatever few Europeans that we came into contact with, we were able to maintain more of our Africanness um, than other people who had been distributed in spaces where they were more oppressed and more and and essentially had it more stripped away from them. Um and so Galagiji people today um one of the popular misconceptions one of the many popular misconceptions is people associate Galagichi peoples specifically with uh Charleston, South Carolina, my hometown um and maybe some parts of Georgia. But it is worth noting that we can't forget about North Carolina. We can't forget about Florida. They are also part of the community. We also have communities of gullichi people who left the area uh and went out west went out west to New Mexico went up west to went west to uh Mexico. Some that went over to the um the Caribbean um in the Bahamas specifically. People often say that Bohemian people and Galagichi people sound so much alike and they take that to believe well it must be because Gulligi people are from the Caribbean that they're from Bahamas or they're from Barbados and that's not true. There are there's because of what's called seasoning in slavery where they would have some people in the Caribbean who were seasoned in the Caribbean and brought over to the Carolinas and some who were seasoned in the Carolinas and brought over to the Caribbean. Um, that's a popular misunderstanding of of the the facts that maybe the reason we sound alike is because of those Caribbean influences. But the reason we sound alike is because of the African influences. The vast majority of Galagichi people came from West Africa just like the vast majority of the people who came who to the the Caribbean. Correction, the vast majority of people came from West Africa just as the vast majority of African uh AfroCaribbeans came from Africa as well.

[00:52:04]So that's why we sound similar um because we have similar elements that went into the creation of our language and also because after the revolutionary war there was uh groups large groups of loyalists who took the people who were in their charge the the gullichi people who were in their charge and took them to the um Caribbean and specifically um in uh not Barbados um the Bahamas. Um, and so in some instances we sound alike not only because we have common ancestry. We sound alike because I have literal common ancestors. Like the actual wherever you go there you are.

[00:52:41]Like we literally have common ancestors even though it's thought to be the other way around that there was a mass exodus of people from Bahamas coming to the um to the the Gulligi cultural heritage corridor, but it's actually the other way around. And so some of the ways that we still maintain our Africanness and maintain our um cultures and food ways, things such as basket weaving, our arts and crafts, you'll find some of the same baskets in West Africa and also a variation of it in the Bahamas as well.

[00:53:12]Um the food, we talked about red rice before. Um but it's not just uh the red rice. Um, it's also the the types of of food that we would cook our planting.

[00:53:23]Uh, being able to plant by by night, knowing when to plant by night. Some of the words uh when they would have like dual clean from the Sierra Leone area um the region and we have a term called day clean, which is kind of like the break of dawn during the day. Um, and so those lone words, things such as gooba, you know, for for peanut. Goober would be like the word for peanut and Georgia is the goober state. And so when you have Georgia being the goober state and there's a gullichi community and the gullichi presence in Georgia and people will be like, well, why do they call Georgia the goober state? Well, I mean, there you have it. And so those are some of the ways that we hold on to our culture. But the problem is those are consumable entity. Those are consumable traits and they've been commoditized by the places where we live. We have places like my own hometown that went from being majority u black, majority gulliguchi, particularly on the peninsula to now approaching 90%, you know, white. You can't go down there and find us except for we when we are entertaining um in or in service of some kind. uh creating arts and crafts for their consumption, creating food and cuisine for their consumption, um doing things for their >> pattern here, >> right? But when it comes to us actually being able to exist in our body in these spaces, we've been moved out of those areas. Um, you know, we've had the homes and everything, uh, Bayside Manor and and, you know, North Park Village, like all these places that have been, you know, emptied out, um, and moved into other parts of the county, Dorchester County, Berkeley County, and and and moved away from the downtown area, um, to the point where when people come down there, I've had people, you know, they think they about to come to to to a space where they can just really let down their hair and be uh, you know, themselves.

[00:55:25]And then they get there and it's like hell where what do black folk at? Like I even when I when I went down there, I was just at dinner just a couple nights ago with a friend of mine who's who's uh Brazilian by way of France and he's doing a documentary and he wanted to um just catch up. So we were catching up and in the restaurant where we we we stood like middle where we sat in the middle of downtown whole time was there.

[00:55:48]I think I might have seen two maybe three at a possible uh black folk walk past the window um until the city bus came by and then it was us on the city bus. But as far as all the people the foot traffic coming back and forth in the restaurants were, you know, were all white and many of them were not locals.

[00:56:04]And so when you have a space where kids who are selling roses, like the rose kids, the the palmet roses are treated like these these thugs, like they're like they're gang members. Like there was one particular store that had um you know a no no dogs no rose petalers sign like what that's a throwback to to to Jim Crow almost. Um but these kids now will have to have like a vending license in order to be able to to to uh sell their crafts. Um they can't just sell them. They have to give it to you and take donations. Otherwise they could be arrested. kids selling, you know, crafts, the basket to be able to get those baskets off the side of the road in Mount Pleasant, like wherever somebody set up shop and started selling the baskets, you could do that. They moved them off the side of the highway.

[00:56:51]Now, you have to be in a specific place where you can sell the basket if you have your vending license in a very specific place. there the the the cuisine in many instances is being served in restaurants where Gulligi food is being served in spaces where Galaguchi people can't even afford to eat and so when you are the you are the selling point when you are the reason you are the tourist attraction in these spaces and it's not just people in Charleston this happens in many places in New Orleans it happens in in in parts of Virginia parts of North Carolina parts of Florida time Time and time again, we'll see black people and this and and our servitude be used as a hook to get people who are these history buffs to come in and reminisce and be nostalgic about the good old days, the glory days, the Annabelle himself where our contribution was our oppression and whatever crafts and things that we could offer them. And so when you grow up in that space and you ask yourself, what do I have to aspire to? if not servitude, what do I have to offer if not service? What is my contribution to my society and to my economy other than to play this role for the tourist gays?

[00:58:10]And so, let me ask a question about that because now that's making me think about this role you have at Harvard University.

[00:58:17]>> You are a lecturer there, the first and I think historically only >> uh instructor of of Gulla language. Uh, it's in the African language. It's in the African and African exercise department under African languages, which I love. I love how it's categorized. I love what you're doing.

[00:58:38]Do you have any worry that putting it there, >> the instruction and the analysis and the study of it changes what Galagichi language could be or is. Does it uh become something that becomes like a certain kind of performance for those liberal or or not liberal, I mean those those those powerful elites.

[00:58:58]>> Mhm.

[00:58:59]>> Uh no, because we have to take a look at what has historically happened with the language. What is what has historically happened with the language is they going to do it anyway. We got to remember that we can't stop white folks from stealing from people that they stole, >> right?

[00:59:14]>> It it it's it's gonna happen. Um, and so when you get to the point where um you already see it in in Disney films, you already see it on Tom and Jerry. Thomas, you better get around here. You know, like that type of thing with the with the when you see Uncle Remis, like they already have this Hollywood slave lingo >> that's doubling itself as people don't know that that's what they're trying to mimic, but that's what they're doing. And if it's one thing we know by now is they don't mind if it's fugazi. They they they don't mind if it's a caricature of who we are. They don't they don't care. Like they've had blackface. They've had um you know these these sort of panaman like versions of of who we are. They don't care.

[01:00:02]>> So when it came to to stealing our music, when it came to stealing our language, when it came to to from to stealing from us, um it doesn't have to be the genuine article for them to consume it. Um, and so what I'm doing is when you take a look at a lot of the literature around Galagichi language, when you take a lot of the the um take a look at a lot of the books that was written about Gulligi language, very many of them in most instances were not documented by Galagichi people. They they were done about us, but they weren't done by us. Now there are um Galaguchi scholars and there are Galagichi people who have contributed to it. But I don't want to make it seem like there are none. But the the but by and large the books and and languages and the ways that these things have been preserved has been done by outside entities who don't always have our best interests um at heart. Um and it's not about them forwarding. They don't have well quite literally they don't have any skin in the game. And so what I wanted to do is a few things by teaching the language um is dispelling the myth that it couldn't be taught that it that it's not a legitimate language that it's just something that you have to just know intuitively. And sometimes even black folk will say that you know you don't have to teach you know black folks they just be around black people and you'll pick it up. Right.

[01:01:19]>> I was say I mean there is something to be said about like it's one thing to take a course that studies the language >> right? You understand its structure and its construction. It's another thing to actually take a course on how to how to speak it. And I think those two things get conflated sometimes. But to your last point, like I mean, is there any value in actually taking a course to figure out how to actually speak this thing to to be outside that cultural community?

[01:01:42]>> Yeah. It's it's it reminds me of like my dad giving me instructions like directions on how to get someplace and I don't know the all the places in between. So I keep asking him a bunch of questions and I'm like, but that don't make sense. I don't remember that. But he's and he finally at one point in time he would just tell me like look just do what I say and in your doing you'll gain understand a lot easier and smoother right >> yeah you you'll gain understanding you're doing you'll gain understanding and and so what would happen is I would get down the road and be like oh that's what he meant like now now I see and so in a sense the process of learning the language is going to teach you so much about the language about yourself about the circumstances because my the way that I approach teaching language is is so very inclusive it's a lot like the social linguistics approach um where I'm not only teaching you grammar, I'm also teaching you things that you may not even need like how to translate this language into the IPA. Um how to the history of a particular word. It's etmology. Uh things like that. A lot of information that a lot of people say is useless because you don't really need to know that in order to learn how to execute the language. But I put the culture and the people first. Um so that when you walk away with a better knowledge of the language, you also walk away with a better understanding uh with the people and hopefully a better greater enlightenment of the people. And this is most effective when the people look like us because there are so many different keys to black English, keys to black language overall. Um Gulla being the first language that was created in this um new language was created in this this country. we're not including indigenous languages because they were already here like that's would be uh disrespectful to say that they're an American language and they preceded America like they came before America but in in English was brought here and so Gulla was is is ironically the the most American language even though it's considered to be counter Americana um it is the most American language because it was one that was born here it its parents might have come from abroad but it was birthed here and and and and developed here. Um, and so for me to have an understanding of the way that the language works, to have an understanding of the way that the language has grown, to have an understanding of the way that the language moves in the world and how to speak it gives you a better understanding of not just Gulla, but also a better understanding of black English, of creed languages, of creed languages throughout the black diaspora because those languages are dealing with similar elements as you know Jamaican PWA might have. Yam Gulla has Yam as well. You know the in MLE they may have in Great Britain they may have in it. We have in it. They have Mando. We got Mando.

[01:04:24]>> And so all of these things that come together you like oh snap. You know we got we say that too. And and being able to teach us about our common ground between one another could go a long way into dispelling a lot of this diaspora war that people insist on.

[01:04:39]>> Yes. That's for sure. Uh before you go on IG, I see you intervening on all kinds of of topics that are sort of at the at the intersections of politics, race, all that stuff. Uh what are some of the ones you jumped in lately that you feel strongly about or you think we should be thinking about more? You know, I'm going tell you one that I have been treading. I've been watching and kind of jumping in and out on Double Dutch um is actually the the issue of of lensure and degrees and things of that nature with um Cheyenne >> Brownal conversation. Yes, that conversation it it it so quickly splintered into a few different conversations that had nothing to do with lenture that there wasn't even about it it it stopped being about the doctorate degree in a hurry and it started being about using degrees as the barometer of who's intelligent and who's not intelligent who can you be an expert without a degree you know like all these different things like the the higher educated versus the non-traditionally educated um can there are people who are spiritual workers people who are um you know um go um that didn't have a degree for being a go but they're still widely respected by uh the community. It just turned into a whole lot of lot of things that had nothing to do with the original um debate. And I just wanted, you know, to to kind of put a word out there that intelligence existed before all of these structures existed. Before all ac before academia as we know it existed, we were intelligent. we we didn't need um degrees in order to be any of those things. But that being said, you don't really need um letters on your doorway to have a restaurant. I mean, it could be you could just open your doors and do it, but I guarantee you people who think that those letters are mean nothing probably wouldn't walk into a restaurant that had a D on it.

[01:06:29]>> Like if if you you would you just wouldn't do that. And and there are things that you can kind of wing it and freestyle and be fast and loose with, but you can't do that as a lawyer because you still have to known the law.

[01:06:40]You there are certain things you need to be updated on as a doctor. There are certain things you can't do that with.

[01:06:44]Some things maybe you can. You can be, you know, a poet. James Baldwin didn't have like an advanced degree. MyAngelo didn't have a dev an advanced degree.

[01:06:52]Jamaica King Kaid doesn't have an advanced um degree. But you know, Ben about the degree, it's about lying about the degree, which >> Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And that's exactly the point is I think that the the the waters got murky in a hurry because all you have to do in the first place is just simply be straight up about what it is you're trying to achieve. And I know from personal experience as a non-traditional linguist, someone who came into this, I got it out the mud. And when I was first asked um you know by Karen Hunter you know very first when she first asked me about my my pathway to to social linguistics and how I got to Harvard um I was able to lay out my journey in a way that that was fully accepted and embraced and people knew that when I was coming in I was probably going to be uh really more of a Prometheus project someone who was going to be anti-establishment. I wasn't coming here to cuddle the the establishment, but I do have a respect and a regard for the process that it takes to get those letters behind your name. And I would never play in anybody's face like that.

[01:07:58]And so I think that I I would I would want people to understand us to understand we're this isn't a debate about intelligence.

[01:08:05]It's it's not an intelligent debate.

[01:08:07]It's not a a debate about class. Um it's not a debate even a debate about abilities.

[01:08:12]If in the event that you are either you are you are claiming to be a thing, you owe it to the people that you're giving services to to show and prove your claim. If you ain't trying to claim it, let it fly. But if you making that claim, you owe them the receipts.

[01:08:27]>> I watched people watch or re-watch her clips, her videos, her interviews, etc., uh, and they said, "You know what? She don't sound like a doctor. She doesn't sound like she's been been to school."

[01:08:38]And and that's not all the way off in my estimation. I mean, there's a way to me that how you speak shouldn't be equated or conflated with your your intellect, but when you go through these programs and these schools, you do get trained in a certain way and you do develop a a language >> um or or you're encouraged to make a sort of linguistic shift for legibility in those spaces. So, even when she said my doctoral degree, I was thinking that's not actually wrong. People acted like it was a big smoking gun, like a linguistic gotcha. Like she said doctoral, that means she ain't been in.

[01:09:12]Well, I can tell you personally as somebody who was taught many a doctoral student, some of them do say doctoral, particularly I find the black ones and I find >> in programs that I've been in. My mother who was in a doctoral program before she got sick uh when I was in my late teens, she's she to this day will say I was in a doctoral program over there. And I know she was in in it. I know she ain't capping, you know.

[01:09:36]>> Right. Right. So, so to me, what people are using as a smoking gun, look at how she speaks English. Look at what she says. Yeah.

[01:09:42]>> Right.

[01:09:43]>> They're right.

[01:09:44]>> Yeah. You're right.

[01:09:45]>> Very problematic. And they're not wrong.

[01:09:49]>> Well, they're right, but not for the reason they think they are.

[01:09:52]>> Exactly. Exactly. And I I think to me a greater smoking gun is the tendency to embellish unnecessarily and go out on a limb with something that is more of a You can tell when somebody's winging it.

[01:10:03]Like why would you say Oprah only has a high school diploma? Like what what is the point of why why Google is free?

[01:10:10]Like why even say that without double-checking before you you you say something like that? Like let's please be for real here. Especially when you're under the gun. Like why all of a sudden turn your marketing to oh making haters mad. Like what are you talking about?

[01:10:26]>> You're not a rapper. Like what are you what are you doing? And so when when we notice the language shift from these very hard steadfast claims to very murky sort of gray area like language to slip through. Um then it becomes like sis come on man not like knock it off. And I and I get it. But again I want to make sure that what we do like what you just said a very important point that you just made with your mom which is very important. You know for a fact that she went through the program. you know her education level, but you know that the way that we speak is sometimes very colloquial and that's not always going to be an indication of our level of intelligence, our level of advancements or level of achievements. Um what we do need to keep an eye on is the facts.

[01:11:12]Like at some point in time the facts ain't lining up the math ain't math and then it is what it is, >> right? The math ain't math and that's some other black stuff that's come to the for I I don't want to bel the Cheyenne Bryant thing but I I did want to ask you one more question. When did you stop believing her?

[01:11:30]>> I'll be honest with you. I never did.

[01:11:35]>> I never did.

[01:11:37]I to be to be clear, I never believed or disbelieved. Like I never I was never invested enough to have a strong opinion.

[01:11:45]>> Yeah.

[01:11:45]>> In the first place.

[01:11:47]>> So that when it started to to get a little hm um I didn't have a bias to blind me from seeing what I was seeing.

[01:11:55]So, it's fortunate that I >> What were you seeing?

[01:11:58]>> I started seeing inconsistencies in um because I I I know a lot of therapists, I know a lot of psychiatrists, I know a lot of people who are in the in the mental health field. And I started seeing some inconsistencies in the advice. Uh some of some of the language was like that doesn't really seem too, you know, that that that that would it wasn't jotting with me um in certain instances. And then when you start to see some of the the marketing approach like you you when you're in this game and you know how to uh market a thing, how to promote a thing and you start promoting yourself uh with in certain spaces one way then in another space another when I see Dr. Raquel on on one show or another show on her own podcast and it's the same her when I saw her on on on your program program it's it's the same it's the same person each time.

[01:12:44]she's not really changing and shape shifting to um to to to meet a particular space. She wouldn't be different on Joe Button than she would be on Instagram. Um but when you start kind of morphing and shape-shifting and kind of reading the room and reflecting what you believe is necessary in order to fit into that space, um it it turns into something that feels more performative than anything. And that's when I was like, hm. But you know, I I check that feeling until the facts roll in. so that I don't lead with something that could be problematic on my part, you know, because I mean >> that was my approach. You know, it's not that I didn't think >> I had very clear from the beginning, but I said I want to know what's being exactly said, what's not being said, what's true, what exactly is not true, etc. before go going too far. I um so it made me trepidacious in a way that made people think that I was either being suckered in in believing it.

[01:13:39]>> Right. Right. Right. Right. you know, or that I was somehow afraid to offer a criticism. It's like, no, I just I I like a little more precision. I like a little more information, a little more evidence collection before we get to that to that next space. Um, do you think how long do you think you're going to end up in the Ivy League? Because I see you I see you not lasting there long. Not because you're not brilliant, amazing, but because >> it it they you don't need it. It needs you more than you need it.

[01:14:02]>> Right.

[01:14:02]>> I'm I'm already too uh I'm too I'm too in in in slavery. would call me a troublesome property. Like I'm already like, yeah, nah. I'm told not to say um for the river to the sea. And I say it told not to say, you know, free Palestine. And I say it anyway. Like even they were like, oh man, you know, your president's going to do Yeah. Well, the president's gone. Uh she she counted to the to the ops and and they out of here. At some point in time, they was dissatisfied with um her performance and you know, didn't have to suffer that fate, but I was willing to go out on my shield. I'm willing to go out on my shield and in my commencement speech and my content. Um and I have like the integrity that I will take with me regardless of where I'm going and um so yeah. No, no, no. I I don't have those types of long-term uh plans and endeavors um for academia. It's a great ride, but um ultimately I'm already on to other things that I think is not only a higher calling, but uh something that is more um along the lines of of being able to to do more with my community, uh hands-on. Um I don't want to, as of now, it's so proprietary and so small in the sense where it's specific events, specific workshops, and things like that. And I have something in the works that I believe is going to be a greater gift to the community. And um I don't want have to do anything to come in between that.

[01:15:23]>> Sorry. I said, can you say a little bit more about what that is?

[01:15:27]>> If I could, I would.

[01:15:28]>> Okay, fair enough.

[01:15:31]>> Yeah.

[01:15:33]>> Where can people find you and your work?

[01:15:35]>> Um if the quickest way um because you never know what's going to happen with any of these apps, um is sunbashtow.com.

[01:15:41]So it's su nmcux.com and you'll find all of my socials on that. or if you just look at subm su nm mcch aux on virtually any of the um the platforms you'll probably find me there.

[01:15:56]>> I think that's excellent. I think that that's um an opportunity not just for you to gain people to follow, but I'm I'm sitting I'm pulling up your site here in the background. Uh and I'm I'm I'm I'm loving what I see. Uh it's a beautiful pa it's a it's a beautiful page and I gotta say so many people were excited uh to uh that you were coming on and they weren't excited because of your artistry. You have you have fans of all of all sorts out out in out in this world. Let me see if I can Did the brother leave right then?

[01:16:29]Y'all done scared the brother off? I was trying to pull this up, but uh I think he's gonna pop back up in a second. But um this brother is is is brilliant. He is amazing. I could talk to him 10 more times. I'm not exaggerating because there's such um insight. Uh there's such uh brilliance, there's such rigor, but there's also such passion and such care, such ethics.

[01:16:59]Um, it's a principled critique. It's a principled engagement. It's a principled reflection on on race, politics, and culture, on black life, and who, you know, a lot of people study black people.

[01:17:13]But find someone who studies black people, but also has a profound love for black people. And with that love, a space for critique, for sure, but but the grandest aspiration, the biggest impulse is to help liberate black people and to help show the beauty and humanity of black people.

[01:17:28]That's that that's what he does. When you go to his social media pages, it is amazing. I love watching his Instagram where he breaks something down and it's like he gives us the the tools and the language and the um uh he gives us permission to defend us in a different way. If that makes sense.

[01:17:45]Cuz sometime like I know this is right or I know that's effed up but I don't know how to explain it. And then he'll be like here's how you break that down.

[01:17:52]Just like you did with that dictionary stuff, man. It it was absolutely brilliant. I think we lost him unfortunately. Maybe his his laptop went out. We had a tech issue at the beginning. Uh which is why we started a little bit late. Uh that may have that may have caught to him. So I'm going to assume that the brother's not coming back. But what I will say and and I'll call him and thank him when when he's when he's available. Um but I want to thank y'all for helping me uh push this brother uh in terms of explaining his brilliance, explaining his analysis. Um, you want to follow him. You want to follow him on all social media. You want to support whatever he does because he's he's amazing. Ah, he's back too because I I didn't want to.

[01:18:32]>> My brother, my brother, my brother. I was just >> uh singing your singing your praises.

[01:18:38]>> Awesome. I appreciate >> Hello.

[01:18:40]>> Yeah. Yeah. You hear me? Oh, >> there we go.

[01:18:46]>> It's all good, man. I said I figured we had a little tech outage. Um, but but I was just as I was rapping, I just want to say thank you, man. You're brilliant.

[01:18:55]You're you're wonderful, man. I was saying a lot of people study black people, but they don't necessarily love black people.

[01:19:00]>> Yeah.

[01:19:01]>> You leave you you you lead with your love for us.

[01:19:05]>> Um >> absolutely. Abs and and and and we love me back and and that's as I can't tell you how good it feels um that regardless of on the tough days when you get some knuckleheads in there just determined to to fight fuss about whatever um by and large I believe um I would I would put my my supporters my followers my my people up against anybody else's base in terms of love and loyalty and it is received and reciprocated in man. Well, I appreciate you, my brother.

[01:19:38]Everybody, check out the site, check out his work, anything he does, please follow it, please read it, please buy it, please consume it, whatever you got to do, cuz this brother is is special, man. Sun Micho is is the best of us in in so many ways. And his brilliance and his genius and and his extraordinary courage and character, it ain't because he's at Harvard. Harvard, he's doing Harvard a favor, I promise you. Uh, brother, I I'll talk to you soon. Thank you so much.

[01:20:05]>> No doubt. Peace. We out.

[01:20:06]>> Peace.

[01:20:07]>> All right, family. That this is uh the last this is the last time uh I think that we're even going to explain um the amazingness of someone by their position at these elite institutions.

[01:20:26]Because I don't want y'all to think, as I just said, that this brother's amazing because he's at Harvard. No, he's at Harvard because he's amazing. And if he were at Howard or Fisk, I'd be saying the same thing. I just want to say because I feel like part of the push for me has been, "Oh, this brother went to teach at Harvard." It's like, "That ain't it." He's just the real deal. He's a genuine article, man. He's a special brother. I'm so grateful that he spent time with us tonight. Um because it's late and he's out on the East Coast with me. So, I'm I'm I'm incredibly grateful by his profound love for us. I'm going to be talking to this brother again, man. I'm going try and do see if we can figure out some work together because I I I I learned so much from hearing him talk and and not just the the specifics and the facts and the details that he's getting at, but how he frames his arguments, how he languages the things that he says, it's deeply instructive to me and and and I benefit so much from hearing him talk. Um anyway, thank you all for watching. Uh hit the like button, hit the subscribe button if you're so kind, hit the join button, but most of all, hit that QR code on the left part of your screen up here. Right there. There we go. right there. Let's get this back. Hit that. Uh, and you can join us right here on Patreon, man. Love y'all. I'll see y'all soon. Peace.