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Ryan C. Greene's BORN TO BE DOPE is a celebration of being unapologetically great at being YOU. Ryan combines Hip Hop and personal development as he interviews the culture's most impactful entertainers, leaders, entrepreneurs, and influencers about their journey to mastering, magnifying, and monetizing their unique dopeness for maximum success in business and life.
Brought to you by GreeneHouse Media. www.borntobedope.com
Ryan C. Greene [00:00:00]:
Welcome to another episode of born to be dope. I am your host, Ryan C. Green. We're in the studio today with Dr. Donald E. Grant, Jr. We're gonna talk about all things race, black, white supremacy. This is.
Ryan C. Greene [00:00:12]:
Hold on, y'all buckle in because this is gonna be a good one.
Donald Grant [00:00:15]:
Let's do it.
Ryan C. Greene [00:00:16]:
This week's episode of born to be dope. Coming to you right after this.
Music [00:00:19]:
Had a vision. Put it into practice with the actions of my hand put it into practice with my circle and my fan had my bad before I became a businessman this is the illness why my ever wrote said I was born to be dope come on. This is the lsram I ever wrote said I was born to be dope.
Ryan C. Greene [00:00:40]:
All right, so welcome to the born to be dope show. This is where we help you master, magnify, monetize your unique dopeness by being unapologetically great at being you. So this week, we're talking to Dr. Donald E. Grant, Jr. Man, welcome. Thanks for coming into the studio, man.
Donald Grant [00:00:53]:
Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.
Ryan C. Greene [00:00:55]:
I'm excited. You're the first one in our brand new spot, man. Beautiful. So glad to have you here.
Donald Grant [00:00:59]:
Very well appointed.
Ryan C. Greene [00:01:00]:
Full disclosure, I get that from Ari Melbourne. Got to tell everybody's business. Hampton University grad.
Donald Grant [00:01:07]:
Yes, sir.
Ryan C. Greene [00:01:07]:
Frat brothers.
Donald Grant [00:01:08]:
Yes, sir.
Ryan C. Greene [00:01:09]:
So what else? That's it? Depends on when the show episodes episode airs. We may or may not be friends, depending on what?
Donald Grant [00:01:16]:
Depends on what happened with the bills, man. Well, I need the ravens to win.
Ryan C. Greene [00:01:20]:
Well, we got that.
Donald Grant [00:01:21]:
So we can be the top seed tomorrow when we beat the dolphins.
Ryan C. Greene [00:01:25]:
Okay, that has to happen because I don't know if we're going to win tomorrow because we playing the steel.
Donald Grant [00:01:29]:
Yeah, I need to win.
Ryan C. Greene [00:01:30]:
All right, we'll see. We good. All right. Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about, y'all, but just in case. All right, so listen, Donald Grant, you might have seen this man on. And you've been all over the place, man.
Donald Grant [00:01:40]:
Yeah, access Hollywood, you know, extra. All the things related to celebrity, mental health and diversity and inclusion.
Ryan C. Greene [00:01:50]:
Great. And that's what we want to talk about today, especially both pieces, because mental health is one of the things that people talk about. They say the word, it's kind of become almost cliche. But people don't necessarily. I'm people who don't necessarily. That's not what I study, so I can't necessarily tell you I can't go further than that boy got problem. But that's what we hear today. We want to talk about that so we can understand better then, especially diversity, equity, inclusion, because we've seen that under attack a lot lately.
Ryan C. Greene [00:02:20]:
So we want to talk about that. But let's jump in. First, tell us who you are, how you chose this lane, or did this lane choose you?
Donald Grant [00:02:28]:
The lane kind of actually chose me. And so I went to Hampton, and my bachelor's degree is in biology. I decided not to go to medical school after I had an internship at a hospital in Buffalo where I grew up, and I became a Baltimore City school teacher. While I was there, I realized that the kids needed way more than I was able to provide, which led me to psychology. While I was practicing psychology, I was overseeing a small portion of foster care systems for La County Department of Mental Health. And I realized that my work with individuals was not the most valuable space I could be in, because I learned that even though individuals injured each other, systems injured people more than individuals. And so I started my business, mindful training solutions, in 2013 in order to work with systems. And so my first work in that space was helping people understand how black and brown boys were aging out of the foster care system.
Donald Grant [00:03:24]:
All the other children would find their forever homes. Black and brown boys would turn 21 and never have a home, never be adopted. And so I wanted to know why. And I helped the county figure out and learn about why these black boys were doing this. And so that, for me, back in 2009, 2010 was when I first became aware of this construct of diversity and inclusion. Before it was an acronym of note, I had been doing the work because I saw the inequities, I saw the disparities, and it just didn't make sense. And nobody was asking the question. And so, as I began to dig in further into academia and different research, I found these disparities all over the place.
Donald Grant [00:04:09]:
And so I've been an equity and inclusion practitioner for decades before it was even a thing.
Ryan C. Greene [00:04:16]:
So let's talk about the systems piece, because I think that in business, I always talk about systems. You got to have things in place to run your business. I'm a systems guy. Like, I see how things connect together. So let's talk about the systems. I think when you're talking about white supremacy, and then you talk about racism, and I think sometimes they get thrown in a bag together. But I want to focus. I think most people have a good handle on what? Racism?
Donald Grant [00:04:44]:
Yes.
Ryan C. Greene [00:04:47]:
Right. But let's talk about the white supremacy, because when you say that part, that's what gets a lot of people like, well, what do you mean? From all sides. But I think that the white supremacy part is the systemic part. So tell me some of the things that you found. Let's pick one or two that you found where that you kind of can show people. Like, this is the systemic issue and how it's there to elevate one race and push down the others 1000%.
Donald Grant [00:05:15]:
So when you think about white supremacy, I always. Because it's triggering, like you said, it kind of creates anxiety for anybody when they hear it. Black, white, no matter what your race, you hear white supremacy, and you're like, whoa, who said that? Why do you say that? Right. I oftentimes start off with this construct that I describe as white superiority ideology.
Ryan C. Greene [00:05:34]:
Okay.
Donald Grant [00:05:35]:
And so when we think about race, we all know that race is a construct that's not real, but it has really real consequences.
Ryan C. Greene [00:05:42]:
Explain that. People hear that. And I just recently learned that maybe 1012 years ago. Yeah, most people have, that race is a construct. Let's start there, and then we keep going.
Donald Grant [00:05:50]:
Sounds good. And so when we think about race based on skin color, we understand that culture and ethnicity is a thing. Like, if you're german, if you're Sudanese, all those things are a thing. But when we talk about race, it's about skin color. What we know is that the origins of all people come from the continent of Africa. And when we look at the kind of ultraviolet rays that go across the globe, when individuals. We have two out of Africa movements, when the anatomically modern humans kind of moved across the globe, and we understand that due to sunlight, melanin produces vitamin D. And if, in fact, you're in a region where the ultraviolet rays are different than those near the equator, you need less melanin.
Donald Grant [00:06:36]:
And as a result, skin color changes. And so when we look at individuals with different skin color, it's literally a manifestation of geography, period, which makes it a false construct. Now, when we talk about race, particularly in America, really across the globe, it's important to understand that people who identify as white were not always white throughout history. So when we think about irish immigrants, polish immigrants, when they arrived on this land, they weren't white people. In fact, the descendants of the colonists actually rejected them. And they told the irish immigrants, the german immigrants, to go and be with the recently freed enslaved people or with the native Americans or the indigenous people. And then the descendants of the colonists saw those groups building alignments, creating unions together, and they said, whoa, whoa, we can't do that. And so when we talk about race, whiteness has been malleable for centuries, meaning that they've absorbed different groups in order to maintain a population size.
Donald Grant [00:07:48]:
When we talk about race, we understand that for the very first time in american history, the 2020 census demonstrated that the white race for the first time declined. And that's what threw white people into a French.
Ryan C. Greene [00:08:01]:
Made a man. Made a man, literally.
Donald Grant [00:08:04]:
And so you have this concept that they refer to as the replacement theory, and that's stating that individuals who practice, if you will, white superiority ideology are fearful about immigration, about mixing races, because the fear is that the white race is going to be eliminated as a result of immigration and mixed marriages. That's why in America, it was illegal for anybody to marry white people, except white people, for the sole purpose of maintaining that. So when we talk about race, that's why it's not real, although it has very real consequences when we talk about white superiority ideology. It's that concept that grew out of the malleability of race, meaning that we got to keep our numbers up. And as of this moment, the white race, if you will, has no more ethnicities to absorb. I think one of the last ones that we looked at was how Persian Americans sometimes identify as white. Not all. Many of them identify as iranian, which is kind of their cultural background, but they have the ability to pass as white if they so choose.
Donald Grant [00:09:14]:
There are no other cultural ethnicities due to phenotype, due to melanin content that whiteness can absorb, which is also creating a new lane of white supremacy. Because there's this fear that there are no other groups for us to say, all we have is what's here, and we have to protect that. And so I understand, as a psychologist, why that feels dangerous, why that feels scary.
Ryan C. Greene [00:09:41]:
Right?
Donald Grant [00:09:41]:
A lot of people fail to kind of, like, interpret what things mean. And if somebody is afraid of losing their identity, that's a real threat. Absolutely. Now, I'm not justifying the behaviors of individuals who operationalize their white supremacy, but I'm saying I get it. One of my first internships, for instance, in graduate school, was working at a clinic for male sex offenders. And these men. I took that internship because I said if I could build empathy with a man who rapes children, I could build empathy with anybody, and I'll be able to have this career for the rest of my life. What I learned is that.
Donald Grant [00:10:17]:
And a lot of people say this, but I learned it very clearly, hurt people, hurt people. And I'd sit with these men and I would have already read their docket because they're all on probation. Or parole. So their crimes were very clearly stated.
Ryan C. Greene [00:10:31]:
Right?
Donald Grant [00:10:32]:
They would tell me that one guy told me, he said, oh, when I was a kid on a soccer team, my mom was a single mom, and she loved a coach. And he would go on trips, not on the bus, but in the coach's car. And he said the coach would rape him every trip.
Ryan C. Greene [00:10:49]:
Wow.
Donald Grant [00:10:50]:
And he, as a result, became a sex offender. And so understanding his history didn't justify his behavior. It didn't give him a pass. But understanding it helped me understand him. And my work was to reduce recidivism, and providing services to these men reduced the chances of them perpetrating again. And when I think about white supremacy, for me, my last book was about understanding it and unpacking the psychology of it. So, for instance, if you look at any lynching scene, if you take a photo of a lynching scene, what you see, there are children in those lynching scenes. That ten year old girl, she wasn't just walking her dog and just happened up on a lynch mob.
Donald Grant [00:11:37]:
Her dad came home and said, hey, grab your sweater. We're going to go chase a black man, hang him from a tree and set him on fire. And this is a lesson that you're going to learn and know for the rest of your life. White people literally traumatize their families in order to maintain this system of white superiority ideology. Now, that little girl in that lynching scene, she's not 300 years old. She's like an 85 year old grandma of a college student right now.
Ryan C. Greene [00:12:05]:
All the time, man. Like those pictures, first of all, just the first five minutes, he didn't already drop the bomb. We can end the show right here. Okay? Just that first five minutes, I wasn't even ready. Okay. But I say to all the time how there's families right now who know their grandparents, their aunts, uncles are in those pictures.
Donald Grant [00:12:25]:
Absolutely.
Ryan C. Greene [00:12:26]:
We saw Jerry Jones was exposed being in the picture once. There were other people in those pictures, too. And just because it's black and white doesn't mean it was from 18 hundreds. Those people are still here, still alive. Those family members still know, and they just go like nothing ever happened.
Donald Grant [00:12:39]:
Well, Dr. If we think about Dr. King, for instance, if he was still alive right now, we'd be celebrating his 95th birthday. He was murdered when he was 39.
Ryan C. Greene [00:12:48]:
39.
Donald Grant [00:12:49]:
39 years old. I look at 39 year olds and I'm like, these are kids.
Ryan C. Greene [00:12:53]:
Yeah.
Donald Grant [00:12:54]:
And so when I think about this, and that's why it always bothers me that all of the photos of the civil rights movement are in black and white. The colorized photos for people are, like, shocking.
Ryan C. Greene [00:13:04]:
They're like, whoa.
Donald Grant [00:13:05]:
Because it's not ancient history. Like, Martin Luther King was born the same year as Barry Gordy, Roxy Roker. It's not ancient history.
Ryan C. Greene [00:13:15]:
Lenny Kravitz's mom.
Donald Grant [00:13:16]:
Yes. From.
Ryan C. Greene [00:13:20]:
Favorite shows.
Donald Grant [00:13:20]:
Well, it's a great show. It's a great show, and it was an impactful show. When you think about. Absolutely think about what Norman Lear did. So here's how the Jeffersons came about. I don't know if you know the story. Norman Lear had already had good times in Sanford and son. The Black Panther party came to Norman Lear, and they said, hey, it's great that you're telling black stories, but why is it that every black story you're telling just focuses on poverty? We had good times, all those things.
Donald Grant [00:13:50]:
And so Norman Lear said, oh, I didn't realize that's what I was doing. Okay, I got. Now there's currently things going on about how Norman Lear may have stole some of the ideas. That's a different story. We can unpack that later. But what we know that Norman did was he said, oh, I didn't realize that all the stories I was telling about black people were promoting stereotypes about poverty, blah, blah, blah. Even though James Evans and the Evans family on good times, they were great family, but James had to work 25 jobs. All the things, right? And so when the Black Panther party came to him, he said, oh, okay.
Donald Grant [00:14:25]:
And so George was a character on all in the family who worked at a dry cleaners. And so Norman said, oh, I'll take this dude. And instead of making him work at a dry cleaners, I'll allow him to own a franchise of dry cleaners. And as a result, he and his family moved to a deluxe apartment in disguise. And that's how it happened. When you think about white supremacy and you think about people who have power and access, the ability to utilize that power and access to create change, that's what he did. Now, again, all of the things that he may have stolen, like, I don't know if those to be true, but I don't doubt it.
Ryan C. Greene [00:15:03]:
Right?
Donald Grant [00:15:04]:
But that's an example. So when we talk about white supremacy, one of the major examples that I give that creates a great dialogue across time is the current maternal mortality rates for black women. So right now, we know that black women die on the birthing tables at three to four times the rate of white women across the country. What we also know is that the father of modern gynecology a man named Dr. Marion Sims used to rent enslaved women in order to practice gynecological procedures on them without anesthesia and to master his skills for his white patients. And so when you look at the current statistics on black maternal mortality and black infant mortality, which is also black babies die at 2.4 times the rate of white babies, up to one before their first birthdays.
Ryan C. Greene [00:15:58]:
Wow.
Donald Grant [00:15:59]:
And research shows us that black babies are more likely to live if they're cared for by black doctors. That, to me, is the piece that demonstrates that this is all about systemic.
Ryan C. Greene [00:16:09]:
Race come back right to the system.
Donald Grant [00:16:11]:
Literally right back to the systems part. And so when you talk about white superiority ideology, white supremacy, right now, one of the biggest pieces of evidence is, in fact, the black maternal mortality rate. Because the history of gynecology is grounded in strong, heavy racism. And as a result, when black women are on the birthing tables and they're explaining their pain, it's not that the doctors are saying, no, I'm not listening to you. They're literally subconsciously thinking that this woman has the capacity to bear more than others. Currently, medical students endorse on surveys. They still believe right now that our skin is literally thicker than other skins. What that means is that when they're trying to find my vein to do iv, they're poking harder because they literally endorse on surveys that they believe these things to be true.
Donald Grant [00:17:08]:
A great book for people to check out is medical apartheid. It's a wonderful book, and it tells all these stories about systemic racism and how we see it operationalized today.
Ryan C. Greene [00:17:20]:
That's wild. I've heard and know, familiar with the fact that they think that we can bear more pain. But when you show how it trickles down to just the simplest, and think about how many people, black people we know afraid of needles, literally. Maybe it's because they were poked too hard by someone who absolutely subconsciously, or consciously thought, this is a black person. So, man, that's just how. It's just all. Okay, I want to go to the. Let's talk about the mental health within the black community, cause and effect of it.
Ryan C. Greene [00:17:53]:
I want to kind of framing that with cause and effect of either. The word I have was ignoring, but sometimes we just don't know. So maybe the ignorance to mental health, how has that impacted us? By not paying attention. Paying attention to it.
Donald Grant [00:18:15]:
It's multilayered, as you already know. And so black people have been injured by medicine across time. And you think about the tuskegee, all the me. As a result, black families have not felt welcome in some of those spaces. And so we have this industry. And I remember I was working in eastern Europe, and I had a weekend off, and I went to Vienna, and that's where Sigmund Freud, the father of psychology, did all of his work. And I had the chance to walk through the house where he worked and see all the remnants. And I don't think everybody, whatever discipline you're in, I don't know if everybody gets the opportunities to walk through the origins of your discipline.
Donald Grant [00:19:01]:
And so for me, walking through Vienna, Austria, in that house, even though there's a lot of concerns with the work that Freud did, there was grounded in racism, a lot of sexism, all the things. It still felt interesting to be able to walk through that space. What we know to be true about the world of psychology is that black people have been pathologized inappropriately for decades. I mean, for centuries, excuse me. And as a result, we've resisted entrance into this space. I remember growing up, and I didn't grow up with any sort of major trauma besides poverty. I could still remember my mom saying things like, what happens in our house stays in our house. Right? And I feel like a lot of black people can kind of reflect on that type of sentiment existing.
Donald Grant [00:19:44]:
And as a result, you don't talk to a therapist, you don't go do this. And so in my. I say mid 40s, but I guess I'm kind of late forty s now. In my late forty s, all these different family secrets start coming out. You have aunts and uncles who are now like, oh, you've grown now. So I'm going to tell you about this. And I'm like, what? And then you learn about great grandma or your aunt. And the terms that we used back then was, oh, she had a nervous breakdown.
Donald Grant [00:20:14]:
She actually had schizophrenia, man.
Ryan C. Greene [00:20:16]:
You know what? My aunt, my mother's sister. Yeah, that was always a thing growing up. That's always what we were always told. She had a nervous breakdown.
Donald Grant [00:20:28]:
She probably had bipolar disorder or schizophrenia or whatever it was, but we don't have that language. And so for me, I just finished a major project at a contract with Los Angeles county department of Mental Health, where I was tasked to learn about what black men in the county needed for mental health purposes. So we did 260 surveys, a bunch of focus groups. I had some young graduate students running programs all out there. What we learned was that one of the questions on the survey asked black men to identify the areas and spaces where they experienced racism throughout their lives. As a kid, and an adult, 93% of the respondents on that survey, saw racism in four or more spaces as children and adults. So I identified workplace, shopping, banking, all those spaces. And what people minimize is that everybody has a mental health concern.
Donald Grant [00:21:27]:
But when you juxtapose that to our experience with racism, racism is a psychological burden that a lot of people don't pay attention to, and it impacts us. So, for instance, everybody gets nervous when the police officer is behind them. Everybody does.
Ryan C. Greene [00:21:43]:
Everybody.
Donald Grant [00:21:45]:
But everybody doesn't get nervous to the point where they feel like they could die. This could be their last moment in time. That is a burden that we experience. A burden. When I have to go and buy a new shirt at Nordstrom and I'm just leaving the gym, I'm like, oh, I need to go home and put on something that comes from Nordstrom. For me to go into, like, that's a psychological burden that we've absorbed over time, and it's just standard fair, but it's still hitting us and hurting us. And so mental health in the black community has to be amplified. We have to honor the fact that we live in a world that's riddled with injuries.
Donald Grant [00:22:22]:
And if we're not honest with our kids and honest with ourselves, we spiral out of control. And so it's critical.
Ryan C. Greene [00:22:29]:
And I see how, especially with social media, we can see we're so connected now. We can see how. I don't know if it's a coping mechanism, but the black community, a lot of our humor, a lot of our shared experience that we find that we can make jokes of really come from trauma. It's really from a traumatic place that now we've experienced it, we all live it, and it's like, okay, we make something funny out of it, but you really go to the root was like.
Donald Grant [00:22:57]:
I think about all the time. I call it the black man out. Humble, right? So you run into a brother, and you're like, oh, that's a nice suit. Oh, no. Look at your shoes. Oh, no, you doing good.
Ryan C. Greene [00:23:09]:
No, you doing better.
Donald Grant [00:23:12]:
Trying to make it.
Ryan C. Greene [00:23:13]:
Wow.
Donald Grant [00:23:14]:
That literally is a remnant of white supremacy, where black men weren't allowed jeevney Christmas to honor their greatness.
Ryan C. Greene [00:23:22]:
Right.
Donald Grant [00:23:22]:
And as a result, we are compelled, even when engaging with one another, we're compelled to down ourselves.
Ryan C. Greene [00:23:29]:
We feel like we just. Yeah, man. I'm thinking we probably process that thinking, that we just trying to give out our brother some props, too, but it's like.
Donald Grant [00:23:37]:
And both things are existing at the same time. I am, in fact, trying to give you props, but here's the problem. I'm unable to consciously accept you giving me props, right? Because the world has told me historically that I got to keep my head down. I can't be too big. I have to make myself small. And as a result, even when engaging with other black men, we subconsciously put ourselves down. That's why I love sometimes when we go out, when I go out with some of my buddies in LA, who I've known for years, whether it's Hampton Bros. Or people from Buffalo there, sometimes we go out and we're like, we're not talking about trauma and race.
Donald Grant [00:24:20]:
What we're going to talk about is our businesses, our kids, our money, and our cars. And sometimes we just sit and do that because we don't ever consciously take time to celebrate our greatness because we've been told we can't.
Ryan C. Greene [00:24:36]:
Man, that's what born to be dope was really born out of. Wow. I mean, I wasn't on that deep of a level as you, but it was the fact that my background is from church and where I feel like we're always told, be humble. You can't speak out about yourself and be meek. And I'm like, no, we were born to be dope. And it's all about, like I said, just a celebration of unapologetically rated you. And it came from me, my personal experience, because as an author, and I tell this story often, first book came out in 2005. And my biggest challenge I had when I published my book, and you understand this as an author, too, was, do I put my black face on the COVID of my book? That part, that was the biggest, biggest challenge.
Ryan C. Greene [00:25:16]:
How many white authors have to think about that when they write a book? They don't. None. But as a black author, I'm like, okay, do I want to put my black face on this book and already know that when I do that, it's going to limit x amount of sales. So living that experience, and finally, what.
Donald Grant [00:25:33]:
Did you decide to do?
Ryan C. Greene [00:25:34]:
I didn't put it on there at first. And then eventually, that first book has been through, like, several covers. So first, I didn't put it on there. I didn't like the COVID anyway. So when I republished it, I put myself on there. All right. And then now I don't have it on there. But now my most recent books, the last book, I did make it matter.
Ryan C. Greene [00:25:54]:
That has me on there, has all of us on there. But I'm doing a born to be dope book next, and that will definitely have my cover on it. Because it's like I made a decision. It's like, look, I am who I am, and I'm great at being me. So whoever is attracted by me, that's what I'm here for. I can't worry about trying to appeal to other people who aren't even checking for me anyway. So that was my personal journey.
Donald Grant [00:26:18]:
Right.
Ryan C. Greene [00:26:19]:
I think someone, we get caught up thinking that, oh, well, we got to do this for certain people, but those people aren't looking for us anyway. They aren't our client. They weren't targeted. We're not in there. Yeah. We weren't here to serve them anyway. So definitely, man, I want to talk about small black. The mental health is.
Ryan C. Greene [00:26:35]:
Relates to the black community. I want to kind of talk about politics now. I'm not sure when this show is going to air, but I know it is. Today is the 6th, right?
Donald Grant [00:26:46]:
Tomorrow. I think tomorrow is the 6th.
Ryan C. Greene [00:26:48]:
Oh, I don't know what day it is. Good lord. Well, we're coming up whatever day this is. We know this is January 6 weekend.
Donald Grant [00:26:55]:
It is.
Ryan C. Greene [00:26:55]:
All right. And we're here in Maryland, right outside of DC. So. Three years ago, we saw. Three years ago already. Three years ago, January 6 riot. Right? Yeah, we saw that happen. But I want to talk about this from a black perspective.
Ryan C. Greene [00:27:11]:
I want to start with the January 6. Right, but more specifically, Trump. Yeah. And black. Not all, obviously, but certain black people's relationships with Trump, because what I'm starting to hear more often now is from people with platforms. Trump gave me the PPP loan. It was Biden done for.
Donald Grant [00:27:38]:
I never knew who. Sexy red. I think that's her name. She's a rapper. I'd never heard of her.
Ryan C. Greene [00:27:46]:
Congratulations. Congratulations.
Donald Grant [00:27:49]:
No shade. Sexy red. I don't even know if I'm saying your name right. But I remember seeing something, and after I saw it, I realized I'd heard her song before, but I didn't know who she was. And I asked my son, my 14 year old son, I was like, do you know who this woman is? He was like, yeah. She said. And I said, well, she's saying how she loves Trump because the PPP loans and all the things. And for me, I look at that, and again, you can have any political framework you want.
Donald Grant [00:28:20]:
This is not about politics. It's not about that. Because in some spaces, some of my practices and my ideologies are not all democratic. I'm registered usually as an independent, but because it limits my ability to vote in primaries. In the primaries, I do sometimes have to pick a side. But there's some practices and policies that I'm not so democratic about. I'm like, I want to keep more of my money. And so when I think about politics, this standpoint is not about politics.
Donald Grant [00:28:54]:
This standpoint is about people being blinded by white supremacy and white superiority ideology. When you think about what happened at our US Capitol on January 6, it was all about the earlier piece that we were talking about, about the fear of being eliminated and the fear of being replaced. I was listening to the radio here in DC the other day, and for some reason, I guess maybe it was, who rented the car. Before I had it, all the stations were all this really gnarly republican stuff. And I heard this commercial for Patriot phones. I never heard this commercial before, but it was a phone company that funnels dollars to all this stuff. And so when you think about, and I'm not even going to say black Republicans, when you think about black people who support Trump, which is different than a black Republican, I know some black Republicans who are amazing people who share a lot of the common ideologies that.
Ryan C. Greene [00:29:57]:
I do, specifically about Trump and who.
Donald Grant [00:30:00]:
He represents and what he represents.
Ryan C. Greene [00:30:03]:
That's right. Exactly.
Donald Grant [00:30:04]:
And so when you think about January 6, this man has curated a following that is steeped in fear related to their identity. And that literally is the bottom line. Those men and women who marched into that Capitol and rioted and hurt people and all the destruction and harm that they caused, they were raising their flag to say, we are here, we are white, and we will not be replaced. And the major problem with it was when we talk about systems, and it feels weird to say because it's like, it's common knowledge. Everybody knows that if those were all.
Ryan C. Greene [00:30:43]:
Black people there, it would have been the largest mass, it would have annihilation.
Donald Grant [00:30:49]:
In modern us history. And my problem is that when you say that there are people who are like, well, I don't think that's true. And the evidence is very clear that if, in fact, those had been thousands of black, first of all, it wouldn't have been able to gather that many black people because it would have been stopped way before they got there. The reason I bring that up is because the system of America has granted white people the road, the opportunity to kind of show out like this. We have to understand that whiteness, like we said earlier, is this false construct. But even bigger than that, white people historically have had to throw away their identity to become white. And so when we talk about irish immigrants and russian immigrants and polish immigrants, they got here. The descendants of the colonists were like, yo, if you stop cooking all that garlicky food, Mr.
Donald Grant [00:31:49]:
Italian man, I'll let you buy a house on my street. Mr. Polish immigrant, if you shave that ski off the back of your last name, I'll let you apply for a job at my workplace. Now, I can't say, as a black man, that I would not have done the same thing to get my kid in the best school, to buy a house in the best neighborhood. I can't say that I would not have done the same thing. So I'm not saying this as a judgment. I am, however, saying that many white Americans had to throw away their cultural identity to become white. Right now, for the first time in history, over the last 15 years, we've seen the retraction of that where white people are like, oh, I'm going to do my dna.
Donald Grant [00:32:31]:
Now. I know that I'm from Germany or I'm from Poland, or I'm from wherever it is, but 30 years ago, there was no talk about that. We don't know where our ancestors came from. We don't pay attention to that because why we're white. And my great grandpa had to throw away his ethnic identity, cultural identity, to become white.
Ryan C. Greene [00:32:55]:
We're going to take a break, y'all. We're going to come at that. Just marinate for a second. We'll come right back after this morning. Be dope. Donald E. Grant.
Donald Grant [00:33:04]:
Let's do it.
Ryan C. Greene [00:33:05]:
Tell me this sounds familiar. If you're an author, you've published your book, you sold a few hundred copies, and now you're like, what to do next? Before you go out trying to write another book, I want to talk to you about author media camp. Now, media camp is a six week program where we're going to show you how to take your $20 book and build a thriving media platform off of it. How to take your book and turn it into a film, turn it into a tv show, turn it into your online course. How to build visual media from your course, from your book, so that you now position yourself as the celebrity authority. I'm going to show you how to ten x your impact, influence, and income from the content you already have by building a visual media platform. And you can go out and buy all the equipment. You can go out and do all the study and film all the stuff yourself, or you can get with a group that's already doing it.
Ryan C. Greene [00:33:51]:
They can show you in six weeks how to build those things out and then bring you into our studios to film it for you. So we're going to actually help you not just build it, but then film it so that you have quality, professional level, premium looking video content to go with your brand. So if that sounds like you, I want to invite you to visit btbmediacamp.com. Btbmediacamp.com. Get all the information on Mediacamp and schedule a call so we can discuss your project, discuss more in depth about the program, and see if it's a fit for you. And it's not just for office. If you're a speaker, if you're a coach, if you're an entrepreneur expert, you know you're trying to develop something bigger than what you already have, then go to BTB mediacamp. Let's schedule a call.
Ryan C. Greene [00:34:28]:
Talk to you soon. Hey, this is Ryan C. Green, executive producer of born to be dope. And if you know, you know the born to be dope is more than just a tv show or more than just a podcast. We're a movement all about celebrating being unapologetically great at being you. And right now, I'm excited to announce we are casting for our next born to be dope visual mixtape and live summit. So if you're a speaker, author, coach, expert, just somebody with a cool story and you know that you have something that can help people master, magnify, or monetize their unique dopeness so they can be successful in ten x, their impact, influence and income and business and life. Then we want to talk to you.
Ryan C. Greene [00:35:01]:
We want to feature you in our next visual mixtape. So we're casting now. You can go to borntobedope.com, get all the information on what visual mixtape is, what we're looking for, how you can be in our film, how you can speak on our stage, and how you can share your story and grow your business by helping other people. So we're excited about it. We want to help you grow your business. We want to share your story with the world. So go to born tobedope.com.
Donald Grant [00:35:25]:
Let's talk.
Ryan C. Greene [00:35:25]:
Let's schedule a call so we can discuss the options with you. I can't wait to talk to you. Be dope hey, whenever I'm wearing my born to be dope apparel, people ask me, where can I get one of those? And the answer is weirdopetease.com. That's tees. Go to where? Dopetease.com. You can go and see the full born to be dope apparel line. Get your favorite shirts, get your favorite hoodie. Buy one for you, buy one for a friend, rep the brand that reps you.
Ryan C. Greene [00:35:47]:
Go to where dopetease.com get your shirts today. Hey, if you're enjoying this show and you're born to be dope, then we need your help. Make sure you go ahead and like this show, whether you're on YouTube, whether you're listening to it on your podcast, streamer like the show, but also subscribe. Subscribe to the show, subscribe to the YouTube channel and then share it out. Tell someone else about it. We only can grow this show as fast as you help us grow. So go ahead, make sure you do that. Like the show, subscribe and share it.
Ryan C. Greene [00:36:13]:
Then also make sure you join the conversation at the Born to be dope cipher. You can go to born to dopecypher.com and join our private group. We're having all the inside combo, all the behind the scenes stuff. All the dope conversation starters are going on in the born to be dope cipher. So make sure you go to borntobedopecypher.com and join the Facebook group now. All right. Welcome back, man. This conversation has been fire.
Ryan C. Greene [00:36:36]:
So we are back with Dr. Donald E. Grant, Jr. We've been talking about, know how we going to take over this. Now we're talking about mental health, talking about systemic racism. Now we're going to get into the DEI because what I love about America is that they seem, how can I put this? America I describe, like, because it's the person who always says, I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. That then goes and does something crazy to prove that they are crazy.
Ryan C. Greene [00:37:13]:
You better been telling you the whole time they weren't crazy. Yeah, America seems that way to tell you we're not racist. We're not racist. We're not racist. But then everything they do to prove they're not racist shows that they're racist. Absolutely. So let's talk about the, we're going to go a little deeper into the diversity, equity and inclusion piece about this because what we've seen now, they don't want us anywhere. So Harvard, now we went to what we always called the real.
Donald Grant [00:37:40]:
Yes.
Ryan C. Greene [00:37:40]:
Hampton University.
Donald Grant [00:37:41]:
Yes.
Ryan C. Greene [00:37:42]:
Shout out to Howard University, too. We know y'all were in Hu first, but it's excellent. But before all of that, there was university. So fair enough. Just the Hu family. Okay. H u, lineage. So in however many years they've been around, even though a long time.
Donald Grant [00:37:58]:
Absolutely.
Ryan C. Greene [00:37:59]:
This was the first black and female. She was the first female.
Donald Grant [00:38:04]:
I think she was the first female.
Ryan C. Greene [00:38:05]:
So first black and female president. They had.
Donald Grant [00:38:08]:
She lasted six months.
Ryan C. Greene [00:38:10]:
Six months. Six months. Now, surely she wasn't elevated to that position because she wasn't qualified. So surely she was qualified. Absolutely. So, in the long, storied history of one of the most prestigious. Thank you. That's the word I was looking for.
Ryan C. Greene [00:38:24]:
Yeah. I love people smarter than me. Prestigious institutions of higher learning, all the years of that, they couldn't handle having a minority presence.
Donald Grant [00:38:37]:
Six months.
Ryan C. Greene [00:38:37]:
For longer than six months. And I'm going to say today. Let me specify, because clearly, it wasn't everyone. It wasn't everyone. But the institution itself allowed the few to get rid of her.
Donald Grant [00:38:49]:
Yeah.
Ryan C. Greene [00:38:50]:
Let's talk about. And I want Claudine gay. I want to talk about her name specifically, doctor. Thank you. Dr. Claudine Gay. Talk about what happened and why this should be concerning for everybody. For everybody.
Ryan C. Greene [00:39:08]:
And especially diversity, equity, inclusion as a thing.
Donald Grant [00:39:10]:
I think that Harvard itself is a microcosm of know. When you think about the legacy clauses at Harvard and you talk about diversity and inclusion before we even talk about Dr. Gay, you think about the fact that I think the admissions rate for the general public for Harvard is below 8% to 10% of everybody who wants to go there. It's very low. But for legacy, for people who are children of Harvard graduates, I think the entry rate is, like, above 50%.
Ryan C. Greene [00:39:54]:
Wow.
Donald Grant [00:39:54]:
And so, Harvard as an institution, in many ways, is a microcosm of what America does and how America functions. And so when you think about this first black woman leading this major organization, and we see black people leading major organizations across the country, not in the numbers that we should, but they're there. There had been. Before she was even placed in that position, there was a train that started running to get her out. When you think about how she was treated, how all those presidents were treated at that congressional hearing, the danger in it now, I will say, I don't think that her board and her leadership prepared her appropriately, because when I did watch the hearing, I wish I had been able to be her executive coach, because there was some language that she could have used that would have been a little bit less disarming and not disarming as a black woman, but in this very touchy space of talking about anti semitism, which is a dangerous conversation.
Ryan C. Greene [00:41:05]:
To have in America, we're not talking about that because I like my show.
Donald Grant [00:41:09]:
And I like my.
Ryan C. Greene [00:41:12]:
That we understand. That was the topic that was.
Donald Grant [00:41:17]:
But she walked through some of those minefields without the preparation I wish she had had. And that's not speaking to her intelligence. That's not speaking to her ability to do her job, but she needed a few more tools. Everybody did to have that conversation. But what we know to be very true, in spite of some of the missteps in that conversation, what was even more true and what demonstrates the truth behind this is that after that happened, her academic integrity began to be questioned. They began to look at her research and talk about plagiarism. And she's a Harvard graduate, right? She didn't just show up at Harvard to be the president like, she's an alum.
Ryan C. Greene [00:42:00]:
She's one of them.
Donald Grant [00:42:01]:
She's one of them.
Ryan C. Greene [00:42:01]:
Her kids should have been, had a 50% chance of getting accepted into school, too.
Donald Grant [00:42:05]:
She's one of them. To me, when they began to speak about plagiarism and question her academic integrity, that to me demonstrated that there had been this train running well before she was placed. And when I think about the fear that people have when I go to an organization, I'm very transparent about who I am as a consultant when I walk in the door. So if people hire me, they already.
Ryan C. Greene [00:42:34]:
Knew what they were getting, right?
Donald Grant [00:42:36]:
And so when I work with an organization and we're having these conversations, and I've had white, and most of my clients are Fortune 100 companies, like, these are major corporations. And so I've had white men ask me, they say, well, Dr. Grant, if you're saying we need to diversify our c suite, does that mean that they're going to be fewer seats for white men? And I say, yes, unless you decide that you're going to expand your c suite by 30% and add a CWl, whatever that would be like, if you're not adding more seats to the table. That's literally what that means, right? And they said, well, that's not fair. I have to explain to them across centuries, what hasn't been fair is that all these major corporations have been led by white men, right? Many of whom were not qualified to do the job for which they were placed in. Now, that's not being shady to white men, but what we know to be true, because the anthropological record demonstrates it, is that white men tend to get elevated simply as a result of being white men. And as a result, one of the dangerous pieces of the work that I do on this diversity, equity and inclusion space is helping people understand that, yes, it literally means that there are fewer seats. When I work with private schools and they say, well, does that mean they're going to be fewer spaces for white children? Yeah.
Donald Grant [00:44:03]:
Unless the school is going to say, we're going to increase.
Ryan C. Greene [00:44:07]:
And their apprehension to that idea, going back to the slash of the car, is proof of why Dei is necessary. Absolutely, literally, because the fact that they're okay with all the spaces being filled by whites, they're okay with that. But the idea of having someone else there because it may replace a white person, they can't grasp and say, well, that's why this is necessary.
Donald Grant [00:44:37]:
Well, one of the major concerns is that they have been unwilling to accept the fact that a lot of the access that they've been granted has not been authentically related to their skill or ability. That's the biggest challenge. That's literally the biggest challenge you have to acknowledge in the same way that when we talk about male privilege, men, black men, white men, asian men, Latinx men, we walk through a world that is aimed at us. Think about, we're right here next to DC. Every monument built across the world is a big white phallus. And we walk around worshiping penises across the world because of male privilege. And men are just now, like when we were talking about when the me too movement know, you hear a man say, oh, I'd love to give Sally a compliment our dress, but I can't because that's sexual harassment. It's like, no, that's not sexual harassment.
Donald Grant [00:45:35]:
You've just been allowed to speak to women any way you wanted me, and now you're being told it's not okay for you to walk around this meeting table and put your hand on her shoulder. It's not okay, right? But it's been okay before. It wasn't okay then.
Ryan C. Greene [00:45:50]:
It wasn't okay then.
Donald Grant [00:45:51]:
It's never been okay, never address. We've just lived in an ecology that has allowed those things to happen. Sociologists did studies a few decades ago where they transcribed hundreds of hours of corporate meetings, and they listened to them, and they counted the number of times that men interrupt women in meetings. And it's not like, oh, shut up, lady. Your thought is not important. It's more like, oh, okay, thank you, Joan. We'll get back to that. And it's really not a conscious thing.
Donald Grant [00:46:22]:
It's a manifestation of male privilege that we now have to be aware of. And it's not saying you're a man, you're bad. It's saying you're a man who've been told that you're more important than women. And you got to check that.
Ryan C. Greene [00:46:35]:
That example, you specifically, is one that when things started coming up and we started educating ourselves about it, even before then, I was always conscious to it about how often men do interrupt women. And on the flip side, how often the women would just fall back. Fall back.
Donald Grant [00:46:52]:
Because that's what they do.
Ryan C. Greene [00:46:53]:
And then when the black women don't fall back, how they get labeled, it's like, no. Yeah, so that, right. Even as being transparent, as a host of a show I deal with, and we just saw club Shay Shay. What happened when a host just sit back and let the guests talk?
Donald Grant [00:47:10]:
Let it ride.
Ryan C. Greene [00:47:11]:
Right. So it's like 2 hours later, when do you jump in? When do you let them talk? So that's always been a thing I've struggled with or dealt with. But definitely when it comes to male female relations, understanding that is so important, man. And it's just little things. Little things that literally being ignorant to something doesn't make you a bad person. Once you know the truth or know the facts about something, and then you continue to do those things because this is what you want to do, that's when you got to question your character and who you are.
Donald Grant [00:47:41]:
That's the problem. Yeah, I had a conversation once. Somebody. It was great. Somebody did an analogy of racism to illiteracy. And I was like, that's a genius. They said, if you call somebody illiterate, it doesn't feel good. Like, it doesn't feel good.
Donald Grant [00:47:56]:
But if they're illiterate, it's literally they don't know how to read. But when you learn to read, you're no longer illiterate.
Ryan C. Greene [00:48:04]:
Right.
Donald Grant [00:48:04]:
Racism is like that. It doesn't feel good to be called racist. But when you're doing racist things, that's what you are. When you learn not to do those things, suddenly you're antiracist. And that's okay to grow in that direction. And so for me, it's kind of like, yeah, I would never want to be called illiterate, but if I can't read, I'm illiterate. But guess what? I can fix that.
Ryan C. Greene [00:48:27]:
Way to fix that. There's a way to fix it.
Donald Grant [00:48:28]:
There's a way to fix it.
Ryan C. Greene [00:48:30]:
Yeah. I love that anti rama.
Donald Grant [00:48:33]:
Because the opposite of racist is not racist. It's antiracist.
Ryan C. Greene [00:48:38]:
That's the thing. And that's the thing. I think a lot of people think, well, because you're not out there calling a black person the N word, you're not a racist. Now, if you're not fighting against racism, that's exactly right.
Donald Grant [00:48:50]:
You're participating in it.
Ryan C. Greene [00:48:52]:
Let's go to executive coaching.
Donald Grant [00:48:55]:
It's one of my favorite things to do, by the way.
Ryan C. Greene [00:48:57]:
And I love how you're going to use Dr.
Donald Grant [00:49:00]:
Gay.
Ryan C. Greene [00:49:00]:
You talk about how you would have coached her. So we're not used her specifically, but let's talk about executive coaching. What that is why, what specifically you do in that space and why as an executive, they should be open to coaching? Because I think that if you reach a point of an executive level, sometimes you'll have an idea that no one can teach you anything. Absolutely. So let's talk about that and the time we have left and why that's important, what you do in that space.
Donald Grant [00:49:25]:
Yeah. One of the things that I found in my work, and I've kind of worked across a variety of different spaces, from academia to nonprofit to the private sector. And what I find is that leaders, when you reach a certain level, there's oftentimes no more professional development. That doesn't mean that you don't need professional development, but you're the head. And so I sit on a few boards, and board leadership is something that I love, too. On these boards, for a nonprofit or for profit, the only boss that the CEO has is the board. And as a result of my board membership, I began to see the kind of gaps that leaders had in their spaces, and I began saying, I can help you with that, or some of the notes that I've seen executives send out, particularly related to current events. You needed some help with that.
Donald Grant [00:50:21]:
Even when they send it to their comms people, it still comes out like, you could have did better. And so for me, executives right now are living in a space that's very different from what it was when they were in their junior spaces of their careers. But many of them are still operating as though the zeitgeist and the ecology is the same as it was 20 years ago or 30 years ago when they were just a vp, and now they're a CEO. And so for me, executive coaching is the space where I get to hold a mirror up to these executives to help them see if the environment that they're creating is, in fact, aimed at the highest productivity for their teams. So when people say that I'm a diversity inclusion practitioner, that is true. However, I'm a wellness practitioner who happens to be a psychologist. I go into organizations and I help leaders understand how to curate an environment that maximizes productivity, that maximizes creativity, and that increases their bottom line. In order for me to run a business, I just can't be like, oh, let's talk about all the nice and touchy feely stuff.
Donald Grant [00:51:33]:
And so, executive coaching, what I learned from the work that I did on why it was so important is because I can go into an organization and give them all the tools that they need. But if the leader doesn't understand how to maintain and sustain those changes, everything falls apart and their investment has been wasted. And so the people right now I have five executive executives who I coach all different races, all different ages. One is a 34 year old CEO of a marketing company. Another is a 73 year old CEO of a major sports team. And helping them see these things for me has been one of the most rewarding parts of the work that I do because I don't do therapy anymore. I realized that the one on one wasn't for me. It was cool, I was good at it, but it wasn't where I found my joy.
Donald Grant [00:52:29]:
But this type of one on one where it's not just about, oh, how do you feel? Tell me more about this. It's literally about strategy, numbers and people and to be able to help a leader understand how they block the environment from being its best and watch them actually make changes to implement some of those strategies to make their teams and their team's teams feel good about being in that space. I love it.
Ryan C. Greene [00:52:59]:
Awesome, man. Awesome. Listen, we got to take one more break and we come back. We're going to talk about some hip hop because that's what this show is about. Did I say at the beginning we mix hip hop and personal development. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to talk about some hip hop coming right back after this next break. All right, tell me this sounds familiar.
Ryan C. Greene [00:53:14]:
If you're an author, you've published your book, you sold a few hundred copies, and now you're like, what to do next? Before you go out trying to got another book, I want to talk to you about author media camp. Now, media camp is a six week program where we're going to show you how to take your $20 book and build a thriving media platform off of it. How to take your book and turn it into a film, turn it into a tv show, turn it into your online course. How to build visual media from your course, from your book so that you now position yourself as the celebrity authority. I'm going to show you how to ten x your impact, influence and income from the content you already have by building a visual media platform. And you can go out and buy all the equipment, you can go out and do all the study and film all the stuff yourself, or you can get with a group that's already doing it. They can show you in six weeks, how to build those things out and then bring you into our studios to film it for you. So we're going to actually help you not just build it, but then film it so that you have quality, professional level, premium looking video content to go with your brand.
Ryan C. Greene [00:54:13]:
So if that sounds like you, I want to invite you to visit btbmediacamp.com. Btbmediacamp.com. Get all the information on Mediacamp and schedule a call so we can discuss your project, discuss more in depth about the program, and see if it's a fit for you. And it's not just for office. If you're a speaker, if you're a coach, if you're an entrepreneur expert and you know you're trying to develop something bigger than what you already have, then go to BTB Mediacamp. Let's schedule a call. Talk to you soon. Hey, this is Ryan C.
Ryan C. Greene [00:54:37]:
Green, executive producer of Born to be dope. And if you know, you know the born to be dope is more than just a tv show or more than just a podcast. We're a movement all about celebrating being unapologetically great at being you. And right now, I'm excited to announce we are casting for our next born to be dope visual mixtape and live summit. So if you're a speaker, author, coach, expert, just somebody with a cool story and you know that you have something that can help people master, magnify, or monetize their unique dopeness so they can be successful in ten x, their impact, influence and income in business and life. Then we want to talk to you. We want to feature you in our next visual mixtape. So we're casting now.
Ryan C. Greene [00:55:12]:
You can go to borntobedope.com, get all the information on what visual mixtape is, what we're looking for, how you can be in our film, how you can speak on our stage, and how you can share your story and grow your business by helping other people. So we're excited about it. We want to help you grow your business. We want to share your story with the world. So go to borntobedope.com.
Donald Grant [00:55:32]:
Let's talk.
Ryan C. Greene [00:55:32]:
Let's schedule a call so we can discuss the options with you. I can't wait to talk to you. Be dope. Hey, whenever I'm wearing my born to be dope apparel, people ask me, where can I get one of those? And the answer is where dopetease.com. That's tees. Go to where? Dopetease.com. You can go and see the full born to be dope apparel line. Get your favorite shirts.
Ryan C. Greene [00:55:51]:
Get your favorite hoodie. Buy one for you. Buy one for a friend. Rep the brand that reps you. Go to weardopetease.com. Get your shirts today. Hey, if you're enjoying this show and you're going to be dope, then we need your help. Make sure you go ahead and like this show.
Ryan C. Greene [00:56:03]:
Whether you're on YouTube, whether you're listening to it on your podcast, streamer like the show, but also subscribe. Subscribe to the show, subscribe to the YouTube channel, and then share it out. Tell someone else about it. We only can grow this show as fast as you help us grow. So go ahead, make sure you do that. Like the show, subscribe and share it. Then also make sure you join the conversation at the born to be dope cipher. You can go to borntobedocypher.com and join our private group.
Ryan C. Greene [00:56:27]:
We're having all the inside combo, all the behind the scenes stuff. All the dope conversation starters are going on in the born to be dope cipher. So make sure you go to born tobedopecypher.com and join the Facebook group now. All right, welcome back to born to be dope. It's time to toss some hip hop, man. And the reason I add hip hop to it, because I think hip hop is the one culture that one we own. I'll say the one that's one of the we own.
Donald Grant [00:56:51]:
Absolutely.
Ryan C. Greene [00:56:52]:
But also, it was started out of just being unapologetically you. It was people who were like, listen, they want to tell this story, want to be them. And we've seen that now. It's become the most powerful culture, powerful.
Donald Grant [00:57:02]:
Force in the world and the most monetized.
Ryan C. Greene [00:57:05]:
And the most monetized. Yeah. And being colonized by the moment anyway.
Donald Grant [00:57:11]:
Colonized and appropriated, yes.
Ryan C. Greene [00:57:13]:
But let's talk about hip hop, man. So first, couple of questions, some rapid fire questions. What was the first hip hop song that you can remember hearing that when you heard it, you was like, oh, you knew it wasn't r b. You knew it wasn't funky. Like, this is what is know.
Donald Grant [00:57:29]:
Don't push me cause I'm close to the edge.
Ryan C. Greene [00:57:33]:
That was mine, too.
Donald Grant [00:57:34]:
I had a little Fisher price record player. I don't know how old I was, but my uncle, who was also my godfather, my mother's oldest brother, he passed away a few years ago. One of my best friends, he bought me that album when I was a kid, and he was one of the coolest dudes I ever met. He played ball internationally in Italy for years, and he lived in Chicago. Growing up in Buffalo. You got an uncle who lives in Chicago. It's a big deal. So he bought me that album.
Donald Grant [00:58:04]:
That's my first entry into loving hip hop. That was the song.
Ryan C. Greene [00:58:10]:
Yeah, that was me too, man. I think about. I didn't know back then, but that was the first hip hop song I remember, like, what is this?
Donald Grant [00:58:17]:
Certainly first hip hop album.
Ryan C. Greene [00:58:19]:
Yeah. So what's your go to rap song?
Donald Grant [00:58:22]:
My favorite rap song is the respiration remix by Blackstar. The words, the rhythm, I like the regular one, too. And also, I think it was at a time in my life where that song was out that it meant something to me. When I think about the reframe, the breathe in, breathe out, I hear the bass. It's just something about it. When it comes on, it evokes in me. And those aren't even my. They would be in my top ten.
Donald Grant [00:58:52]:
But Andre 3000 is my favorite rapper. But respiration remix, my favorite rap song.
Ryan C. Greene [00:58:59]:
Is Dre, also your favorite flute player. Now listen, I love that.
Donald Grant [00:59:06]:
I love it, too. But I saw his interview, he was just like, you want me to rap about colonoscopy? Yeah, actually, that might be nice, because some brothers need to go get that.
Ryan C. Greene [00:59:15]:
Colonoscopy, and that's perfect segue. You would think I planned this, but I wanted to talk to you about mental health and hip hop. So we talked about mental health. We talked about the black community. I think that a lot of what we see, and I say, I think this is not just because I just saw it and think I hear people in the industry talk about this. There's a lot of talent that I use that term loosely, talent that's been elevated and promoted to our community, that clearly either, if it's not mental health as a mental disabilities, there's things like that. We can see that these aren't the same rappers we came up on. When you think about some of our biggest rappers, and they were 18, 1920 years old, the stuff they were rapping about, and then we've got 25, 30 year olds a day that all you talk about is taking pills to numb yourself.
Ryan C. Greene [01:00:10]:
What role do you think hip hop should play in the mental health of black. Of the black community?
Donald Grant [01:00:18]:
I think it's a great question, and I like to listen to what I like to listen to. I like to write about what I to write about. And so my goal is not to police anybody's creativity. I think there's a space for everybody to do what they do. My concern, though, is with what is marketed broadly. And I think about why, for instance, Blackstar never won a Grammy. Or I think about how certain groups, certain artists don't get their just due, like Talib Kwali. And if you're not talking about shooting up the community or shooting drugs into your arm or those things.
Donald Grant [01:01:01]:
And so, for me, it's not necessarily about the artist. It's about the monetization of the marketing machine of hip hop, as we already know, that has been deliberately aimed at our destruction. And so I think that hip hop has, in fact, done a good job at helping people tell their stories, helping people who feel like they're alone hear a story that matches theirs, and suddenly they don't feel alone anymore. And when you think about Eminem, for instance, there were a lot of poor white people who thought that they were the only poor white Appalachians. And suddenly this dude comes out and they're like, oh, gosh, somebody sees me. And so for me, I think that mental health and hip hop are inextricable. And I don't know if you know this, but Dougie Fresh is doing some really amazing work. He works with this.
Donald Grant [01:01:51]:
They call him the hip hop doctor. He's a neurologist. And I was at the Congressional Black Caucus last year, and they did a session, and I wish I could remember this neurologist's name. He's a very talented doctor and faculty, I think, at Columbia. And they have all these songs about mental wellness, but also about physical wellness. They have a rap song about understanding the signs of a stroke. And they said that since they made that song, they gave, some number of, like, 85 kids have been able to see their parent or grandparent or loved one having a stroke, call 911, and save their lives. And so I do think that hip hop has done a good job at telling the stories and all those things.
Donald Grant [01:02:42]:
It's the marketing and the anr, people who give the budget to those individuals, highlighting what's not okay. Not okay sounds judgmental.
Ryan C. Greene [01:02:53]:
Not as productive.
Donald Grant [01:02:54]:
Not as productive.
Ryan C. Greene [01:02:55]:
There's no balance anymore.
Donald Grant [01:02:56]:
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And so, for me, when I think about, it's not that outcast was always talking about the greatest stuff, or it wasn't always, like, black empowerment and public enemy, but they juxtaposed entertainment and knowledge. And the goal was never to make people feel that their circumstance or their situation was being played in a negative way. And right now, what I see is the highlight, like you said, of the substance abuse and all those things. And I think when you describe the current rappers and compared to. We sound real old right now. These young folk, young people, it really is just a symbol of where the world is right now.
Donald Grant [01:03:47]:
Young people are experiencing stuff that me and you didn't have to think about growing up in the 80s. Like, when I think about what my 14 year old son is exposed to at this age, I'm like, my mind would have exploded if I had access to all this.
Ryan C. Greene [01:04:00]:
I agree. I agree with that. And I think that I wonder if part of that is some reason we feel like once you get to a certain age, you can't rap any. You shouldn't be rapping anymore. But even Andre, he was serious when he said, about what? Rap about. There's tons of stuff you can rap about that we want to talk about.
Donald Grant [01:04:19]:
And we want to hear it, and.
Ryan C. Greene [01:04:21]:
We want to hear from you. So it was like, that could be another message for that. Help the younger ones as they grow and say, okay, this is what's next, what to look out for and for us to kind of still. I would say that no one told Maya Angelou stopped writing poetry when she got 30 years old. Right. Or James ball when you're too old to write now, hip hop is poetry. So some reason we've convinced people that at a certain age, you should stop, and we lose those voices.
Donald Grant [01:04:52]:
But I do appreciate somebody saying, I don't have anything to say right now.
Ryan C. Greene [01:04:56]:
Yeah, I can appreciate that.
Donald Grant [01:04:57]:
And I would rather some of the people who do have a platform, I would rather they not be speaking right now.
Ryan C. Greene [01:05:07]:
You don't have to say something. Right. Yeah, I can understand that as well. All right, now I'm going to make an assumption here that at some point, because hip hop is so ubiquitous in our upbringing, in our age, we grew up the whole time with it. At some point, you wanted to be a rapper. Maybe not professionally. You had a crew. Now, I'm not going to put you on a spot for the bars, but I figured you probably aspired you wrote a rhyme at some point in your life.
Ryan C. Greene [01:05:31]:
All of us have, yes. What was your rap name?
Donald Grant [01:05:36]:
I don't think I ever had a rap name. So today, even right now, as I sit here as Dr. Grant, when I go home, I'm man. My middle name is Emmanuel. I'm Donald Jr. And my mother never wanted me to be little Donald or DJ or anything like that, so she extracted man out of Emmanuel. So I guess if I had a rap name, it'd be man.
Ryan C. Greene [01:05:58]:
Man.
Donald Grant [01:05:59]:
That's man with two ends.
Ryan C. Greene [01:06:00]:
That's dope. That's dope.
Donald Grant [01:06:02]:
I like that. That's my route.
Ryan C. Greene [01:06:03]:
All right. And you're from Buffalo, but I'm from Buffalo because you've lived different places. How long you grew up in Buffalo? I grew up in Buffalo.
Donald Grant [01:06:10]:
High school. I left all the way through high school. I left Buffalo at 18, went to Hampton, and, yeah, I've now lived in Los Angeles longer than I've lived in Buffalo. So I've been in LA for 20 years.
Ryan C. Greene [01:06:21]:
Great. The reason I asked, because I interviewed Tracy Lee from I always miss the theme. It's his big song, but he's still got a new go get. Tracy Lee's album, by the way. Different. That's the name of it. Different. Dope album, adult album.
Ryan C. Greene [01:06:36]:
So he talks about adult stuff in a dope way. I brought it up because he was born in Buffalo, he was raised in Philly. So I'll hear Buffalo. Tell me who you love from.
Donald Grant [01:06:45]:
You know, Griselda's out there doing some good work. We got. And so for me, it's a little bit younger than I didn't know them cats in Buffalo, but I love their representation. Buffalo has been always seen as this little hick town, but, I mean, it's the second biggest city in the state. The Buffalo Bills are the only actual football team that plays in New York state. The Giants and the Jets, Buffalo Bills mafia. We're the only New York team authentically playing in the state of New York. And so I haven't lived in Buffalo in over 20 years, but I rep hard.
Ryan C. Greene [01:07:26]:
Right.
Donald Grant [01:07:27]:
Coming from a place like that, America is less than 14% black. Buffalo is 33% black.
Ryan C. Greene [01:07:34]:
Wow.
Donald Grant [01:07:35]:
33%. And so, for me, the development that I had growing up there, my first mentor was a woman who worked at my school. At my high school, I went to a school from fifth grade to twelveth grade. It was an honor school. And Ms. McVeigh, she grew up in Farmville, Virginia, and she and her best friend were the first students to start a walkout to protest segregation in 1951. In fact, her high school was named after Dr. Moten, who was a Hamptonian who graduated in 1890 from Hampton hall.
Donald Grant [01:08:12]:
Exactly. Mollen Hall.
Ryan C. Greene [01:08:14]:
Hamptonians. We know about Mo.
Donald Grant [01:08:16]:
I was in harkness. I saw what happened in Mohammed. And so my first mentor was responsible for reigniting the modern civil rights movement, because after they had 450 students walk out of that high school, the lawyers from the NAACP came there. And that Farmville, Virginia case, that walkout was one of the cases used inside the brown versus board of education case. And so being from know, it was a town where, like, my great grandpa, he moved up there from South Carolina because of the steel mills, and he wanted to escape Jim Crow. He'd go back every year and get his cousins, and so that's how my family got to Buffalo. And so I'm a big stars fan and supporter of that city because it gave me the grit juxtaposed to the ability to be able to speak and code switch and do all the things, because I grew up in a mostly black city, and then I go to a black college, and then people say, oh, the world is not mostly black. That's fine, that's fine.
Donald Grant [01:09:21]:
But what I want to do is I want to honor and value my blackness before I'm forced to question it. Wow.
Ryan C. Greene [01:09:28]:
All right, last question. I want to ask you about hip hop, and you kind of said Andre 3000 was your favorite. So the question was your spirit rapper? Like, do you see yourself in him, or do you have a different rapper that kind of speaks? If you were a rapper, like, Andre could probably. Maybe he's not your answer, but who do you see? Like, if I were a rapper, that's.
Donald Grant [01:09:47]:
Who I. Yeah, so that's a great question, and two things come to mind for me. So, Andre 3000, I think he would be my spirit rapper, as I am. Right. But then I also think if I had an alter ego, probably DMX, I would want to be that dude.
Ryan C. Greene [01:10:10]:
I can see that.
Donald Grant [01:10:13]:
Dr. Grant in the building, son.
Ryan C. Greene [01:10:15]:
I love it.
Donald Grant [01:10:15]:
I think he would be my alternate, like, somebody who's totally not who I see myself to be. But sometimes I want to walk into a room like that. It wouldn't be really authentic. Or maybe it'd be more authentic than, you know.
Ryan C. Greene [01:10:29]:
I think that's it. I think it can be a combination. It can be a gumbo pot. Yeah, I think so. We all have that. And that's the thing I love about hip hop, life, blackness, is that we know how to dress it up when we need to. We know how to have fun when we need to. That's right.
Ryan C. Greene [01:10:46]:
We know how to get dirty in the streets when we need to.
Donald Grant [01:10:47]:
I remember the first time I heard growing up in Buffalo, I never heard Master p. Okay. Until I went to Hampton, and a guy who was across the hall from me in Harkness hall was from New Orleans, and I heard this. I'm like, I've never heard this before. I'm like, what is this? First time I heard go go was at Hampton because they didn't play it in Buffalo. And I'm like, wow. To be exposed to this openness of black music that I never knew was really exciting. And so I could pick UgK.
Donald Grant [01:11:24]:
If I was a group, I'd be UGK. There's so many levels to it. And I think, for me, I think my closing point here is that I think that hip hop represents the diversity of blackness. When I think about Anderson Pac, even though he's not a rapper, he's a hip hop type artist. And he was rejected for a while because of kind of like, what he looks like. He didn't ascribe to the whole what black is. And for me, I'm grateful that we're in a time that black kids and black adults now get to choose their blackness in a way, that's whatever it is. When I used to go back to the projects after I went to school, people are, oh, Donald, you talk white.
Donald Grant [01:12:14]:
Actually, you speak white.
Ryan C. Greene [01:12:15]:
I never said that.
Donald Grant [01:12:18]:
If you want to say it. But for me, our ability right now to be black in any way that blackness presents itself, that's what I'm most excited about right now.
Ryan C. Greene [01:12:29]:
I love that, man. We're out of time, so I want to get deep in it. But, yeah, I hate when people talk about pulling your black card and this and that. Look, black is more. All of it is black.
Donald Grant [01:12:37]:
Yeah, I love that. I don't eat apple pie. I mean, I don't eat pumpkin pie. I don't eat sweet potato pie.
Ryan C. Greene [01:12:43]:
I don't eat sweet potato pie either, bro.
Donald Grant [01:12:45]:
I'm still black.
Ryan C. Greene [01:12:46]:
Black. Before we go, I want people to know how they can get in touch with you. You got some books. I know. So talk to us about what's going on with you. How can people work with you?
Donald Grant [01:12:58]:
Hire you? Go to my website, mindfultrainingsolutions.com. You can find me on instagram at. Books are. All three books are available on Amazon. My first book is an international study on black men and racism in the United States, Canada, France, and the UK, and it is entitled Black Men, intergenerational Colonialism and behavioral health. My second book is a family children's story published by this brother right here, and it is entitled a Moon for us all. My third book is an intergenerational study on white supremacy, also published by this brother right here, entitled white on white crime, Old Lies, and contemporary times. Get your copies today.
Ryan C. Greene [01:13:47]:
Awesome. Executive coaching.
Donald Grant [01:13:48]:
Executive coaching. Mindfultrainingsolutions.com. Set up a consultation.
Ryan C. Greene [01:13:53]:
Donald, it's been great, man.
Donald Grant [01:13:54]:
It's been great, man.
Ryan C. Greene [01:13:55]:
Thank you for having me, man. So glad you called. While you're in town. So glad to be here. Looking forward to just more great things, man.
Donald Grant [01:14:02]:
Let's do it. Congratulations to you, man. This is a beautiful space. This is a beautiful work, man.
Ryan C. Greene [01:14:06]:
Appreciate that. All right, so again, I'm Ryan C. Green. Thank you for tuning in this week. Go listen to all the other episodes. Make sure you subscribe to the channel. Wherever you're listening or watching this show, subscribe. You've got the power to elevate the kind of media you enjoy in our community by taking just one action share, like subscribe, something like that.
Ryan C. Greene [01:14:26]:
You want to reach out, go to I am born to be dope on Instagram where we are just go to Instagram. I am born to be dope and let's do it, man. So go out there. Be unapologetically great at being you because you were born to be dope.
Music [01:14:41]:
This is the illness trauma ever wrote said I was born to be dope I dream big like Malaysia's worker jacket on the movie screen beat size, stamina the wooden color blue is green muscle with the hustle turn my dreams into reality I'm my ancestors while the dreams on the balcony scribbling in note to sit a margin of my composition it but what's next? Master efforts were my ambition I failed to step back but kept pushing reinvented myself establish a better footage fall down six times.