'1. Hello.
My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership Lessons from
the Great Books podcast episode number one forty.
The history of The United States is complicated
and multifaceted, and it's not all
negative and terrible. Over the last few decades,
though, the wounds of the people of The United States have been opened and explored
again by some for the purposes of writing
polemics and protest nonfiction.
And others in The United States have opted not to explore any of
this at all. Your point of interest in exploration depends
and will depend very greatly on your starting point,
and everyone starts at a different point on the map.
But this is not a new exploration in the long cultural history of
the American Republic. As a matter of fact, once
every twenty years or so, right on time like clockwork, an ethnic generation of
Americans, an entire generation of Americans is
suddenly mugged by the reality of life with other ethnic
groups on the same continental spread.
Occasionally, though, you will get writing clear eyed entrenched analysis from
people who lived through the previous great, quote, unquote, yawp twenty
years previous and may provide wisdom, anchoring, and explanation
that is appreciated by critics, ignored by activists,
and exploited by political opportunists, all of whom invariably and
blindly miss the point.
The author we're reading today, whose seminal essays and books
about race, culture, and class in The United States, were written from the viewpoint
of someone who had been through all of the younger generation's outrage before in
his own time and was promptly ignored in his own
time, much like contemporaries Thomas Sowell and Shelby
Steele were ignored, and Glenn Loury was ignored about
ten years later. And now in our own time, folks like Adam
b Coleman and Coleman Hughes are ignored.
Today on the show, we will be pulling leadership lessons. We'll be
calling leadership lessons from a long
essay that's actually a book, and it reads part of
a longer argument for the Americanness, and I'm
making up a word there, that lies deeply
embedded in all of us trapped by
geography together on this continent, whether we like it or
not. Today, we will be reading
from the Library of American version,
Albert Murray's The Omni Americans.
Peters, the transference of racial and cultural wisdom based
on life experience and book knowledge across generations continues
to be a challenge for which there seems to be no
immediate solution. And, of
course, today on our podcast Yeah. We were just talking about
this before we hit the record button. We are
joined by our co host, Tom
Libby. How you doing, Tom? I am
living my best life, Hasan. Loving it.
Awesome. Well, normally, Tom does not join
us on Black History Month, not because Tom doesn't have anything to say about
black history, but because, normally, we have DeRollo Nixon
joining us. But, unfortunately, DeRollo was taken away by other
obligations, for the remainder of the month. And so I reached out to
Tom and asked him if he would like to show up today,
while we cover Murray here. Again, an individual
that, which should not surprise any of our regular listeners, an
individual who he had not heard of before this episode
today, nor who had he read any of his work. But
that's okay. Hey. Listen. I I
spent I spent a little of a I spent a little time doing some
research on this guy. I will tell you from all of the
I I I must have one thing I I let me just back up for
a second. One thing I love about this episode that we're doing right now is
this gentleman was alive in this century.
He'd passed away in 2013, which which
was interesting for me because I the first picture I
saw of him when I looked him up, I was like, I know this dude.
Like, I was like, I I I don't know why. Because, again, as you
anybody who's listened to this podcast will know, it's not like I'm a screaming
literary expert. Like, I'm not like you know? But for some reason,
I knew who he was, and I was like, I know this dude. Like, what
is why do I know him? And it took me forever to realize it was
his ties to music that I realized that that that's where I knew him from
because he was a really, very well written,
critic of blues and jazz and things like that. And so
I that was like, I knew I knew his face, and I was like, that's
where I know him from. So, anyway, I act I ended up watching a bunch
of interviews from him over the weekend. So, I'm
he's he's going on my list of people I would love to have lunch with
if I were to be pick somebody from history. I just like listening to him
talk. I I really enjoyed listening to his interviews and stuff like that.
So, anyway, I just thought I'd throw that in there. Yeah. No. He was,
he was known for and and it really isn't this essay that we're going
to read today, the Omni Americans. He made his he made his argument
really first that, jazz
and we'll we'll talk a little bit about this today. But the jazz is the
is the fundamental unique
representation of America. Yeah. It's the art of the The art
of the that America created. Yeah. Exactly. And that the
Europeans couldn't have done it. Africans couldn't have done it.
Asians couldn't have done it. We're the only ones that could
have put that together on this continent by
virtue of how we think about ourselves. And
that's an interesting perspective to explore,
particularly in light of jazz critics like Stanley
Crouch, who would come later on, and even jazz players who eventually
became critics like Wynton Marcellus, who
maybe took a little bit of a different approach to,
to thinking about, the jazz medium.
The other dynamic is I'm a big fan of jazz music, and so I knew
about this guy a while ago, but I hadn't had a
chance to really fully explore, all of his, all of his writing
and all of his work. And so for this podcast, you know, I did a
deep dive into him as, as well. And in addition to reading his, his
essay, the omnimemergans, which we're gonna cover today, I also,
looked at, his other book, which I really do enjoy,
south to a very old place, which I love that title. It's very
Faulkner ish. I love that title. He references
Faulkner a lot in his interviews too. He does. And, you know, the
interview link that I sent you from the interview that he did in
1996, it's
interesting sort of how the interviewer is trying to pull him
into something, you know, with the questions, and he just refuses to go there. Doesn't
like yeah. I saw that too. I I I
I realized that as well. It was interesting. I love that.
It it it means it it well, what it indicates to me is that he
was he was he knew exactly well,
and we'll talk about his literary life here, but he knew exactly who he
was, and he knew exactly what he was, what he was about.
Yeah. Very sharp too. Very sharp.
Yep. Absolutely. Alright. Let's go
ahead and, jump in
to the Omni Americans. We're gonna pick up in the section
labeled, pale face fables, brown
skin people. And I quote,
the self conception in terms of which most Negroes have actually lived and moved
and had their personal being for all these years, however, has always been, as
they say, something else again. Perhaps self indulgence
causes white people to public outcry against the fact that a
document whose statistics are at times clearly ridiculous and whose central assumptions
and embarrassingly sloppy conclusions make a travesty of scientific methodology
is by way of becoming a veritable handbook of race relations in some parts
of the country. Now pause. He was talking about and writing a response to the
Moynihan report, which was released in the nineteen sixties,
and which described the decline of,
yeah, the decline of inner
city black families, in Chicago, Detroit, and and up
north, and then was tying this into larger challenges of
segregation, in America. And by the way, that report was made
by, a a gentleman, who at the time, I believe, was a senator
or would later become a senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. So when he says the
report, that's what he's talking about. Okay. Back to this.
But then not very many Negro social science technicians have come
forth to even take issue with dark ghetto either. Not even those
ever so prideful black nationalistic spokesman who otherwise display so much
suspicion about becoming victims of brainwashing whitewashing and who
express so much militant concern about improving, quote, unquote, the blacks' the black
man's image in America, seem in the least aware of the fact
that almost every chapter of dark ghetto not only supports the stereotype that
Negroes have always been extremely sensitive about, but also provides a quasi
scientific refutation of the very elements of Negro American history upon which
contemporary Negro leaders must build. Dardhetto, which
is a strong which is strong on political indictment, but as we'll be seeing weak
on psychological insight, are reasons Negroes as substandard human beings
who insist in a sick community, who subsist in a sick community.
Its image of Harlem is, in effect,
that of an urban pit writhing with derelicts.
According to the impression the author creates, even if his figures do not,
black despair has driven most of his inhabitants either to crime, narcotics,
addiction, prostitution, and the like, or to obsessive imitations of something which
he calls, quote, unquote, the white man's society. See you, if any
Negroes, he goes so far as to claim, ever lose that
sense of shame being dark skinned in self hatred. The obsession with whiteness, he adds,
continues past childhood and into adulthood. It stays with the Negro all his
life. It's extremely difficult to believe, Italics
added. It is extremely difficult to believe that the evidence that Dartigano represents
presents in support of such sweeping generalization would meet the scientific
standards of, say, Talcott Parsons, who cannot fail to note the Clark's
overestimation of white well-being is almost worshipful.
I'm gonna go back a little bit and read this.
The nature of Negro moral outcry polemics, it should also be remembered,
is now such that the most glibly self confident and even the most smugly chauvinistic
black spokesman and leaders readily and frequently refer to themselves as being fear
ridden, emasculated, and without self respect. No wonder white Americans continue
to be so shocked and disoriented by the intensification of the civil rights struggle.
Instead of relying on what is now known about the nature of social uprisings, white
Americans keep allowing themselves to expect the theoretical Sambo promised as it were by
Stanley m Elkins in slavery, a problem in America,
institutional and intellectual life, implicitly confirmed by the pronouncements of
Kenneth Clark in our ghetto and conceded by so much self deprecating rhetoric.
But what these same white Americans keep running up against is such a bewildering,
outrageous, and to some of them terrifying behavior as the intransigent determination of
leaders like Charles Evers in Mississippi, the mockery and high camp of media
types like H. Rap Brown on all networks, and people like those in Watts,
Newark, and Detroit who respond to the murders hysteria of white
police and national guardsmen with a defiance that is often as derisive
as it is deep seated. The compulsions
nourished by the folklore of white supremacy seem to
be that such that white Americans are as yet unable to
realize that they themselves are obviously far more impressed by their own show of brute
force than black insurgents ever seem to be. They still do
not seem to realize that what they actually see on television during all of the
demonstrations, and as the saying goes, civil disruptions, is not a herd
of walleye black natives cringing before white authority. What
they see are heavily armed, outraged, and slaughter prone white policemen and
soldiers smoldering with rage and itching to perpetrate a massacre, confronting
Negroes who are behaving not only as if the whole situation were a farce
and a carnival, but also who have time to grant television interviews
in which there is as much snap course social science jargon as
street corner hip talk. Like, it's either upward mobility or
burn baby burn. As one character in For Whom the
Bell Tolls, shaking his head, kept saying of the Spanish during the civil
war, quote, what a people, unquote.
Indeed, as Negroes are forever saying in delighted puzzlement of each
other, my people, my people, ain't nothing like them. Man, when you're
talking about us, you're talking about something
else.
And this is where we begin with Albert
Murray and the Omni Americans.
Now as usual on this show, we're going to do a little bit
of a dive into Albert Murray and into his,
literary life. We're going to sort of explore a
little bit about well, we're gonna explore a little bit,
about who he was and where he came from.
So Albert L. Murray, born 05/12/1916, died
08/18/2013, was an American literary and music
critic, novelist, essayist, and biographer. His books include The Omni
Americans, which we're reading today, South to a Very Real Place, and Stomping the
Blues. By the way, I'd recommend picking up Stomping the Blues if you're a fan
of blues music as well. He
attended Tuskegee Institute on scholarship and received a BS in education in
1939. One of his fellow students was Ralph Ellison, who would later write the
novel Invisible Man, published in 1952, who we
covered on the podcast last year. Go find that episode.
In 1941, he married Mozelle Manefi. They had a daughter,
Michelle. While based at Tuskegee, he completed additional graduate work at
Northwestern University in 1941 and, interestingly enough, at
the University of Paris in 1951.
After briefly returning to his position at Tuskegee, he became a member of the
active guard reserve in 1951. Over the next decade,
Murray was stationed in a number of locales ranging from Morocco to California to
Massachusetts and taught a geopolitics course in the Tuskegee
ROTC program. In 1962, after doctor's exam
revealed signs of heart disease, he retired from the United States Air Force as
a major. Murray did not publish
his first book until 1970. The
Omni Americans, which, again, we're reading today, contained a series of essays and reviews
on such topics as protest literature in the Moynihan report on black poverty.
In the introduction, he wrote that quote, I love this quote, and this is what
encouraged me to pick this book up today. The United States is in actuality not
a nation of black people and white people. It is a nation of
multicolored people.
I love that. Tom,
what can leaders glean from the life and times of Albert
l Murray?
What that's a question to start with. Yeah. Well
Well, let me let me just say first things first. Right? Like, I I
think if you think about the think about the time
frame that he actually lived through and what that man saw in
his life. Like, if we can't learn from him,
like, what are we doing here, people? Like, seriously. Like, think about, like,
again, like, from Jim
Crow to the the, like, the the,
the the civil rights movement to
like like, he he's seen so much. It
just even if he wasn't a great writer, just a person who's lived through
all of that, again, whether it was black, white, red, brown, whatever.
Like Mhmm. Just think of the the sheer amount that we could
learn from those people and whether or not we choose to do so
or not is actually the bigger question to me.
Like, why would we not? But yet we Right. Constantly discount,
discredit, or push aside people who are in that
that age group. And and, again, today, we're probably not seeing
anybody that was born in, you know, in 1916
anymore. And now it's like we're we're pushed twenty years past that. So
now it's people in the you know, born in the thirties. But but,
again, it's the but I think we
can learn a lot from him. I mean, they one thing that that I know
I I don't remember if we had hit the record button on on the
podcast yet or not, but one of the things that you and I were talking
about on the fact that this man knew who he was. Mhmm. He didn't
deviate from his principles. He had a moral compass
that was clear to him, and he never allowed anybody
to, you know, to to overshadow or
to skew his visibility of that moral compass.
If you can't, as a leader, take just from that
alone, then you shouldn't be a leader. Mhmm. So
Yeah. So, I mean, again, even from the simplicity of it, and I'm
again, not not even to go into into deep conversation about the
type of person he was and the interactions he had with the people around him.
And and, you know, you mentioned you took a deep dive into
I I I ended up watching
I ended up watching at minimum three speeches that were
given about him from people that he impacted their lives.
There was two, two black gentlemen and a white and a white
gentleman, all three of which referred to him as their grandfather.
Right. Because that's the kind of person he was. If if you
were in if you were in with him, you were in with him. It wasn't
like he didn't keep from what I gathered from him, there
was basically two people on this earth, people in his inner circle and people
who weren't, and that was it. Like, I don't think he really had
that. So to answer your question, to go back to, like, what can we learn
from him as a leader, I think that's very compelling. Like, he
was overly trusting of the people in his inner circle. He
he valued them beyond belief. He looked
he looked to teach them and to learn from them. He looked to like, there
was a lot there was a lot with him. And there was one person
in particular this this gentleman was talking about. He couldn't find a
babysitter for his four year old son, and he had to bring him to,
mister Mori's house. And he went, like, he sat his son down,
like, for this long conversation saying, don't touch anything. Don't look at anything. Don't do
it. Like, this this person, like, is not used to having little kids in
this house. And at the end of the visit with with,
Maury, the little boy tugged his father's jacket and
said, you said to treat this house like grandpa's house. Like, what do I how
do I say goodbye? Like, do I shake his hand? Do I say do I
just wave? And when he turned and told Albert
Mori that conversation that the little boy had to him, Albert Mori
literally opened his arms and just grabbed the little boy and hugged him. Like,
it's the first time he ever met the kid, and he treated him like a
grandson, like, right out the gate. Like and it's not that he
didn't see. And and and I say I I
gotta be careful how I word this because, like I said, a couple of the
people that that he that I want, like, some were black, some were white. Like,
it it and it's not that he didn't see color. He
saw the difference in their color, but he just didn't care. Like, it was that
the color it's not that the the color wasn't important or that
it didn't matter. It was more about the color
not being the reason Right. Or
whichever for whatever. Right? Like, the reason for good, the reason for bad, the reason
for what he just didn't allow the color to be the reason. Right.
But he appreciated all of it. Like, I just I found him fascinating.
The more and like I said, it didn't matter whether people were white, black,
brown, whether people were male or female. Every person that
I heard, in the interviews that I listened to over the weekend and now, like
I said, there was quite a few. I listened to, because I listened to them
on 1.75, by the way.
I I was able to get through literally, like, a dozen, like, a dozen
interviews with him over the weekend. And Yeah. Or not interviews with him.
Sorry. I listened to the interview that you sent me, but I also was listening
to people give speeches on his behalf, whether it was
accolades or introductions to an award that he won or
whatever. Mhmm. Mhmm. It just seemed like
and, again, like I said to you earlier, I'm putting him on my
list of people. Like, when you when you say, like, if you can talk to
anybody in history, like, you know, whatever note any time
frame, I would love to talk to him. I think he would be fascinating to
just sit and have a conversation with. I I was,
exposed to him because I'm a fan of jazz music. Right? And
so, I haven't really talked about this on the podcast in a long time, but,
my wife and I cofounded a jazz festival in, in our
local, our local town, because we're fans of jazz music.
We're fans of jazz musicians. We like hanging out
with them, and talking with them. We even bring our kids around them
because they tend to be because of the nature of jazz
music, and and Albert Marie would agree with this. Because of the nature of jazz
music, there's no room for at least
not in my time. There's no room for prejudice or discrimination. There's just not. Like,
you're either good or you're not. Right? And it doesn't matter if you're
it doesn't matter if you're an Asian cat. It doesn't matter if you're, you know,
if you're black. It doesn't matter if you're white. It doesn't matter if you're Native
American. It doesn't does not can you blow? Can you
play the drums? Can you bump on the cello?
Can you do the thing that needs to be done in an
improvizational sort of environment? Right?
And what I loved about Murray was he took that
concept, and I don't know whether it came first or came second. And
when I studied his life, one of the interesting things that
I noted was he didn't stay in America. He went
other places, and so he brought in his geopolitical,
his geopolitical, worldview and frame
to include folks from other places. Right? And,
you know, I think just like with a lot of people
who struggle, right, to
to navigate the racial and ethnic waters in America,
you don't really realize, black or white or whatever,
you don't really realize how unique America is until you have
to go someplace else. Yeah. And going from, you know, Morocco
to Massachusetts, is going to give you that kind of education.
You're going to see that. You're going to see how Arabs treat other Arabs.
Right? You're going to see how, Germans treat other
Germans. You're going to see how Russians treat other Russians.
And you're gonna be able to put that into a context, I think,
that is going to influence, or not influence,
but it's gonna you're gonna put it in context. It's gonna change how you think
about being an American. And then the improvisational pieces from
jazz come over because and this is the we
talk about this every year, in July when we talk about declaration of independence and
the constitution. So I'm gonna repeat it here because it's worth repeating.
The the thing that unites all of us as
Americans, the thing that brings us all
together, regardless of our skin color or ethnicity or
even religion, is a common creed. And
Murray talks about this in the Omni Americans. We
consistently are asking as people
in America. We are asking America to live up to the words of its
founding, and we are constantly pushing the words of its
founding and and constantly
critiquing and poking and
improvising, around those words. And so And
interpreting. And interpreting those words.
And interpreting those words. Correct. Right. Well, that goes along with the improvisation.
That's that's all part of jazz is that interpretation. And so,
you know, I found it interesting that one of his fellow students was Ralph Ellison.
You know, the two giant black literary figures of the nineteen
fifties were Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright.
And those two guys, I won't say they were big fans of each
other, but they operated in they operated in two different spheres,
kinda like Booker t Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. And we talked a
little bit about that on this podcast as well. But Murray
was seeking to, I think, make a broader
argument about the nature of what it means to be American
while avoiding the easy trap of,
well, it's just this race or it's just that race or it's just this era,
just avoiding the easy traps. And so he he's intellectually challenging to
read because you can see him improvising as he's writing,
and you can see it in, in the Omni Americans.
Okay. One other We just talked about too. Like, isn't it
it was, like, amazingly fascinating to me that to to find out
that when he taught at Tuskegee Mhmm. That he taught the
Tuskegee Airmen. Oh, yeah. I was like, that just blew my
mind. I was like, wait. What? Like, this guy, he was their
professor. He was their teacher. I was like, that was that that was just crazy
to me. That's that's You know, he was he was with that he
was in that generational intergenerum between World War one and World
War two. Right? He was born in that period. Yeah. And
that's the period. And most people in America don't really think about this, black or
white. But that was the period of black people
experiencing black excellence,
at the at the sort of the post civil war height, right, of
black excellence. There's the Harlem Renaissance. Right?
Seeing black people from from jazz players, speaking of jazz players, from jazz
players to football players. Right? Or not football. Sorry. Baseball or basketball
players. From from boxers to drug dealers. Right?
You know, everybody was seeking to be excellent,
not in opposition to white people, but in
in in but encased in their own identity. Right? We don't
need to define ourselves in opposition because we just are. By the
way, Zora Neale Hurston came out of that milieu too, in her
writing in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Right.
Okay. Let's let me ask you this question because this is gonna lead into what
does it mean to be an American because I wanna wanna talk about this because
this is this is fundamentally the question that Murray really pokes
at. In the introduction
to the Omni Americans, as I already mentioned, Murray stated,
quote, The United States is in actuality not a nation of black people and white
people. It is a nation of multicolored people. What do you think about
that? Well, it's funny it's funny that because
I I I read that quote as well, and I I found it fascinating
because and and those of you who've listened to this podcast before
have probably known that I I've done a I've done a lot of lectures
at the local colleges and universities here mostly on, you know, Native
American history and and, and culture.
And I tell the audience all the time, if your family has been in The
United States for more than five generations, you're probably
multicultural at this point. Whether you know it or not or whether you buy into
it or not or not buy into it, but, like, live it. Meaning, like,
it it's it's almost impossible for,
let's say, Irish or Italian families to come over here for
five whole generations and continue to marry into their own
race. It's almost impossible. Right? So, like, so if you've been here
now think about it. Like, so my my family has been here since
the sixteen hundreds. Like, you know, the my the the white the white side of
my family. You're telling me from 1600 till now, we didn't
intermarry with anybody else, but people from there's no
way. So I'm assuming that if you take my my 23
and me is probably gonna look like like a like a like one of the
like a like a cylinder, like a colander with all the holes in it. Like,
I I couldn't even imagine the the the the how
wide of the variety of races and cultures would be in
my history if I were to look at it that intently.
Right. So to your question, I found
this fascinating because I think it in my
brain, it it it kind of it speaks directly to
my own narrative. Right? Like, the whole idea of, like, the
color of your skin does not dictate who you are. The
history of your family dictates more of it than anything.
So, again, for all I know, I could have black relatives back in the
day, like, at some point back. Not that I identify as black, and I wouldn't
do that as as a as a matter of,
as a matter of my own identity, but it
it's and and I certainly wouldn't say because let's just say I don't know. Let's
say it's seven generations back that there was a a a, you know, a black
person in there somewhere. I would never in a million years say that I understood
the plight of the black person because seven generations ago, I had
somebody married into a black I mean, that's ridiculous. That doesn't that doesn't
have but but to his point and to and to what I was try
like, the way I'm trying to wrap this into my brain is
but I can still look at that ancestor seven generations
back regardless, black, white, red, brown, and still say they were
American. I know they were because they that's how long my family has been
here. So I could look at my own genetic makeup and
and see exactly what he's talking about because I don't I I
could eat very easily. I and, again, those of you who know me and if
you're looking at this video, I could very easily discount
and discredit my entire native heritage and just say that I'm white. It'd
be very easy for me to do. I don't think that serves
me anything, but I could. And I think I think that's
kinda what he was talking about. At least, again, when when I'm looking at it,
if you think of the black people in The United States today, regardless of the
actual color of their skin, if their history goes back to the slave days,
then, you know, or or back before. And and they Mhmm.
Again, seven generations, whatever. You you're just
American now. Like like Right. I I like, if
you're if you consider yourself Irish American or Italian
American, both of your parents are probably Italian. Both of
your parents are probably Irish. They both either your grandparents came over on
the boat or like, sure. I get that. But if you
say you're Irish American or Italian American, your family's been here
since eighteen o two, Come on. You're not Irish American anymore. You're just
American. Let's just be realistic about this. Like Well
So Yeah. Let's be realistic about this. Let's hear what Murray has to say about
this because he he hits this right early. He does. He hits this right
early in the Omni Americans. So let me pick up here.
And he says this, and I quote,
thus, though recognizing that the depths, which after all are bottomless, have
not yet actually been plumbed. There is no truly urgent reason to
trace the origin of US Negro style and manner any farther back in time than
the arrival of a Dutch ship of war in Virginia with a cargo of 20
black captives for sale in 1619, if indeed that far. By the
way, that's where the 1619 project comes in.
Negroes definitely were reluctant immigrants to the new world, but in view of the life
they had experienced in the land of their origin, they could hardly have regarded it
as a stronghold of individual freedom and limitless opportunity, nor could they have
been unmindful of the obvious fact that Africans, quote, unquote, back home, whereas
actively engaged in the slave trade as were the Europeans and Americans.
By the way, we have to point that out. Many contemporary
Americans, both black and white, obviously assume that the slave runners simply
landed their ships and overpowered the helpless natives at will. Such
was not the usual case at all. For the most part, such entrepreneurs bartered for,
quote, unquote, black ivory, much as the same for elephant tusks.
The whites, Negro historian Benjamin Quarles points out, did not go
into the interior to procure slaves. This they left to the Africans themselves.
Spurred on by the desire for European goods, one tribe raided another, seized
whatever captives it could, and marched them in coffles with the leather thongs around their
necks to coastal trading centers. It is all
too true that Negroes, unlike the Yankee and the backwoodsmen, were slaves whose legal status
was that of property. But it is also true, as things have turned
out even more significant, that they were slaves, and this is what
he italicizes, who were living in the presence of more human
freedom and individual opportunity than they or anybody else had ever seen
before. That the conception of being a free
man in America was infinitely richer than any notion of individuality in the
Africa of that period goes without saying. That's a
bombshell, by the way, of a statement right there. Yeah. Really
is. That's a bombshell of a statement. Like, when he when he when he when
I read that, I went, oh, oh, oh, and I
highlighted that because that's a bombshell of a statement
that most people don't think about. Back
to the book, that this conception was perceived by the black slaves as shown by
their history as Americans. And now he's going to back up his statement. The fugitive
slave, for instance, was culturally speaking, certainly an American and a magnificent one
at that. His basic urge to escape was, of course, only human, as was his
willingness to risk the odds. But the tactics he employed as well as the objectives
he was seeking were American, not African. In his
objectives, he certainly does not seem to have been motivated by any overwhelming nostalgia
for tribal life. The slaves who absconded to the fight for the British during
revolutionary war were no less inspired by American ideas than those who fought for the
colonies. The liberation that the white people wanted from the
British, the black people wanted from white people. By the
way, I laughed when I read that. As
for as for the tactics of the fugitive slaves, the underground
railroad was not only an innovation, it was also an extension of the
American quest for democracy brought to its highest level of epic heroism.
Nobody tried to sabotage the Mayflower.
Just pointing that out. There was no bounty on the heads of its captain, crew,
or voyagers as was the case of with all conductors, station masters, and passengers on
the northbound freedom train. Given the differences in circumstances, equipment, and above
all motives, the legendary exploits of white US backwoodsmen,
keelboatmen, and prairie schoolmen, for example, became
relatively safe when one sets them beside the
breathtaking escapes of the fugitive slave beating his way South to Florida,
west to the Indians, and North to faraway Canada through swamp and town
alike seeking freedom. Nobody was chasing
Daniel Boone. Or to take another area
of American experience, the pioneer spirit of American womanhood
is widely eulogized. But at no time in the history of the republic has such
womanhood ever attained a higher level of excellence than the indomitable heroism of runaway
slave named Harriet Tubman, who kidnapped over the 300 of her
fellow men out of bondage and of whom William h Seward once said, quote,
a noble or higher spirit or a truer seldom dwells in human form,
close quote. Harriet Tubman was, like Sojourner
Truth, already alleged in her time. Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Bronson Alcott, by the way, Bronson Alcott, I believe, was the father of
Louise May Alcott, the author of Little Women, and
Horace Mann, among numerous others of that golden era of national
synthesis, immediately and eagerly acknowledge what the dynamics of racial one
upsmanship have obscured for so many succeeding students of American civilization.
Tubman was not only an American legend, she also added a
necessary even if still misapprehended
dimension to the national mythology. Another
example in such an ethical figure as that of the mulatto fugitive abolitionist
and statesman named Frederick Douglass, contemporary American Negroes can find
all the fundamental reassurances as to their identity and mission as
Americans that the Joseph of Thomas Mann found in the man from
Ir Khashdim. Indeed, not even such justly canonized founding
fathers as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson represent a more splendid image and pattern for
the contemporary American citizenship of anyone. On balance,
not even Abraham Lincoln was a more heroic embodiment of the American
as self made man. After all, Lincoln, like
Franklin and Jefferson, was born
free.
I am reading this book, and I wanna fully acknowledge this,
as we are in the middle
of what the writers on sub Substack and the
folks on Twitter call a vibe shift,
but I think it's more like the ending of a political realignment.
And, by the way, our political parties go through this once every eighty years.
Eighty years ago, Democrats were, quite frankly,
not that great, and Republicans were, quite frankly,
on the side of civil rights. And there was a shift that
occurred, and Democrats became very much
in favor of civil rights, and Republicans backburned that
as a secondary consideration to making money. And
now we are having another shift eighty years later where eighty
years long from the civil rights movement where Republicans
have captured, if not almost all as
a party, a lot of the territory of civil
rights action. And if you don't believe me, if you're looking for actual
lived evidence of this,
Both the forty fifth president of The United States and the forty seventh president of
The United States increased funding for historical black
colleges and universities by the stroke of an executive pen
and did it without any fanfare. The Democratic president in
between just kinda passed on it when it was
offered to him. There has been a shift
in politics, but it takes a while for it to show up.
And when political realignments happen in
chaotic turnings like the one we're at the end of,
we always, as a people, ask the question that we've all been
asking for the last twenty years of chaos. What does it really
mean to be a, quote, unquote, American?
Now I might have gonna have a position on this, and Tom is gonna have
a position on this based on, as I said in my opening, where you stand
on the map, right, where you're starting from with the territory.
But we also ask this question when activists upheaval from populations
demanding that America as a political entity live up to the promises of
its founding. And when those calls begin to spread as
they were doing when Albert Murray was in his forties and fifties
from a younger generation of African American activists,
when those questions begin to spread, we also
get political upheavals and realignments.
But Murray figured out something that I think most of us have to
reremember, and I think we will reremember it as we come out of this
chaos and move along the other side of it by
2028 or so. The very people of The United
States live in tension. This is what, Murray
meant by we're not a nation of black people or white people. We're a nation
of multicolored people. That's how he framed the tension.
And we don't wanna look at the hard truth. And the hard truth is
this. All of us humans on this continent within this political and cultural
entity known as The United States, regardless of skin color, ethnicity, or
even religion, demand that we be treated as amorphous
and undefinable and,
specifically, that species human known as
American. We can't define it, but we
want to be treated that way.
Even to Tom's point in Tom's background, even the
folks who were here when all of us showed up on ships
and started doing what people do when they show up to new lands,
just walking around, making trouble, and spreading around.
Yeah. Well, I mean, that's I mean,
Albert Murray has hit on some has hit on a truth there. Right?
Like, we're I always ask this question whenever an
activist yells at me, and they do all the time. They're gonna we're gonna do
the color purple here coming up. They're gonna yell at me because of my take
on that. It's fine.
Where are we gonna go? Like, to your
point about Irish, Italian, whatever. Like, they're not no part nobody
who claims to be an Irish descent is going back to
Ireland for any reason whatsoever. Let's visit.
Right. Maybe have a Guinness and kiss the bloodstone. It's a You gotta kiss the
bloodstone and come right back. Or, like, they may go
to Italy to, like, have some some good pasta
and maybe look at the David, which, by the way, I wanna go to Italy
and look at David, and look at the Sistine Chapel, maybe go say hello to
the pope, and then go home. Tony
Soprano went to Italy to do more criminal stuff.
Like, he didn't go to Italy because he felt Italian.
What does it mean for leaders
to be Americans? First off, Tom, what does it mean to be an American? What
does that mean? Yeah. Go ahead. I'm gonna ask you the hard question. What does
it mean to be an American? I mean, you know, have
you ever seen I I think you and I might have talked about this briefly
at one point, but there's a scene in, was it the newsroom, I
think it was, where Yes. Daniel was sitting on stage, and there's a
a young a college girl that says, you know, why is America the best
country in the world or whatever? And the two it was like a panel discussion
and Yeah. Just goes off. And if you
actually sit there and listen to him,
it's like like, that that's that speech really
resonated with me. Right? Because to your point, and
and there's there's a lot of there there's another part to this too that it's
gonna sound like a little bit of double talk here, but there's
a there's a there's a lot of Americans that don't feel like America needs
to be the police of the world. Right? Like, we don't need to be the
big brother of the world. You know? We don't need to be uncle
Sam to every country across the world. So why is it
always our responsibility to go in there and either help negotiate
peace, support one of the, you know, support one of the
one of the fighting sides that are we feel are on the side of good
versus evil, whatever. But, like but inevitably, we
do. And part of it and if you go back to the the the
the, reference that I was making with the newsroom with Jeff Daniels
is because it's not about being the
richest country in the world or the high or the best
economics of the world, the land of the free home of the brave. Like, it's
it's not about your your rights and civil liberties that a lot of other
countries have today. The United States is not the only country in the world anymore
that is democracy. More than half the countries in the world right now are democracy.
They're considered a democracy. So Mhmm. They have a voice.
Their their population has a voice a voice. They can vote. They can get their,
you know, new leadership in there. All that stuff exists.
So when when you but but go now, again, like I said, it's gonna sound
a little bit like double talk because when you go back to what it means
to be an American, it's because at one point, we stood up for something that
was bigger than ourselves. Right. It's we stood up we
stood in the way of injustices as a
nation even though there were injustices happening within our
own borders Mhmm. It was still
something that we felt like like, yes,
there are injustices. Yes, there are things in our within our country that we don't
think are perfect, but we can work on them them internally. What we don't
wanna see is all of the things that are happening inside The US that are
injustices become plagues on the outside.
Like, they become, like, things that run the world into the ground on the other
side. So The United States stands on principle. And that well, let me rephrase
this. We used to stand on principle. Like I think I I
I think we still do. I think we still do stand on principle, but
I don't necessarily think that it is,
always our leaders that stand on principle. I think the average
American person on the street I do. I fundamentally believe this
because of the places I've been and the people that I've talked to. Yeah. You
know, any group of multicolored people in America, you get them in
a room together, and I'm not talking about the elites with the status. Forget those
people. They're out of the they're out of the conversation. They're playing different games in
a different sort of arena. But people who are making, you know, a hundred
thousand dollars or $50,000, which is the vast majority of people in The United States,
those people still have the American principle. They're they're matter of fact matter of
fact, they don't understand why the elites can't get to get
on board with the principle. But, I mean
but to your point, but I I think that's I think that's what it is.
Like, I think that we it's almost like
it's almost like we we sit we sit on a high horse viewing
everybody else beneath us as Americans, but yet we
don't recognize that we sit on the high horse. Right. Yeah.
No. I I think that that's really what it is. Right? Like, we we're gonna
we're gonna have some sort of moral high ground. We're gonna stand on that
moral high ground, and we're gonna shout from the rooftops that we
are standing on the moral high ground even even when
the moral high ground is not so high. Right? Like, it like, we're we're not
Well well, what is it? We stand collectively on this moral high ground.
Now, again, if you go back to, like, we're not always on the same page.
Sure. But when we're not on the same page, we, generally
speaking, are still trying to do the right thing. That's, like, that's the
principle of it. Like, we feel like we stand on the on the right
side of, of of the thought process.
And we just want we want to make sure that nobody else feels like
they're they're getting suppressed like that in other
which is why we we still feel now we can complain all we want about
maybe we spend a little bit too much money. Maybe we spend a little bit
too much time or resources policing the rest of the world. Sure. You
wanna you wanna cut that budget down, I I'm okay with that, but that doesn't
mean that we just don't do it anymore. Pre pre World War two or pre
World War one, when if you think about pre World War one, the United
States had a a a federal a a national, essentially,
a national, not motto, but it was
basically a a rule of thumb where we just didn't get involved in international politics.
We stayed to ourself. We wanted, like, we wanted to control what we could
control and let the rest of the world fall to shit. Sorry. Excuse my
language. But post World War one, when we were forced to get
involved in that war, that just went out the window.
So now, like and there's some shift now that people are like, well, we should
probably get back to at least a little semblance of that in which,
again, would be cutting funding to, you know, underprivileged
third world countries, you know, cutting funding for, you know, our
military allies. Like, you know, like, sure. If you wanna cut some but we
can't just be nonexistent anymore. That that those days are gone. Right. So
Well, well, they also But but we do feel, to your point, as Americans, what
makes us Americans is that we do feel like we are on the moral high
ground throughout the rest of the world. Right. Well, and and an inch above when
you're standing on a platform, an inch above somebody else, you are high. I mean,
you are technically speaking higher than them, which is an inch, but
it's high. Or you're just high. Or you're just high. Right? Yeah.
Exactly. Now I think, you know, I think what you said
there is very important. I would also add
that the we used to have leaders. This is a leadership podcast,
and this is one of my bugaboos for many years. We used to
have leaders that explained to people
what the hell they were getting into. So Roosevelt explained to
people what the hell they were getting into. Even
even Truman and Eisenhower explained to
people what they were getting into. And it's
that lack of explanation, I think, that's frustrating people in
addition to bureaucratic opaque
systems where no one seems to have any accountability. Meanwhile,
I'm walking around the world, and I've got accountability left and right.
And if I screw up, my kids don't eat. If I screw up,
I get fired. If I right. You know? So so there's this
disconnect. Right? So we have an opaque bureaucratic system
where no one or where very few leaders are bothering,
and I'm looking congress, I'm looking at you directly. You should be doing this.
But very few people explain to the population what they're
doing. Instead, you have activist talk or,
you know, getting money from donors, from people, you
know, that $5,000 a plate deals, you know, and not engaging in
leadership. People,
every person across the world wants leadership.
This is a failure. Most of our problems in the last twenty years have been
failures of leadership. By the way, both Republican and Democrat, I'm
paying you both with the same brush. You you failed leadership. Okay?
Lofty rhetoric or just telling me to go shopping is not leadership.
It's it's dame that ain't it. Then the other dynamic that I
think exists inside of there is
and I think this is very important. We've
always had and you see this in when you study the the history of the
constitution. So one of the interesting things that came out when I
was studying the history of the Federalist Papers was that Patrick Henry, mister
give me liberty or give me death, right, who was a great polemicist and
narrator and or not narrator, sorry, orator and, had
great oratory skills. Right? He was supposed to go to
the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, at the end of
the revolutionary war. Thomas Jefferson actually told him
to go as a representative of Virginia and Kentucky at the
time. And Patrick Henry and this
is this is what I'm talking about. Patrick Henry turned
Thomas Jefferson down. Because back then, Thomas Jefferson wasn't
Thomas Jefferson. He's just some dude. Right? Which I think is great.
And Patrick Henry was like, no. I'm not gonna go. And the letter that the
line he has in the letter is, that he writes, and you can find this
in the anti federalist papers, I think. He basically says,
I smell a rat. I want the articles of confederation left
where they the way they are. I don't wanna be united with the rest of
these people. Leave me alone. And that
streak and and
Murray references this with the Yankee backs back woodsmen.
There is a streak of people that came over here on boats, and now
it's it's it's in the DNA of the culture who who
don't want government
of any kind telling them what to do. They want to be their own kings,
and this is the place as far as they're concerned, this is the
place where they can be their own kings. And so just leave them alone. Dorel
and I were talking about this when we were talking about the Federalist Papers and
the Anti Federalist Papers a couple years ago on the show. And Dorel made
this good point. He said, leave them alone and let them go up into the
hills. Just leave them alone. Let those people go up in the hills. Because, like,
if you go up in the hills and you try to, like if the FBI
FBI does not go into the hills of, like,
North Carolina Yeah. Appalachian. Right. Just leave those people alone.
Just leave them alone. Why would you follow them there? That's why why do you
think the Cherokee went there in the Trail Of Tears? They left they just they
weren't following them there. The the there was a a certain number of people from
the Cherokee Nation that went up in the North Carolina Hills. And,
technically, the federal didn't follow them. They just they took everybody else. They just went,
just leave me alone. I don't wanna be part of your
game. I don't wanna play. And so that streak,
which is a counter tension to the streak of we need to
go out and help other people in the world, that's a massive tension in
America. And it gets exposed when we have chaotic times. When we
don't know what's going on when when we have failures of, failures of leadership.
Okay. So how do leaders define themselves then in in The
United States Of America? I always sort of define what it means to be an
American full attention and all of that. How do
leaders define themselves, their teams, and their cultures in
The United States Of America?
If I'm start because if I'm starting a company and I have more than one
person or, actually, not even more than one. I got one person. Congratulations. I'm a
leader. And that person more likely than not is an American. More likely than
not. So, what how do they
define themselves? And, I'm not sure I'm not sure I understand the
question. Like Well Do they, like We haven't we've
never really talked about this on the show, but
should let me frame it let me frame it this way. Should leaders
allow all of that
external stuff that doesn't seem to matter to the mission to come
in to how they're running their their thing, running
their team, or running their culture. Because, like, I'm just thinking of a conversation I
just had with somebody who's leading me, right, on a project that I'm working on.
I literally just had it before I came here, on the before we hit record.
And that person's perspective
is uniquely American even though
their skin color is closer in pigmentation to mine.
They're still an American. Like, there's things that come out of their mouth that
that you wouldn't you wouldn't hear come out of there's just assumptions,
not even things come out of their mouth. There's assumptions that are built into how
they view the world, which is what Murray talks about, an assumption of freedom and
assumption of individual agency. And I love it when he makes
the point in, in that section in the only Americans that we just read.
You know, Harriet Tubman wasn't trying to get folks on the underground railroad
back to Africa. Yeah. Wasn't what it wasn't what she was
trying to do. You know?
Yeah. You know, the funny thing that you just so there's,
I mean, there's also I think
I think it comes down there there's a lot there's a lot to unpack there,
by the way. Oh, yeah. Because There's a lot Like, you think about, like like,
from a leadership perspective, like, what is the culture of your company?
What is the because I remember growing you know, coming into the
professional workforce. So, you know, when I was outside of my,
you know, my my high school days and the the little side jobs that you
do in high school. But when you start hitting the professional thing, your professional
landscape, and they're like there's, like, these
unwritten rules, right, that your that leadership kind of can talk,
like, shouldn't be talking politics in the office. You shouldn't,
like, you know, don't talk about religion in the office because
well, they just they because they're not they're not equipped
to handle that kind of conflict resolution. Right? Like, if
Mhmm. If if you have two employees that just one's a Democrat, one's a
Republican, and they just hate each other beyond belief, and you can't make
them work with each other, like, how does that just translates that you're a bad
leader? Whereas if you just kinda don't
allow the conversations to happen in the first place and you don't know what your
political views are or their their political view they don't know what your political views
are, but you guys can coordinate to to get this project done just
fine. Like, I I don't know. There there's a there's a there's a there's a
lot of weird oddities there, right, that you just gonna have to decide
what kind of now there's another there's on the flip side to this. There
you can say that I'm the kind of leader that stands for this, that
wants this, that wants my team to react like this. And if you
can't get on board with that, then you shouldn't be here. So it's not it's
not about democrat and republican. It's not about Catholic and and
Judaism, or it's not, like, it's not a religious thing. It's not it's about
it's about principles and morals and and and, like, we're going to do this.
Now you can sit there and say, well, I'm a Democrat, you're a
Republican, or you're I'm a Republican, you're a Democrat, and we don't see eye to
eye on anything. But if you don't know what your political stands are
or stances are, but yet your company culture
dictates this, this, this, and this, and you can stand behind that, does it
really matter? Mhmm. You know, like, the the the Mhmm. Does your
political view really matter? I I I love our current
administration. I hate our current administration. I don't care about our current administration
because they're gonna be gone in a couple years. Like Right. You know, does any
of that really matter if you have a project in front of you that needs
all of your attention and that you can actually get something done? Like,
stop talking about it. Like, you know, we don't talk about Bruno.
Right. You know? Like, it's now, again, is
that fair? No. Is is it is it is it, like, is it fair
to to to say that when you're in your work place that you're that certain
topics are off limits, that you shouldn't be able to express yourself?
I mean, maybe not. I don't know. Like, again, it goes back to, like, think
about a couple years ago in the NFL when they were a lot of these
players were kneeling down, and and there was a lot of debate on who gets
to control that. And then we found out we found out by by
the way. And for those of you who don't know this
Go ahead. It can be controlled. This is an employer
employee conversation. Turns out Turns out all
those billionaires work for somebody. Right. These
people can be told don't do that or you're fired. Like,
I was I was even baffled by this. I was like, wait. What? This is
I think that's a first amendment kind of violation. And
I guess it's not if it's an yeah. Your employer dictates
how you act when you're being employed. So and I was like, holy
crap. Amendment if you're getting a paycheck. Right. Exactly.
So, anyway, so so when you're asking, like like, what, like, what
are leaders supposed to how do they define themselves? I
I I think I think that you've you've got you've got a handful of
things that that you have to be very selective about. Right. You
have you have principles. You have, like, guiding principles that
that tell you or dictate to you that in order for me to
make money, satisfy
these this moral compass or these principles that I stand
on. And if I can't stand on these principles and make that money, then
I don't take that money. And I think that's a very powerful thing for
employees to see because then you can decide what kind
of company you wanna work for, what kind of leader do you wanna work for,
and it's relatively clear and transparent that this company
like, we talk about, in in another project that you and I
are are are partnering in. We talk about being public benefit
corporations, companies like Patagonia, where their, like, their
mission is to save the environment in one jacket at a time or
whatever, however they word it. I I I'm not a marketing person for them, so
I have no idea how they word it. But and I don't buy their a
lot of their products just because they're expensive, but not had not no other reason
than that. But but if you wanna go work for Patagonia
and you say, alright. I I know if I go to work for these companies,
I will never have to bend on this principle, and that's why I
wanna go work for them, that's great. If you can define yourself on
principle, you can define yourself on moral compass. You what you
in my opinion, and this is just my opinion, what you just can't
define yourself was on profit margin. Like, when you tell
people I'm gonna be the kind of leader that just makes us all a lot
of money, that seems to be the weakest link in
that chain of how I can define myself.
Yeah. Well, it it it only really works, and then we'll go
back to the book. I just wanna I wanna say something about that because I
think you've hit on something there as well. Profit margin only really
works when everyone is getting
rich together. Yeah. And almost
at almost no time is 100% everyone getting rich together.
Like, it's just, you know, that's just sort of react not sort of that's
just reality. So there's gonna be stratifications. There's
gonna be people in the middle, there's gonna be people at the bottom, there's gonna
be people at the top. And
we are we are so historically and culturally,
and I can see it when I read books from authors like Albert Murray who
were writing in the sixties and seventies or Eldridge Cleaver who we just covered on
the podcast for the Soul on Ice. Right? Or
Malcolm x. Right? We are hidebound.
Regardless of political party. We are hidebound to a
phantasmagoric vision of the middle of the twentieth century that
probably wasn't the truth.
And that vision of the middle twentieth century was a
vision of, if you're a Democrat, you know, top tax
rate was, you know, 65%. You know,
Franklin Delmar Roosevelt, there'll be no wartime millionaires, and then we're gonna, you
know, we're gonna reduce that to, we're gonna reduce that
to, to, to 40%, and it's gonna stay that way until Kennedy. And
he's only gonna bring it on, like, 30%, and then Reagan only really brought it
down to, like, 20% or something like that. And we're
gonna take your we're gonna take your money. Right? But corporations are gonna respond to
that by getting in bed with unions, who
are going to engage in policies by pitting one
employer against another across the street, and it's all gonna work out. And that's if
you're on if you're on the left. If you're on the right, you know,
a man can make enough money to be the sole provider, the sole
breadwinner in his home, and the woman can
stay home and raise the kids, and there's social
norming that comes from the neighborhood. It comes from
people, knowing who their neighbors are. It comes
from people understanding, that religion,
whether you believe in it or not, is an irrelevancy, get you behind church
heathen. Like like, you know, this and this is from the right, like, the
cultural things. Right? And so we're both both the right and the left in America
are hidebound to this vision of the mid twentieth century.
And because people change and times change even
though they don't always change that much. But
people change, people change, times change, and so we move forward. Right?
And, again, a failure of leadership. Right? We don't have leaders.
And I used to think it would be the elite leaders as I already mentioned,
but now I think it has to be the guy or the
woman who's in that business, who has to be the example of
leadership. I I I I got on this a couple years ago. I don't
think we can rely on the congressman or
even the mayor of your town, and I won't even go as high as the
president. Forget that guy, or even your your national congressman.
Your local congressman, your local mayor, can't be the
leader for you. You've gotta be the leader. You've gotta be the leader in your
family. You've gotta be the leader in your community. I don't care whether you're a
man or a woman. It doesn't matter to me. Be the leader. Right? Be the
person who who who who stands up and does that because that's the only way
we're going to evolve into something else from that hidebound,
phantasmagoric vision that we all seem to be trapped by. By the way,
here's a side note on that. I have I've been thinking lately
that five hundred years from now when they write the history of this era and
we're all dead and gone and the podcast is scrubbed from the Internet and it
won't matter. It's gonna be archived, Tae
san. We're gonna we're gonna live we're gonna live forever. It could be archived.
Oh god. Please. Please no. Please just scrub me from
the Internet. It's fine. But, five hundred years from now when they write the
history of this era and everybody who lived here is gone,
I wonder if they will look at the mid twentieth century as being an
outlier, not the norm, the outlier. You know?
Because there were certain unique historical
things that occurred, particularly between 1939 and
1945, that were linchpinned that everything else
circled around. And it took people a while to figure out, to Google a
half century, almost a full century to figure out how to get back to a
norm. I've been thinking about that quite a bit. And that
has that has implications for leaders. That has implications for leaders in
communities. That has implications for leaders in towns and cities,
and even implications for leadership in your family. You know?
We can't be hidebound by the past. I mean, think about it this way.
We have an entire generation of people that's being born right now, of which my
youngest son who's eight is part of that generation, who have
zero historical memory of the twentieth century at
all. It will always be a history book thing for
them. It won't be something that they were born into. It will be something that
is way past to them.
And for many of us, that's weird to think about.
Yeah. But that's happened that's happened already a few times. Right? Like, if you think
about it, like, all all the westward expansion, manifest
destiny, all that stuff up until 1890 Right. You were born in the
early, you know, like like, Albert Murray here was born in
'25 1316. Right? Nineteen sixteen.
To him, that entire thing was a history book. Right.
Right. Oh, I'm not saying it hasn't happened before. Yeah. Yeah. I was saying, like
so we talk about this a lot. And and and and my favorite phrase has
been on this podcast about a hundred times so far, which is like, the more
things change, the more things stay the same. Like, we've got we
keep doing the same thing over and over.
It's like the human phrase is the definition of insanity. It's it's the
human condition. A a good friend of our a mutual friend of ours,
would say that in his, in his courses. It's his ethics courses.
It's the human condition. And he's exactly right. He's not wrong. It's the human
condition. You know? Alright. Back to
the book. Here's another piece of the human condition, transferring wisdom. Talk about going
from generation to generation. How do you do that?
Alright. Back to the book. Back to the Omni Americans by
Albert Marie And I
quote, as an art form, the blues idiom, by its very nature,
goes beyond the objective of making human existence bearable physically or
psychologically. The most elementary and hence the least dispensable
objective of all serious artistic expression, whether Aboriginal or sophisticated,
is to make human existence meaningful.
Mayad's primary concern with life is to make it as significant as possible, and the
blues are part of this effort. The definitive
statement of the epistemic the epistemicological
assumptions that underlie the blues idiom may well be the colloquial title
and opening declaration of one of Duke Ellington's best known dance tunes from the mid
thirties. By the way, I love that sentence. He managed to put in epistemological,
idiom, and colloquial all in the same sentence. Love this guy.
Of Duke Ellington's best known dance tune from the mid thirties,
quote, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.
In any case, when the Negro musician or dancer swings the blues, he is
fulfilling the same fundamental existential requirement that determines
the mission of the poet, the priest, and the medicine man. He's making an affirmative
and, hence, exemplary and heroic response to that which Andre
Malraux describes as la conditien humane, the
human condition. Extemporizing in response to
the exigencies of the situation in which he finds himself, he is confronted,
acknowledging, and he is confronting, acknowledging, and contending with the infernal
absurdities and ever impending frustrations inherent in the nature of all existence
by playing with the possibilities that are also there. This does
not mean the player becomes the man. The player become man,
the stylizer, and by the same token, the humanizer of chaos. And thus
does play become ritual, ceremony, and art, and thus does
also the dance beat improvisation of experience in the blues idiom becomes
survival technique, aesthetic acquire equipment for living, and a central
element in the dynamics of US Negro lifestyle. When the
typical Negro dance orchestra plays the blues, it is also playing with the blues. When
it swings, jumps, hops, stomps, bounces, drags, shuffles, rocks, and so on, its
manner not only represents a swing of the blues attitude toward the bad news that
comes with facts of life, it also exemplifies and generates a riffing the blues
disposition toward the rough times that beset all human
existence. The blues idiom dancer, like
the solo instrumentalist, turns disjunctures into continuities. He is
not disconcerted by intrusions, lapses, shifts in
rhythm, intensification of tempo, for instance, but is inspired
by them to higher and richer levels of improvisation. As a matter of fact, and
as the colloquial sense of the word suggests, the break in the blues idiom
provides the dancer his greatest opportunity, which at the same
time is also his most heroic challenge and his moment of
greatest jeopardy. By the way, that's that's an excellent description of what happens
in a blues in a blues song or even in a jazz song.
But then impromptu heroism, such as is required of the most agile
storybook protagonists, is precisely what the blues tradition has evolved to
condition Negroes to regard as normal procedure.
Nor is there any other attitude towards experience more appropriate to the
ever shifting circumstances of all Americans or more consistent with the
predicament of man in the contemporary world at large.
Indeed, the blues idiom represents a major American innovation of
universal significance and potential because it fulfills, among other things,
precisely that fundamental function that Constance Roark
ascribes to the comedy, the irreverent wisdom, the sudden changes in
adroit adaptation she found in the folk genre of the Yankee back woodsman
Negro of the era of Andrew Jackson. It provides,
quote, emblems for pioneer people who require
resilience as a prime trait.
I like that description of what's happening in the blues,
because you can see it on the floor. You can see it when you go
to a blues club or when you go to a jazz club.
You can also see it in the struggle
that people have, and this is why I read that section, the struggle that people
have in
distributing through improvisation and idiom,
not necessarily dance, but this idea that Murray has of style.
You're transmitting wisdom. What have you learned from this
improvisation? What can other people pick up from it?
And, this is not something new. I mean,
everybody, has struggled with wisdom transfer. When I was writing
this script, I thought of, some of the
sections in bury my heart at wounded knee. Right? When the old men were talking
to the young men and wanted to go off and fight the white people, wanted
to kill them all, and let god sort them out. And, well,
you know, that's the heisan, translation. And
and the old the old man the old men were like,
it might not be a good idea.
Or you see it in feminist writings when we cover books by Zora
Neale Hurston or Virginia Woolf, talking about
and and engaging in opposition to older female writers like,
Jane Austen or earlier female writers like Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte.
Right? You also and African
American writers, like Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver,
who were in rank opposition to the wisdom of a
previous generation. There's a excellent essay in Eldridge Cleaver's
book, Soul on Ice, where he describes being on the prison
yard, and an older black man basically
shuts the young bucks up with some wisdom that they don't want to hear.
And they don't have anything to say.
It is probably his best essay in that book.
Wisdom. Wisdom
can come through culture transfer. Right? And in The United States, we do have
unique pieces of culture. We have blues. We have jazz. We have
baseball. I threw movies in there and cinema even though we
ripped that off from the French and then made it better. We're
we're almost the BASF of countries. Oh, we did. Oh,
we did. That's I mean, come on. Let's be real here.
I I wasn't arguing. Pardon pardon my French, you
know, viewers and listeners when was the last great French film?
Don't worry. I'll I I await with bated breath your emails and
your tweets. But, you know, when we
think about the modes of cultural transfer,
and wisdom transfer, those idiomatic identifiers of class,
culture, and race also come through, and they also impact that
wisdom transfer. But eventually, they fall away, right, revealing
the core elements that need to be reserved over the course of time.
We have a real struggle in our own era because of technology.
The writer, that we just covered, on the podcast,
Walter Benjamin, talked about this in the nineteen thirties, and the storyteller
talked about how the novel basically destroyed the oral tradition. The
technology of the novel and the technology of the printing press destroyed the oral
tradition. And I I am of the opinion
that cell phones and social media and the Internet in
general, because cell phones and social media sort of built on top of that.
But the Internet in general has destroyed wisdom transfer because everything is
right now. Everything is in the present. Right?
To your point earlier, you know, about me being scrubbed from the Internet. Yeah.
I might be archived in the Internet Wayback Machine, but eventually, no one's
gonna care. Right? Because I'm in the Internet Wayback
Machine. I think this is a real challenge for
leaders, and I think it is one of the core things that we are struggling
with. And so, Tom, how can we transfer wisdom,
particularly to the young bucks that don't wanna hear it from generation to
generation?
This this, again, is is probably one of the tougher questions here
because, again, like, to your point so
sometimes how well, let me let me rephrase
your question because I think there's a there's a component that's missing from the
question. So how do leaders transfer wisdom across generations
without compromise? That, like Okay. There there's because
because the transfer of wisdom with
compromise is a lot easier, and it's a lot easier to stomach.
For example, you know, I'll just take our own culture, as
a a very easy or quick example. Right? So
Mhmm. You're you're teaching a a younger kid how to
a a particular dance. Let's say, like, a men's northern fancy dance or something like
that. Not that any of your listener our listeners are gonna have a clue what
I'm talking about, but let stay with me for a second. So when
you're trying to transfer that wisdom into why the regalia is designed the
way it is, what it's supposed to look like, what it means to
to wear that regalia, and then enter the circle and dance in a particular
style that's very traditional and generational. It's been
crossing generations for for a long time. And that younger kid
says, but I don't my moccasins
hurt my feet. Can I wear my sneakers? And you compromise
and say, yeah. It's just a pair of sneakers. Go ahead. Go wear your
sneakers. Right?
Where the like, so as a as a leader, you have to
decide, is the wisdom of that
overall dance, regalia style, dance
style, education behind why it exists, where it exists, and
for what, is it important enough to compromise this
one thing that he doesn't wanna wear moccasins and he wants to wear
sneakers? And if the answer is yes, then that transfer of
wisdom from generation to generation is successful. If
it is not and you try to reinforce why they should be wearing the
moccasins and it's lost on them and they don't wanna dance
anymore because moccasins hurt their feet, and
they they're not gonna dance unless they can wear their sneakers.
Right? Like so, again, it's they're I think I think
I think generational wisdom transference
has compromise all over the place, and we just don't recognize it
because it's subtle. Or at least I don't
think we we try we we try to view it as
transfer of knowledge or transfer of wisdom, but there's always these
compromises that we are so subtly willing to to give into.
And I think that for us to stand firm and
say we're not giving into these compromises anymore, I think
that would be devastating. I think the I think that the younger generation would just
stop listening to us altogether. There's also
there's also there's a different style of transfer of wisdom
where you're not physically preaching and teaching or you're
physically not talking, but I'll give you another another example
of this. I have five children. My youngest daughter was
almost never punished. She was almost never in trouble.
And from an outsider looking in, they go, it's because she was the
baby and she was spoiled. No. It's because she
watched what her older brothers and sisters got in trouble
for and didn't do those things. Didn't do those things. Yeah.
She was she was a she was a student. She was a
student of her environment. She didn't need anybody to transfer that
wisdom to her. She did it on her own by watching and observing what
was happening in our family unit and saying, I'm not
doing that. So can that happen in the workforce? Absolutely. I did the same
thing when I was really early in my career, I worked in the restaurant industry,
and I was trying to move up the the managerial chain, so to
speak, and become a general manager. And every manager that I
worked under, if they got in trouble for something, mental note,
I'm not doing that. Whatever that guy just got in trouble for, got yelled at
about, or got rid like, I'm not doing that. I'm gonna make a note. I'm
gonna learn from that on my own. Nobody has to teach me that. Nobody has
to tell me that. I'm gonna observe it and learn it on my own. I
think part of what we're seeing and what you're talking about, especially from the social
media components, people aren't doing that anymore.
People aren't observing. Like, people are seeing people get famous on TikTok or
whatever, not realizing that they're sacrificing their entire family unit.
They're not spending real quality time with their family. They're they're suffering
from loneliness and depression and all this other stuff. But they're
what they're learning is look at the number of likes that they get or number
of followers they get or number of views they get on their videos. It's
it's the the the the transfer of wisdom
is still there. Well, let me rephrase this. The transfer of
information is still there, but is it truly wisdom? Is Yeah. Again, another
part of the question. Because that's another thing that you know? And that's the the
younger generation, when they're looking at us and we're
trying to explain something or tell, I can't even tell you, Haysan,
how many times my youngest son has come to me and said the words,
dad, you were right. Because I don't
force feed it down his throat anymore. I tell him my thoughts. I give him
my opinions. I tell him what I would do, and then he goes and does
his own thing. He makes his own mistakes. And then when he comes back and
says, dad, you were right. I go, okay. Now do you want help
fixing this? And then the answer is yes, and it's genuine. He actually wants
it. If we don't allow young people to make some of their own mistakes, then
this transfer of wisdom is not gonna happen either.
So okay. So you said a bunch of different things there, and I think I
said a lot of things. Yeah. I said a lot of things there, and they're
all valuable. No. I I think
so. The thing that I land on is the
the challenge of holding the line. And it's not really the challenge of holding the
line. It's the challenge of knowing where the line is.
So
if I
I'll pick something obvious. Right? So,
yeah, I'll pick an outrageous obvious one. Murderers, murderers, murderers all the
time. Right? Like, you you okay. Like okay.
And yet we
can have conversations, and we do with this society,
both about abortion and the death penalty, although
less about the death penalty as of late, of
the last ten or fifteen years that has sort of faded out of the public
conversation. But I I think I think that'll start coming back in in a few
years here as well as conversations about euthanasia.
And, you know, remember Jack Kevorkan? Fourteen. Yeah. That's gonna come
back. You know? I think. Physician assisted suicide. There you go.
Yeah. Well, even that even that even that that that acronym
right there, right? Physician assisted suicide, right? And as a
person who's fascinated by language, I am
convinced more and more every day that
the battle of reality is a battle of who owns the dictionary, who gets to
define the words that are in it, and who gets to define what words
even go in it in the first place. So I guess the
question out of all of that that comes to me is because I loved your
example about sneakers versus moccasins.
What is the line we're preserving there? Can we
articulate that? Can we articulate why the
moccasins are better than the sneakers? And can we do
it in a way that honors
the person who wants to wear sneakers,
but that also honors or or or creates
a great chain of being going back to the people who
wore moccasins. And by the way, by the way,
this is sort of what I think about. I always not always. When
conversations like this occur and when we're making points like
this, I think of my grandma. Right?
And my grandmother would have ordered groceries off the Internet if she'd had
it in, like, 1930 whatever, And she woulda
used that. So it's not the sneakers maybe. It's the line.
It's the chain of being, right, from the moccasins to the
sneakers. How do we talk with people about that? How do we do
that in a way that's compelling for them to even listen to? Because to your
point, it can just come off as information and
not actual
wisdom. Yeah. So I I again, it's
it's I I think I
think part of it is I think part of it is, is
principally driven. Right? So so, again, I'll I'll give you and and,
again, to to your point, I'm not gonna sit here and and and
view or judge the way that somebody teaches their family
and their compromise, and I'm not gonna judge them based on my
what I'm willing to compromise and not compromise. Because just for the record,
all not not a single one of my kids would dare step foot in this
in one of our ceremonial circles with sneakers on. They were they were in their
moccasins. If they're in regalia, they're in their moccasins. It's that simple. And I
think part of it is because I I feel like from
a family perspective, we put a lot we put a tremendous
amount of weight on
if if our if our most recent
ancestor was alive Mhmm. Would they approve?
If the answer is to your point and and by the way, there are a
lot of things, that they would approve on. For
and for example, like, we my my, my mentor
and father-in-law and and and teacher, who passed away in
02/2020, he would say all the time, like,
why would you not use a hand drill, like a power drill? Our
ancestors would use that if they had it available. Right? Like, they they would use
that. Now would our ancestors use sneakers instead of
moccasins in the circle? Probably
not. And the reason I say that is because sneakers are not new.
Sneakers have been around for a hundred years. Mhmm. And
our ancestors from seventy five years ago did wouldn't wear
sneakers in there. Fifty years ago, wouldn't wear sneakers in there.
This is a very modern thing that the next generation is
trying to do. Mhmm. So it's, you know,
it's we don't have to go back two hundred years. This is not something that
we're, like, we're trying to hold on to for no reason. Like, this is something
that that now now, again, I go back let me
switch gears gears here because there's a completely different and if anybody listens
to this podcast that happens to be native, I'm gonna make a little bit of
a distinction here, a distinction with a difference. Mhmm. You're at a
powwow that's a competition powwow versus a powwow that's a
ceremonial powwow. It's different. When you're at a
competition powwow, the comfort of your feet are important. You
also can't slip and fall. And there's a lot of things that sneakers
actually there's a benefit to versus a ceremonial powwow
where it's not about that. It's not about competition. It's not
about winning. It's not about winning a a a pry piece of, you know, prize
money or it's not about that. It's about paying homage
to our ancestors. That's the the point of it.
So, again, there's a little bit of a distinction with a difference there. So
very traditional people who are who
go to these two different versions of pow wows may have two different pieces
of wisdom to give to their kids, grandkids, great grand grandkids as they're
learning how to interact with this environment. So
from a leadership perspective in the workforce, maybe there's a similar
applications here where it's, you know, do as
I say, not as I do in this case, but, you know, not in this
one. Like, I I'm gonna lead by example in this case, but do as I
say, not as I do in this case, and it may make sense. But as
a leader, you have to make it make sense. You can't just you you can't
just say and and call it martial law. Like, it doesn't work that
way, especially today's workforce. Today's workforce needs to know the why.
They need to have an understanding of like, you're asking them to run through a
brick wall, and I'm willing to do it, but I need to know that my
willingness to do it is gonna be worth it for both myself, my
both for you, myself, and my principals. So I I
think there's there's, again, there's a I think that could be a podcast all by
itself. Like, these these kinds of this kind of question. Well
and it's it's but it's it is the you're right. And it is it is
the question that we are going to be covering on this podcast for the
remainder of the year. It's it's one of those things that I think is going
to be key for us as leaders to wrap our arms around,
particularly as we switch over from being
in and I and, again, I'm gonna keep saying it. I'm gonna speak it into
reality. As we switch over from being
in in chaos, and in chaotic
times to being in what I do fundamentally believe is
going to be a cultural high. I do. I I
I think we're I think we're I think we're poised for that. People are tired
of the chaos. People are tired of nonsense.
People do want wisdom. That's the they they finally come around to this is
the thing we're missing. We do need to get back on track. A lot of
the things that we've talked about here today and what does on track mean, what
does wisdom mean, these are conversations that are worth while to, to
have, and every generation has them.
It's just how are we going to get
that knowledge across? How are we going to get that wisdom across?
You know, every generation has to relearn the wisdom of the previous generation just considered
to be table stakes. Right? I mean, this this is what you show up for,
and this is what what it is around
understanding reality and existing in the world and preserving the gift
of feedback. I also think that
there's some technologies, and I'm I'm kind of obsessed with this idea now.
There's some technologies that are better for transmitting this wisdom.
So, you know, I don't know that I'm
I'm not down on the novel. Otherwise, why would I be doing this podcast?
But, I do think that there are
some inherent challenges in the fragmentation of information,
that we haven't really we haven't really gotten our arms
around. And and what I worry about, and
I've said this you said this last year on the podcast, I maybe
not worry. What I caution, right, is that
people our age who did go through all the chaos and do have genuine
wisdom, I don't wanna see us shuffled to the
side like those pair of moccasins just left in the corner.
Right? Because
because the kinds of things we've learned from from going through the hard
chaos of the last twenty years at various
levels, is valuable. There is a value to that,
and it does need to be, it does need to be transmitted.
Alright. Final thoughts on Albert Murray, final thoughts on the Omni Americans
as we close today. Last word,
Tom.
I I, honestly, I think if somebody's listening to this podcast and it sparks
their interest even a little bit, googling this guy
is easy. And there is like I said, I there's a
tremendous amount of information about him, not even just
about, not sorry. Not about not even just him
himself doing interviews, but the sheer volume of people that
speak about this guy in in the ways and and
the the the but it it's it's fascinating.
So the the last word for me would be, if anything on this
podcast had has struck your attention or really has has resonated with you and you
wanna learn more about Albert Murray, I would highly recommend
you go and just Google the guy and start listening to some of the interviews
with him. I I saw an interview with him, the one you shared with,
Hamilton, College. I saw an interview with him,
with Charlie Rose, who was a
journalist back in the day. Like, either they did a TV show. I forgot what
the name of the TV show was, but it was a Yes. He did. Charlie
Rose show. Yeah. And he he interviewed him, and the interview with him was
was exceptionally well done. There was another, there was
another thing that was doing it was like believe it or not, it was an
anti Semitism,
not convention, but it was an anti Semitism
The A conference or something? Collective or conference or something like that. Yeah. There
were several, I mean, several doctoral,
people talking about him and his works and how he how
how they interacted with, you know, modern society and why it's
important. And the fact that the guy wrote, what, five or six books
in five years or six years from 1970 to 1976, he
produced almost all of his literature. He was fast he's just he's
fascinating. He's fascinating. He was smart. And as you read some of the
excerpts from the book and you yourself were impressed at some of the word
combinations that he used in a single sentence, the guy was sharp. And he was
sharp all the way until the last interview he did, which I believe was the
early two thousand I think 02/2006 or '7, maybe it was 02/2008. But,
he was sharp as attack. The guy knew his stuff. He knew who he was.
He was principled. And I I think the other thing that I
that I, that I thought was interesting about him, I found
it fascinating that he was able to talk about racial issues
Mhmm. Not from a position of hate, violence,
or, or, like, that you need like,
forced understanding, I guess, is the other part that I was thinking of. He
always spoke of it from a
experiential, influential, and
educational perspective.
Again, think about the time frame that he grew up in and, you know, black
people in America and that and almost through most of his life were not
treated all that crazy. Right. Yet he had no animosity.
Like, that's the other thing too. Like, he it wasn't thinking the world didn't owe
him anything. He's he was able to succeed through it. He would like, all
the things that he talks about was he's always positive. So
to your point about transfer of some wisdom, I think that the world today could
learn a lot from him. I really do. I think that the world today could
learn a lot from him. White, black, Asians, native, doesn't matter. I
think I think that that all of us could just just listen to him talk.
It was impressive. So, anyway, that's that's my my thoughts on Albert
Murray. Awesome. Well, thank you, Tom,
for visiting us today, joining us today on the
Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast. And with that,
well, we're out.