Hello and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our program, Mechanics Institute Online, for our event with Professor Eddie Glaud for his new book, Begin Again. James Baldwin's America and its urgent lessons for our own. And Eddie Glaud will be in conversation with writer, Jules Gomez. I'm Laura Sheppard, Director of Events at Mechanics Institute. And tonight, we're very pleased to co-sponsor our event with the Museum of the African Diaspora. Now, for those of you who are new to Mechanics Institute, we were founded in 1854 and we're one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. We feature a general interest library, our international chess club, and ongoing author and literary programs, and, of course, our Friday Night Cinema Lip Film series. Please visit our website. And also, the library is now open five days a week. So please check our website for the hours and please come down and visit us in person. But first, I'd like to welcome Museum of the African Diaspora's Director of Public Programs, Elizabeth Gessel, to say a few words about MOAD and about their upcoming events. Elizabeth. Good evening, everyone. Thank you, Laura. And I'm so honored to partner with Mechanics Institute on this event this evening. I'm the Director of Public Programs at Museum of the African Diaspora here in San Francisco. MOAD is a contemporary art museum and our exhibitions and programming inspire learning through the global lens of the African Diaspora. We are currently still close to the public, but we will be reopening in October with five very exciting new exhibitions anchored by two of the first museum solo shows for the Ghanaian artist Amako Boafo and the Molly-Born Johannesburg-based artist Billy Zengewa. So we're very excited about reopening with these stunning exhibitions in October. In the meantime, we're continuing our virtual programs. You can see artist talks, conversations with filmmakers and authors, join an open mic night, or engage in a lively discussion with MOAD docents about a body of work. You can find out more about our reopening and our current programming at moadsf.org. And I hope to see you all there. Great. And thank you, Elizabeth. And when you do visit Mechanics Institute, MOAD is just two blocks away. So please come visit both of us. Also, please put your questions in the chat later on, and we'll be engaging you, the audience. If you'd also like to purchase, begin again. We encourage you to purchase a book at alexanderbook.com or an independent bookstore near you. We are so delighted and honored to have Eddie Cloud with us today. His new book is a reflection of Baldwin's experiences and writings, and today we'll be also focusing on his writings during the 60s and 70s, which offer hope and guidance for racial equity and social justice today, mixing biography, uncovered interviews, history, memoir, and analysis of our current moment. Begin again is Cloud's endeavor following Baldwin to bear witness to the difficult truth of race in America that we face now. I'd like to introduce our guest. Eddie S. Cloud is the James S. McDowell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University, where he is also the chair of the Center for African-American Studies and the chair of the Department of African-American Studies. And in addition to begin again, he's the author of Democracy in Black, How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul. And Jules Gomez, our Bay Area playwright, novelist, poet, and cultural worker is the author of eight books, including the first black lesbian vampire novel called The Gilda Stories. Her trilogy of plays about African-American artists in the first half of the 20th century include Waiting for Giovanni, Leaving the Blues, and Unpacking in P-town, which was commissioned by the New Conservatory Theater Center in San Francisco, where she is playwright and resident. So please welcome Eddie Goud and Jules Gomez. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm very excited, Eddie, and I'm going to just jump right in. And as you know, with any good interview, you can answer anything you want, even if you don't like my question. So there are so many ways to go at this, particularly given the fact that we're coming out of, hopefully, a pandemic where people have been shut into their homes and doing a lot of thinking and some contributing, I hope, financially to some of the movements, and that we've had this summer last year and longer than a summer of Black Lives Matter protests. So this book is, and this discussion coming, I think, a really important time. I'm going to quote you, where you say, it has never been America's way to confront trauma directly, largely because the lie does not allow for it. And nearly every turn, the country minimizes the trauma. And I think we see that even more right now. And can you talk about that explicit confrontation of the need for it? And how does that relate to what's been happening in the last year? Well, first, let me just say I'm so honored to be in conversation with you. I'm excited. I look forward to the dialogue. I want to thank Laura and Elizabeth and Pat, all the invisible labor that's making this possible. So thank you. Yes, there is this kind of resistance to confronting the horrors that make our lives possible. The broken glass, the shards that lie beneath our feet, as it were. And I would suspect that it's part of, or I would venture to say that it's tied to the country's perpetual adolescence. We want to maintain our innocence. So there's a refusal to look at what we've done to make our lives possible. And we see that in this current moment, at the very moment in which we felt as if we were on the cusp of grappling with police violence, of dealing with the overreach of the carceral state and what it has meant for communities of color across this country, we immediately saw a reassertion of the law. You think about Joe Biden, President Biden's speech to the joint session, and Tim Scott's response. One of the first things he says is America is not racist. And then Kamala Harris, the vice president, comes behind him and says, America isn't racist, but we have to deal with our past. And the thing is, we can quibble about whether or not the claim is true, but the real question is, why did they assert it now? And it has everything to do with that kind of refusal, Joe, to confront what we've done. And it's evidence of our ongoing immaturity as a nation that makes sense. Yes, there is that feeling in this country of innocence as if the country was born innocent leak. And all of the things that happen from the moment the colonists stepped on these shores with the attempt to erase Native American presence physically and spiritually, and the way the indentured quality of the arrival of Asian-Americans here to be used and then disappeared. So that quality of innocence is so flagrantly wrong. You know, wrong. It's hard to believe that white America maintains that sense of innocence. And for me, what's extremely exciting about Baldwin's writing when you look at the fiction or the essays is that he maintained a level of hope, even seeing the lie, understanding the lie. Do you think James Baldwin's spiritual underpinnings were one of the things that helped him maintain a sense of hope for this? I'm not sure. You know, there's that moment in 1970. He had just tried to commit suicide in 69 after King's murder and another failed relationship, feeling loveless. In some ways, he fell to pieces. And in 1970, he's an Istanbul and Ebony reporter interviewing, and he asks him a question about hope. And Baldwin gives him this big-toothed smile, and he says, hope is invented every day. And if you have to invent hope every day, that means you're having to hold off despair every day. You're having to keep despair at arms length every day. So I think his sense of hope is indebted to his religious formation, but it's also a blue-soaked hope. It's that formulation that I love coming out of Du Bois' souls of black folk in the elegy, or what wasn't an elegy, to his son, where he says, a hope not hopeless, but unhopeful, a hope not hopeless, but unhopeful. And that's that blue-soaked hope. So oftentimes, Americans want to read hopefulness as optimism, as if this is pan gloss in Voltaire's Candide. No, this isn't the best of all possible worlds, baby. No, no, no. This is BB King's, Nobody Loves Me But My Mother, She Could Be Jobbed In Two. Yes. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. I wonder sometimes about Baldwin's ability to leave the US, to go to France and to other countries, and really find himself, find the US within himself. Can you talk a little bit about that? I don't think of it as a running away from the US, but somehow giving himself a perspective. What do you think? I think it's absolutely critical. When you read the introduction to Nobody Knows My Name, 61, I think. There's this line. You always have my Baldwin right next to me. There's this line. He says, in America, the color of my skin had stood between myself and me. In Europe, the barrier was down. Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch. It turned out that the question of who I was was not solved because I had removed myself from the social forces which menaced me. Anyway, these forces had become interior, and I had dragged them across the ocean with me. The question of who I was had at last become a personal question, and the answer was to be found in me. And so this is that passage in Nobody Knows My Name which shows that Baldwin is grappling with the question of identity, self-identity, and self-creation outside of the context of the daily cuts of white supremacy in the United States. But he's still grappling with what has been deposited in his gut, the sense that he's ugly, the sense that he's not lovable, the sense that he's less valued, and he's trying to in some ways vomit that all up and the distance without having the temptation of trying to kill somebody.  So he gave him the space to do the work to actually engage in this arduous task of self-creation. That distance was necessary, but it wasn't an exile. I keep saying this. Yes, I agree. He's still reflecting on the country, still thinking about the country. He just needed the space to do so. Yes. And I think he also, and I'd appreciate your thoughts on it, when he was writing Giovanni's Room, many people said, well, he wrote this book and it's a gay book and it's all about white people. And in a way, for me, Giovanni's Room was another attempt to find the distance to talk about a lot of things. I mean, I think it's actual and metaphorical. He's talking about poverty. He's talking about nationalism and colonialism in Giovanni's Room, wrapped up in this story of a love affair that's also a betrayal. And I think those are all metaphors for the US and their colonialism. Absolutely. It's a love story and it's hard, but it's a love story that's all because Baldwin is constantly trying to keep track of two things at once, it seems to me. He wants to be able to describe at a certain level of detail with the eye of the artist and the material conditions of our living. But he also wants to give attention to with detail of the complex interiority of our living. So this is at the heart of the beef with Richard Wright, which leads Ralph Ellis and Albert Murray to misidentify Baldwin as an ally, because he's saying to Richard Wright, we're not reducible to our material conditions, Richard, because if we're all bigger, then I can't account for you. And so Giovanni's Room becomes this kind of extraordinary exploration of the complexities, the perils of love and feeling loveless within the context of a world that is deeply layered. And what's so fascinating for me is that it's the second novel. I mean, could you imagine writing Giovanni's Room in the 1950s, early 1950s? I mean, when I interviewed Angela Davis about Jimmy, because I saw this video footage of him speaking at Berkeley and Angela Davis was looking like a little, she had the look of the smitten child. She looked upon Jimmy, right? And she said, in so many ways, he was out there all by himself. And Giovanni's Room, for me, is just this exquisite example of his courage and the magnitude of his intellectual vision, of his imagination. Oh, yeah. I mean, I first read Baldwin when I was probably about 14. And I fell in love with his ability to use language. That was the first thing. And I knew that I was too young to really understand everything and that I would need to come back to his writing when I was more mature as a reader and as a person. But I felt like I had been, something had been injected into my heart and my mind just by reading him, even if I didn't understand it as a teenager. So I feel grateful that I knew I needed to come back. And that's what I did. And later came back to read Giovanni's Room in another country and then was more flabbergasted than ever when I actually was like, oh my god, how did he do that? Yeah. I wonder what you think Spurred Baldwin to leave France and come back to the US. I know in your book you talk about it being the return was not really spurred by this desegregation of Charlotte High School. But what do you think it really was? I think he wanted to come home and see the people he loved. He wanted to eat some fried chicken, to hear the sounds of Harlem. When he writes about what allowed him to finish, go tell it on the mountain, listening to those Bessie Smith records, finding the kind of cultural anchor that allowed him to hear the rhythm of speech, the cultural kind of reservoir that made him who he was, who he is. But again, though, when he comes home, he's radically transformed. He's not the Jimmy that left. So there is this kind of misfittedness that always kind of characterizes Baldwin's position, vis-a-vis American letters, vis-a-vis African American letters, and the like. But I think there is the politics of the moment. There's the movement that is taking off. But I think there is also these deeply held connections. He's got to come back and he's got to see that David has grown up. He wants to see his model. He wants to hold the people that he helped raise. And that's important. That's really important. Yeah, I agree. And when you talk about the aftertimes, when he comes back and the movement is in a different place, is it moving, is it not moving, what is his role in it, what do you think that sense of that aftertimes being the splintering after disruption of old ways and making of new community? What do you think James Baldwin felt was his part in it? The new activists who are kind of contentious with each other, what do you think he thought of his role in? He's always bearing witness. I opened chapter one with the story of him in this apartment with the SNCC students from Howard, with Michael Thelwell and Stokely Carmichael and Muriel Tillingast. Jimmy needed his drink, so they had to get some bootleg liquor.  And he says to them, if you promise me that you won't believe what the world says about you, I promise that I will never betray you. I will never betray you. That I, Jimmy Baldwin, will never betray you. And Stokely Carmichael Kwame Therese said he never did. And Baldwin saw in the eyes of these young folk in 1963 that they had experienced raw terror in the South. And many people tend to think of Black power as wholly separate from the civil rights movement, not understanding that many of the proponents of Black power were actually proponents of nonviolence. Stokely Carmichael said he only broke nonviolent discipline once. And that's in the march against fear when the police attacked Dr. King. So Baldwin is trying to give an account that these young people who were screaming at the top of their lungs, Black power, who were demanding a radical transformation, these were America's children. And that they could not be tossed aside. And so I think what he was trying to do is to give an account, to give an account of what happened, where America couldn't absorb our struggles into its triumphant story that secured its innocence, but to tell the truth about what happened. That's why No Name in the Street is such an important book to me. Because No Name in the Street Jewel is the spine of Begin Again. And it's the first book he writes after King's assassination. Yes, yes. And he calls it this mighty motherfucker. Because he's trying, it almost killed it, because he's trying to give this account. And part of what he's trying to do is tell a story of wound, of trauma, of fragmented memory, of betrayal. Of betrayal. He's trying to pick up the pieces. And so the answer to your question in a direct way, he's trying to bear witness in such a way that we could gather ourselves up in the face of the country's betrayal and raise our babies, right? Because he knows he sees Reagan on the horizon in 63. Yeah. He sees it, he sees it. He sees what's ahead of these young people when he's talking to them in that apartment in 1963, you know? In the sense of trauma and that you say trauma, witness and trauma are inextricably linked. And you talk about a bit about what happened with the brother, Ben, of one of the three workers who were killed. And I wish you'd talk a little bit about that, because to me, it is a good example of how trauma enters the system, the human system, and it goes down through generations. I hadn't known about what happened with Ben and I feel like it's a good thing to do. What happened with Ben and I felt I wanted to know more so that we understand why we today are still suffering from the middle passage, in a way. Yeah, yeah. You know, there's, you know, I remember watching eyes on the prize and I remember the footage around the death of Shauna Goodman and Shane. And I remember the footage of the funeral and the interview with the young Ben Cheney who looked up to his brother, James, right? And I want to do what he, I want to step into his shoes. He was, and the grief and how his mother had to pull him close in tour. And this baby grows up and finds himself connected with the Black Liberation Army. It's supposed to be transporting some things, taking some people on a ride and that ends up a part of a murder spree with the ex-Vietnam vet and winds up doing time. But prior to that moment, he was so angry. The parents, the Cheneys had to leave Mississippi because they were under threat. Then they threw him into, he was the first recipient of the Goodman scholarship, threw him into this private school with all his white kids. Right? So he's alienated. He's angry, he's wounded and he ends up doing time. And so there's this interview and I heard it through the grapevine where Baldwin is interviewing Dave Dennis. And Dennis talks about Ben and it broke my heart. He was like, these are the children this country has produced. And the irony, he comes home out of prison. He gets his sentences commuted. He comes home only to see that white folks then shot up his brother's grave, his tombstone. The generations of it are horrifying. It just keeps rolling over and over from the big lie to the murders and the killings and the victimization of black people and poor people and brown people. How do we fix ourselves? James Baldwin asked at one point. And I think that's gonna be the question we as activists and thinkers face in these coming years. How do we fix ourselves? Yeah. So anyway, I did wanna address some of the critique of Baldwin's later work. Yeah. And I appreciate what you say about it that the criticism failed to take seriously the continuity of themes running through Baldwin's body of work. Why do you think critics felt Baldwin had become a caricature of himself? You know, ironically, I think a lot of it, well, a couple of things. One, I think Joseph Campbell's biography of Baldwin which says that Jimmy's voice broke in 1963. I think that's just wrong. Just it doesn't make any sense to me. And it became a kind of standard periodization of his work.  He's not, right? So I think on the one hand, I think there's this kind of that biography sets the tone in interesting sorts of ways of how he's periodized. I think another thing is that the politics changed. So Jimmy, so I think it says more about the critics than about the work. No naming the street for me is a marvel at the level of form as well as substance. What he's trying to, at the level of form, he's trying to write trauma. So the book folds back on itself. He's Toni Morrison's beloved. And what she's doing with memory, to my mind, is indebted to this book. Angela Davis says, she thinks it's the first book in carceral studies. What he's doing with Toni Maynard and the Safe Streets Act of 1968. But at this point, you know, people are rejecting Black Power, at least the Petty Buja Z, rejecting Black Power. And by the time we get to the 1980s, this is the age of Cosby. And Jimmy is still coming hard.  You see, so I think it has something to do with the shift in the times and Baldwin's insistence on bearing witness. So for example, the last book, The Evidence of Things Not Same. He's talking about that when a child works. Yeah. And what happens when white supremacy still obtains and Black folk hold the reins of power?  It's almost a foreshadow jewel. Of Barack Obama's face, the Black mayor's face, the Black sharer's face, and the riot and the burning of Baltimore. All of that happening at once, Baldwin was trying to get us to think about it in the evidence of things that, oh, these folk didn't want to hear this. Yeah. Go on, go back to Saint Paul de Valls. Yeah. So I think it has something to do with the politics of the time. And I think it has something to do with the early critical assessments of this work. You liken Baldwin's later writing to a cold-framed composition pursuance. I wish you'd talked just a little bit more about that. And I see now I have to find the piece of music and play it. I'm like, hey, just... Yeah. So Love Supreme is one of my favorite Coltrane albums. And my first book, Exodus, is actually was structured, at least in my head, based on pursuance. Da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da. So that's, and what Coltrane does is a series of choral combination so that by the time you get to the end of that track, it's almost, you almost can't recognize it. It's almost sheets of sound, right? But there's a through line. So there's a part of what I was trying to say is that if you pay attention, if you, what you think is screaming and rage, there is, right, this continuity that there's this theme that is being played that is at the heart of the reflection. So even when it seems at its most discordant, right? It is still the central beauty in the Aristotelian sense, in the ancient sense. It is still the beautiful formulation that defines Baldwin's corpus. So what I was trying to do is to get people to move from the sound of notes of native son, right? In order to understand the sound of no name and devil finds work and evidence of things not seen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll all be downloading some Coltrane tonight. You know, at one point, early on, Huey P. Newton said in the Black Panther Party newspaper that the party is going to have to learn to align itself with other movements, the gay movement, women's movement to create kind of coalitions in order to be successful. And he did that at a very early time and people really ignored him. It was really, really sad.  So I'm not saying hypersexuality as a curse word as much as understanding it's a response to something. But I wonder about that homosexuality was so frightening to a lot of us in the black community. It made for distrust of Baldwin. Yeah, I think so. I mean, this is one of the failures I think of the book because I couldn't quite figure out how to do this, how to write about sexuality and Baldwin in a way that would fit with what I was trying to do at the level of form with biography, literary, because the attempts that I did, it just, it became too academic. But let me just, so that's just me just saying that it's one of the failings of the book. But Baldwin was misfitted because he was queering everything that he was, every time he entered into a space, he queered. Yeah. And I use that in a technical sense, right?  Mm-mm. And Jimmie was hurt. I mean, he was hurt by what Eldridge Cleaver said about it. And the irony though, is that when Eldridge Cleaver was in exile, if you look at the panther papers of all the people who were donating money for his exile, Baldwin's name was at the top of the list every single time, every single time. But King's movement, King was unsettled by Baldwin's presence. Remember, Baldwin is out. Yeah.  He's out. Right. And that's been out. And folk are unsettled by this. But I think not only is this sexuality unsettling King, it's his class position as well. Because King is Atlanta bourgeois. Yeah. Yeah. And those of us who know what that means, we know that's a particular kind of black bourgeoisie. Baldwin is not from Sugar Hill. He's from the bottom. Right. King is reserved. He doesn't want anyone to know that he's smoking cigarettes.  Baldwin is prone to the dramatic and may at any moment cuss anybody out at a time. So I think there is a sense in which not only is his sexuality unsettling, his class position. Class issue is always overlooked when we're talking about this stuff.  So yeah, he's misfitted. He's misfitted. And I think it's part of the source of the power of his prophetic witness. He always stands at an angle. These of the moment. Yeah. At a point, Baldwin says, color is not a human or a personal reality. It is a political reality. And you quote that in your book, do you think that this is too advanced a concept to speculate about in 1963 that other activists really, they're not able to quite grasp the significance and the truth of that statement. Yeah, you know, I think so. You know, he's so ahead of his time. Right? I can see Baldwin using they, you know, his pronouns being very particular because he's already there. You know, he's already there. There's a sense in which Baldwin is trying to, is warning us not to spring the trap of categorization. To understand that the political reality of white supremacy necessitates that we organize along the lines of race.  And the moment you say, I'm an N-word, the moment they call you the N-word, you say, no, I'm not. The no, I'm not means that you're already in the circuitry. And then you go, no, I'm not, I'm this. And then you go, no, I'm not, I'm this. The moment you go, I am, you negate the negation. And then you go constructive. If you draw in those categories, you could so easily become trapped in. Yeah. Baldwin understood that for people who have been beaten down by the concept of color, it makes sense that we would grab hold of it and reinvest it with meaning that black would become beautiful.  The mystical. Because then you're trapped. Right. And this is 1940, this is 1948 in an essay, Everybody's Protest Now, In Notes of a Native Son. Now as then, we find ourselves bound first without, then with then by the nature of our categorization. And escape is not affected through a bitter railing against this trap. It is though this very striving or the only motion needed to spring the trap upon us. We take our shape. It is true within and against that cage of regality bequeath us at our birth. And yet it is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed. Yes. Now what happens is that Ellison and Murray, they misread it, right? Because they think here he's offering us a sense of a kind of American individuality.  But that's another story. That's another book. I mean, I think as someone who writes speculative fiction, when I read a lot of things that Baldwin says, he is so far ahead of his time, it makes you want to place him in somewhere, there's Afrofuturism, because his preachments, if I've just made up a word, speak to a time in which you cannot be bound by the dominant culture's reality. You must not be bound by the dominant culture's reality. And he was saying that decades before. Absolutely. I think also there's something about the way Baldwin always turned to love, always wanted us to have, has love as a touchstone that really freaks people out. They think, is he a hippie? Where is he going with that? And I think it is still one of the most profound ideas that we could take in. The idea that love must underpin everything we do, or we fail. And not just simply a narrow love for our own people, but a love of the planet, the earth, the spirit, I think is very, very important coming. Yeah, yeah. You know, Baldwin's notion of love is not just simply a goth, they're like kings. It's Felia, it's Eros.  He says, who like lovers? What does he mean by that? Right, like lovers, whatever I teach this to my students, I say, well, what does that mean?  So there's a vulnerability, a risk involved in giving oneself over or in no name in the street, he says, you get a sense of what love means when you have another human being on topic, you know, this sort of thing, right? So there's their love for Baldwin requires a kind, not losing of oneself, but an opening of oneself to another, right? Yeah, yeah. And that for him is the most powerful force, right, on the planet. And not many of us are willing to do that, he says. Not many of us are willing to even talk about it really. Exactly. The idea of being witness, bearing witness, I think is such a powerful one as well. And when I think about the young woman, Darnella Frazier, who took that video of George Floyd's murder, you know, and we make fun of teenagers always having their phones and, you know, taking pictures, I just think of her as someone who intrinsically, inherently, maybe not even consciously knew she had to bear witness to this murder and that by doing so, she helped a nation bear witness to what was going on in our country and helped to open up a whole idea about social change, you know, that we've been avoiding, you know, as Baldwin said, it's not a Negro problem, it's a white problem. And I think her, Darnella Frazier's bearing witness, we pointed us into that understanding. This is a white problem that we have to address. How do you, how do you think about our addressing it? It's so huge, the magnitude of the lies, the history. What are some of the things you think about and you think about how, I know that's a big question. I know that's a big question, but as a writer, think about it just as a writer. You as a writer, me as a writer, how do we as writers think about addressing the, you know, there's this line in Baldwin's essay, wrote in 1962, you know, as much truth as one conveys, that the writer, the novelist, the artist, he says, must tell the truth and then a little bit more. So part of what we have to do as poets in the Emersonian sense of what the poet is, right? Is that we have to offer languages, offer ways of seeing that break loose, that break, that enable people to imagine beyond the opacity of now, to see the world differently, right? So in your speculative fiction, you know, it's like, I just finished reading Parable of the Sore, and I was rereading Parable of the Sore, and I was thinking about Parable of the Sore alongside of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The Road, yeah. And thinking about how differently they end. Yes. Both end with death, but there's a burial, there's a communal burial. There's a way in which a certain way of telling the story, a certain way of how we're going to commune with our dead, how we're going to carry our dead forward, that closure, and what happens, how individualized Cormac McCarthy's is in interesting sorts of ways, right? So part of what we have to do as artists, as writers, is to really, I think, offer up ways of imagining the world differently. Yes. As Shelley says, imagine, you know, the imagination is the source of the good. Yes. Yes. I love that. I love that. Well, I know that you have used said in your book that, and I hesitate to say this name out loud, but so I won't, the former president, number 45, is not exceptional, but is rather a part of a long line of continuing the lie. Are there ways institutionally that we might be able to keep history in front of us? And as a teacher, yes, you would, yeah. Yeah, I think so, you know, and I see Lori just showed up, could be kind of let us know. I think so, and that's why I kind of ended with my trip to the Legacy Museum and the Lynching Memorial, right? There is something very different about what Brian Stevenson is trying to do. It's not about, you know, this triumphalous narrative that actually defines, you know, self, the tourist industry of civil rights, of the civil rights movement. It stands, you know, in a different relationship. When you go to Montgomery, it doesn't fit with the civil rights narrative in an easy way because it is trying to get us to confront our dead, right? That the Lynching Memorial isn't about triumph, it's about the horrors, what we're capable of and what does it mean to remember that? And that is public history, right? That is institutionalized and it matters that it's in Montgomery, right? It matters that it's there. And as Brian Stevenson says, which I love, he says, truth and reconciliation is sequential. First, you have to tell the truth in order for us to reconcile. And reconciliation becomes the condition for repair. So there we go. I love that. And I think about what we're trying to do as writers is to make the country live up to the promise of America. You know, it's not like I'm gonna be the patriotic American, I'm true to the promise of what was America. And the final words from Baldwin are the ones that I have put up over my desk and it's simply that we refuse to spare. Yeah. And reading your book has certainly helped me think about how we refuse to spare so much. I really appreciate your writing the book and being with us here to talk about that. Thank you so much. Thank you, I'm so blessed. Thank you so much for taking the time. Such a wonderful conversation. Thank you. Oh, thank you, Jewel. And thank you, Professor Eddie Glau. This has been such an inspiring conversation. And now we'd like to just open it up to our Q and A with our audience. Pam, would you like to read off some of the questions? Your, one of the first questions that came up is from Susan Lippmann. Given the racist history of the United States, how would you describe the racial history of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries? Where does this leave us in the 21st century? Oh. In 25 words or less. Listen. Our inheritance is in part this idea that white people matter more than others. This idea that, of what I call the value gap, this belief that because of the color of one's skin, one ought to be valued more than others. That has not been uprooted. It defined our founding. It was at the heart of the Civil War. It was at the heart of the betrayal of the radical reconstruction. And it was at the heart of Make America Great Again. We're still battling with those demons. Or better put, those ghosts still have the country by the throat, it seems to me. Okay, well, the next question is from Regina B. You spoke of raw terror, blacks were subjected to in the 60s. It seems that black people are experiencing raw terror today, realized by a plethora of voter suppression legislation along with a lack of law enforcement reforms and a growing un-sheltered population. Professor Glaude, I'm looking for hope. Where is it hiding? Hope is invented every day. Yeah. As Baldwin said, human beings are at once disasters and miracle. We have to protect ourselves from the disasters that we are. But if we show up, there's at least a chance for a miracle. So hope is found in our capacity to be otherwise. In other words, you are the hope you've been looking for to echo Miss Ella Baker. You are the hope you've been looking for. And so that doesn't mean that it's not blue soap. It doesn't mean that the times aren't dark. But I stand in a tradition where darkness that never has the last word. It never has the last word. So where do we find hope? Right here. It's in each of us. We can be transformative agents if we just decide to be so. And I like to think of darkness as fertility. Dark soil is a place where things grow. And when things are dark and fearsome, in that darkness, we cannot see what is behind those shadows, but behind them is always something that's growing and fertile that will feed us. And we make that change if we just will keep going and not be totally afraid of that darkness. Indeed. My favorite reggae band is Midnight. And it's the dawn of a new day. It's the darkest hour, but it's the dawn of a new day. Exactly. Exactly. Susan Lippmann has another question. What role does capitalism play in the continued discrimination against blacks? Oh, except the heart of it. Racial capitalism, right? There's a sense in which modern capitalism takes shape in the context of the transatlantic slave trade, which has everything to do with a set of presuppositions about the disposability of people, of human beings and the justifications, right? Around that disposability, right? So Baldwin says in 1964, in an essay entitled The White Problem, he said, the Christians who founded the nation had a fatal flaw. They sought to build the democracy, but they had these chattels and they had to justify the role that this chattel played in their lives. And so what they said in order to justify the role these chattels played in their lives is that these men and women were not human beings. Because if they were not human beings, then there was no crime that had been committed. And Baldwin says, that lie is the basis of our present trouble. So they're intimately connected. Or as the late Stuart Hall would put it, race is the modality through which class is experienced in the United States. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Does that make sense, Joel? Absolutely, absolutely. It's, you know, if we're gonna be the coin of the realm, if people are gonna be the coin of the realm, then we have to break down that realm so those coins cannot be used. Yeah. I believe in what Dr. King talked about as a revolution of value. We have to disrupt the value gap. That is, we have to change our view of black people. The only way we can change our view of black people is we have to change our view of white people. The idea that somebody, because of the color of their skin ought to be valued more than ideas irredeemable. We need to throw it away. And we also need to change what we value. What we value, right? And hopefully that will happen in our lifetime, but we'll see. Michael Striano asks, if Baldwin rejected the ethos of violence in an attempt to understand what was underneath it and extrapolated those ideas to predict future political and racial tensions, do you think he would be surprised by where we've ended up in 2021 and the events of the past five to 10 years? I've always hesitant to try to anticipate Baldwin's words or his reactions. As a reader of Baldwin, I could say, right, that as Joel noted in our conversation, he was profanity. We're still grappling with the very thing he was trying to explicate, to understand, to give an account of. So that's my short answer to that very nuanced question. And I will, I have to say this, Michael Striano, who asked that question is a wonderful actor in New York who played the spirit of Giovanni in my play. Oh, that's wonderful. So all during rehearsals and the run of the play, he and I had fantastic Baldwin conversations. And so I really appreciate him being here and he's still got some great questions coming. He's still, that was wonderful. He was a magnificent in the play. Thank you, Michael. Well, there's a question. Actually, it's kind of the two people that asked basically the same question, Barbara Swan and Michelle, can you speak about the writers that Baldwin read and admired? And Michelle asks, which writers influenced James Baldwin? Oh, his library is expansive. Obviously, there's Henry James. In my recent interview with the New York Times, I don't, I can't, I don't have Baldwin's love of Henry James. I prefer his brother, Willie. So there's Henry James, there's Marcel, there's Proust. Proust is important. Of course, there's the King James Bible. There's the way in which he's engaging the classic American writers as well. You know, Baldwin, Baldwin's library isn't, I haven't people haven't, I haven't had a chance to get my hands on it in a way, but there's also evidence of his engagement with Whitman, his engagement with Emerson.  Jules, you want to try to answer some of that as well or no? I, you know, I think, of course, he was good friends with Lorraine Hansberry. Of course, yeah, they're partners. It really influenced him in his playwriting. And I think he was also interested in, I mean, of course, he read all of his contemporaries. So he could keep up with their critiques of him. But he was amazingly well read for someone who was writing so much himself, which I find amazing and fabulous. It's very, it's very, it's a very stern discipline reading because the illusions are clear. I mean, I found, he's reading Whitman very closely at the McDowell, at McDowell. And when you read no name, you see explicit allusions to Whitman, oh, pioneers shows up and that sort of thing, right? So he's, it's, one of my dreams is to get a hold of his library. I don't know where it is to see what he's annotated, yeah. Yeah. Tammy Jacquet has asked, do you think the future will change? And I think maybe as it, maybe the, what will change in the future? What, what can change? It all depends on us. That's, that's, so it can change. Nothing is fixed, except the fact that we're going to take one last breath. Yeah. So what the future holds depends upon what we do. It's in our hands. It's Tony Morrison said in a Nobel lecture. It's in our, it's in our hands. Yeah. So, but you know, the question is whether or not America will double down on its ugly. Whether we will finally choose to be a multiracial democracy. That's the choice that's in front of us right now. I have another question from Michael Striano. The conversation for reparations has been restarted in the past couple of years. I support reparations, but with such deep hurt that has been inflicted in so many ways, is there a way to allocate your reparations to really make a difference and to make any progress to remedy some of those wounds? Absolutely. Remember what Brian Stevenson said. Truth and reconciliation is sequential. First, you got to tell the truth in order for there to be reconciliation. And reconciliation becomes the basis for repair. What does it mean to tell the truth? Well, if we tell the truth, then we know that racial inequality in the United States is not something that just happened. The wealth gap is the result of banking policy. The result of FHA loans. So at the very moment in which the vaunted American middle class came into existence through New Deal policies, Black folk were locked out, specifically agricultural industries, domestically, weren't covered. We know that residential segregation, school segregation, redlining, forms of policing. We have produced the society that we have built deliberate. It is our country is what we have made. So once we concede that, we have to be just as deliberate in dismantling it as we were in creating it. That's the move we have to make. And if we make that move, then we won't be lifting all boats. We will be trying specifically to remedy, right? The ways in which racial inequality saturate our society. And it's gonna be a long haul because we're gonna have to rebuild the country. Rebuild. Because the built environment reflects racial inequality. Our zoning laws, our neighborhoods, we're gonna have to build the country differently. And that's gonna go happen. It's gonna take, in order for that to happen, it's gonna be well beyond our lifetimes. Yes, I agree. I mean, it's like trying to patch a leak in the roof without going down to the studs and seeing where the problems are. And I think that's, it'll be generations from now, but I think it's worth the effort. Absolutely. So there's a question, another question from Regina B. Will you comment on the controversy surrounding critical race theory and is it included in your curriculum at Princeton? So critical race theory as an intellectual project is typically located in law schools. It is tied to critical legal studies. What we have to be clear is that the current debate around critical race theory is a red herring that has been created by the right wing, Cabal, trying to distract us from the all-out assault on voting that's happening in the country. So they are not interested in whether or not they actually are right about critical race theory. They're just using it as, excuse me, as a broad branding of everything they don't like. Sorry. So the shorthand is that I don't want to argue with the folks about whether or not they're right about critical race theory.  And what they're doing is they're playing on fears. So the demographic shifts are leading people to believe that they're gonna be displaced. Now they're telling people that they're gonna be made out to be monsters, excuse me. Sounds like a hay fever cough to me. Some water, maybe some water went down the wrong way. Yeah, yeah. I would agree with Eddie that there's a, it's like a magician's trick. Distract you with one thing, one issue. And you really don't talk about what the real core issues are. And if we think about voting rights and if we think about redlining and incarceration from the whole, from school to prison pipeline, then we understand what is critical is getting to the basic point of having a multi-racial country, a multi ethnic country. And that this argument about critical race theory is simply a distraction from all of those issues. That we as non-academics, we just read the headlines and we get distracted by that caution that we're supposed to take around intellectual ideas like that, so. Oh my goodness. Welcome back, sorry. Let's see you back, sir. Well, I was really amazed that in Evanston, Illinois, the city of Evanston is going to be giving reparations from their community that was just announced about two days ago. And I'm not sure which channel I saw this on. Maybe it was on Amantpur, but I was really amazed and so pleased to see this. And who knows if this can be a modeling for really understanding the past and bringing the past into the present and also that it ties in with the responsibility of capitalism in promoting racism from the very beginning. So that was just something that's come up in the news that's been quite popular. And also, Eddie, I wanted to ask you about, since you were involved in the Academy of Religious Scholars, if you have continued connection with that organization, we just saw one of the heads of the Baptist Church resigned because of all of the racism and rhetoric that's going on. And I'm wondering if there's, if you see any support through the faith community to make changes in this country from the grassroots? Well, absolutely. When you think of what Bishop Barber is doing with the Four Peoples Campaign, it is a mobilization of progressive Christians in response to evangelical support of Trumpism. So, absolutely, absolutely. I apologize, something. Okay. Hey, there's one more question. And it is, hold on, it is from Princeton. You know the current state condition of James Baldwin's home in France. Is Baldwin honored and loved in France? Baldwin is loved and honored in France, but his home is being turned into luxury apartments. Right, capitalism. With a little plaque. And his study is supposed to be salvaged, but it's luxury departments with the panoramic view. That's what I saw. Yeah. We're gonna start writing letters. It's too late. It's already too late. And people did try, but it was already too late. I think the greatest tribute that we can give to James Baldwin is one that Eddie Glaude has contributed to, which is writing about his work, his ideas, and letting each subsequent generation know how significant he and his ideas are to our survival as a people and as a nation. Indy, thank you so much, Jewel. Appreciate it. Thank you, this is really- I wanna thank both of you, Jewel and Eddie, for the most inspiring and incredibly powerful conversation tonight. I'm just totally overwhelmed and pleased. And we'll continue reading James Baldwin's work and reading your work, Eddie, and your work, Jewel, in all of its forms and continue to look inside, to make the changes that we need to make and to be active, to be activists and voices for racial justice and social justice in this country. And I hope that everyone here tonight has been inspired to do the same. And we look forward to more conversations. As we go, come back to the library, Mechanics Institute is open. Come back to our programs when we start up live in the fall. Be safe, be healthy, and we'll say a good night and be well. Thank you. Stay safe, everybody. Thank you, Jewel. Thank you very much. Thank you, Laura. Thank you to Moed and to Elizabeth Gessel for hosting with us once again. Thank you. Thank you, Jewel, for such an amazing conversation. I'm so inspired. Take care. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and close the doors. It was great. I think it's really wonderful conversation. I hope everybody will watch our, we will have a recording of this posted on our YouTube account. Fabulous. Thank you. Bye. Bye-bye.


Shona Ferguson and Connie Ferguson break up The couple who have become firm favorites on the celebrity scene and often referred to each other as best buddies apparently called it quits after cheating rumors involving Shona emerge. The cheating rumors are nothing new but Connie got proof that couldn't be disputed. She's upset. She didn't expect this a close source told Mzansi stories. Those close to Connie have told Mzansi stories that the alleged cheating is even more hurtful because it's not for the first time. They were good friends and he betrayed that trust. She's gone through this before and he promised to change. Shona has denied the cheating claims and said that his reputation speaks for itself.


Photographs are everywhere. The destination is much less important than the vision you bring to it. Thank God!


And now he can't afford a state house and they've moved in with his brother. Eight kids, four adults, one two and a half bedroom house and that Government has no plan. so they had to move in with his brother and now there are eight children and four adults living in one three bedroom home in Kelston. It's not there for the Samoan man who lost his job at a factory in South Auckland and can't afford a state house and moved in with his brother. maitha yna 16 o'r pili, aiga, i'n 1-3a meiri i pa i'n Kelston.


Two heats and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbados and Bahamas and the Grenada scheduled to go in the first heat. The games record set back in 2013 by Jamaica. The only event we have qualifying, the only 4x4 event that we have a qualifying round. Encouraging still Ricardo to see the numbers coming out. You always like to see heats and give the young athletes a chance to get themselves ready and get a feel for what it takes to make it to the final. Some of them already will have had that level of experience but a lot of them will not have had. Saint Vincent of the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbados, Barbados, Bahamas and Grenada. Very difficult for a lot of these countries to over a three day period field, 4x1 teams, 4x4 teams, a mixed relay team. A little bit easier for the Eastern Caribbean territories when it is in the Eastern Caribbean, travel in the Caribbean, still primitive as they go on. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbados, Barbados, Bahamas and Grenada. Antigua and Barbados with Conjure Pascal going well. Barbados have Nikolai Clark on their opening leg. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines with work to do. Bahamas also going well, they are in lane number 6. Bahamas and Grenada. Zion Shepard there coming down for the Bahamas, measuring Devon Ferguson. They come to the first change, the Bahamas just ahead of Grenada. By the way, top three short to go through plus the two next best times and the Bahamians going well with Kelly. But now it's over, Tygon Peterkin for Grenada in close pursuit. Antigua and Barbada in third position. Barbados in fourth position, but long for that third and the final automatic qualifying spot. But it is Bahamas ahead of Grenada. pulls away into the home stretch. He will pass first but here comes Antigua and the Barbuda. Bahamas in front, Grenada in second. Antigua and Barbuda separating themselves from Barbados in that third and final automatic qualifying spot. Gavano Bridgewater with the baton. But here comes Kwanel Pierre for Grenada. I think this is the first we've seen of him these games. He's been aching to get on the track. Pierre leads for Grenada but the Bahamians respond. Bridgewater circling the Grenadian. Gavano Bridgewater taking the Bahamas well clear on this penultimate leg. They'll hand over first. Grenada still holding an automatic qualifying position as the Bahamians continue to dominate this with Berklin Monnings, there for Herdla on the anchor leg and it will take something special to get back to him but the Grenadians will try. Here comes Barbados trying to get that food position qualifying spot. Barbados ahead of Antigua and Barbuda at the moment but it's Bahamas. The Grenadians are closing you know. The Grenadians are coming forward. Let's see how close they will be able to get. Grenada will come through to win the heat. Fabulous finish. Terrific anchor leg run from Sylvester. Barbados snatched third. Well they love it. Sylvester is the new star of St. George's. Joseph Sylvester with a fine run there to give his team victory in that semifinal 3-12.09. The time for them. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines well down. They finish in fifth. Sylvester here well behind.  They're cheering him on Monnings coming down the home street but unaware of the danger manifesting at his back and Sylvester takes the win of the Spice Isle. They're both into the final. Should be interesting later on this evening. They'll have to return and do it once again for the final race of the Carrifta Games. Here on Haynes anchoring Barbada to third place there 3-17.65 for them. The Bahamas 3-12.51 and Grenada the heat winner. The three of them are through and Antigone Barbada will be watching the times in the second semifinal to see what might happen for them. So too will Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.


What's the word y'all welcome back to a another one of those talking about every single NBA team for X amount of minutes I know that the title says one minute, but I'm keeping it a buck with you Every team is not getting one minute to talk about because as we get to the 60% mark of the NBA season There's some teams that don't get a lot of eye time for me. I might watch some highlights I might watch my watch his possessions from players that I like on that organization, but let's be honest man Some some teams are not worth watching unless you're a die-hard fan of that team and what you will see Don't this video you will be able to tell which are the teams that I've been watching heavily versus which are the teams I have not been watching so yes, you dig it click bait in my apologies But we're trying to get new people to join the channel speaking of that if you're new around here subscribe leave a like at the End of the day. I'm just to do with a microphone and watch some basketball. You may disagree with everything I say in this video Which would be weird Considering we're talking about 30 different teams if you disagree with literally everything I say in this video This is the only time I'm gonna tell you do not subscribe to do not subscribe to the town of my boy But everybody else even if it's one out of 30 subscribe leave a like let's get into it Hey, this video was filmed an hour before the clippers trade with the with the trailblazer So keep that in mind was also filmed before the big news that the 76ers and the Nets might be having conversations soon That doesn't really disrupt the video, but I'm just letting you know once we get to those teams They're not mentioned because of the article the way we're doing things is out one seed one seed to see to see so if for some reason You don't really care about me talking about 29 teams You just want to listen to your favorite team and your favorite team happen to be at the end of the conference You can you can fast forward if you want to but spoiler alert as I said Some teams get talked about less in the lower we get down low key the least I'm gonna have to say because you feel me let's start off at the top of the Easter conference right now The one-seater Chicago Bulls is weird to say I ain't as a die-hard bulls thing going into the season I would have never expected that we'd be 60% of the way through the season and the bulls will be the one see But pretty much as of right now every question mark that fans slash writers head about to Chicago Bulls when it comes to defense It's true right now We can't defend a damn thing every single night. It's we're trying to outscore you You we gonna give up a two But we might come down ahead of three and like that we got the lead and it's been hard to watch because Because I've been accustomed to now when we when we had Alice Caruso and Lonzo ball at there Jones Junior being healthy I was low-key accustomed to the Bulls playing a little bit of defense out there and when I try to explain to people that Aren't watching the Bulls as as intently as I am that those three players being out with injury matters so much They don't really understand Those guys are the heart and soul of the defensive they not out there causing havoc we will not get stops So I would not be surprised again as we talk about six to eight weeks of those guys been injured if this team was the one See right now slid down to the four or slid down to the five considering how bunched up they are and this makes me think about Basically what I'm thinking about about all 30 NBA teams because we're in the dog days in the NBA season I'm just counting on days of the trade that line and my mind immediately thinks of What will the front office do come trade that line? And I've listened to a lot of different podcasts of people that are really into the game of basketball as far as like Knowing people around the league that are sources. They say that the Bulls don't want to trade Patrick Williams Okay, so if we're not trading Patrick Williams, and you believe that we could go out and win a championship What moves do we do because right now based on what we've seen this is not a team that is ready? Right, so I don't I don't really know what they do again I'm just enjoying the fact that we are playing okay basketball because we haven't had that in half a decade But I'm very curious of what they do get well soon to the rest of the guys I was on TNT talking about the Bulls for two minutes That was fun talk about the Phoenix Suns because as of right now the Phoenix Suns are 41 and 10 crazy They lost their last game to the Atlanta Hawks, but other than that, they're great And when I ask people and there are some places I've talked about this before there are some places where I try not to talk about Basketball, but I'm always curious about the casual fans and I again casual is not a negative connotation in my world If you if you're a casual fan, that's okay The casual fans for separation of the NBA slash who will win a championship slash who will win a conference And when I ask people who do you have coming out the West or do you have one in the championship? The Suns don't get as much love as I think they should a lot of people go to the worst Which makes sense because the words are great in themselves A lot of people think that the Bucks don't repeat which makes sense They're great in themselves a lot of people still see the Brooklyn that's which is great But I very rarely hear people say the Suns and in my mind They should be getting a lot more love because there's not many holes as you can poke in this team They have stoppers they have a floor general point guard who's one of the greatest they ever do it They have Devin Booker who is improved every single year. I know Kenny his field goal percentage now There's points or his percentage on two pointers down. He's getting better every single season They got a three-man a center rotation that looks like the greatest of all time and a lot of that goes to Chris Paul They are greatly coached and they just have good role players and they're the greatest clutch team in the entire NBA And when I think about basketball specifically playoff basketball, I want the clutches team This is a game that's gonna get slowed down So I'm not saying I would pick the Phoenix Suns to win a championship But when I ask people I would expect people to say the Phoenix Suns more than some of these other teams But I'm just enjoying watching the play every night the Miami Heat man again Every single team has dealt with injuries for sure So I'm not trying to single out the Miami heat or even the Bulls like I did a couple minutes ago Every single team have went through their ups and downs when it came to health to seek the protocol injuries But we're talking about a team that miss Cal Laurie for a significant amount of time The amount of bio missed over a month of basketball Jimmy baller has been in and out of the rotation But here they are tied for the one seat and low key by the end of the night They might be the one seat because the Bulls are playing a second game of a back-to-back at last night They went to overtime and lost so they might have them dead legs The Miami Heat are so very good right now, and it's not surprising that they're good It's surprising that they've been able to be this good considering all the things that they've been through and I try to Consume a lot of NBA ball because as much as I try to watch I can't get everything There are some things that are even higher level for me to even understand in the game of basketball So I try to read as much as I can or try to list to as many podcasts as I can and there's a one Twitter followed I'll highly recommend I'll recommend listening or listening to him on his podcast and I recommend reading reading his articles And my apology if I pronounced is wrong because he has a pronunciation in his name But I'm so wrong with letters or so bad or letters Nikai is Duncan Some of y'all already know him. He's got like 50,000 followers on Twitter He's a very good follow and I was listening to him on a podcast with Kevin O'Connor and he was he's very in tune with the Miami He's specifically and he's basically talking about how the Miami Heat have been able to change the way they play basketball Depending on who's available that night Which is crazy because every single NBA team can't really do that. They have smart players They have one of the greatest coaches in the league is weird to say the air exposure It's never won a coach of the year But he hasn't and I think a lot of that has to do with like early in his career similar to like Steve Kern we'll talk about them in a couple minutes how When you start off your NBA career as a coach and you already have legendary players Slash big threes people question how much is coaching versus how much is the players and I think of the coaches get devalued to the to the average NBA fan when the reality air exposes just one of the greatest to do it He might be the best doing it right now I'm low-key fearing that he gonna bring out that zone and the Bulls won't score for five minutes at a time You know, he's been they've been able to find two-way player-sized players that were there were scraps and other teams and have them Be good max screws or Caleb Martin or game Vincent And they just been able to do things and they're a fun team to watch offensively and defensively and for the first time in a While they have all three of their star players playing and they won last night The Warriors are currently on an eight-game win streak without Draymond Green. They are looking good clay Thompson's looking better and better I think last night he hit six threes in the first half not a second half He didn't really do much either but he hit like six threes in the first half and then he's looking better and better They've been able to keep the streak alive without Draymond, which is promising Because we don't really know what's going on with Draymond. He announced yesterday that he won't be able to participate in the all-star game So that's two weeks away and he's already said no to that So we don't know what's going on with Draymond Green But they've been able to weather the storm that Steph Curry who's looking better and better low-key that slump might be over We'll see it's only been like three games. So I'm not saying it's completely over But he's looking better and better But my question similar to what I said about the Bulls is what do they do with the trade deadline? Because again as good as they are and they can't win a championship and a lot of people see them as a favor, which is good They're not un-messwittable. You know what I really want to say, but we're gonna keep a PG They're not un-messwittable and they have some players on their team that might be tradeable pieces to to improve I don't think Bob Myers has been a dude that's made in season trades other than the D'Angelo Russell trade when they weren't very good But as they look like contenders Bob Myers and the front office of the Warriors have never been a team that's going to be like, oh, we're one piece away But could they do it this year the 76ers The reseed I mean the eastern conference in itself one game can drop you from the one C to the five C low key Depending on what the rest of the league is up to so it's it's kind of scary being a part of this Hey, it's also fun as an NBA fan. I'm the 76ers are 31 and 20 Um lost their last game to the wizards if I'm not mistaken, but the game before that was a thriller Tyree's maxi yada yada yada um my main concern about the 76ers is Will they be disappointing fans? If they decide not to trade Ben Simmons this week And I know that Daryl Mori in the front office have have tried to tamper the expectations Hey, we are okay with with not trading Ben because we think that we can get James Hard in this off season I if I was a 76er fan, I would low key be disappointed in not trading Ben Simmons This is that line Joel and bead could be the MVP of the league this season even with him playing in the MVP level I I personally and this could change throughout the course of the season I still don't see them in the upper echelon of contenders too because it is so much Joel and bead And it's just like good to solid role players slash good players around him when in reality. I mean, I don't know I just don't know Is this I know they said they they don't want to waste a Joel and bead year Is this consider wasting a Joel and bead year if you don't trade Ben Simmons for asset those grizzlies, man those grizzlies Jared Jackson jr. Unfortunately for him it took him a while to get to the point where he's at right now because of that He wasn't really in all-star conversations But as of recently whether it be the last month or two, he's been playing all-star caliber. It's so crazy I went back to look at this I'm through the first 14 games of the season they were seven and seven and they had the worst defense in the entire League Right now. Let me let me go ahead click over to my other tab. Uh, they are 36 and 18 they went like 25 games And lost four of them at one point That is now currently there's six and four in the last 10 But either way that is insane and right now they went from the worst defense in the league to a team That's teetering around seven to ten one game can turn you from the seven to the ten It's kind of weird in the NBA right now, but it's just a testament to I don't know actually I literally what happened. What was the the flick switching or even there might not have been a flick switch I was listening to the low post the other day and one of my favorite podcasts And he had a couple guests on who sounded very similar So I don't know if it was bobby marx or the other guy But they said that they still have the bucks is the favorite in easter corvus because they're they're working with this different kind of swagger Which I can low key agree with the fact that they lost a game And I forget what it was that cleveland they lost the game in cleveland They got smoked in cleveland and then in a post game interview Yannis came up with some some chicken and chicken wings said hey, we suck You know, I think they just have a different mindset when it comes to the regular season Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? Is it is that championship fatigue already? I don't really know But they're still really really good when the best three of the team Best three of the players play not only recently again They lost to the calves with all three and I think they lost to the nuggets by 30 with all three For the most part they have been virtually unstoppable with all three We think about net rating and how good the offense in the defense is I still am a bit afraid of what brick Lopez's injury is or Or would they be able to trade don't take even chenzo to just bolster up that front court? I don't really know because it feels like Dante's Um Dante's trade value might not be as high as it was when they were getting by donovan's a couple seasons ago But there I feel like they are going to be centers on the market I think we're going to talk about this a little bit when we get to the hornets centers on the market That won't cost a ton that could raise your floor And I think the buck should be trying to go after one of those guys The utah jazz are bad right now and a lot of that again, rudigo bear miss significant time Donovan Mitchell is missing significant time. He just got out of um I'm so used to now protocol Just automatically being healthy safety, but dont have a picture just got a concussion protocol And brian windows are said um today Or late yesterday go better Mitchell have been at each other's. I don't know if I can say it Other throats. Oh my god Brian windows are saying that Donovan Mitchell and rudigo bear are back to having A passively aggressive awkward relationship and that was McMahon McMahon If that is Interesting there was also reports a couple weeks ago. It was like a daughter Mitch was one One first-round exit away from a question the trade and again. These are all rumors.  I don't know But it's interesting for the league ladies gentlemen Rudy go bear said two weeks ago. Um, I look at the way What do you say? I look at the way Devin Booker has tied in on the defensive side of the ball and yadda That is a real-life shot at Donovan Mitchell that he's talking about Devon Booker's defense when these dudes have been compared for each other for the last three seasons The team hasn't been great. They've been missing their top two players. Joe Ingalls is towards ACL If this was happening on a team that was like one of the top markets in the NBA It'd be all over the place, but they're Utah so it was low-key Could this be the last year that we see these two players play together? Maybe the Cavaliers, man I legit think that Jared Alice should have been an all-star over at Christmas Hey, it is what it is They have been a team that that has thrived in beating badass teams or like when we're going to get the team that is worse than us We will win those games and that is how you get to the playoffs and that is how you get a top seed You don't play down a competition and once you plan against a good people you have a chance and they play against a good People in the Bucks bus they asked but the last couple losses for them have been bad It have not been very Cleveland Cavaliers like I think it was the Rockets and the Detroit Pizzas and the Detroit Pizzas when they blew a big lead But regardless, I'm still impressed with the way they've been able to do what they do Considering Colin Sexton being out Ricky Rubio was looking like their third to fourth best player majority of the season He is also out. I'm Laurie marketing is now out They have not had the injury luck like a lot of teams But I feel like theirs might be more significant than the average team Considering the roles that the players were playing and they still been good man DZ being an all-star game in Cleveland It's gonna be great. I can't wait to be there and he gets announced or You know what actually this is this is what I've learned in the last couple years of me being at the all-star game The average fan of that that organization gets priced out of the all-star game tickets So I was gonna say when Darius Garland gets announced to come to the game Yeah, there's gonna be a uproar But it won't be as big of an uproar as you expect because the average NBA fan can't pay $1,500 $2,000 to just go to this exhibition game I'll roof for him like like he's a hometown dude, but yeah, it's unfortunate But that's I guess that's the way things work shouldn't but hey the Mavericks. Hey listen I'm a guy. I'm a guy that can say he's wrong when he was wrong And I was wrong about Jason kids defensive schemes early in the season I was talking about how I don't love it when I was watching they were blitzing every single thing They were blitzing Davion Mitchell who at that point was shooting 20% from three on the season They were blitzing blitzing blitzing and letting them pick and roll with John Holmes And I was what the hell are they doing and recently The scheme has been working. They're one of the best offensive teams in the entire league Luca Dodgers is playing back up to Luca Dodgers standards And I know the count of stats have always been there, but he looks more fit now than he did in the early stages of the season I know these is lost a bad one to okay see what I'll shake is Alexander, but regardless I was wrong, but they're still missing something I don't think they're gonna be able to get that something But they're still missing something for me to put them on the next level But again when Lucas playing good basketball, he is must-see TV the Nets There's a lot of turmoil going on with the Brooklyn Nets right now Katie posted a picture on Instagram and you know what I'm gonna see if I can find it real quick because I was low-key surprised now again We are um as NBA fans We overreact to literally everything. I'm not exaggerating Kevin Arrant was listening to a song and posted it on Instagram and here I am trying to dissect What the hell he said hold on let me find it. He was listening to a song by Huey brisk and Nico beats called losing my faith Ladies and gentlemen, what is he talking about? But now they're they're having things said and just it just hasn't been looking great with the with the heart of rumors going around and Him the other night having literally his worst game almost ever And he talked about his post game interviews just having distractions and then Kyrie said hopefully one day We'll all be able to play together where you in like The self-awareness just wasn't there For a team that is still according to Vegas the the favorite to win a championship They don't look like it now when all three of them are playing. It's a different story But you're only gonna have for that When everybody's healthy if everybody gets healthy at the same time they've been together for a season and a half They have like 17 games under their belt together You know I'm saying and if things don't work out if they don't win a championship And James Harden moves to his next team or Kyrie moves to his next team because he wants to play to a play in a place Where he doesn't need to get the shot? Somebody's trace we gonna look back on be like damn The Nets did it again The Nets did it again I listen in the moment if you can trade for James Harden and you can sign Katie and Kyrie you do it 99 times out of a hundred But I don't think they thought a global pandemic was gonna hit prevent them from having one of their top three players play And I don't think they expected James Harden To not look like the hundred percent version himself. He's selling all-star. You saw that the other night He's selling all-star kind of a player I won't refute that but he still doesn't look like the James Harden that was dogging the league and won an MVP just a couple Seasons ago. What can I say about the nuggets other than they are not they are great? Yolkich is great. You know what I saw a screenshot on Twitter and it was the oh my god What is the podcast with I can't think of the name of the podcast All the smoke all the smoke with Matt Barnes and Steve Jackson and they were ranking their MVPs and none of them had Yolkich on the ballot And there's a stigma around the league of people that that think that Yolkich is an MVP caliber player as Nerds everybody that show love to Yolkich is a nerd They only talk about advanced stats and graphs. No motherfucker. You're just not watching the games That's just tells me everything I need to know if you don't have Yolkich in your MVP conversation I'm not saying he should be the winner right now because I don't have a vote and we're only 60% of the way through the season But if you're going through the top three top four MVP candidates and Yolkich is not on my list I just know you're not watching their games, which is fine But don't try to discredit my ballot because I got Yolkich there simple the Raptors Hey, the Raptors are if you look at their Offensive defensive stats. They're average. They're literally everything. They're average defensive team They're average offensive teams, but when I watched them I feel like their defense should be a lot better than average when it comes to the advanced stats because when they run that line up of Scotty Gerritron, Jr. Who's like leading the league in the flexes and steals Pascal. Oh gee and Pascal and Scotty Barnes. I'm like who am I forgetting Scotty Barnes. They got like hands out of this world They're deflecting every plans. They're playing great defense My question to them is what do they do at the trade that line because even though They've been looking better and better They still only have like a six-man rotation of players that can legitimately play NBA minutes on a team that's solid So will they be able to move Gordon's Rodgers get this trade that line? I don't know because he's still making like 18 million dollars I don't know if a team is gonna take that you basically I saw a report that if a team did trade for Gordon's Rodgers They'd buy him out. I'm so very happy for Carinthony Towns making another all-star appearance a couple years ago Every GM across the league was asked if you were to start an NBA organization Who'll be the guy you want to start off with and Carinthony Towns had a vast majority of those votes and every single season They went down and down and down and got to the point where people were calling Carinthony Towns soft And he wasn't a great NBA center anymore. And here he is getting back to all-star caliber I'm in a lot of that has to do with his team winning more games at the end of the day I mean his stats is pretty much the same over the past couple seasons But he is winning more games and I would say that his defense is better this season than any of the other Seasons and I saw somebody on Twitter And this is not a shot at you my boy if you're watching this video definitely not a shot I'm just talking about the Minnesota Timbers right now and in yesterday's video I was talking about the NBA all-star game and we were talking about snubs and in that video I was basically saying like there's not a lot of there's not a lot of snubs and bro hit me like hey Anthony Edwards is a snub and though Anthony Edwards has been great this season What I think we got to stop using the word snub so loosely and the reason I am saying that is Because if you're trying to tell me X players a snub I just got a report from for more Sorry, if you're telling me that X player is a snub you got to also tell me who he should replace And if you can't do that then player X is not a snub and my mind snub is a player that should have been in there and deserved Over the player that actually wasn't there Lamella ball legitimately might be a snub and the average I don't really see him as snub even though he has been playing all-star caliber. I just don't think he's he's been better Than the other players that actually made it that that's my only thing that's my only thing shout out to aunt though He's amazing the Charlotte Hornets Let's talk about it man The big thing about the Charlotte Hornets that everybody has been talking about is their lack of center depth slash lack of good Center to to put this team over the top what it's over the top mean I think over the top means that not in the playing and right now they're four and a half games out of the first They lost their last two the middle ball had a career night the other night It was great, but they end up losing to the Boston Celtics who will talk about in a couple teams but this is the thing if They want to upgrade that position. I just don't think they have That great of a package to do it. I Thought that James book night because he looks like a baby. I for some reason thought he was like 19 21 He spent two years at college. I don't know what I thought he was 19 21, which is not a bad thing It's not a bad thing, but I just thought that he was he he was 19 years old That's all and the packages is is is not enticing if you're not throwing book night in there book night when he's got minutes He's looked okay He's looked like a good slash good potential player, but I've also seen Hornets fans They're not willing to give up book night.  There are a lot of centers that might be on the market The Washington Wizards have three centers over there that I don't think they care about any of them as far as like they're answering Phones for Thomas Bryant. They're answering phones for for Montrez and they're answering phones from Daniel Gaffer I just don't know what your package looks like Clippers last night played one of the best games of the season now They were blowing a lead and low-key clustered out with Reggie Jackson and that screenshot of Reggie Jackson going around Twitter right now It's hilarious, but I mentioned this a couple videos ago how they they just remind me of like a good mid-major college, bro You just legitimately don't know if it's gonna be a Reggie Jackson night You don't know if it's going to be mook You don't know if it's gonna be anybody else terrorist man can surprisingly drop a 20-piece out of nowhere I'm here coffee could drop 20 Luca Narca It's six threes in the game and because of that they're hard to game plan against and I think after the game last night Tehran Lou went to supposed game interview is like we're prepared to not get Not get Kawhi Leonard back this season, which is disappointing man I'm just watching why I play basketball regardless them sending that 500 is Is really impressive considering the lack of upper and talent that they have the Celtics man I had told myself or told y'all that I would not talk about the Celtics anymore because every time I talk about the second Celtics They go on a five game loser streak, but here we go We're testing the Kenny. What is it the Kenny curse the Kenny for real curse either way in the last 10 games? They are seven and three the defense has been spectacular Even though their up and talent Jason Tater might not be having the same season statistically as some of the other seasons He's still been I And and they're slowly creeping their way out of the not in the playoff thing Them in the Atlanta Hawks you would talk about Found a way in the early stages of the second half of the season to be good again And a lot of that for the boss of Celtics is they were hanging their head on the defensive side of the ball But I also saw a rumor the other day about the Chicago Bulls and Dennis Schroeder, which is very interesting I don't know what that package looks like and I'm not really interested in Dennis Schroeder as a player for the Bulls But I don't know what we would give you other than like The flat the cap flexibility to get under the luxury tax For that straight I don't know South to the Seas though the Lakers whoo Three games under 500 they've missed Anthony Davis so a good point. He's come back He's looked really really good since he's come back Which is a great sign because eventually LeBron will come back from this injury We don't know when that will be LeBron and his team has always been a Team to slow roll these injuries. We're like they'll tell you he's day-to-day and then it'll turn into a week And they're like, oh actually it's gonna be two more weeks You know I'm saying a slow roll in these things and I saw a picture I'm in a video on Twitter about there being a sack of liquid in the back of LeBron's left leg or left knee and That doesn't sound great That doesn't sound great So I hope Ron comes back sooner rather than later not as a Laker fan But as a fan of the NBA considering how good he was and I just want to see their entire team healthy for the first time The Atlanta Hawks are eight and two in their last 10 games They just be the best team of basketball and Trey Young's offense. I'm just literally reading my notes Trey Young offense Trey Young's offense is As far as a heliocentric Offensive player. There's not many in the entire league that are better Now the other side of the ball for Vincent from being a top five Issue that but we strictly talking about the offensive side of the ball Trey Young as an orchestrator is is he leaked and we talked about a dude that low-key like six foot maybe lower I met Trey young dog and he really feel like he was six foot six one like they be trying to advertise him as you feel me But this is another year where there seem like they might turn a flip of switch on the second half of the season Which is not good You shouldn't start every season ass and then start to play good and then find yourself as a five-seater the six-seater What a four seed if you could just play consistently solid for the entire season There's nothing to worry about But hey, I guess better late than never the Blazers better be active at the deadline or I'm going to be upset with them Simple they bet they better be active. I'm not I'm not telling them who they should trade or they should trade Dame or they should trade CJ if they don't make a minimum of three trades I'm be disappointed unless one of those trade they make one trade That's about a boom out of bam then I won't be disappointed, but they just got to make some moves I don't really know what direction they're gonna go in as far as trying to get you thin Or are they trying to buy for when Dame comes back at the end of this season or or next season? I don't really know the direction But you got to make a decision the Wizards the vibes aren't great y'all the vibes are not great Talk about a team that was the one see everybody said this before the the one see very early in the season Then we he has to be moved for the lower will be moved for the lowest seems like because him and Bradley be able to button heads And you're you're picking Bradley Beal for the watch the Wizards You can't have anybody in there that's gonna buy heads with him But the problem is then when he got paid a decent amount of money for sure And I don't know if teams are looking at what he's done this season Even though he had a triple double gets to the 76 didn't I I don't know if many teams are looking at what special Then when he has done this season and his price sag I think like Yeah, that's worth it Every single player should be up for trade for them not a single player should be untouchable Not one of them not one of them the vibes aren't great And if they don't make trade similar to what I said the the Treblazers I'm disappointed, but again, I'm just a guy that wants to see craziness happen so make trade the Pelicans are a half a game out of the play-in and with the Treblazers potentially making some trades the Pelicans might be a play-in team this season Which is crazy because you're 19 and 32 and they still trying to tell the fans that Zion will come back Zion will come back if they can just Win a couple in a row boom, you're a play-in team and then Zion comes back boom I really have much to say about the pelicans. I really like Herb Jones and Brandon Ingham is a stud and that that's all It's talking about the vibes being off Jul according to reddit and I didn't fact check this myself because I just feel like it's the people that are out there They go through the following of NBA players slash celebrities to see who've unfollowed who was kind of weird to me Like uh drake unfollowed Rihanna and a sabraki after you announced that you're having a baby who the hell was like Rihanna is having a baby. Let me go think and see what drake is up to You know what I'm saying? Recently somebody looked through Julius Randall's twitter followed and he unfollowed the New York Knicks and now people are speculating Does he know that the trade is coming up in these last couple days? The Vaps have not been great with Julius Randall. He has not talked to the reporters at the end of games in the past I don't think he's done it at all in 2022. He goes through these games. He goes through the motions He hasn't played great and he doesn't talk to to the media Ah All NBA second team last year y'all Not even in consideration for an all-star appearance this season Ah, and now we get down to our last group of teams and we might be able to rapid-fire somebody's low key The spurs might have disante Murray as an all-star replacement and I talked about this yesterday I hope he gets it But if the NBA wants to stay consistent with what the hell they've been trying to tell us for a decade or two Two guards three forwards and then two Wild cards off the bench. They should be replacing drake mile with the forward which might be brand enigma But if they go with disante Murray then adam silver got to make those changes Disante Murray deserves to be in there as a replacement But if he's not then I can't even be mad because that's just them sticking to their guns.  I was like, oh, is that a center bro is six five? Yeah, like 15 rebounds y'all I don't know if they got something Terry Taylor because that was the only time I ever seen a stat line from him But I like that they playing the younger dudes, you know, I'm saying see what the heck is going on Lance Stevens He just got to extend it or got a full-time contract which is great for him But I ain't got nothing to say about the pacers since they make a trade I ain't got much to say about the kings until they make a trade No, um, devion Mitchell of the pass couple games have been really exciting bro He had the game against the warriors where he played great defense Oh, nope. No, no He had the game against the nets where you play great defense on a combination of james hardon slash carry urban And then against the warriors the other night he had 21 points going into halftime Davion Mitchell getting better and better, which is a good thing. That's a very good thing That makes maybe make it a a race or maybe a trade in a deer and fox a little less hard on them If they believe that devion Mitchell could continue this little run. He's on cake under him recently took over the NBA ladders rookie of the year Shout out to him. I'm trying to explain to people that the rookie of the year award literally means nothing at all Um, other than like I had a good rookie season that does that's not a way to tell who's going to be the best prospect Of the top guys in the draft class We've seen in uh night in night out of a rookie having a great rookie season not being great I'm not foreshadowing that for kate or anybody else associated But anytime I make a tweet about kate or I make a tweet about scottie or I'll make a tweet about mobily There's people coming in from the other camps like Just being being salty about the thing when in reality the rickie of the award doesn't mean a damn thing It just doesn't just respect all all of the guys as rookies in hooping brad this class has been incredible Um, the thunder speaking in this rookie class you had the moment with josh get a gator out of carriage williams and again carriage williams, please become a chicago bull, please Um, but my notes for the okc thunder says more first round picks question mark Next the orlando The orlando magic are a fun team for them being the worst team in basketball And then lastly the houston rockets. I might note say last eight games kevin portie jr Seventeen points seven and a half assists and only three turnovers Bright considering early in the season. It didn't look like he can really hold the primary playmaker a role That is me talking about every single nba team for um x amount of time some got three seconds Some got three minutes. I don't really know if you enjoyed the video leave it a like And we will do this again at the end of the season, but it won't be every team It will be every playoff team. I appreciate y'all peace