If you can relate to what folks
are talking about, great!
I think that that is exactly what
we need in this day and age to tear down all the
barriers in the walls that exist.
Right.
If the bridge can be hip hop, cross it.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,
children of all ages, party people...
This is Talib Kweli.
This is The People's Party.
We have Jasmin Leigh in the house.
She's gonna hold me down.
We have a lot of beautiful, wonderful,
inspirational things to talk about
and we're gonna talk about 'em tonight with one of
my favorite people on the planet.
Award-winning commentator, activist,
journalist, lawyer...
I mean this woman does it all.
She is the voice for the community.
We love around here.
Give it up for Miss Angela Rye.
Angela!
Hello, friend!
How are you?
I'm good— how are you?
Good to see you.
Good to see you!
Hi Jasmin!
Hi Angela!
Thank you for coming, Angela.
Thank you for having me.
We are honored by your presence.
Thank you, that was so nice!
I'm happy to be here!
I'm happy that you're here, too.
Thank you for joining us on The People's Party.
The People's Party. That's a thing.
That should be like a real thing.
It should!
I hope there's like merch and
a movement that's starting.
You're a part of the beginning of it.
You know we want to be "Sophistaratchet".
Yes! That is a thing, too!
Yes, I read that about you; I read that
you were "Sophistaratchet".
Yes, I should've trademarked that.
That was a thing...
So, you and me—
and you can correct me if I'm wrong...
but our relationship developed
on Twitter first?
I think that sounds right.
Yeah that's probably right.
I was once suspended on Twitter.
Yes I remember this!
Yeah, I've been locked
on Twitter and I've been suspended on Twitter.
And people don't really understand the difference
a lot of times.
No, they don't know sometimes
if you the troll or the troll-ee.
That's right.
That's what happens...
Trollin' the hell out of me...
You know, I troll the trolls sometimes.
Yes.
And a white supremacist troll
had actually post posted my mom's address...
Yeah! Exactly right.
Crazy!
But yeah— a white supremacist troll trolled me and
posted my mother's address,
and I wrote something like, "You can be found".
Yeah.
And I was suspended.
'Cause you can.
Yeah, you can.
And, I was looking for him!
Especially if you post my mama's address...
Yeah, I was looking for him...
Like, I might be finding you
right now.
Yeah. Like I don't want to go too deep into it
but he could have been found,
you know what I'm saying?
And I got suspended for that.
And the first person I called was Angela Rye.
I remember.
So my uncle Steve had just passed away,
and we were at his memorial service
-- like on the way there --
and I was talking to my mom and I was like,
"Mom, they suspended Talib's account!"
And she was like, "Who?!"
I was like, "Nevermind!"
So I'm like on the way to the memorial service
like, "I've gotta get his account reinstated!"
So I just done an event with Twitter and
they were fantastic.
And I think it changed quickly.
Right?
Yeah!
I was suspended for about an hour.
Oh, look at you go... alright.
Yeah, an hour later I had my account.
I had an apology.
Yeah.
And it took them about three days to give
me all my followers back; I think I had about
800,000 followers...
Oh, I had forgot about that part, too.
Yeah, but it was interesting...
You know, a couple years later I was locked
because I had a white supremacist lawyer,
Jason Van Dyke who was threatening me
and my fans with,
"I'm shoot you and hang you..."
and all types of things
and I posted his business address
and they locked my account
but I remain on Twitter because
you know I enjoy it.
Yeah, you really enjoy it.
I do.
I do. I enjoy it a lot.
Yes. We know.
We know. Sometimes I feel like I should tell him
to take a spa day.
Like, you need a spa day.
We need to like do some breathing
exercises.
You know it's crazy: I'm privileged. Very privileged
in my life. I take a lot of spa days.
I know but I'm saying right when I'm watching
you Tweet, I'm like, "Right now!"
I'm probably at the spa
when I'm tweeting.
Oh no no. We are definitely taking your phone
'cause you are missing out on some things...
I will be honest with you,
since the 2016 election...
... which was traumatizing to me
and in a lot of ways was a game changer --
some good, some bad --
I really have not been on Twitter as much.
I noticed.
It has taken
me a moment to just really get
in alignment with myself,
figure out how I want to present to the world,
and what I feel is like the healthiest way
for me to engage,
and I don't think Twitter is it.
There are some things I think from folks
in our own community that I've seen that have
been harmful to people I care about and to me
directly.
I agree.
There are things where
like -- I remember being on air saying that
like the Make America Great Again hat
is triggering for many of us,
and the response to that from
the other side was not to
figure out why like, "Well what's going on? Why?"
"We don't want anything we're championing to be triggering the folks."
Their response was to send me
Make America Great Again hats over and over and
over again.
That's not a death threat, although I have had
some of those too...
But I just feel like, for what?
Like, this is not real life, you know what I mean?
And if this isn't constructive discourse
this isn't the type of conversation I want to have.
No, yeah: I understand.
I tell people about my Twitter feed
and it's like I really enjoy it.
I feel empowered by it,
but I understand that it's a unique thing for me.
I understand my life experience has led me into a
unique place to have a unique platform with
a unique plethora of information
that allows me to push back in ways that others can't,
but that might be triggering for other folks.
It might be stressful.
It's, like, for me it's not.
Wait — I have to tell you one more thing!
So you were talking about where we first like
met or at least had a conversation.
I want to say this -- and I'm not going to speak
on behalf of the culture but I know that there
are tons of people who are of the culture
who feel this way...
like your music has been game changing
and healing and transformative to so many of us.
I used to have Beautiful Struggle on repeat like
I might just bring that back today, just 'cuz.
Like that whole album was incredible to me.
Thank you.
And of course everything before that
but like that one in particular was
like, "I love this".
You're gonna make a black man blush.
Good! Come on, blush!
I see it! I see it coming!
Receive your flowers!
Well, you know what's crazy -- and
Jarret can appreciate this, from Rawkus,
because he's in the house, as well...
You know,
Beautiful Struggle --
that's the album where I started having black
female fans.
Like before then it was mostly male.
Yeah.
Lot of white fans because it was
very much you know sold
and marketed, presented, based on
who I was as underground
and that culture was very testosterone-driven.
And, with Beautiful Struggle
I had achieved a little bit of
success, and now I could afford.
Mary J. Blige and Faith Evans
and I had Neptunes' beats on there,
and it's like there was things I did as a black person
that I think went against sort of
what the hip hop culture I was a part of at
the time was it was.
It was like people
were like, "Why is there all this singing on there?"
"Why is it all this—" and I'm like,
well, this is where I come from.
Like I might exist and do this
underground hip hop --
backpack, nod-your-head real well,
but I come from lush sounds and R&B
and vocalists and I was I was the first artist to
have Mary and Faith on an album
together since Biggie.
That was like important to me.
You know what I'm saying?
But you you are very much involved
in hip hop culture and you just telling
me that story lets me know --
like, when I read things from you...
I read this thing that you did
for CNN where you made your point very well
but you quoted J. Cole lyrics while you
were making your point.
You're associated with hip hop so much.
You're associated with Common.
You're associated with the Breakfast Club.
Why are you so associated with hip hop?
I think that there are things about
like, the way that I think about my house...
So my parents have black art
on the walls and black books on the shelves,
and made sure that I had black dolls,
but I have a brother who's 14 years older than me,
Brian, who I call "Bubba"
Shout out to Bubba.
And Brian was always
listening to hip hop.
And so I think that was my entree into hip hop,
but to me, I can tie
every song growing up
that influenced me in any way to an experience.
And that's not unique to hip hop: that's R&B, too...
... that's listening to Motown cassette tapes
on roads trips with my parents, like...
But of course many of those beats
are sampled by hip hop artists,
so there are just experiences that I have
that are tied directly to music.
Music is so, so important to me -- not just because
I can quote a lyric on CNN but because
when I heard that lyric, it spoke to my soul.
You know what I mean? In a real unique way.
So I think that
I'm not talented in that way...
You're very talented. I understand --
No! In that way!
Right right right...
In that way!
Like, I be in the soprano section...
in the third row.
Right.
Like it needs to be
far back.
Like you don't have the mic right over my mouth.
Right.
But I think that the reality of it is I love beats
and I love the inspiration that our music --
and art, period.
I think about like Alvin Ailey
and you know the shows that we've had on
Broadway or that never made it to Broadway or
television shows growing up -- like I love what art
has done for us and our expression of that.
And it's so dope that folks try to culturally
appropriate it, but you just can't to us better than us.
In 2019,
it's crazy because like hip hop has changed
so much, and it's not just "a black thing" now,
like all different cultures
are doing hip hop, and when it first came out
it was pretty much so we could tell our stories.
But in 2019, do you think that hip hop
is more like party music
or is it still like revolutionary?
So this may be something I get trolled for
but this is my truth.
I believe there's a distinction between hip hop
and pop rap
and I think there right now
there's a dominance of pop rap.
But I also think that it's not all the way fair
to say it's always been black.
There were, you know -- there was a group called
The Beastie Boys.
I'm just saying... I'm just saying...
Yeah, but...
But it was overwhelmingly black then
and it's still overwhelmingly black now,
and I think the reality of it is it allows people
to express however they see fit.
And it has always had a multicultural audience
and supporters and fans and like
more power to the people.
If you can relate to what
folks are talking about: great.
I think that that is exactly what we need
in this day and age to tear down all the barriers
and the walls that exist.
If the bridge can be hip hop, cross it.
Right.
Chuck D once famously called hip hop
CNN for the black community.
Love it.
You know, now we have a lot more channels.
That was back with CNN was like really
like THE news channel, right?
Now we have a lot more, but...
I think, to Chuck D's point, hip hop was
feeding the community
with information, with inspiration --
feeding marginalized communities with all that.
Does hip hop still do that?
I think it does.
You talked about J. Cole a moment ago.
Like I know so many folks who learned about
tax policy on the last J. Cole album.
Even this stuff that Cardi does -- who I think has
crossed over between hip hop and pop rap --
she still like she's speaking to people
using her personal experiences to educate
folks.
And even uplift.
Mm-hmm, and uplift.
And I think the other thing that hip hop is
doing a little better now...
like, even if you look at the 4:44 album getting
people to talk about their experiences --
and it's crazy because we started talking about 2016
and how that was transformative to me --
I can't believe how impacted I personally
have been from Nipsey's death and the community.
And one of the things, going back to like what we
learned from hip hop, all this stuff that he was
talking about us doing -- the ways in which he was
pouring back into the community that raised him.
Like, we have so much to learn
and if we are responsive to
and heed the lessons that are in hip hop,
we would be doing so much better,
starting with Chuck D. Like you... like, man...
I mean, if we would really listen and not just be like,
"Oh, that's deep!" and then move on,
but, "Oh, that's deep: how am I gonna apply?"
We'll so much better off.
Yeah man, I agree. Chuck D's name comes up
so often in these conversations.
Incredible.
It's interesting: Chuck D went to --
graduated from Adelphi university
years later in his career,
while my father was teaching there.
Oh man...
A little while ago -- about a couple months ago --
my father and Chuck D did a conference together,
which was interesting for me to watch because
like it's my hip hop father and my actual father
sitting down and having a conversation.
That's dope.
My parents made sure that I had --
you were talking about black books
I didn't have black dolls
but I had all types of black things
and I've seen you do interviews talking about
this Anheuser-Busch "Kings and Queens" poster
which I also had in my house.
I was gonna ask you if you had it!
Like, we're old enough. It's the older
ones that know this.
Yeah, you know.
You have that. You've got the footprints in
in the sand -- the Jesus with the footprints...
and got the Anheuser-Busch...
I didn't have the Jesus but I definitely have—
Did you guys have the statues with all the naked
African women?
I did.
My mom had those all over the house.
Yeah we had 'em! For sure!
Statues with it with the spear.
There's a picture I should have posted, too --
but there's a picture of me and my brother,
he was going to his prom and I'm looking up at
him with the badest leg warmers that
ever existed. I used to wear the things every day --
but there's a picture of Jesse Jackson hanging
on the mantle.
Next to that is this picture with
Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.
And then -- what else is over there...
There's like essence in the basket.
Anyway... it was a very black household.
So your father was an activist in Seattle...
He still is: Eddie Rye.
Eddie Rye with a bullhorn.
Shout out to Eddie Rye.
And he named you
after Angela Davis.
I'm named Talib Kweli.
Yeah.
How important is it for you to have that
representation in your name and your household?
That black representation growing up?
Well it's major, and the more I learned about
Angela Davis, I was floored and humbled,
and I'm like "How am I ever gonna live up to that?"
So some of it, too, was like pressure,
but a full-circle moment for me was just
this past January, meeting her for the first time,
being like...
And then for her to know who I was,
I was ready to die right there.
I was like, "This is so dope!"
You feel like you're in the right place, right?
I just felt, like, whole. You know what I mean?
It was in that moment where
it was like just complete.
Like, wow. This is somebody
who not only knows who I am
but who says she's proud of what I'm doing.
Like, it meant the world to me.
And especially like --
she's brilliant...
Ain't she, though?
Oh my God. She's like brilliant.
The stuff she's doing
on mass incarceration, the way in which she's
advocating for our brothers and sisters in
Palestine... like all the stuff she's done...
I heard a conversation with her
and she mentioned that
somebody asked her, "Do you feel spread too thin?"
Like having to mobilize and work on
behalf of people all over the world.
And she was like, "No. If there are people
struggling somewhere, like,
it's our obligation to kind of help them."
Right.
And I'm like, "Man, that is so real."
But she's incredible.
Yeah, I think you're a representation
or how you grow up like really
molds your mind because, as you keep talking about
black dolls, we weren't allowed to have anything
besides black dolls.
So when we were growing up,
we knew black was beautiful.
I went to an all-black school.
We were taught Lift Every Voice and Sing.
Like, we had those things to look up to.
Yeah, no: it makes a huge difference and I
and I think what I've noticed now --
or what I've come into realizing is that
that is still a form of privilege.
So I'd like to acknowledge that, too. Like --
Absolutely. It's an educational privilege.
Thank you to my parents... man!
Like the education piece.
The fact that my mom knew that like as soon as
I left the house -- every day -- that my
blackness would be tried and tested.
That I might be invisible in textbooks.
So they were like, "We're going show you
some other books."
Right.
Like, it was just a major, major, major thing
and I am so grateful for them.
Well I think the reason why Angela Davis could
come up to you, and know who you are, and be proud
of you is because you really have on many
levels become our voice.
Mm-hmm.
When we see you on TV,
like, you say things
with your face, with your eye,
and with your words, that, when I'm watching,
it's very rare that I watch a talking head
commentating on politics that I'm like,
"That's exactly how I feel."
"That's exactly what I would have said."
You spoke when we first started talking about how
emotional the 2016 election made you feel,
and we all saw that.
We all saw you on TV
going through that.
Do you still feel the same rawness or is it more
numb now?
I think that I vacillate between frustration
and anger
and disbelief.
Like, and you know, you're kind of like --
what I'll say for me -- I judge myself
like, "Why aren't you over this yet?"
You know what I mean?
Like, so I'm not being very kind to my wounded
inner child in those moments, but I'm just like
I want to get over it but I can't because every
single day there's something else more
treacherous happening.
And on the thing about the voice
that I think is important...
One: Thank you. That means a lot coming from you.
It also feels like a lot of pressure.
And sometimes I don't want to bear that pressure
like I just want to speak my truth without having
the responsibility of the community.
And I think, especially now,
because there are things that I say that the
community doesn't love,
I am -- another point of privilege -- is...
whether its in every relationship I've been in
every boyfriend's family members have all loved me,
I'm used to the community being like
"That's our girl! That's our girl!" And like,
within the last seven or eight months
it's been like division even coming from the
community and that shit hurts.
Sorry -- am I not supposed to...
Nah, you can curse
as much as you fuckin' want.
I'm sorry, okay? That's my truth!
Let it out!
That's an important point that you're making.
But it hurts!
It's really sad because it's like,
Yo! Number one --
Black folks aren't monolithic.
It's absolutely right.
We're not gonna agree
on every single thing
all the time.
And that's why our discourse is at right now, where
if don't agree with every single thing I agree with...
Yes! Every single thing, and it's like
"Yo! I don't."
Number one -- I'm not I'm not ever going to be
the type of voice where I'm going to speak
your truth and shame mine or hide mine.
I can't do that, you know?
You know what I think that comes from?
Coming from academics
and speaking to the academic privilege,
I was taught -- drilled in me -- that
you have to research.
Yeah.
Coming from you know the Five-Percent
God body community in Brooklyn when I was running
the streets, I was taught show and prove.
Yeah.
Show and prove. If you don't show and prove
then, you know, your word is not bond.
Your word has to be bond.
And so now we have a generation, I think, of people
who you have experienced as a lawyer,
you had to go to school for this.
You have experience in the community.
People talk about "on code" but don't really
understand what that means.
People are getting their information,
in my opinion, from YouTube exclusively.
They're watching talking heads on YouTube and
it's like confirmation bias. They're watching things
that validate what they already believe.
They're in those comments sections
and then they're going to
Twitter and Facebook and they're speaking on what
they saw on YouTube and then making YouTube
videos about what they saw on YouTube
and they're like click and let me monetize and
give you my opinion about...
And so when you don't have.
sort of a filter, you don't have any type of --
and I don't want to say...
It's not about authority or gatekeeping.
It's just about knowledge.
But the thing is --
so, yes I agree with that --
but I also think that for me
my role as a voice is not be...
I want my word to be bond,
And I will also misspeak
because I'm human. I will forget something.
My husband was on the phone with my assistant earlier,
I was like, "Oh I got pay this
makeup artist" from something
two weeks ago, and then I was like,
"When I told you I was gonna do that,
did you do it or did I do it?"
And she called me back 45 seconds later to
make sure I did it.
That's a problem -- like, you know,
when your short term memory is just...
So my point is, in saying this, that sometimes
I'll say things thinking people will understand
the full context, but they don't
because they're not in my head.
I do that with my team all the time.
But there is no room for error.
We're not giving each other any grace and it's
from, like, a spirit of love.
Now, granted, if you go back to
you know, Marcus Garvey, W.B., Booker T. --
they weren't always so gracious either.
Some nasty comment sections.
They would've had YouTube videos, child:
it would be lit right now.
They would've been calling Malcolm X an immigrant.
Yeah!
Or that right now.
Yes,
but I think that -- or Marcus Garvey, too...
but, like, the point that I'm raising is just
that I would like
for us to evolve beyond even where they were,
as brilliant as they were.
Like, can we operate
from a place of love,
agree to disagree truly respectfully, not just
to be saying it.
Right: revolutionary love.
That would be a thing.
Not just revolutionary rhetoric.
Yeah.
And listen to understand,
and not just listen to condemn
because I feel like a lot of these new kids --
Number one, they're very very privileged and they
feel like what their word is goes,
and they don't really do all the research
like you're saying because before we had to go
and look at encyclopedias.
So it's like most of our information is written
down and it's coming from the same place.
Now there's so many outlets of information
you can get that you have no idea if it's
correct or not.
And some of that is good, you know, because the
encyclopedias were written by old rich white men, but --
I loved reading the encyclopedia, though!
Me too!
But it's about vetting your sources, right?
It's about understanding that if you're reading
Huffington Post or The Root or
you know, whatever the story is --
you have to understand this is
a left, progressive bias,
and they might be biased in their thinking.
I'm of the opinion that the leftist bias is closer
to the truth. That's my own opinion.
But you know you have to understand that
there are sites that have a right bias,
and Encyclopedia Britannica has a bias.
And there's also sites that just are wrong.
You know? And to me like if there was one thing --
like, If I die tomorrow, I want people to know this
because it's in print does not make it fact.
That's right.
Period.
Like we got a thousand textbooks --
I use this example all the time in my...
See how I didn't even finish my last sentence,
but I have a better idea...
There's an example that I --
Take note: that's what smart people do.
Yes.
They cover it all.
Or you got ADD or something...
... but there is a thing that I say in speeches often
where I'm talking about George Washington and
those are not wooden teeth.
Those were not wooden teeth in his mouth.
They were teeth from his slaves.
He didn't learn that in class because they wanted
us to believe he was just out here picking apples
or whatever the hell.
He was like -- right?! Didn't you learn about
George Washington and his apples?
Right. Yeah.
You learned that he had wooden teeth in his mouth.
Yeah.
Like, they want to glamorize this stuff,
and I posted something about that -- man...
some of these dudes,
they had no business on Mount Rushmore and it
somebody from Indian country was like they
they didn't need Mount Rushmore,
they took that from us, too.
And I was like, "Facts! You right!"
So, you know, anyway...
I don't even know what my point was.
Oh, it's not fact because it's in print
the textbooks are lying, too.
That's right.
That's right.
But you just got to read everything.
When you read an article, try and find at least
four more articles on that same thing
to try and figure out
if it's telling you the truth or not.
Come on journalist and teach.
Come on. Come on.
No doubt.
So, when I say something
that people have an issue with,
they go after my music.
If they can't beat my argument, they'll go after
my music or they'll be like, you know,
"Mos Def was better" or this and that...
With women, they're going to go after your looks,
or your hair,
Yes!
and your clothes immediately.
There's a -- I won't give him any any power.
by mentioning his name -- but there's a...
... not even an activist... what is he?
I don't even want to call him a scholar
because he couldn't get tenure.
A person.
A person, who
like is mad at something I said recently.
He's always mad at me. He claims that I was arrogant
when I met him. I think I was just rushing out of
the venue, but people decide that's arrogant...
but he called me a bitch on whatever platform he has.
And so I think that's interesting.
To me I'm more offended by "bitch" than I am "cunt".
"Cunt" doesn't it hit me as much as like --
That's a white people...
Yeah, I think it might be.
Yeah, white women get very upset.
Yeah, I don't want to be called one necessarily...
You know that you can get kicked off of Twitter
for calling a woman "a cunt"
but you can't get kicked off Twitter
for calling a woman a bitch?
Interesting
Yeah. "Cunt" is seen as -- I know the T.O.S.
very well...
Let's talk to Jack [Dorsey] about that.
I know!
... very well.
I told y'all!
I know the in's and out's...
If y'all didn't know Talib was a troll, he's a troll
on Twitter, y'all. This is professional.
High-grade troll.
Professional.
Hey man, I troll the trolls, man. I bully the bullies.
That's what I do.
I make them rethink their decision.
Is that what you do?
That's what I do.
I make them rethink their course of action like
you might want to back up...
Let's talk about feminism versus womanism.
Yes, let's.
What is your definition of those?
So I do believe that feminism...
... the intention of the feminism-definition
is to ensure that women
have the same rights as men,
and deserve them.
And of course we do.
Womanism is, I think, a different
iteration of that because -- particularly women of color
-- felt as if feminism
didn't include them...
... particularly when the movements kind of started.
I think it's interesting as we're creeping upon
women's suffrage that the centennial
anniversary for women's suffrage,
which would be 2020...
... that this is still a discussion point.
But I think it needs to be one.
53% of white women
voted for Donald Trump.
White women are clearly silent in the South where,
you know, these abortion bans -- bills restricting
reproductive justice rights -- are being,
you know, passed
writ large and it's like
at what point do you put your interests over your
husband's and your son's?
So I think that still remains an issue.
I was reading this article --
I dunno, I want to say a few months ago when they were
talking about women's suffrage coming --
I'm gonna send it to you, 'cuz it's actually really dope.
OK.
But this writer was talking about
not repeating the mistakes of the past, right?
And making sure that this this time, in 2020,
it's a more inclusive movement
that, if it's a race issue but is still a woman
bringing the race issue to you, it's time for
white women to align behind this race issue
from the spirit of intersectionality.
Like, be really embracing that -- and it not just
being upon us to embrace intersectionality.
That's the criticism that
the black community has with feminism...
And not the black community --
certain aspects. Some people.
They criticize
intersectionality, as well.
I am someone who would like to think of myself
as supportive of feminism --
Of the concept of it, not of how it's been played
out in black communities with black women.
I'm also supportive of womanism.
But there -- you know...
I publicly identify as a feminist.
I publicly identify as a womanist.
To me, it's as if they're saying the same thing.
What do you think it is
now -- and tying it into the
reproductive justice conversation -- because
from what I understand, reproductive justice as
opposed to talking about being pro-life or
pro-choice, brings in the fact that
white women have a better shot of getting
abortions, and it brings in the health risk
and it brings in the class of race issues
that don't get talked about in the
pro-life/pro-choice thing.
What do you think it is that's creating --
besides the obvious --
misogyny and sexism, that's creating such a hatred
and such a backlash for women,
particularly now, standing up their rights?
I think that the religious right
has cloaked this in what is holy and
I think that if they are to cloak it and
what is holy that the religious right
should have to state whether
they are Christian when they go and get that Viagra.
I think that the religious right
should have to take a lie detector test
on whether or not they've ever
pulled out.
You know, like, I'm just like
let's just be for real because the hypocrisy is insane,
and I normally don't talk about sex like this
'cause I grew up in the church but now I'm
just like listen, if we're gonna legislate vaginas
we're gonna legislate penises, too.
That's right 'cuz can go get a vasectomy.
But I want to legislate vasectomies, too.
You know, and even --
I started looking at this when I found
out that the military paid prescription
prices -- or paid for prescriptions for Viagra,
but they didn't want to pay for the prescriptions
for transgender people
in the military. So I was just like,
"This is some hypocrisy that's unbelievable."
So, anyway, it's just like
their description of this is
"He who is without sin cast the first stone"
and I'm just like -- it's more of that.
It's not really about what
is holy because it was about what is holy,
there wouldn't be migrant children sleeping on
rocks. If it was about what is holy,
we wouldn't be locking people up so that private
prisons could make more money.
If it was about what was holy,
we wouldn't have the homelessness crisis
that is rampant throughout the country,
right?
If it was about what's holy, we wouldn't be
fighting for people to be making minimum wage.
A livable wage that is a minimum wage, right?
It is about control.
It is about fear.
And it's... yeah. They're on their Pharisee-type stuff...
That's interesting to me because
I didn't grow up in a church.
But what I've seen happen in politics and I've
seen a black community --
certain people in our community -- fall for this.
It's this idea that the right-wing or conservatives
own family values or they own the concept
of wanting to be active in your community
and this and that...
And, you know, it's very
important to me that people understand that
you're someone who is not a right-wing person at all...
At all.
... but you grew up in the church,
and you have the same values.
Like, those values are not owned by
a political party in the same way that
the right-wing doesn't own homophobia.
But the other thing is, like you said, they don't own
family values. I would say that they don't even
display family values...
I agree with that.
... which is why there so many broken families.
And that's how long the con is because
they don't even display family values but they've
convinced the whole country that
not only that like if you're not a
right-wing person, you know,
like right-wingers and white supremacists
who argue with me online --
they try to claim Malcolm X
because they're saying he's a conservative
because he's religious and he's a family man.
He must be a conservative...
He's a pro-black, Pan-African
son of an immigrant, Muslim black man
who didn't even identify as an American.
They're trying to claim Frederick Douglass
and Martin Luther King [Jr.], too. And who else?
They've been trying to claim King for
years but this Malcolm thing is new.
You know?
Yeah. That's fair.
I hear you.
They probably are pulling old clips.
I think the worst thing that happens
now, speaking of what happens online,
people take, like, small sound bytes
but take them out of context.
They took the Ballot or Bullet speech, and they
make these GIFs and these these memes where they
take where Malcolm says he's "not a Democrat."
But he also said, "I'm not a Republican."
"I'm not an American."
That's right. That's right.
They just take the "I'm not a Democrat."
He was very critical of Democrats and liberals,
but he would also criticize the Republicans
in the same sense.
They would just leave that out.
It's not just the labels though.
It really is democracy.
There's no such thing as a democracy with a two
party system. And the third lane is nonexistent.
The independent streak -- the Green Party
ain't a thing.
Bernie is, you know, Independent
until he needs the Democratic base for votes.
It's not a real thing.
And so I always think about --
speaking of posters on the wall --
my dad brought back home...
... right after Nelson Mandela's election, like this
thing about South Africa's democratic system
and there were all these parties, like
they had parties based on sports...
There were a gazillion parties on this poster.
And in my mind, in high school...
in middle school, I was like
that's what democracy is supposed to look like.
And I've never shared that thought.
I'm like we could have a Black Party.
If the Tea Party pushed Republicans further to the right,
we could have a Black Party that pushes Democrats
further to inclusivity.
Don't call yourself a big tent party
if half of the damn party is invisible to you.
So it's so funny to me because they're
still saying I'm bought off by the Democrats.
I'm like, "Where is the money then?!"
These folks are afraid of me?!
Like I'm not bought off by no damn Democratic Party.
I'm more critical of the Democrats
'cuz I expect more out of them
than Republicans, but I'm like,
"You guys are so dumb."
They say I get checks, too.
They say I've got a Soros check and a DNC check and...
Oh, you got a DNC check, too?
Write some checks for me
because I need some checks...
The DNC don't be paying no money.
Yeah.
No, no. They really don't.
No, they really don't.
And they were mad at me, too, not that long ago.
My friend is a senior adviser over there now, but not
that long ago they were like...
A lot of people in our community or sort of...
... over the voting thing, you know?
And I've even in the past
spoken on why I didn't vote.
I've evolved in my thinking is that
Yeah, I was about to say
you just got a CNN-look.
Yeah, is that one of the looks?
Yeah, I was like, "The hell?!"
So, early in my life,
you know, I didn't like all the money in politics.
I didn't like the Electoral College.
I didn't like my choices.
I didn't -- I still to this day don't like the
concept of voting for the lesser of two evils.
I don't agree with that concept.
What turned me around on voting
was reading about Malcolm X and
Adam Clayton Powell
and Malcolm, who's my hero...
How they used to vote as a strategy and
as a tool.
Block voting.
Getting the community together on
certain issues that we can --
and looking at other communities in New York City
that were doing the same thing.
Of course other communities didn't have the
history of slavery like our community has,
so it's different. A different level of organizing.
But I understand why people don't want to vote.
So I'm not critical of it.
I now speak in favor of voting, but I don't --
I try not to shame or look at someone because
I know what that feels like.
I know why people thought like that.
Right now we have a situation where Donald Trump --
People in our community say,
"Well, why does it even matter that he's president?"
Because on the ground,
whether it's Trump or Obama, conditions don't
change. And there's truth to that.
But there's also truth to the fact that there's
aspects of the Trump administration that are
dangerous in ways that we've never seen.
And I think that you've spoken on those things very
eloquently.
And so what is it about Trump that makes
him more anti-black than our past presidents?
Yeah.
I don't know that he's more anti-black than our
past presidents?
I think that he's more bold with it.
It's not like implicit: it is explicit
and clear.
I think that I take
issue with voting
or getting people to vote just to oppose him.
I feel like there is an empowerment strategy that
must exist to get people to see their importance.
I really believe our failure
to mobilize around --
not just voting either because I think that's
part of the problem -- but around
our representation holistically in
politics is.
we're still kind of carrying slave mentality.
And what I mean by that is
if you're not economically empowered because
you don't have the resources and if your
community is suffering because it doesn't have
the resources and the one thing you
can do is engage in a political process
to get those resources to the community and to
businesses to change lives
is engaging in the political process,
like, that is the one place where we can change things
and for whatever reason that does not click for us.
Right.
One of the things I think that was the most
humbling for me where I related more to this
idea of not voting or why even do this if it's
not going to change is in the 2018
election watching what happened with
Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum.
I promise you Andrew won.
I agree.
I cannot wait until it's uncovered,
I don't know how it's gonna be uncovered,
but I promise you he won.
And in my opinion --
There was such a groundswell, as well.
Man! And my visceral
reaction was like, "Why the f*** do I even do this?"
Like, "Why do I even do this?"
A lot of people get stuck there.
And that's what happened, so I was like let me sit
with this so I can understand it so I'm more
empathetic going forward but like
how do we change it because we can't stay here.
They were going to kill us.
And I'm not talking about taking lives and it
being another civil war although it could be that
way. But like they're going to starve
us to death of all the resources it is a slow
death. There's an analogy that folks use all the
time talking about,
If you put a frog in boiling hot water it's
gonna pop right out.
But if you put the frog in the pot of water and
slowly increase the temperature it'll be boiled
to death. That's what's happening with us.
So the reason why we have to pay attention to
everything that Trump is doing and all the little
Trumps in states and in city councils
all over.
And the judges they put in so they can
have this anti-abortion legislation.
And the judges who will say that they can't even
acknowledge that Brown versus Board of Education
is the law of the land
which integrated schools like...
We have to pay attention to that.
That's right because they're playing the long game.
Yeah! And they've been doing that.
There's no better advocate for us than ourselves.
So I'm saying vote so that you can put people who
think like us and look like us in office.
Vote because there would have never been a BET
if Bob Johnson didn't engage in the political
process. Sure he sold it to Viacom now but the
point is we had representation on air.
All of that stuff happens through
the policy-making process.
And that's been sort of your whole
mission, from my perspective.
Impact, which from what I could tell
took off very quickly.
It has been super-successful.
"Legislative advocacy" is a term that I
had never heard of
until I looked up what I want to ask you about.
And that sounds like what you're talking about here.
Part of it is legislative,
but I'm really talking about political advocacy
overall. Whether it is aligning state
legislators like American Legislative Exchange Council
that was stood up by the Koch brothers,
they were writing up bills and those state
legislators in other places were copy and
pasting that same legislation and droppin' it.
We need to be doing the same thing!
Right.
That doesn't take money to do. So we developed a
whole database of every black elected official
in the country, and I promise you we are gonna
make that work for us.
You know when you Google search somebody
and things come up?
And, you know -- with Angela Rye...
CNN... Angela Rye... Impact...
"What does Angela Wright do" comes up.
And it's because...
What?! Who is this fool, actually?
You know especially around like the CBC,
the Congressional Black Caucus.
People are super-ignorant about what it is that
the Congressional Black Caucus does.
So I would like you to enlighten us.
Yes absolutely. So I worked for the Congressional
Black Caucus during the 112th Congress.
I was the executive director and general counsel.
The Congressional Black Caucus now because
people turned out in the 2018 election is
the largest it's ever been.
There are 55 members of Congress,
black members Congress, who are members.
There are two black members
who aren't joining, so 57 members total...
... They're Republicans.
But what they do -- they're called the conscience
of the Congress, and over time the CBC
has done everything from introducing
a budget every year that they thought --
You know, basically how different departments
should be funded.
They have introduced a bill
on reparations.
Every single Congress, Mr. Conyers started that and
Sheila Jackson Lee --
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee
from Houston just took that bill over.
Whether it's in the amendment process, making sure
that we're represented -- that communities of color
are considered, that they're advocated for --
those are our voices, and I see them as
mothers and fathers, some of them big brothers
big sisters now...
We don't always all agree.
They don't always all agree with each other.
Right.
But they are some of the best
fighters we have in Congress,
and I'm just grateful to see how they continue to
evolve.
What do you have to say to people who work within
our community who are critical of them
in the same way that they're critical of people
like Barack Obama?
Critical of them for working with big
banks or working with certain
lobbyists...
What do you have to say to those critics?
So, the first thing I would say is I was the CBC ED
during President Obama's tenure,
and some of the toughest moments I've had
was when the CBC
couldn't get support from the Obama administration
on things. Like, we were doing
a jobs tour, and it was devastating to me that we
couldn't get support and alignment with them.
They decided to do a jobs tour in rural America
when we were going to the heart of the community.
That's when black unemployment was double --
like, well it's always double the national average,
but it was like 16 percent.
It was super-high.
So that was really crushing, but there were also
some moments where we really did align and could
work together.
I think that, again, the way
that you make policy is not monolithic,
and they have to take into consideration what's
in the best interests of their constituents
in their districts. And sometimes those things are
not in alignment.
Right now, this is the first time where I think
most of the CBC members do not represent
majority-minority districts,
meaning they have more white
constituents than they have black.
Wow.
They will still be the voices of black Americans
because we don't have anybody else.
Right right.
Also you talked about big banks:
Congresswoman Maxine Waters is the chair --
the first woman,
the first black person ever, to chair Financial Services.
Child, she has taken these big banks to task.
Like, it is not happening.
Yeah, we love Maxine Waters around here.
She's like, "Maybe we should break y'all up."
Auntie Maxine.
You know. "Maybe y'all should go to jail!"
You know...
Yeah yeah yeah.
"That way..."
You know, like she does not...
she does not care.
And she's like the dopest,
fiercest advocate ever. That was my first
political internship.
Shout out to Maxine Waters.
Yes. The Queen!
Do you have a top five favorite MCs?
So I'm gonna say Black Thought.
Black Thought.
Exactly.
I'm going to say...
I've been trying to tell 'em...
I'm gonna say J. Cole.
I'm gonna do some newer ones
because I feel like the newer ones don't get...
OK, J. Cole.
Yeah!
I'm gonna say Kendrick.
I'm going to say... I need a woman...
I'll put Lauryn in there.
Yeah, Lauryn's gotta make the top five.
I had to put Lauryn in there.
Miss Hill...
How many do I have?
You're at four.
Damn! See what happens? Every time!
You've got one more.
A lot of competition for that last spot.
I know!
Choose wisely.
I'm like...
I'm gonna say Tupac.
Tupac Shakur...
I'm gonna say Tupac.
I have like five more!
In the spirit of revolutionary love...
Man!
... for Tupac Shakur.
I love Tupac.
Ladies and gentlemen, Angela Rye.
Thank you!
In and out.
That was fun! Not enough time!
