Unveiling History's Real Truths About Racism | Ep. 89 with Dr. Blunt and Jeffrey Birthright
Join us as our host, Patrick Mccalla, sits down with esteemed guests, Dr. Blunt and Jeffrey Birthright. In this episode, we explore the fear of sanitizing history, the power of interpretation, and the real truth behind historical events that history books didn’t tell us about.
From Dr. Blunt's upbringing in 1960s San Francisco to Jeffrey Birthright's passion for mentoring young men, our guests bring unique perspectives and insights to the table for this double interview. They challenge conventional historical narratives and encourage listeners to question what they've been taught.
From the roots of racial division to the responsibilities of mentorship, this episode covers a wide range of topics that will be sure to provoke thought and inspire action. Watch now as we navigate through history's twists and turns, uncovering truths and dispelling myths along the way.
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No Grey Areas is a motivational podcast with captivating guests centered around how our choices humanize, empower, and define who we become. This podcast is inspired by the cautionary tale, No Grey Areas, written by Joseph Gagliano. Learn more about the truth behind his story involved with sports' biggest scandal at nogreyareas.com
Transcript
Host
Welcome to the No Gray Areas podcast. I'm your host, Patrick McCullough. I'm here in the studio with mentors and historians Jeffrey Birthright and Doctor Blunt. Listeners, we explore the danger of sanitizing history, challenging historical interpretations, and the power of critical thinking. Here we go.
::Pat McCalla
Dr. Carl, a blunt and Jeffrey Birthright. Welcome to the No Gray Areas podcast. So glad you're here. So let me just get a little background on both of you quickly. So maybe in 30 seconds or less. Dr. Blunt, give me a little background or audience a little background on
::Dr. Blunt
::Dr. Blunt
Well, I can say born and raised in San Francisco in the sixties. I should tell you what kind of person I am. Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Go, go sixties. Anything happen and going to Catholic school, being the youngest in the family with my mother loving me up. So all of my my repressions are just not coming out now as you grow as a grown.
::Dr. Blunt
Man, youngest of how many before.
::Dr. Blunt
But.
::Pat McCalla
so you had to be tough. You got to grow up just being tough, right?
::Dr. Blunt
no, just the opposite. My sisters, six years old, me, my brothers, 12, mother sisters, 14. So they're like, What's your name again? I'm like, I'm your brother.
::Dr. Blunt
And you're like.
::Dr. Blunt
hell. So
::Dr. Blunt
that was the fifties. My mom raised them. They didn't leave the house, so they got married because it was the fifties. I come along in the sixties, black guy wearing hats, platform shoes, Black Panthers. Eldridge Cleaver lived across the street, hippies, three drugs. My mother was like, Yikes. She said, I just beat you. And you figured out when you're 18, bro.
::Pat McCalla
Can you send us a picture of you with your platform shoes
::Dr. Blunt
God, What am I.
::Dr. Blunt
Going to my phone? We got to see that.
::Jeffrey Birthright
We're going to post that one.
::Pat McCalla
So that's awesome.
::Pat McCalla
60 seconds or less. Jeff
::Jeffrey Birthright
come from West Indian parents born and raised in New York, Long Island, Lakeview, New York, and very, very passionate about helping young boys become young men and be successful at it. So that's my passion. And I got good brothers like a brother blunt here to help me really to be the best at it. So I'm try my best to reach everybody and talk to everybody.
::Jeffrey Birthright
And I mean, we have a lot of programs with women, but we don't really have nothing for young men or young black men. We really want to
::Jeffrey Birthright
I want to help them become better men.
::Pat McCalla
Yeah. And I want to circle back around to that towards the end of our interview. So I appreciate that you both care so much about youth, but this is going to be an interesting interview because you're in a sense, you're almost my co-host.
::Pat McCalla
A little bit
::Jeffrey Birthright
Yeah. You're actually talking
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah, he does good with that. He gives. He gives to be really high.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Yeah. Yeah. So I
::Jeffrey Birthright
I got. Let's just
::Dr. Blunt
okay?
::Dr. Blunt
When you sanitize history? First, let's look at the elements. It's supposed to be accurate, is supposed to be truthful. It's supposed to be analytical, and you're supposed to use all the data as opposed to cherry picking. I'll just use one example. The United Confederate Daughters of the Confederacy after the Civil War, they took control of all the schoolbooks in the South and just changed it around.
::Dr. Blunt
They said the slavery was good. We don't know why these black folks aren't, you know, how dare they? We fed them, We clothed them, we taught them stuff, and then now they're mad, you know? So I didn't realize at first a lot of guys I went to school with in the sixties and seventies. Why they were so segregationist till I found out that's all they were fed.
::Dr. Blunt
That's all. That's all they knew.
::Dr. Blunt
What they had grown up learning in school.
::Dr. Blunt
That's all they knew.
::Dr. Blunt
An example. Some of the black guys on the team, they would never shower when it was time to shower. You know, you got the dorms. Communal showers. Easy, man. I've never showered white folks in my life and I'm not going to start now. So they were amazed because I grew up with going to school with white folks.
::Dr. Blunt
I did West Coast, Asians, Filipinos. So when you talk about sanitizing same perception, two different interpretations of the world of life, that's what the the the the importance of not sanitize. And you have to understand another man you don't have to agree with or to have to like him, you know, but you have to understand I don't like him because as opposed I don't like him just because he's black.
::Dr. Blunt
I don't like him because he got a foul attitude. I don't like it because he uses bad language. And that's what I think the importance is of non sanitizing history. This is what it is, like it or not. And then move.
::Dr. Blunt
On. Yeah.
::Pat McCalla
Yeah.
::Pat McCalla
And I want to circle back around a little bit some of the things you touched on because I think it's so important. I want to come back to that. Let me ask you another question. What's the danger of not properly interpreting history? So we talked about sanitize it. You only want to take out the stuff that makes us uncomfortable, right?
::Dr. Blunt
Yes.
::Pat McCalla
But
::Pat McCalla
sometimes we're not even interpreting history correctly. What's the danger of that?
::Dr. Blunt
You hit on the right point. Like you said, we're not comfortable with that. So we're taking it out. It's not even that point. I'm uncomfortable with these things, so I'm going to make that the boogeyman. I'm going to say this is bad. That's why I'm taking it out, as opposed to saying, you know, slavery was kind of bad.
::Dr. Blunt
So we're not going to talk about it as well. The slavery was not bad. It was good. It gave black folks jobs. It took them from from Africa. And it does it took those out of their noses, put shoes on their feet. So that's the difference. Not just redacting it,
::Dr. Blunt
but changing it, reinterpreted it. You get a false impression.
::Dr. Blunt
And we're sitting across the table and one guy said, I don't understand, kind of like my math teacher. How come you can't get this math? Because they get it. And I don't I said, Well, because maybe you had a teacher I supposed to teach me.
::Dr. Blunt
Well, I.
::Dr. Blunt
Don't get math.
::Dr. Blunt
I wish I would have thought of that explanation. Go to school because I was asked that a lot. Why aren't you getting this? I should have said
::Jeffrey Birthright
because you're the teacher.
::Pat McCalla
Yeah,
::Pat McCalla
Give an example or two historical examples of an event that's often been misinterpreted to our detriment.
::Dr. Blunt
jeez.
::Dr. Blunt
I could start by saying Herodotus for those historians out there. He was the father of history. He was in Egypt around the fourth, fourth century B.C. And he eyewitness, he said, wow, all these pyramids, all these things, the Egyptians and the Egyptians are dark skinned people with wooly hair. Okay. What do you do you think that is the.
::Dr. Blunt
Herodotus saying.
::Dr. Blunt
Herodotus said this.
::Pat McCalla
historian looking right now at the people. And that's what he's writing.
::Dr. Blunt
To write, to say it, that Lucien, who is a Greek philosopher, also around that time, he said the Egyptians, the Ethiopians were dark skinned people with the eclipse. So if you connect the dots, would you guess Egyptians.
::Dr. Blunt
Like me, they.
::Dr. Blunt
Didn't look. No, they had a little bit more heartlessness.
::Pat McCalla
I have no hair.
::Dr. Blunt
They had a little bit more hair. Yeah, a little bit more
::Dr. Blunt
So when you see the Egyptians, you see, you know, Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, you see Elizabeth Taylor and their their brown skin, like my color. So what they refuse to tell you is that a thousand years before that, all the Egyptians were very dark skinned because of the Romans, the Persians, the Assyrians, everybody intermingled with them over the years.
::Dr. Blunt
The term is they lost the intensity of their color. So when we talk about ancient Egyptian history, you don't think of dark skin black folks. So you start your basis of the pyramids, you start the basis of anything for a a adjusted scenario. You know, I look at Egyptians and I say, okay, they look like Mexicans, black folks, anything to do with the pyramids.
::Dr. Blunt
So I'm saying that to say that you have to look at your history to do your research, if that makes any sense.
::Dr. Blunt
For
::Pat McCalla
sure, for sure.
::Pat McCalla
And why does that matter? Because here I think I get what you're saying. You're going, you know, you watch a typical movie about ancient Egypt and you're seeing a bunch of people that look a lot like
::Dr. Blunt
me. Yeah,
::Pat McCalla
Right? So again, for people that are listening to just the audio, I'm light skinned, I'm white, and I don't have nappy hair.
::Pat McCalla
start thinking, okay, Egypt,: ::Pat McCalla
a a person of faith. I know when Jesus was taken by his parents to Egypt to run away from Herod,
::Dr. Blunt
::Dr. Blunt
correct?
::Dr. Blunt
Correct.
::Dr. Blunt
boy. You know something? I was I'm working on right now.
::Dr. Blunt
You said interpretation of perception. History is interpretation of perception. The the the vanquished. Read it, the victors write it. So let's just say, for instance, I'm not a biblical scholar by any.
::Dr. Blunt
Means.
::Dr. Blunt
Right there.
::Dr. Blunt
By the way. We're going to drop out. I need that one.
::Jeffrey Birthright
too.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Yeah.
::Dr. Blunt
Well, I'm not a Google scholar by ATV via the Catholic. We need to have to read the Bible. However, as you do your research and you see these facts, you see interpretation, perceptions. Same fact of fact is that the ancient name of Africa was our Key Boulevard, which translated into the cradle or mother of mankind or the Garden of Eden.
::Dr. Blunt
Fact, fact number two, the the fossil, the oldest fossil that shows a human erectus was found in Africa. Fact. Fact number three, the oldest mathematical instrument called the Bombo Bongo, which is some type of ruler, was found in Africa, if you like. Okay. Then another fact, Scientists theorize that
::Dr. Blunt
everybody in the world has a trace of African blood in African ancestry.
::Dr. Blunt
So now again, you go to the Bible and you look at Genesis and it says, you know, the Garden of Eden, The river ran through it. It ran through Kush, which Kush is now in modern day Sudan. Then he said, also the land of gold, I think was called a villa. I think it was a name. They use it in the Bible, but that's what they called Kush Nubia.
::Dr. Blunt
So I'm taking all these facts. I say, Well, well, if that was where the Garden of Eden was was developed, how come Adam and Eve is always just perfect to somebody look like Farrah Fawcett and Kris Kristofferson? So you talk about religion, religious base,
::Dr. Blunt
you know, and when I was taught in school, the cradle of civilization was in Mesopotamia.
::Dr. Blunt
It was in Iraq and Iran. Where are your facts? Well, the Tigris and Euphrates mix up. They take the confluence. Okay, I share one fact. What about.
::Dr. Blunt
My five?
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah. So it's all about connecting the dots. So again, some villages will not believe, you know, Africa was not the motherhood of mankind. Africans were not dark skinned. You know, Egyptians were light skinned. So that's where
::Dr. Blunt
start in a misinterpretation.
::Jeffrey Birthright
We can stay right here really quick. So.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Absolutely. So the
::Pat McCalla
co-host. So
::Jeffrey Birthright
you do whatever you said.
::Jeffrey Birthright
So so with that being said and all those those nuances, can you talk a little bit about some other nuances that people might not realize came from Africa during that time?
::Dr. Blunt
Of Let me see. Well, you talk about, you know, the demos are a little bit more like the seventh century. The Moors.
::Dr. Blunt
Controlled.
::Dr. Blunt
From Spain all the way to the Middle East as we know now. They were top military folks, they were traders. They were heavy on education. When you hear the word Timbuktu, the city of Timbuktu.
::Pat McCalla
I heard that all the time growing
::Dr. Blunt
You think like, man, I'm telling you, Timbuktu is like that, right? Yeah. I don't want to go there building nowhere. Yeah, that's one of the first universities in the world. University of Timbuktu. When the French colonials went there, they burned everything. They took all the matches, They burned them up. They tried to eradicate and erase all that famous African history.
::Dr. Blunt
You talk about one of the greatest empires of Rome. His name was Septimius Severus. He was in North Africa.
::Dr. Blunt
You even hear about him mentioned he.
::Dr. Blunt
He expanded the Roman Empire to some of his greatest lives. He developed almost a rapid deployment group because the Roman Empire was so vast. Roman armies were always on the move, always on the move.
::Dr. Blunt
Being in the army was like a punishment. So he said, I'll give you guys a little bit more dough. You guys want to re-enlist, I'll give you a little bit of promotion, I'll give you some land. So he kind of re-engineered how the Roman legions were prepared. You since did you guys march in four months? I'm just going to put you know, I'm going to put these particular battalions are legion, so to speak, in various places.
::Dr. Blunt
Brilliant move.
::Dr. Blunt
I had a professor who told me as my major professor said, You guys write about any emperor you want. I wrote about Septimius Severus. He blew his stack. Well, did you write about this despot, this this anomaly, this, this, this, that? Yeah. You could write about, you know, somebody white, a white improved. You pick him. And I'm just like, wow.
::Dr. Blunt
em. Not when I was in school.: ::Pat McCalla
facts. You just
::Dr. Blunt
learn the facts. You said
::Dr. Blunt
bogus facts.
::Dr. Blunt
I don't believe that. I'm calling you Mom and Dad. You're challenging me. Carl's being disrespectful in class. So that that's a big difference. I know.
::Dr. Blunt
You know, I can't.
::Pat McCalla
You always. Let me just quick side note, I want to come
::Dr. Blunt
back to.
::Dr. Blunt
Okay.
::Jeffrey Birthright
where you were.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Kind of challenging things in your mind
::Pat McCalla
maybe you couldn't say it out loud?
::Pat McCalla
is that how you were growing
::Dr. Blunt
up?
::Dr. Blunt
a freshman in high school in: ::Dr. Blunt
She would not let him ride. Is really after how to ride my bike in the house of Dad.
::Dr. Blunt
Well.
::Dr. Blunt
Well, first of all,
::Dr. Blunt
I was pretty active.
::Dr. Blunt
You know.
::Dr. Blunt
And then Eldridge Cleaver lived across the street with the Black Panthers, and she's like, no, When I got the cousin, I got, you know, she said, I said, Mama, go to college. And here and she said, hell no, you're going to school right down here at City College. So I keep an eye on you.
::Pat McCalla
Okay, so you were this is this is just you
::Jeffrey Birthright
were you're just wired as
::Dr. Blunt
I.
::Dr. Blunt
Could when I You and I got your freedom. All these. All these questions I like reading. I like research so that was the result of my mother being messed up. So being very oppressive is not the term I want you, let's say protective.
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah.
::Dr. Blunt
Because I don't want her, you know, rolling over in a grave and stuff. So. Yeah. So I'm wired like that because I could not express those, those things when I was a young
::Pat McCalla
opportunity it really came out. But,
::Pat McCalla
Dr. Blunt, I heard you on another podcast and you talked about the importance though, for people today, not just youth that are in school, but for all of us to do our own homework, right?
::Dr. Blunt
yeah, that's the key.
::Pat McCalla
Yeah.
::Pat McCalla
Just because you heard something or you learned something in school or in a history class or you saw something on a on social media post to take the time and go back and research it yourself. Why is that important? And I'm going to keep asking that particular question throughout this podcast. Why is that.
::Dr. Blunt
Important? That's key. And again, I'm glad you keep focus me because like birthright to tell you, I mean, I guess it's talking. I'm all over the place. But
::Dr. Blunt
the social media, friend or foe, I had that conversation the other day with we were with a student. I'll start off with an example. I have a conspiracy theory product called Conspiracy theory, bro.
::Dr. Blunt
Five years ago things one of those your friend five years ago,
::Dr. Blunt
I would believe half the stuff he tells me. I start out by saying he called me a couple of years ago saying, Man, you know, all those kids of five many kids they couldn't find at the border. Yeah, well, they harvested all of their organs all over the world.
::Dr. Blunt
You're not going to find them.
::Dr. Blunt
I'm like.
::Dr. Blunt
Damn, man, Really? So then he calls me and he says, Man, do you know a professor at UCLA got fired because he wouldn't give black students an easier test? I'm like, Wow, man, send me that. Okay, I'll look at it, triangulate like three different sources. I said, Let me look at Huffington Post or somebody else. And it says, Yes.
::Dr. Blunt
Students wanted to.
::Dr. Blunt
Get a little easier time because of the George Floyd things. I mean, we stressed out. Could you give us a little bit longer to study for our test message a little bit different than the first one?
::Dr. Blunt
Get five. Yeah. The second one was like a.
::Dr. Blunt
Student went to the faculty on behalf of the black students say that they should be able to get more time to do their test back. And he said no, a little bit different. The third one said a white student and B, no. He said the black students went to the faculty and said, You should give those guys more time, you know, because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
::Dr. Blunt
The faculty responded and said, No, we're not going to do it. Except one faculty member who was just white students friend. This is all unbeknownst to the black students. He said, No, those ads and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just went off into a a racist rant because he thought they were friends. It got to the faculty.
::Dr. Blunt
That's why he got fired. So, number one, that's one reason for you have to, you know, to do your research, do your triangulation because you don't believe when I was coming up, no cell phones to me. What do we have? We had neighbors, friends, sisters, brothers, teachers. geez.
::Dr. Blunt
Long ago. Jeez.
::Dr. Blunt
But we had we had built in filters, which were people, you know, hey, I don't believe that. Who told you that? Now, man, whatever these kids get on the phone, they don't know if it's real or not. I don't know if you guys remember Bobo. Bobo was this social media things, This person would come on and say, when your father go to sleep tonight, beat him in the head with a hammer or something.
::Dr. Blunt
So Momo was and these kids were like, okay, I'm going to do this stuff. So to answer your question that way is that's that's the danger of not checking your sources. Again, don't have to believe me. I had to believe me. Do your research. Do your own research.
::Jeffrey Birthright
is also important even when you do your research. Like he said, I think the triangulation part is important. And also you got to separate kind of reliability and validity and they're different. So so even if we if in the if we're taking like if we're going shooting and we have a target up there, and if you're valid, you'll hit
::Dr. Blunt
that every time.
::Dr. Blunt
we hit. All right. You
::Jeffrey Birthright
know, one spot that becomes reliable. So. Right. Absolutely. So
::Jeffrey Birthright
I mean, Wikipedia is valid, but it's not reliable.
::Dr. Blunt
That's good.
::Dr. Blunt
Point.
::Jeffrey Birthright
If you get like peer reviewed articles, that would be more reliable. But if you get Wikipedia, they give information is not necessarily reliable but is valid. Yeah. So we kind of got in when we were doing history. We got to separate. We got to understand the difference between that.
::Pat McCalla
How does this not get, like, overwhelmed though, Because I get. Man, you guys, I totally agree with what you're saying. And I know I love history and I've always been passionate about reading history. But as you start reading it and then even being born, I went to Bible school and been a Bible teacher for years and going back and looking at it.
::Pat McCalla
So. So to to your point, let me just let you know what revolution nice my my own personal Bible study is. I started looking at and going, I got to quit looking at this as a 20th century Westerner and try to read it and interpret it
::Dr. Blunt
as.
::Dr. Blunt
The time.
::Dr. Blunt
To correct it.
::Pat McCalla
you know, pre that the Older testament pre that otherwise I'm not going to interpret this right and you're saying the same thing with history as a lot of times history is written by someone who's interpreting a lens to be like me interpreting the Bible as a 20th century American.
::Pat McCalla
There's going to be all kinds of messes there because it wasn't a 20th century American who wrote it as a first century Jew.
::Pat McCalla
It
::Pat McCalla
But how did how does.
::Pat McCalla
That not get overwhelming for people to go like, well, how do I know it's.
::Pat McCalla
True then.
::Dr. Blunt
That that is exactly correct. Check your sources and history is interpretation perceptions. So you may stumble across something that nobody's thought of before. That example of good in examples you could see,
::Dr. Blunt
I would Washington, D.C. was was being laid out there. The chief lead architect for France, his name was purely on phone. He laid out Washington, laid out everything, and he got to beef with with Thomas Jefferson.
::Dr. Blunt
And he said, hey, man, I'm taking my plans in a book and you're on your own later. And he split. So Tom was like, So what am I going to do? This guy named Benjamin Banneker.
::Dr. Blunt
Who was an.
::Dr. Blunt
Architect on the planning committee, said, I got you, man. I started plans. He said, What he said I saw in two days. He recreated the whole plans of Washington, D.C. So I asked the students who should get credit for laying out Washington, D.C..
::Dr. Blunt
Law.
::Dr. Blunt
In front of Benjamin Banneker and half said this and have said that. That's history. That's interpretation and perception. You look at it one issue and you putting your own spin on it. Well, our vision of Banneker did was take plot fonts, plans and laid them out. Yeah, but Pierre left because if Banneker made it happen, he brought it to fruition.
::Dr. Blunt
So that's why interpretation and perception, not only in school but in life, is important.
::Pat McCalla
Doctor Blunt, that such a perfect example, because you're right,
::Pat McCalla
you're taking a factual event that took
::Dr. Blunt
Yes.
::Jeffrey Birthright
text.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Yeah.
::Dr. Blunt
I didn't read the
::Dr. Blunt
the right.
::Dr. Blunt
Know, I didn't get houses in the back. Yeah.
::Pat McCalla
whose name was in bold print on who designed Washington DC? That's going to be interpretation,
::Dr. Blunt
right?
::Dr. Blunt
Correct.
::Pat McCalla
history book, they're going to interpret. Is it
::Pat McCalla
the guy that came up with the initial plans or the guy that made it happen? And that's what you're talking about? It's
::Dr. Blunt
Right. And no writer, no Rome. No writer. No, no. Just how did you arrive at your conclusion? That's all I want to know. Well, because he did all the work. He did everything he did it. So I think, lo, I should get credit or. I mean, this guy brought it from the dead. So it's how you interpret it.
::Dr. Blunt
What was your lot? You know, like an algebra proved your answers it. I'd be like, okay, I get it. Not the fact that L'Enfant was white was about it was black, which he was supposed to be mean, you know. You know, I ain't give because you better get no credit if you put that kind of logic in And that's that's fallacy.
::Dr. Blunt
But if you just say, hey, this is what I did, this is what
::Dr. Blunt
I thought, and that's how I came to my conclusion.
::Dr. Blunt
I
::Jeffrey Birthright
got it. I got a I got a question as well. How much does emotions play in getting the truth about history? Because, I mean, I think there's an emotional component also that there are some people who don't want to give a certain group of people credit and who do want to give people credit. But so how much how much emotions do you think
::Jeffrey Birthright
plays a part in developing the history?
::Jeffrey Birthright
That's a great.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Question.
::Dr. Blunt
kind of like why we have black history Month.
::Dr. Blunt
I had a colleague to of the day. I think black history was racist. But tell me why. He said, because we need to have a White History Month. I would like okay pick Libby July and I we hear about why people don't want for 11 more months.
::Dr. Blunt
He's like, well, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm like, What are you talking about? Did it. He could answer me, but that's based on emotion. I'm tired of you. Black people always ask if you want reparations, you want.
::Dr. Blunt
To go to school.
::Dr. Blunt
You want to have the opportunity to have a job, you know, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, relax. So I'm at the airport doing the pandemic
::Dr. Blunt
and this guy had a baby get a MAGA hat on. I don't know what I did, what I deserved as best as. Excuse me, man. You know, I don't want to be intrusive, but make America great for who?
::Dr. Blunt
I just want to be clear. He said, are Americans. I'm like, good. I guess. I mean, I said, Where are you from yourself in Philly? I said, Okay, man.
::Dr. Blunt
I'm.
::Dr. Blunt
From San Francisco. So we started chatting.
::Dr. Blunt
It is Subway. And again, when I say white folks, black folks, I'm not being all inclusive. I don't know about, you know, just the ones I talk to. I know I read, I hear. I see what he's saying. So, I mean, welcome, white folks. I got to say, I'm not racist. I don't even know we were talking about it.
::Dr. Blunt
He said, well, I'm not racist. I'm like, What's your name again? You said, Good, good Iraqi vet. I mean, thank you for your service. So let me tell you some good. I said, if you just think that because folks want to have the opportunity to go to school, you take affirmative action is bad because you're trying to balance the playing field and being excluded from school for 350 years know affirmative action has been in there 50 years.
::Dr. Blunt
You think that's equal now we need to quit. Let folks get in. I said that that's that's a racist statement. You know, I don't want these folks to go to school or I don't want these folks to have a job. Now, my dad was from the South and he said whenever a white employer hired a black man, the folks to say, you're taking away a job from a good white guy, story of poor had to say, hey, I'm getting here for less money and he's kick it, dude, five times as much work as this guy.
::Dr. Blunt
So that was is like, okay, okay. So I say, I came up Gordon being taught that I had to be five times better than you to get the same job. I said, I don't even know you. And for me to think that has to be a racist on my part, you said I didn't think of that as so long as I don't joke, you would do something to you and don't give you a overt racist of action.
::Dr. Blunt
Then you know, okay, you can't debate folks on opinion. You can debate him on facts or not opinion. And he said, never thought about that. So that answered your question about being emotional. You know, unless we talk you semantically by buy you drink, I say I don't drink. But, you know, I appreciate that. But emotion, we should have a White History Month.
::Dr. Blunt
Well, for the past 40 years, every must have been white history. And we got, you know.
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah.
::Dr. Blunt
Man, you
::Dr. Blunt
victim of racism? Let me tell you where. Let me go grab your wife and your son in blitzed them and set them on fire and bring my family out to watch that. Once you start experiencing that, then you start to know what racism is now. Because what people are saying or people are writing it, it's like,
::Dr. Blunt
I never thought of that
::Pat McCalla
again, where you're going with this I think is so good because again, depending on who you talk about, talk to
::Dr. Blunt
does.
::Dr. Blunt
You write
::Pat McCalla
down and you consider like this is factual, what happened there, like
::Pat McCalla
just because of the color of my skin. If I grew up in the South in the sixties, I would have had a different lens that I probably would have looked through than you would have growing up in the South in the sixties.
::Pat McCalla
And so if we both wrote down what were our facts,
::Dr. Blunt
Correct?
::Pat McCalla
it might look a little different.
::Pat McCalla
And I think that's your point, isn't it? Is We have to be very careful when we look back at history and what we're saying, like this is a historical fact.
::Dr. Blunt
to portray the sixties, you being there bald. I would assume you were skinhead. Yeah him be a ball out of some he had just got of penitentiary back in the sixties. That's before the ball heads became more of a fashion statement.
::Pat McCalla
We
::Jeffrey Birthright
call.
::Dr. Blunt
well.
::Dr. Blunt
You know, I had a big afro. I had a moderate afro. My body don't roll over your grave. I had a moderate afro and folks thought I was, you know, power to the people I'm not going to capture. I'm an altar boy. But folks, just assume that these young men today, these twisted years, my mother father would never let me go out in the street with uncombed hair.
::Dr. Blunt
They said, Man, don't you know that the slaves would not allow to to exercise hygiene? You know, they could bathe, they could brush that, they could call the hair. Boy, you comb your hair. So I asked a young man, now, what statement are you making? why did you twist your hair up? so back in our day, your hair was a statement.
::Dr. Blunt
Now they just do it because it's a fat interpretation, you know, interpretation.
::Dr. Blunt
So
::Pat McCalla
and I guess I'm going to keep asking this question over and over again because I want to keep hammering on it. Why does all of this matter? Why is it so important for us to understand this or to get this? So let me let me back up again and go back to early in our conversation when when I grow up watching movies like the Ten Commandments about Egypt and I get this idea in my mind that they all are
::Pat McCalla
basically look like me with the light skinned and
::Dr. Blunt
blue eyes.
::Dr. Blunt
I don't know what we're talking about, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
::Pat McCalla
but why does that matter?
::Pat McCalla
does that matter?
::Dr. Blunt
You know, it matters to the folks who produce that, because they try to to, you know, reinforce that narrative. But for folks
::Dr. Blunt
who are on the receiving end, do you understand? Accept it or not? I'm not going to take him out. But I know that's bogus or I just know it's a movie. I've just got to check it out.
::Dr. Blunt
But knowing your history, knowing you have the power, the power to unlock history is that interpretation. Perception is not just being shoved down your throat.
::Dr. Blunt
Again, back to Black History Month. I said, You guys know everybody has a mouth. You know, LBGTQ, you do Hispanics, you know, the Asian-Americans, females. Now, No, that's a good point. Back in the sixties when I came up, everybody thing in the sixties is civil rights, black power revolution.
::Dr. Blunt
Do you know that the Latinos, the Chicano movement started major? It started in the sixties. Feminism started in the sixties. Gay and lesbian movement started in the sixties. Cesar Chavez with with the great workers. But folks,
::Dr. Blunt
they don't talk with these talk about, you know, you black people always want our stuff about our stuff. We want our stuff back.
::Dr. Blunt
You know, you guys took everything from us. So
::Dr. Blunt
that's why it's important knowing that you have the power as a person to interpret, analyze anything you want to do. And you can say, Hey, man, I don't believe that. I do believe this because of that. It's logic. I cannot change your opinion, but I could question you on how you came, your opinion.
::Pat McCalla
Dr. Blunt, just having our little time here today, I think I realize that about you, and I value that in you. I think one of things that we've really lost in our society, in our culture today, and I mean today is and probably stretching back over the last decade or more is our inability to have dialog, to have true dialog.
::Pat McCalla
And I'm and I'm realizing, just listen, you tell stories that
::Pat McCalla
seem to be very gifted at that that you can go up to someone and buy maybe the clothing they're wearing
::Dr. Blunt
or.
::Dr. Blunt
Representing.
::Pat McCalla
You're thinking immediately, like, I pray, don't agree with this person, but you're going to be able to go have a dialog with them and get them to just think about it and help them have a dialog, a real dialog with you.
::Pat McCalla
would you agree that we've lost our ability or we we've lost a lot of our ability to have true dialog.
::Dr. Blunt
Make that be read in my mind. That's the next thing I was going to say, be it
::Dr. Blunt
kid in the sixties, taught me.
::Dr. Blunt
Tolerance.
::Dr. Blunt
Talked about the gay lesbian movement kids. Now I talk about the transgender curriculum they got going no matter what's going on. We had that same scenario 60 years ago. They talk about COVID. We had the crack cocaine of they talk about Black Lives Matter. We had Black Panthers talk about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, but we had Vietnam.
::Dr. Blunt
So growing up in San Francisco gave me tolerance. I don't agree with everybody, but I can understand whether who they.
::Dr. Blunt
Are.
::Dr. Blunt
Because the gay and lesbian movement in San Francisco to sixties was very violent. Folks like that, those are the ones who were always oppressed. They were oppressed to a certain extent, but the general the general white establishment embraced him because, yeah, maybe gays and lesbians, but you are white, you know, so the black gays, black lesbians and Latinos had to have their own counterculture, which I thought was bizarre.
::Dr. Blunt
You know, they had to go to the Peacock Lounge,
::Dr. Blunt
I would like banned everything.
::Dr. Blunt
Even the
::Pat McCalla
movements in the sixties were sometimes segregated,
::Dr. Blunt
Dan Gay movement,
::Jeffrey Birthright
::Dr. Blunt
skin.
::Dr. Blunt
Based on color
::Dr. Blunt
and economic status. Harvey Milk And those those gays objected to gay and homosexual were two different term you calls about homosexual. That was a proper term at the time, calls somebody queer was an insult that was on its head. You know, I'm not homo. Don't don't define me. A binary I've done by the way.
::Pat McCalla
we can have about
::Dr. Blunt
The N-word. Yeah. Back then, somebody was getting hurt.
::Dr. Blunt
Now that's that's a.
::Dr. Blunt
Term.
::Dr. Blunt
Of endearment.
::Dr. Blunt
And I'm like, Bro, I. I don't understand that, man. So go. Yeah. Good. Yeah,
::Jeffrey Birthright
I kind.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Of think that is you kind of got to be knowledgeable of the times and how it is changing. And because you don't want to be offended and you don't really understand the context of of what's going on. So I know where the blunt he if you say the N-word, it means something to him as opposed to if you say around me it means something different in the context means something
::Jeffrey Birthright
different.
::Jeffrey Birthright
So I think it's important to.
::Pat McCalla
so so on your point, let me ask you this. You don't have to give me the exact ages because maybe you don't care. But what's the difference in your age is
::Dr. Blunt
I'll be 73 this year.
::Jeffrey Birthright
and I'll be 43.
::Dr. Blunt
there. A generation.
::Jeffrey Birthright
And what
::Jeffrey Birthright
Is definitely very.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Different.
::Jeffrey Birthright
No, not is not different. But
::Jeffrey Birthright
in my generation, I think what I've learned is we've take what's been used to hurt us, to use it like as a term of endearment when I talked to Dr. Blunt, he he doesn't feel that way. So I'm once again and when you have these conversations with other people, you have to know your audience.
::Jeffrey Birthright
So if I know bothers him in a negative, I can't say that. So he talks about tolerance. And what I do want to chime in on tolerance is I just don't think we have these conversations anymore because so many people, they want to be heard and nobody wants to listen. So everybody wants to talk over everybody else. And no, and we don't come to a resolve because everybody like his conversation with the young man from Philly,
::Dr. Blunt
they had a conversation about it.
::Pat McCalla
Yes.
::Pat McCalla
I noticed the same thing when he was telling that story.
::Pat McCalla
to people listening. Right.
::Pat McCalla
Yeah. And
::Dr. Blunt
That's the key
::Dr. Blunt
I think that's the key to understanding.
::Jeffrey Birthright
birth.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Yes, by.
::Pat McCalla
BRF.
::Pat McCalla
Hey, you when you said.
::Pat McCalla
Were more intent on being heard than listening.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Yeah,
::Jeffrey Birthright
chambers
::Jeffrey Birthright
it differently.
::Jeffrey Birthright
And nobody does the research to find out what's real
::Dr. Blunt
research.
::Dr. Blunt
That's it.
::Dr. Blunt
about it.
::Dr. Blunt
And I enjoy going to
::Pat McCalla
make sure I'm assuming,
::Pat McCalla
Dr. Blunt, did you make sure he's done his research
::Dr. Blunt
yeah. Sometimes he gets me, though. Sometimes he gets me and I'm like, okay, I got to go with that.
::Dr. Blunt
So I
::Jeffrey Birthright
think that is so much when we research.
::Jeffrey Birthright
one of the negative things about the stuff that's going on now as far as podcasts and stuff is concerned, everybody has an opinion and everybody believes that they're right. And
::Jeffrey Birthright
even biblically study, show yourself approved. So I am all for I hear what you're saying. I understand, but I'm going look it up for myself
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah.
::Pat McCalla
get. Yeah.
::Pat McCalla
Yeah,
::Dr. Blunt
It is this is where you look as well.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Absolutely. So it's a it's a plethora of things that go into it.
::Pat McCalla
You write on. I mean, and when you take it back to the Bible in the Book of Acts, which is kind of the history of the New Testament times,
::Jeffrey Birthright
Church,
::Jeffrey Birthright
Yes, right.
::Dr. Blunt
at it.
::Dr. Blunt
believe me, because I'm
::Pat McCalla
the apostle Paul.
::Dr. Blunt
And you go
::Jeffrey Birthright
So if I call Dr. Blunt anytime and I love annoying him, I
::Dr. Blunt
body, I will call him any
::Dr. Blunt
That's exactly what he does.
::Dr. Blunt
The
::Dr. Blunt
it. And if
::Pat McCalla
and
::Pat McCalla
are. Yeah.
::Pat McCalla
Yeah.
::Pat McCalla
was, you know? Yeah.
::Dr. Blunt
show you that.
::Dr. Blunt
You're
::Jeffrey Birthright
Absolutely.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Absolutely. History.
::Jeffrey Birthright
absolutely absolute. So it's not just the book who wrote the book and how
::Dr. Blunt
reliable are they? They
::Jeffrey Birthright
wrote the book where they get their information from. You know, I was a I'm currently doing my doctoral program and it's always you have to research the researcher to make sure that they're credible.
::Pat McCalla
on that note, when you were just talking about your doctoral program,
::Pat McCalla
was friends with a guy years ago that was doing his doctoral work on justice issues, and he made this comment in his doctoral thesis was going to be really around this idea that whoever controls the narrative, controls the power or has the power,
::Jeffrey Birthright
Yeah.
::Dr. Blunt
there?
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah, like most of the stories we're going to get, I know I'm getting out of my area of expertise, but we talk about redacting the Bible, the Apocrypha. Why did they take those books out of the Bible? And again, you know, I don't I don't know the reason. I just kind of thought they were like, I know what I'm talking about, but everybody tries to control
::Dr. Blunt
narrative, you know?
::Dr. Blunt
You
::Pat McCalla
know what? Don't this doctor bond, this is perfect that you brought that up because most of our listeners are probably from a faith based perspective. And some of them probably just went off the road like, you know, hitting their steering wheel. What are you talking about with the Apocrypha? And but that's our point is to be able to have a dialog
::Dr. Blunt
I need to understand. That's why I brought it.
::Dr. Blunt
Up.
::Pat McCalla
Or,
::Pat McCalla
Both ways to go. Okay. You, you don't have a problem with that taking out of the Bible because you just heard that your whole life. But do you know can you, can you support why you think it's okay that they took it out
::Pat McCalla
that's your point isn't it.
::Dr. Blunt
Right. Somebody would tell me that. That's why. Because I just because I don't know, instead of be going around running my mouth, I.
::Dr. Blunt
Ask, Yeah.
::Dr. Blunt
I ask it
::Pat McCalla
and do the research or have the dialog with someone who's coming from a different perspective. And again, for me personally, I think this has been some of my biggest growth area in my life. I'm 52 and I had a pause for just a second
::Dr. Blunt
So I'm 52,
::Jeffrey Birthright
to not 53
::Pat McCalla
yet.
::Pat McCalla
I think some of my.
::Pat McCalla
Greatest growth the last few years has come in exactly what we're talking about, where I'm so much better at dialoging
::Dr. Blunt
that's it.
::Jeffrey Birthright
and you'll see it through
::Dr. Blunt
years. Okay.
::Dr. Blunt
Right, right. The value of.
::Dr. Blunt
That ask questions rather than me running around running my mouth about the biblical stuff. I don't know. I've asked about it. Who knows? And drama or conclusions. That's the whole thing we talk about now. Do your research. But that was going on. Is this historical fact corrected? Correct? It depends on how you do your logic, how you get your answers, how you prove your work.
::Dr. Blunt
And that's what I drilled to these these young men all the time. The guy yesterday was doing something about alternative fuel. And we talk about black history. He was kind of like, how does a relate to be? Yeah, I should look at you.
::Pat McCalla
and black history.
::Dr. Blunt
together. He's thinking.
::Dr. Blunt
George Washington Carver, the: ::Dr. Blunt
Heroes growing up, by.
::Dr. Blunt
The way.
::Dr. Blunt
He looked it up. He's like, Well, Mr. Blunt, I never do that. I'm like, okay.
::Dr. Blunt
Brilliant scientist.
::Pat McCalla
cutting edge stuff that he was doing.
::Pat McCalla
Yeah. And so you put those two together for him,
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah, He was like, Yeah.
::Dr. Blunt
man, it was like that.
::Dr. Blunt
I'm glad you told me that. I'm like, okay, So again, I said, Don't take my word for it. Google it right now.
::Dr. Blunt
I'm smiling. So big. Our audience
::Pat McCalla
listening, they're not watching. They don't see me smiling really big because.
::Pat McCalla
I was I was curious, where are you going to take that to Alternative fuel.
::Dr. Blunt
And, you know,
::Pat McCalla
George Washington Carver is perfect because, again, if you're.
::Pat McCalla
Listening and you don't know who.
::Pat McCalla
This guy is, you got to go.
::Pat McCalla
Look him up and do a little bit of reading on
::Dr. Blunt
Like you say it would would take any any salary would take any salary from Tuskegee.
::Pat McCalla
Yeah, yeah.
::Pat McCalla
Heart of compassion. Brilliant. Brilliant. But
::Dr. Blunt
what they tell us in school, the peanut man.
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah, that's all we know about.
::Dr. Blunt
What.
::Pat McCalla
He helped us make peanut butter.
::Dr. Blunt
exactly the way that I was taught. Exactly. George Washington chopped on a cherry tree. You never told a lie
::Dr. Blunt
like grit.
::Dr. Blunt
You guys get that frozen. We don't know George Washington very well for saying that he
::Pat McCalla
never told a lie.
::Pat McCalla
So.
::Pat McCalla
let me circle back around to something else that came up a few times as we've been talking language and why it matters
::Pat McCalla
istory, like maybe maybe late: ::Pat McCalla
People Group
::Pat McCalla
Correct. So how is language important in history and current culture and
::Dr. Blunt
events?
::Dr. Blunt
Well, okay, let me
::Dr. Blunt
ion or Bacon's revolt back in: ::Dr. Blunt
::Dr. Blunt
76. Yes.
::Dr. Blunt
the it did its servants, the black indentured servants and the white indentured servants got together with a guy named Bacon who was a landowner armed themselves and fought the colonial government because they want to move the Native Americans off of their land.
::Pat McCalla
can I just jump in here really quick and help our audience? Because some of them aren't historians and didn't
::Dr. Blunt
pay attention to history. Okay, So
::Dr. Blunt
Correct.
::Pat McCalla
So when you say colonials, we've got people living here now that weren't native to this country
::Pat McCalla
and some of them are going some of our audience right now is going, I'm going to I'm going to get.
::Pat McCalla
You off on it. We'll bring you back.
::Dr. Blunt
Okay? Okay.
::Dr. Blunt
Another issue.
::Jeffrey Birthright
And
::Dr. Blunt
boy. So now I opened up two boxes for. Right.
::Dr. Blunt
I know that I. Right.
::Pat McCalla
So I want you to
::Pat McCalla
finish this story and then go back and
::Pat McCalla
fix that one part
::Dr. Blunt
Okay.
::Dr. Blunt
But
::Dr. Blunt
But I could reverse it now and start on the.
::Dr. Blunt
Duke River and then.
::Dr. Blunt
Bring up to that. So it's: ::Pat McCalla
important to know history correctly.
::Dr. Blunt
e New World came in slaves in: ::Jeffrey Birthright
Not know who do they come with? Can you tell what they came with?
::Dr. Blunt
Well, they all that came weren't working slave. They were indentured servants. If you talk a little bit about before, indentured servitude means.
::Dr. Blunt
They had like
::Pat McCalla
seven years of they had to work and then
::Dr. Blunt
Correct? Correct.
::Dr. Blunt
they had to have skills. You just not sinning. No bulb to the new world. See me? I give you some money to go to New World and hang out. They had to have skills so they weren't. It were just rank and file people. They were. They were clothiers. They were weavers. They were silversmiths. They were carpenters.
::Dr. Blunt
They had skills. You talking about Africans coming with those skills, agriculture and whatnot. So seven years they get released. The whites came as well as indentured service. They're not saying that all blacks came, as did the service. Some did come in slavery, but a lot of them did not. They came with the white folks. Okay, So as we go a little bit further, we go to my Africa historical stuff.
::Dr. Blunt
We talk about all these great African empires, Kush, the 25th Dynasty, the Cushite Pharaohs, all that and whatnot. So you saw that Africans had a very rich tradition in trade, military education, all of that.
::Dr. Blunt
So
::Pat McCalla
we're still trying to figure out how the Egyptians
::Dr. Blunt
built these things over here. It was
::Pat McCalla
us that from black history.
::Pat McCalla
were blacks. Egypt, and they built these things that were still going. How did
::Dr. Blunt
they tell you alien aliens came down and did it? That's talking about now. Yeah.
::Pat McCalla
yeah.
::Pat McCalla
o, so what you're saying then: ::Dr. Blunt
right
::Dr. Blunt
so
::Pat McCalla
slaves. But
::Pat McCalla
many of that came had these skills.
::Dr. Blunt
Skills and it cut to the chase
::Dr. Blunt
the honorable Eliot scared the rich landowners they set these black indentured servants and these why they did the service both picked up arms together. We've got to stop that. So to think two things happened. They started developing new domain cultures. The white folks had called apprentices. The blacks are still servants. So you start separate.
::Dr. Blunt
So then some of the indentured servants blacks contracts came. They weren't honored and they were like, Well, bro, what you. What are you doing? I should be free now. We just got to go free. We going to keep going to turn you slaves and that's it. We get rid of indentured servitude. So the black kid did the service, went to the ones, the white ones who they just got together and fought and they said, Hey, we need some help.
::Dr. Blunt
And it was like, well, being white now gives us a little bit more status. So you all on your own. So that's when the whole race thing started. You make it savages.
::Pat McCalla
they were linking arms early on,
::Dr. Blunt
with us.
::Dr. Blunt
With arms, Yeah. And it was like
::Jeffrey Birthright
So.
::Jeffrey Birthright
So, so let me go back real quick.
::Jeffrey Birthright
So pretty much that war was about the haves versus the have nots.
::Dr. Blunt
And invited you to serve. Service didn't have nothing, but they, being white, started giving you a privilege and you start by the Native Americans. They started put a nomenclature of savages on them, the blacks subhuman, you know. So that's how they started separating. And you were like, wow, that's how the whole term race started. Back, back then in those days.
::Dr. Blunt
So you would ask me what kind of impact did have? How did that happen? That took you to a point where race became prevalent. You never call anybody black or white or whatnot, you call them. We use English, he's German, he's Irish, those type of things. Now, he said, we got to figure out.
::Dr. Blunt
A way connected to
::Pat McCalla
their their culture,
::Jeffrey Birthright
Yeah. The
::Dr. Blunt
in his skills. Right. And white folks said, we're going to make it color conscious with white being at the top, just a decision, you know.
::Dr. Blunt
Okay.
::Dr. Blunt
But
::Pat McCalla
then how that ideas have consequences, how that played off. Then when you, when you look down, how that plays out for the next 150,
::Dr. Blunt
even now.
::Dr. Blunt
Even now,
::Dr. Blunt
you know.
::Jeffrey Birthright
day. So.
::Dr. Blunt
fun.
::Dr. Blunt
My making sense. I know I'm all over the place.
::Pat McCalla
you are. You are.
::Pat McCalla
I wish we could come up with a different term than racism. I hate that term. Here's why I hate that term. And again, this is coming from a faith based perspective, someone who believes the Bible. The Bible teaches that the humans were created, the image of God were the pinnacle of God's creation.
::Pat McCalla
Racism doesn't make sense because there's one race, there's the human race. I think that word even incorporates racism. Racism incorporates
::Dr. Blunt
race.
::Dr. Blunt
Just one. There's one.
::Pat McCalla
human race now within that human race. The beauty of of God is he created different ethnicities and there's different cultures and there's different languages and there's different culture colors. And and then the beauty and all of that is But when we start throwing around the term racism, which I don't know of another word, I so maybe you guys can help me come up with a new one.
::Pat McCalla
I wish we.
::Pat McCalla
Could change that word because it seems to only influence our thinking
::Pat McCalla
like you're a race and I'm a race. No, we're not.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Well, it's a race. I think one of the things that come from the the various
::Jeffrey Birthright
races is the the the the division. And because you have racism, because you have different races, you can have division. Once, you know, we talking about the church because we have different denominations, we can also have divisions. So so I think that I don't know if everybody could handle everybody working together.
::Jeffrey Birthright
I don't know if everybody can handle that. But if we did, I tell you what, we'll be a lot better off as a people. Yeah. As opposed to you take what's yours. I take it with the minds and the individuality of it. But I think that if we if we work together as people, assume means is the human race, I think whatever his best interest is, whatever your best interests and I could benefit both of you, I'll do it as opposed to
::Dr. Blunt
him because
::Jeffrey Birthright
he's black.
::Jeffrey Birthright
I help him because he's white.
::Jeffrey Birthright
And that's
::Pat McCalla
that's. man, That's a great point.
::Pat McCalla
Murph.
::Dr. Blunt
That's a great question.
::Pat McCalla
if we start the starting point is so important or terminal, it can, if you start with Native Americans mean savages, If that's your starting point, that's not going to go in a good direction. If we start with there's different races that's not going to go in a different direction and which one's more advanced? Which one's in gold?
::Pat McCalla
No, no, no. If we start with there's one human race, and within that there's these cultures that actually now we can go, okay, we're this, we're from the same human race. We're both humans, but you're going to have a different lens you look through because of where you grew up, the time you grew
::Dr. Blunt
up, the family.
::Dr. Blunt
Exactly
::Pat McCalla
as in me.
::Pat McCalla
And now we can have dialog about that. Maybe you can help me understand yours better and I can help you understand my perspective better. But we're starting from the point that we're we're both humans.
::Dr. Blunt
That's right. Right term.
::Pat McCalla
I wish we could just change that term.
::Pat McCalla
And
::Jeffrey Birthright
so to try to change it.
::Jeffrey Birthright
So if you could change it, what would you change it to?
::Jeffrey Birthright
Man, that I'm doing
::Dr. Blunt
the interview?
::Dr. Blunt
I don't know. I don't know.
::Pat McCalla
That's a great question.
::Pat McCalla
I've thrown this.
::Pat McCalla
Around for years. When I talk to people and we none of us can ever come up with a good
::Jeffrey Birthright
So for those in the comments, when you get a chance, what should we change the word race to? If you have a if you ever put it in the comments and we'll check it out.
::Jeffrey Birthright
I like it.
::Jeffrey Birthright
I like
::Dr. Blunt
I know. I know. But let me just taking it back, you started again and said, you know the Bible, too, when I said I mean, we created equal one race and out of the school that I think that race is African because it was started in Africa. And then there's folks division right there. I do believe that maybe Dr. Blunt can't talk anymore.
::Dr. Blunt
And I'm like, you can be racist. We can still talk. But some folks are like, hey, I want to talk about it. I want to talk about it just because I don't agree with you, then, you know, we're not going to have any conversation. This whole thing I'm here with you guys about understanding tolerance. Logic will leave you today is the minute that Dr. Blunt was out his mind, but at least we said we had a good conversation, had some laughs and moved on.
::Dr. Blunt
And somebody else may say, let me let me look that up. Let me check out what he was talking about. That's what it's all about.
::Jeffrey Birthright
And I think it comes back to the emotion of it because because of their hatred or however they feel about blacks or Africans, they want to have no affiliation. This was never a part of me. I was never a part of that of that egregious group of people called Africans or whatever the case is. So now when you're telling them that they are that it the emotional side kicks in.
::Jeffrey Birthright
And I always tell my friends and everything, you cannot be emotional and logical. They don't go hand in hand.
::Dr. Blunt
You can't. And like I say, based on how we were brought up,
::Dr. Blunt
we were made an image likeness of God. We, you know, God was black. So I attribute and I'm like, how do you know?
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah, you know, well, look upon the look, because I saw the picture
::Pat McCalla
Of Jesus in my little picture Bible,
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah.
::Dr. Blunt
I think thinking like Kris Kristofferson.
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah.
::Jeffrey Birthright
exactly. Exactly.
::Dr. Blunt
The.
::Dr. Blunt
Way they represented
::Jeffrey Birthright
And I know we talked about whitewash and history are sanitized in history.
::Jeffrey Birthright
that's the ideal thing. I mean, I know everybody who had the picture of Jesus Christ Will Blond hair, blue eyes.
::Dr. Blunt
Yep, we all had that.
::Pat McCalla
You just didn't ask
::Dr. Blunt
Yes, sir, careful.
::Pat McCalla
blunt.
::Pat McCalla
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
::Dr. Blunt
yeah.
::Dr. Blunt
Very good. My dad, he said, Jesus Christ, could say it, Dad. Lawrence My brother would say, What's that for? Humphrey? So you had to be very careful what you said. Eating religious around our house. Everybody had their little cross in the kitchen. But. But though this is a good man, you allow me to kind of shipments in the hope of being cleared of not being around, because usually when I'm talking to myself all the time.
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah.
::Dr. Blunt
very
::Pat McCalla
So let me ask one quick one more question then. I want to redirect our our conversation a little bit, but I brought that up before. Whoever controls the narrative has the power
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah.
::Dr. Blunt
event. Correct.
::Jeffrey Birthright
you talking about this is not the gospels, but go ahead.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Yes, go ahead.
::Dr. Blunt
No, no. I'll just go to, you know, current events that January 6th, folks are just exercising their ability to meet, you know, with the right folks are the same thing.
::Dr. Blunt
Over and over and over and over.
::Dr. Blunt
What like a glimpse if folks drew their.
::Dr. Blunt
Own conclusions.
::Dr. Blunt
From those things based on their lived experiences? Yes. You know, based on their lived experiences, carried a gun to the Capitol, to some folks might not be a problem, you know, whereas, you know, somebody else, like I have friends that don't believe racism exists. I'm good with that because they experience that in Iowa. They spews that in Nebraska.
::Dr. Blunt
Karl, I knew a couple of black folks and everything is really cool. And you guys are always asked if it is and always crying. I always complain about stuff. I'm like, because that's what they lived experience. You know, I got friends living in the major cities.
::Pat McCalla
You know what? I like that you say no, Dr. Blunt, is that you're saying I have friends.
::Dr. Blunt
yeah. They have a different
::Pat McCalla
view and one that you would think that you would say is wrong. It's a wrong view, because what I would do, I would look at them go.
::Pat McCalla
How do you say that racism.
::Pat McCalla
Doesn't exist or hasn't existed or doesn't still exist, but you still call them friends. And again, I think that's what's so important is that we can we can have dialog with people that think differently. You brought up January six and I promise you that we have some listeners that are right away. They immediately, as soon as you said, January
::Jeffrey Birthright
six, they have an
::Dr. Blunt
Correct.
::Dr. Blunt
Based on
::Dr. Blunt
Exactly. And
::Dr. Blunt
I cannot dispute anybody's opinion, but I can listen to them and I can say I don't agree. And that's okay. That's fine. Just move on. So why don't you agree? Let's start going into the logic of it. But normally when you get halfway and
::Dr. Blunt
folks get frustrated because you don't agree with them and they quit talking
::Pat McCalla
goes back to what Bert said, where logic and emotion, they seldom can go
::Dr. Blunt
Together and.
::Dr. Blunt
You
::Dr. Blunt
your spouse
::Jeffrey Birthright
Bad? You really angry, right?
::Dr. Blunt
Not talking bad. No, not at all.
::Dr. Blunt
And
::Jeffrey Birthright
so when we talk about like even like January six is so much of history, so much of storytelling, so much of all of this comes from your perspective. So if you are raised, particularly all in the culture that you come from, supports whatever you want it to, whatever you see it as, that's what you're going to go on because that's what you know.
::Jeffrey Birthright
So unfortunately, we all don't know the same things and we're going to have different views. We're going to have different perspectives. So I, I should allow you to speak freely on how you view January six. And if you want to hear what I got to say about it, you know what I mean? But it's not saying you're right and I'm wrong.
::Jeffrey Birthright
And like Dr. Blunt saying this, help me to understand your perspective. I mean, I understand. But the thing is, your perspective is a it's a the process of getting your perspective is what's
::Dr. Blunt
important. Yeah,
::Jeffrey Birthright
so is it's all this stuff. When you were seven, you saw when you were 12, when you were 16, when you were eight, and all these things, I don't care how old you are, they develop your perspective and your culture and your and your thought process of how you things January six should go or how it went in your eyes.
::Jeffrey Birthright
It doesn't mean you're right. It doesn't mean you're wrong. That's just your perspective.
::Pat McCalla
example that's kind of a silly example, but I grew up in rural Montana, so everybody looked a lot like me. In fact, the only people that didn't look like me played for the University of
::Dr. Blunt
Montana.
::Dr. Blunt
basketball.
::Dr. Blunt
You like bam.
::Dr. Blunt
For teams, right? Yeah. There was one black guy there.
::Dr. Blunt
got to see
::Dr. Blunt
He was.
::Dr. Blunt
Terrible. But. But
::Dr. Blunt
Yes.
::Dr. Blunt
But your logic makes sense. That's all I saw. Okay, I get it. That's all I saw at that time. So I could understand that.
::Dr. Blunt
My
::Jeffrey Birthright
::Jeffrey Birthright
mentor of mine, Dan McNair. He would always say there's the truth. And the truth is, you know, it. It's not the same. The truth and the truth as you know it. So all you know, the truth, as you know, it was all blacks were athletes. Once again, there's nothing wrong with that. But help me understand why you got to that, why you came and you did.
::Jeffrey Birthright
You told me that everybody who you saw was on the
::Dr. Blunt
Football.
::Dr. Blunt
Team or the basketball
::Jeffrey Birthright
team. So now I understand once again, this dialog that we have,
::Jeffrey Birthright
we go into it with these emotions and I don't want to hear nothing. I don't want to see what I see is right and I don't want to listen to what you have to say and that's where we we lose each other whenever we talk about history, because it doesn't match up to what I know, what I learned when I was 12 and I learned when I was seven, when I learned when I was 18, all this stuff.
::Jeffrey Birthright
So now you're telling me I have to rewire my brain to accept that that there was an African Holocaust I got to go back to to talk about, it was just Lewis and Clark. There was a
::Dr. Blunt
third guy, New York, York.
::Dr. Blunt
Story that's the key to this whole conversation right now. Do your research. Do your research and be able to change, have tolerance, you know, have tolerance. I don't agree, but I see why you say what you say. But I still don't agree. Yeah.
::Jeffrey Birthright
No, no. I also believe that the more educated you are, you can have these conversations because it's less emotions. But if to the uneducated which I and that could be the wrong term that I'm using, if I am, I apologize. But to the uneducated, they come to these conversations with emotions and with it has to be this way.
::Jeffrey Birthright
The more educated you are, the me, you're okay. I can understand where you're coming from. It's more so more level of understanding.
::Pat McCalla
I wonder if a I wonder if a better way to phrase that would be someone with wisdom.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Wisdom.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Wisdom
::Jeffrey Birthright
Right.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Educated.
::Jeffrey Birthright
You know, my grandma would always say knowledge speaks and wisdom listens.
::Dr. Blunt
Well, my father said it like that, but differently. He was a very colorful build.
::Dr. Blunt
His language.
::Dr. Blunt
He said, with some folks you know, certain people talk with, they have something to say, other folks talk. But he didn't want to say something, but he used a couple of expletives between. Right. And so you get to a point where I'm just talking, but I'm talking would have something something to say. But.
::Dr. Blunt
you.
::Dr. Blunt
Know, you just get understanding, understand the situation and communicate it clearly. You know, I can sit down with folks and don't agree with him at all, like the guy with the white history. But hey, man, okay, we're good. I can work with that kind of a surprise. I think. You know, I've been racially oppressed because I'm white. Okay, well, let's flip the script.
::Dr. Blunt
Let's take some of your relatives and stuff and set them on fire and see how you feel. You feel better or worse? You know, at least I was listening to him, you know, And he, you know, folks can come to me and kind of, you know, I'm going to be a a, I guess, objective type person. You know, Birth was talking about the N-word you know, when I talk to my students, they understand this.
::Dr. Blunt
It means something to me. So I appreciate it if you would use it around, but. okay. Mr. Black We got we got you. Got you. So that's a victory They can still use it, but this is what it needs.
::Dr. Blunt
To be
::Pat McCalla
their perspective and they actually learned something from. You on that? On what we're talking about. They learned how to listen.
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
::Pat McCalla
Yeah. Really quick before we wrap things up,
::Pat McCalla
you guys both care deeply about young people. You're both involved in mentoring.
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah. So?
::Dr. Blunt
Well, again, that's our future. I talked about me growing up in the sixties. We had the same pressures. Seemed like the world was coming apart. Nothing was going right. You know, we got together, we developed our own music, clothes, style.
::Dr. Blunt
Our own.
::Dr. Blunt
Scenarios. But we got together, we understood the situation and we voted no matter, you know, who we voted for. Same with the generation now, with these cell phones, These kids have the opportunity to get good information, but we got to teach them how to go deeper, that we're.
::Dr. Blunt
Going to lose.
::Dr. Blunt
Them. We're going to lose them in ten, 15, 20 years from now. You know, tell you what they're going to believe a guy in the better universe, there's going to be folks living in reality. That's not really reality. We got to let them know how to make their choices. This is not reality. You can play around here for a while, but this is reality.
::Dr. Blunt
You got to come out of that and be real. I said, I think we're going to lose. We're going to lose our kids if we don't let them know they have an opportunity at the power to do their own research and make their own decisions, make.
::Dr. Blunt
Their
::Pat McCalla
own decision, make their own choices. Doctor Blunt, Brilliant. How you connect to that? Back to our theme of the power and complexity of human choice.
::Dr. Blunt
Know.
::Dr. Blunt
That's by accident, but I would take credit for it.
::Dr. Blunt
Yeah.
::Jeffrey Birthright
So
::Jeffrey Birthright
if we're going to go like on a biblical, I kind of think that this world is kind of fall into shambles because men are not taking their rightful roles in society. So I think that if you don't know the role, it's hard to play a role that you've never seen play. So I think that as men, as Dr. Blunt, I, I listen to Dr. Blunt.
::Jeffrey Birthright
He tells me advice. It might not always be the best advice, but he
::Dr. Blunt
gives me, I guess, some bad advice, that's for sure.
::Pat McCalla
ship.
::Pat McCalla
Yeah. And
::Dr. Blunt
show men at the
::Dr. Blunt
That's good. Get close this. We have one thing. When I was doing my doctorate, one of professors. So I'm glad you're home. I do your committee chairman, because, you know, we got a lot in common. He said I was born in poverty, broke a bit. I got a.
::Dr. Blunt
Vertical.
::Dr. Blunt
My brother was was a drug addict. My father wasn't around. We haven't covered. It made me black. I said to my.
::Dr. Blunt
Mother, father was I had.
::Dr. Blunt
Two family at home with the Catholic school. You know, and he was, I'm so sorry.
::Dr. Blunt
He hasn't yet. He is.
::Dr. Blunt
So do we connected because he was from poverty? I saw.
::Dr. Blunt
Upper middle class.
::Dr. Blunt
As I've never been inside a.
::Dr. Blunt
Mobile home. Yeah.
::Dr. Blunt
But that goes to say about this baby. I mean, I know some people that had it, probably men, but. But just understanding, you know him and I could have fell out but I we spoke and we talked about it and that's the whole key to this whole thing. I could have been insulted. I could have.
::Dr. Blunt
Angry.
::Dr. Blunt
You know, he could have been insulted. But I saw, you know, Dr. Simmons, I get you. But we're from a different background.
::Pat McCalla
Well, Doctor Blunt and Jeffrey, thank you so much for the time today. Jeff, good luck with your your doctor doctorate.
::Jeffrey Birthright
What are
::Jeffrey Birthright
eat?
::Jeffrey Birthright
What am.
::Jeffrey Birthright
I doing? Yeah, What are you working at?
::Jeffrey Birthright
The the topic is motivational factors that influence African-American males to pursue higher education.
::Jeffrey Birthright
man,
::Pat McCalla
that's awesome.
::Pat McCalla
All right. So now we're to one of our favorite parts of the podcast, Two Truths and a Lie. So our audience has heard you for about an hour. I've been listening to for about an hour. So we're going to see if you can stump me and the audience. Three statements.
::Pat McCalla
two will be truths. One will be a lie. And I try to guess the lie.
::Dr. Blunt
Okay, let me see.
::Dr. Blunt
I was on my college debate team. I didn't get married till I was 40.
::Dr. Blunt
And.
::Dr. Blunt
I could speak Latin.
::Pat McCalla
I got to go with college debate team is true because you had you had to have been on a debate team.
::Dr. Blunt
::Dr. Blunt
No, I was with that one. I,
::Dr. Blunt
was right in the last podcast. I was
::Pat McCalla
wrong on both of them.
::Pat McCalla
But
::Pat McCalla
you weren't on a debate team. How did they miss you on the debate.
::Pat McCalla
Team.
::Dr. Blunt
College in the seventies, I was on a different trajectory.
::Dr. Blunt
My brother, I was I was like.
::Dr. Blunt
What was the question again?
::Dr. Blunt
You to know what they asked. All right.
::Pat McCalla
Jeffrey, how about to choose life?
::Jeffrey Birthright
So I played in the NFL. I was a concert pianist and I have a twin sister
::Pat McCalla
man. Those are good ones, too.
::Pat McCalla
I know you played at ASU with our mutual friend Gono.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Any of you and Nate.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Okay, Now you,
::Jeffrey Birthright
Yes. Right.
::Jeffrey Birthright
And
::Pat McCalla
NYU.
::Pat McCalla
concert pianist?
::Pat McCalla
I'm going to say that's the life.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Okay.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Now I play the NFL. It's not true.
::Jeffrey Birthright
No.
::Jeffrey Birthright
I was.
::Jeffrey Birthright
You always were?
::Jeffrey Birthright
Yeah. When I was in New York, I played at Carnegie Hall. Columbia. Yeah.
::Dr. Blunt
See, my perception? I want to believe that you change my whole perception.
::Dr. Blunt
You better go back to our whole podcast. Yeah. Yeah,
::Pat McCalla
I would have.
::Pat McCalla
Guessed that you played in the NFL just because you played college
::Jeffrey Birthright
football. Yeah.
::Jeffrey Birthright
know. Yeah. Grow up playing. You must have.
::Jeffrey Birthright
My mom forced me to
::Dr. Blunt
not
::Jeffrey Birthright
favorite composer was Johann Sebastian
::Dr. Blunt
Bach.
::Jeffrey Birthright
Yeah. Yeah.
::Pat McCalla
thank you so much. This has been such an important conversation, and I hope our audience and myself really takes to heart what we talked about today, to really listen to dialog, to research. And when it comes to history, recognize that we're probably reading something through a perspective or a lens that may not always be correct, and it may change how we see things if we're not careful.
::Pat McCalla
So I appreciate your time today.
::Dr. Blunt
hope you invite us back.
::Dr. Blunt
Thank you. Thank you.
::Dr. Blunt
Sir. Thank you.
::Host
What an enlightening episode that was with our guest, Jeffrey Birthright and Doctor Blunt. If you love this episode, be sure to like, follow, and subscribe so you never miss one of our informative podcast. Until next time, keep questioning, keep listening, and keep seeking wisdom.
