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Parenting With A Purpose
Donna Janel Williams, a Chester native is on a mission to bring back the responsibility, nobility, and beauty back to parenting. Parenting With A Purpose show aims to reach, teach and propel single mom, single dads, married, divorced, adopted, and foster parents all over the world with engaging conversations to help parents raise up successful leaders. Donna Janel believes parents are the bows and children are the arrows and they will land in the direction we aim them.
Parenting With A Purpose
Empowering Parents: Navigating Education and Cultural Resilience in Challenging Times
Discover the power of parents as the primary educators in today's shifting landscape with our insightful guest, Akil Parker. We'll uncover how the evolving societal and governmental climate calls parents to adapt and innovate, stepping up as key players in their children's education and well-being. Akil brings a wealth of knowledge and challenges us to see the current strains on educational resources as opportunities for community-driven growth and empowerment. Together, we explore the necessity for parents to seek alternative resources within their communities, highlighting both the challenges and the opportunities that arise when government support dwindles.
Our conversation takes a critical look at the intersection of education, history, and systemic issues affecting the Black community. Stereotypes and the misallocation of taxpayer dollars are placed under a microscope, questioning the effectiveness of current integration and DEI initiatives. We ask tough questions about whether these efforts truly dismantle systemic power imbalances or if they merely offer superficial solutions. By drawing parallels to historical patterns, we invite listeners to rethink strategies for genuine empowerment and community resilience, emphasizing the importance of cultural grounding and education choices that resonate with Black and minority families.
Empowerment through self-awareness and education forms the backbone of our episode. We discuss the transformative potential of positive narratives, reshaping personal identities and community perspectives. Akil shares rich insights on overcoming math anxiety, urging parents to equip their children with essential skills for the future. Wrapping up, we highlight ways to stay connected with Parents With A Purpose and utilize practical resources for fostering children's success. Our mission is clear: to encourage parents to invest in their communities, drawing inspiration from historically prosperous Black communities and learning from diverse cultural experiences to navigate today's challenges with strength and unity.
Parents are the Bows and Children are the Arrows they will land wherever we aim them eventually!
Welcome back to Parenting with a Purpose. I am your host, donna Janelle. Well, you know, my job here is to bring back the responsibility, nobility and beauty back into parenting. Parents are the bows and our children are arrows, so they will land wherever we aim them, as long as we give them the proper tools to be successful. Right? And with that being said, we know that it takes a village to raise children, but parents need a village too, right? So, here at parenting with a purpose, our job here is to give you the tools and hopefully give you some exposure and some stories and some just different things that's happened to parents in all levels. Right, because, remember, parenting the purpose is not just about you know your biological children. It's about your adopted children, your stepchildren, your nieces and your nephews. You know my story I'm raising two of my nieces, so it's not just who you birth. If you're responsible for the upbringing and raising of a child, you are a parent. Okay, period, I don't care how you slice it, you are a parent. So that's what we're going to be talking about today, with Parents of the Purpose.
Speaker 1:So, you know, lately we've been talking about there's been a lot of different changes right now, especially, particularly in the government, right? And how does that look like in parenting? And I just believe we're at a time where there's really a mandate on parenting, right? We really need to step up our game in parenting, however necessary, however we deem seem to fit whatever appropriate situations, right? I think for a long time the government has been stepping into our parenting and kind of telling us what we should and should not do and how we raise our children. Just point, for example, even about, um, just different ideas about what being taught to our kids in school, or even when we talk about even identity, right, the government has stepped into those areas. So I feel like right now, especially with what's going on in the government right now, that it is a time for parents to really step up, right. Not saying that you know the government. You have the right to tell our kids what and how they should live. We, as parents, we should be able to. We're their first teachers, right? We're their first lovers, we're their first doctors, we're their first lawyers, we're their cheerleaders right? We know our children more than what anybody else know our children, right. So I think right now is a time for us, it's an opportunity for us to really step up and really dictate and lead in this whole parenting thing right now, so that we don't have to wait for somebody to tell us how we should parent. So again we have our.
Speaker 1:I have a guest here, akil. Everybody you guys know Akil, right, he's been here a couple of times. Mr Parker has been here a couple of times couple times now, you know, giving us some insight on several different topics. And relates to parenting. We talked about the education, we talked about math, we talked about parenting as a father. So today, akil just want to tap into the conversation about, like, what we really think parenting is going right now and where it should be going and the things that we should be doing, given that it seems as if the government is almost kind of almost taking our hands off a lot of situations regarding our youth now, when we talk about even just financial support in regards to them and families, and even the educational system is shifting right. So I wanted to bring Akil in to this conversation because you know he's always enlightened us with his deep self, so we want to hear what you got to say. Welcome back, akil.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1:All right, so let's get right into it. Akil, so you know, when you think about the title, that I have the mandate on parenting right, and how does that look like, or how does it how it should begin to look like, like, what does it look like now? Right, parenting right, and how it should look like for the best success for all of us, this society, our children, our community, our country.
Speaker 2:So I think there've been a lot of safety nets for that affect parenting that are going to be removed because a lot of the funding is going to be removed. So it's going to force many of us to start operating differently and start, you know, taking things more seriously and trying to find resources within the community and you know, and a lot of things that we need. We already have access to them, but we just may not recognize them. Like we have access to, like educational opportunities, the different things that we can do as parents to try to enrich and to develop our children educationally and also just in terms of other things, like you know, diet and you know, just just different things. But you know it's going to be I look at it like it's the best of times and it's also the worst of times because it's going. It's like we're in a sink or swim type of situation, so we're going to be forced to make some changes. So it's kind of like when you may know that you needed to make some changes but you may not have been as motivated to make changes because there's not that sense of urgency, but once the resources are actually taken or they're no longer being given out, now you have that actual sense of urgency. So now you have to do something. Now I also recognize that everyone in the community is not prepared to make those changes. So it's going to be rough for a lot of people, and I really should say it's going to be rough for all of us, because even those of us that may be more prepared, we're all going to experience the harm that some of us experience is going to be indirectly, it's going to indirectly affect others. You know, and not just in the immediate future, but in the long-term future, and you know, maybe five years from now, 10 years from now, because these have these situations have long-term effects. You know, not just short-term. They have some short-term effects, but they have the long-term effects which are much more significant and much more substantial. And I think that that's another thing that we have to start doing is start to think more long-term.
Speaker 2:And sometimes we have to do the difficult work of sometimes deciding if we're going to sacrifice present comfort for long-term comfort, which is a difficult thing to do at times, when you think about people that were anti-colonial, you know, and you know governmental leaders, and you know on the continent of Africa and the Caribbean, and you know, they were revolutionary, but they also realized that they wanted freedom for their people right, and for the people to be able to live up to and, you know, experience their full humanity.
Speaker 2:But that might've meant that people would have to starve today. You know, men, women and children have to starve today in order to take a stand and like, stand on business, as they say, and, you know, say no to the colonizers. So those are difficult decisions that have to be made and they're not, they're not easy choices to make. You know, it might seem easy when we, you know, hear about these situations or we read about them in a history book, but those are not easy decisions because we're dealing with actual people, dealing with actual children, and you know, people have needs and I think this is so. I think that's the, that's the complicated critical thinking that needs to take place to figure out how to achieve both, how to be able to provide for your current needs of today while without sacrificing completely your welfare in the future, your well-being in the future, a year from now, five years from now, 10, 20 years from now.
Speaker 1:You know, I was thinking about, as I look at the country right now, the world as a whole, I guess particularly more in the country, because we're really dealing with a lot of effects of what's going on in the government.
Speaker 1:It just kind of remind me of back in the day where, when a government really didn't have a whole lot to do in our parents and or even really in our communities, right, besides dropping stuff off in our communities and affecting our communities in such a negative way, how we as a people came together, like when you think about even you know, the schoolhouses Right, they were, we had schoolhouses and we were determined to get education. Parents was determined for their children to be educated. Um, and it was just like so much um, fight for what's right, and not only just fighting towards the government, but even in the meantime of fighting towards the government but really just making it your own. I even think about one of the other things that came to my mind was like the wick program, like the women's infant and children program was the black panthers did right and now it's a governmental, it's now it's through the government, but it all started with that, like the Black Panthers in the community, like that we didn't have the proper nutrition and and formula and things like that for our kids in the community. So they stepped up and said, okay, this is what's needed. And then, honestly, when you the stats, the most people who are using even the WIC program are Caucasians. It's not even the African-American population.
Speaker 1:So I'm just thinking like there's things that we as a people can do without the government assistance, right, and then also not only do without the government assistance. Do it like a community-based, like if we need better schools, right. We keep blaming. I keep hearing you know the government is not putting funding in our schools. But I'm just thinking also, like back in the day they didn't put funding in the schools, right, and we were educated. We figured out a way to be educated or how to educate our children. So I think right now, with everything that's going on in the government, where certain services are being snatched away from the schools, like the fund is like. So how do we navigate now? Like, do we, do we just say, do we just keep saying, oh, the government needs to do this or the government needs to do that, or do we as a people stand up as a whole to say, nah, like they're going to do their thing. We're going to fight them, but in the meantime we don't want our children to suffer.
Speaker 2:Right. So I think that I think the government should be held accountable to a degree, because the tax dollars that the government has, that's not their money. I think oftentimes, when people have conversations about the government or when people have conversations about so-called handouts, a lot of that is disingenuous, because the government functions off of tax taxation. That's our actual money. No, so we don't often look at it like that. We don't look at it like it's actual, actually taxpayer money, and you know so. You know. The other thing is is that? So we have to, we have to start to look at like what the government is actually doing, but we also have to have, I think, develop low expectations, and I think our expectations are too high and we have to almost assume that they're not going to do or it is not going to do what we would like for it to do. And when we act that way, then we'll be again forced into action and we'll be in a situation, like you brought up the past and I'm thinking about, you know, philadelphia like in the 18th century, like the 1700s, when it was the Free African Society, which these were, like, you know, mutual aid. There were mutual aid societies for black people that freed, that free blacks, you know, would run People like Richard Allen that was, you know, who was the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Mother Bethel, which is still in South Philly in existence to this day, and there's, you know, many schools and other institutions named after Richard Allen all around and throughout Philadelphia and other parts of the country, I'm sure. And so that was what we did, because that's what we had to do to survive. We did because that's what we had to do to survive. And you know, when I think about, in terms of education, like we've always had independent educational spaces and there are a lot of independent educational spaces now. So, when they speak of defunding the Department of Education, which may cause for there being less funding to you know different, you know public schools, you know around the country.
Speaker 2:Well, and again, this is not an easy task, but it's something that has been done and this is why studying history is so important. People often say well, you know what's the point of doing that, how's it going to help me? Why is reading this book going to help me? Well, reading the book is going to help you because when the environment or the circumstances that the book describes, when they represent themselves, and you never know when they're going to represent themselves. Well, you could know. We can forecast things because we can start to. This is where mathematics comes into play, because it helps you to forecast what's going to happen in the future by paying attention to certain trends, doing certain types of analysis, right.
Speaker 2:So when we see, ok, well, this was the situation in 1940 and black people started independent schools and this was the situation in 1960. Like, you mentioned the Black Panther Party, like how they had their free breakfast program, right, which was essentially an educational program where they would get cultural education, political education. They get some good food first thing in the morning before going to the state sanctioned schools, right, so these are things that we did. These were things that were happening all over the country, like independent education, right. So we have to learn about these stories.
Speaker 2:You know, and there are a lot of books. You know, even in the South, you know, there are a lot of, you know, black people even on plantations, like you know, frederick Douglass talks about in his third autobiography how he had, like the reading group. You know, he was teaching, teaching brothers how to read, using the Bible. You know, but you know, we've always educated ourselves. We've always been a very like educated people. We've always taken pride in education and we still do, even though there's a lot of negative propaganda to the contrary that makes it seem as though we're, overall, not as concerned about education. We are concerned about education but it just doesn't get the proper amount and the proportionate I would say proportionate amount of recognition, the proportionate amount of publicity that it should. So a person with the untrained eye will look at it and say look see, black people don't even care about education. So what are y'all complaining about? For that means you have an untrained eye. You don't really know what's really happening in the community, what's really happening in the streets. You know, even.
Speaker 2:You know to the point where the news media might show. You know a fight at a school and you know, you think about well, it might've been five people involved in that fight, but the school has 1,500 people in it and if you do the math on that, that's like what percentage is that? That's less than let me see, five people out of 1,500. Let's see, 10% would be 150. 1% would be 15. So five people, that's a third of 1% of the population involved in that fight. But the way the news media will promote it to get their clicks and views, and everything they make it seem like see, look, that's all they do in school is fight. All these black kids just be fighting in school. It's just not true. And even if it was like a you know I don't want to get too much off topic, but this is still related Even if it was a free fall, let's say it was a hundred people involved.
Speaker 2:Again, when you think about this in terms of the laws, the rules of mathematics, the laws of physics, it's always like, okay, it's easy for something to escalate After it started. Usually it's a dispute between two people and then somebody comes to defend somebody, somebody comes to defend somebody, somebody else comes, the extra people. It's kind of like a war. This country declares war on the other country and then they bring their military in. The soldiers don't know these other people that they're killing, that they're shooting at. They don't know them, they're just following their orders.
Speaker 2:So oftentimes people instinctively react, not even out of necessarily hatred sometimes, but often it's out of love. That's something that I learned from studying Che Guevara. That's one of his quotes. He said he was talking about revolutionaries. He said the revolutionary is not motivated by as much by hatred for the enemy as he is by love for his people. So you get, you jump into the fight. You see somebody you care about that's fighting. You jump in the fight not because you hate the person that's fighting them. It's because you love that person that you know and you want to protect them.
Speaker 2:So a lot of these things have to go into our thought process when we look at these situations. But oftentimes they don't, because we don't believe in the humanity of black people. And if we dismiss the humanity of black people, then everything that I just said becomes irrelevant, like the laws of math, the laws of physics become irrelevant because you say well, we're not dealing with human beings anyway. So why would mathematics and physics have anything to do with any of this? Or statistics? Why would they have to do it? Why would they have to do it for any of this? But you know, we have to look past that.
Speaker 1:You said something very significant. I think you know, we do. You know understanding that it is our taxpayer dollars, right, who the government, who govern the government, really that the government's supposed to use to benefit the people? Right, and you know, we know that it's not being done effectively. I'm not saying they're not using our tax money because they're using it for something, right, but is it effective of what they're doing? It's like we're doing the same thing over and over again and like, even now, like when I keep seeing I again, and like even now, like when I keep seeing I'm not a news person, but you can't help what you say and you can't unsee some things right, and you can't unhear some things like the stuff just be out there. You know, even when I, when I hear of, like, defunding education and in a lot of other important societal um funding, right, things that help the community, and and I get how they're looking like I understand that concept of looking at and I get how they're looking like I understand a concept of looking at things and see if we're spending money effectively, right, there's one thing where it says okay, listen, there's a lot of money being going, a lot of money being spent, but is it being expected spent effectively? Like, every person should be evaluating their money and see how it's being used, right, but I think you know, right now most parents are concerned is because it's like everything is being cut at the same time. Plan to make sure that the money that we they do get or they do use is effective, right, it's just like somebody just came and snatched in everything that you knew about life, like your whole feet has been snatched away. Right, the carpet under your feet has been snatched away. You're kind of floating in the air and you don't know where to go.
Speaker 1:So I've been talking to a lot of parents and, you know, just even talking about just education. I was talking to this mom the other day and we were talking about, you know, the books that are being allowed and not allowed in school anymore, like the history books, it's like. It's like they certain part of history they want to erase and then a certain part of history that that doesn't make sense they want to keep right. So we were talking about, for example, amanda Gorman's poem. Right, like her poem. Remember she was? It was at the inauguration. Was it Clinton or Obama?
Speaker 2:I vaguely remember that that name sounds familiar, but I don't remember the poem.
Speaker 1:And I think it was actually maybe Obama's Matter of fact, obama's first inauguration. She had a poem and her poem was amazing. It was in all the libraries, and that's history, right. And her poem was not even allowed to be used at any schools anymore, like most were not all schools, but most schools have been. Well, you know, when they start banning different books and things like that, her poem was even just banned and that's part of history, right. This was at inauguration, and now that this, they can't even share this information.
Speaker 1:So the mom concerned to me. What her concern that she brought to me was what, what, what actually is my? She said I'll put her exact word. She said I feel like my child is being brain whitewashed, brainwashed in the education system now, even though I'm paying for the education like I'm sending, I'm paying my tax money. I moved into a great community so it could be a great school, but yet now the school is not even being diverse. It's not even like diversity is no longer in the school, it's all literally. She feels like everything is just whitewashed and the whole black history, indian history, jewish history, everything is being erased except for the white man's history. But the white man history has been so distorted as if it was a great thing versus everything else.
Speaker 1:And so she said to me she was like my concern is that I'm raising my child to be you know, to be in a world that's diverse.
Speaker 1:But it's almost like the world is shifting from diversity to more isolation and seclusion and I'm teaching my daughter that it seems like she needs. But back in the day you said you know, you need to be twice as better because they're they don't even consider you as a whole person. So you need to be twice as better and I'm raising her to, to figure this out. And it's like even now with D, I just been you know ousted what. What am I raising my child to do? And I said you know what? I think this is interesting conversation because I think I wasn't back in the day with Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and all those other people, but it almost seemed as if it's an error. That's going back to like, what am I supposed to do to my and as far as raising my child? So when she said it to me, when we were talking about it, it really just reminded me of the fight that they had back in the day.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot to be said about that conversation and I'm glad the parent was thinking this way. But I want us to think about again history. There's a quote that Malcolm X used to always, and this is the 100th year anniversary of Malcolm X's birth, by the way. So I want everybody to make sure they know that May 19th 2025. He turns 100 years old. Not in physical, physical sense, because he was assassinated in 1960. In the spiritual sense, we can say. But one of his famous quotes that he learned from the ladyijah muhammad was that, of all of our studies, history is most qualified to reward our research. So the conversation reminds me of like a something that kwame torre said. So if anybody's not familiar with kwame torre, make sure you get familiar. Get familiar with kwame torre.
Speaker 2:Originally his name was he went by stokely carmichael, trinidadian brother, grew up in the bronx, went to howard. He's a human rights activist just for the vast majority of his life, involved in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, also SNCC. Sncc did a lot of work in Mississippi with the people, voting rights, voting registration drives and freedom schools down there, and with a lot of other people, a lot of other college students and whatnot. H Rat Brown was one of them, currently known as Jamil Alamein, who was still alive, but a political prisoner to this day, and one of the things Kwame Ture said in the early 60s was that integration. Well, they had a critique of integration. You know the integration as a political movement, as a political tactic, I guess by the white power structure, and you know they said that integration was a subterfuge for the maintenance of white supremacy. So basically, meaning it was just a it's like a hustle, it's a subterfuge, it's a distraction. They really just want to maintain white supremacy. But they say, okay, we're going to integrate you, because integration was not a two-way street, it wasn't by direction. It's like, okay, you know, you can come to our schools, but we, we not come to y'all schools, so we're going to shut y'all schools down and then some of us, some of y'all, can come to our schools. So what that indicates even if you look at the Brown versus Board of Education case with Chief Justice Earl Warren, what he said is essentially what he was saying in his opinion was that in order for black kids to get a good education, they got to go be with white kids. So, even if you don't come out and say it in so many words. That's the idea, right, and a lot of us have eternalized that without realizing it and never challenging it. You know, you got to be, and a lot of times we were getting better education before the schools were integrated by, like, black teachers and black administrators that were solid, very solid. You know highly educated, serious scholars, you know more scholarly than myself. You know, and a lot of other you know, black teachers of today, of modern times.
Speaker 2:Integration was a subterfuge for the mainstream white supremacy. So one day I'm thinking, and I'm like, when DEI becomes popular as a term diversity, equity and inclusion I'm thinking to myself well, how is diversity any different from, you know, from integration? Again, it's like when you do a mathematical analysis, you just replace. You go back to Kwame Ture's quote from the 1960s, replace the word integration with DEI. Right, dei is a subterfuge for the maintenance of white supremacy, because and it is white supremacy because look at what's happening Like white people, if white people can give it to you, white people can take it away from you. So that means you're in control, right? So it's not about power, right?
Speaker 2:Something else Kwame Ture talked about a lot. Like you know, oftentimes we get caught up in conversations about racism, but we don't address power Right, because, you know, white people could collectively decide one day have a big meeting to say, ok, we're not going to be racist anymore, but if they still have power over us, then you know, we're still in trouble. You know, because that's the issue. It's like you know something else Kwame Ture said you know, in the 60s he said if a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem, but if he has the power to lynch me, that's my problem. You know, because that means he can actually do it. If he don't got the power to do it, then I don't got nothing to worry about you can want to think about. I mean, there are, of course, going to be benefits to the people who have jobs because of it.
Speaker 2:A lot of it, though, again, but we have to look at where it came from and what was the purpose of it. Was it a concession? I believe it was in large part. Interestingly enough, a lot of the people that were complaining about Black kids looting and rioting after George Floyd got murdered, the same Black folks ended up benefiting and getting jobs because of DEI, and so really they should be thanking them Black kids for rioting and looting, for getting them those jobs that helped them secure themselves financially for the last few years, or whatnot. But so these are just things to think about, like when you do real analysis and when you look at, like, the situation.
Speaker 2:And again, there's nothing new about that neither, because even in the 60s the same thing was going on and as a result, to or in an effort to stop black youth from, you know, rioting and you know which they had every right to do because of the conditions you know, you know a lot of, you know they would give. I guess they would start with what is Lyndon Johnson calling poverty programs. They would start poverty programs. It would give young people jobs, you know, because, like, well, if I just give you a job, put a couple of dollars in your pocket, you might not be too worried about the political climate and the fact that your people are being oppressed, you might not be too worried about it because you got a job, you get a couple of dollars, you know, got some money in your pocket.
Speaker 2:And the same thing happened, you know, back then. So every time the youth would rise up or the youth would be, you know, motivated to, you know, be more aggressive and during the civil rights movement or later in you know, when the black power movement, so to speak, I guess, starts I don't know if there's an actual start time for it for that the government would give out more poverty program money. So the same black people that are complaint would be complaining in the sixties about these youth. These youth are doing this and doing that or whatever they're benefiting from, these youth doing that, the same, the exact thing they're complaining about. Because you're getting poverty programs, so you're getting money. You're getting government money. So the same things happened recently, but now the government's taking away the DEI money.
Speaker 2:So it's an actual I think we got to look at it like it's a delicate balance because the government has to be careful. Also, right, the conservatives, the Republicans, they got to be careful also because they're banking on money. You know black people not responding in ways that we've responded in the past, because you know us being given concessions is a result of you know us rising up and saying, becoming more militant. So the goal is not is for us to never become militant. We have to be comfortable, we have to be as comfortable as possible and we have to be, you know, politically impotent and not be aggressive and not buck against the system.
Speaker 2:But if you're too, what is it draconian you could say if the government and the corporations are working together? Because that's what fascism is basically the government is the corporation, the corporation is the government. So you look at, like you got Elon and hanging out with Trump, and Elon's a corporation, he represents a corporation, but he's calling a lot of shots, so the government and corporations become one of the same. So this is like it's like Nazi Germany, you know, and and and Italy back in the day, with Mussolini and them, you know, and Hitler and all them, right. So it's kind of it's a similar situation, right. So but if you get too draconian and the people rise up and then you got to bring back the DEI programs, you know, so it's like it's a, it's not, it's not sweet for them. I say all that to say like it's not sweet for them either, like, but I think they're, they're being very analytical and they're watching.
Speaker 2:And again, like, when I come on, I always talk about mathematics. There's math that's involved in being able to forecast and predict human behavior and knowing, okay, how hard can I push somebody, or how much can I deny people. How many resources, how much money can I extract, take out of somebody's community before they actually snap, before they actually crash out right? There's mathematical formulas we can use to figure that out that are being used right and again. So this is why we need to understand as much math as possible, because the math is the key.
Speaker 2:And speaking of that like, so, like to the parent, like if they take, you know, like one of the things I say kind of jokingly, but maybe it's not a joke like if Trump decided to sign an executive order to say we're not going to teach, they're not going to allow math in public schools, in public schools where black people attend, I'm like, okay, that's a horrible thing, but come to all this math, as long as YouTube is up, you can come learn it for me, you know. So we got to make the best. That's part of making the best of a bad situation. You know and there are other people in the community that the children can learn mathematics from that. Children can learn chemistry from, biology from, physics from, can learn English language arts from, can learn other foreign languages from, and I think that's how we have to start thinking.
Speaker 2:We have to think okay, well, if they take this away, we should push back because, again, our tax dollars are paying for this. So, if they're not giving us these resources and these opportunities, that means you're stealing our money, because then what is our money paying for this? So that means, if they're not giving us these resources and these opportunities, that means you're stealing our money, because then what is our money paying for? Right?
Speaker 1:But at the same time, I believe that we should be more optimistic about finding alternatives but if we sit around and wait for them to do something for us and it's based on our own money, right that we're still going to be missing a mark because we're not doing it for ourselves, we're not figuring this out of how to, why to, where to and when to do something. You know, it's one thing to say, like, for example, like you know, when my kids were going to one particular school district, I was paying tax in that school district and I just didn't like the way that they were using money because they weren't educating my child, they weren't doing the resources right, using the resources. So I was one of those parents to say, okay, this is what the school district has, but they're not offering it and they're not using it effectively. So now I have to take my child, and I too, probably, was brainwashed that my child needs to go to a white institution for a better result. Right, I took my daughter out of the regular public school because they you know they tried to say she was reading at like a first kindergarten level or something under grade. But when she went to the private school, she actually tested, gifted, right. So I knew, I mean, the girl was reading like chapter books and she was three. But when she went to this particular school district where she came out of private preschool that I paid for, right, so she was already above and gifted then I put her in a public school and the way that they were treating her, putting her in a less reading group, I think that they they never even tested, they assumed that she didn't know how to read because she was a black girl, right. So I didn't like that, knew that that was false.
Speaker 1:I took her out of school and sent her to wilmington friend school, sent her to her friend friend's school, which was predominantly white, right. But I knew that at that time I knew like that I felt like between that school and it was another private school I was going to send her to. The reason why I chose the friend's school it was because they were building a whole person versus the other private school who were literally just building intellectual people, like just like smart kids who don't have any character, who didn't didn't have like a holistic life. So I chose this private school. But I was thinking in my head I need to send her to a white school so that she can get the best of her education. Right, send her there and she did get great education.
Speaker 1:But then when I decided to move to another like area, move to Middletown, delaware, right, which is you know it's a, it's diverse and it's not just diverse and I would say you know just black and white, but it's very diverse, it's Asian populations, it's a lot, and the school district was very good. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna take her from paying $22,000 a year to this white private school, bring her in the public school system. Which was scary, I would admit, taking my kid from private school and bring her to the public school because I was like, are they going to be able to meet the standards that she's already had? And they were surprisingly to me and it was crazy. I think it's just because I've seen so much in public schools and I've come from public school, so in my head it's like I need her to be for getting the best education in a private school. But when I brought her over to this public school they were able to meet the standard, actually above, and I was paying my taxpayer money and she was getting exactly what she needs. But then I have other friends who live in the city who pay tax money Right, they pay state and city taxes, right, paying all this money and our kids are getting like less of the education. So it's like it's it's like do you take your?
Speaker 1:A lot of us, a lot of parents, are feeling like do you take your kids, put them in a private institution, right, so that they can get what they need? But then when we take them out of the public institution, it's almost like we're not fighting for them to get what they need, we're just going to snatch them out. You know what I mean? It's like it's almost like a thin line. It's like but do you make your child to sacrifice to keep them in the public school who are not getting all the resources Right? So it's like I know, as a mom, I struggle with that for years to try to figure out OK, okay, I want her to be different, but I also want her to have the education she needs, but she still needs to be around her people too, right. So it's like it was such a struggle and I look at it now that you know I have other kids who are after her, but that was a really struggling.
Speaker 1:A lot of, a lot of black parents, a lot of um, even minorities are feeling the same way as what should we do? Should we invest our kids into these private schools, which are now, you're, mostly white institutions? Because there's not really. You know, you have, like the quaker schools, you have the jewish schools, but like is there? Like? You have the catholic schools, but like is there like a black school? Right, because then it's like if you decide to build a school full of just black people, then you're segregating things again, right? So then they they talk about, is that reverse segregation? So it's so hard to figure out what you're supposed to do with your child as far as like education, and then society and community so I mentioned malcolm x earlier.
Speaker 2:As I said it, this 2025 is a 100-year anniversary of his birth, so another one of his quotes comes to mind. Well, not just a quote, but a kind of an explanation to your point. So people will try to say that reverse segregation is a thing, just like they'll say reverse racism is a thing, but it's actually not a thing. Mathematically we can prove that it can't exist. What you're referring to is actually separatism right being separate, and a lot of people are separate. As human beings, we should have the right to convene and educate our children in spaces that we choose. Chinese people should have that right. Other Asian people should have that right. Different types of Europeans should have that right. The Catholic church has that right to start Catholic schools and allow admission to whoever they want. Black people should have that right too. People of African descent should have that right as well. That's the difference between separatism and segregation. With segregation, the person that's being segregated doesn't have power over what they do. It's kind of like a classroom right. When I'm a classroom teacher, I'm responsible for the classroom, so I make the seating chart so I can segregate the children. I can move the children wherever I want them to go. They don't have any power to say, to decide where they want to sit. But in separatism, if I can say, you know, come in, pick a seat where you want. If some girls say, you know, I don't like that boy or I don't like that girl, I'm not sitting by them. I'm about toism she has the power to move on her own without somebody else imposing that on her. But I think that we should have schools like that, like in Philadelphia there was a school called Ivy Leaf. I know a lot of solid people. When I moved to Philly I met a lot of solid people that matriculated through Ivy Leaf School. It was a black private school and, uh, like they say, you judge it, judge a tree by the fruit that it bears. And, as I said, I've met a lot of people you know from philly that went through that institution and you know, uh, you know productive members of society and progressive thinkers. You know a lot of them and you know. And then there's another one, um, the lotus academy. Lotus is hanging on. I don't think it has the school student population that it once did, but it's still standing, still in existence, you know. So we have them, but a lot of times in some of the schools. This is something that I've heard.
Speaker 2:A complaint that I've heard from members of our community that have sent their children to you know some independent black schools is that you know some in some of them the rigor was not there, and that could be understandable, because oftentimes the schools don't have the financial support, so the schools don't have the financial support. Then you can't afford to recruit and retain the most effective teachers. So it's not just that, it's not that Black people are not qualified, don't have qualified teachers. Among our ranks we do have many qualified Black teachers, but at the same time people have families. They need food, clothing and shelter they have to be able to provide. So maybe the white man or the public school system because we think about it, every public school system is an independent white school system. That's what it is. It's controlled by the white community, so it's an independent white school system. They may pay better, get better benefits. So it's difficult for the independent black school to compete without the financial support and this is something that we're still trying to figure out so that we can have that.
Speaker 2:But I would say that if you do send your child to one of the other private schools. I think the key is just to make sure they're culturally grounded, because oftentimes what ends up happening is, you know, we end up, our children end up in these spaces and end up being, you know, kind of motivated or encouraged to try to assimilate into the culture of the institution, right. But if your child is culturally grounded and meaning like they're getting cultural education from outside that building because I, like, like my daughter, went to a Catholic school from kindergarten through sixth grade, right, and now she goes to a public school and that was a decision that her mother made. So you know, in terms of co-parenting, I choose my battles. So I chose not to fight that battle because I know I'm her primary educator anyway. So she's being culturally grounded by me. So when she goes into that space she's been exposed to a lot of things that I might not otherwise have her exposed to, but she understands it because she's essentially been guarded and defended against it by what I'm educating her about when she's at home with me. So I think that's the key.
Speaker 2:So that way, when you go into those spaces and you get the mathematics education, you get the ELA education, you get the foreign language education, you get the different types of education and a different subject matter. You're just going there to get what you can get and you keep it moving. You're not trying to, you know. And then when you look at like how a lot, of, a lot of ethnic groups, how they operate like I taught at Central High School for a year here in Philadelphia and Central is a very there's like cultural pluralism at Central because there's a lot of different races and ethnicities there. You know, and that's what that's one of the things that Central boasts of. It's one of their positive attributes. You know, one of their selling points right, there's a lot of diversity. You know, that's just, that's just the way it is. And you notice like a lot of the, a lot of the youth there they just come to get their, you know, get their math and keep it moving. They're not trying to assimilate into a European culture or anybody else's culture necessarily. They're trying to get what they can get because they come from a strong community background where culturally they're already grounded. So look, I'm just coming here to just learn this literature, learn this calculus, learn some other foreign languages that nobody speaks in my community. So I'm coming here to learn it come here to learn the social studies you know, get the good grades, get the high gpa, apply for college scholarships, take the standardized tests and then go on about my business. But if we can do that with our children, make sure they're culturally grounded and politically aware, and that's the work that we have to do and that's the work that other groups do too.
Speaker 2:I remember I was speaking to an elder some years ago. I was at a meeting for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. If any of y'all watching, that's the organization founded by Carter G Woodson, who also founded Negro History Week back in 1926. I think it was 1926. I always get that confused between when he started the organization and when he when he started Negro history week. Well anyway, negro history week, of course, later became black history month, which we recognize this month in February. Um, I lost my train of thought. I was talking about Carter G Wilson and he was talking about. I said why did I bring that up? I can't remember why I brought that up.
Speaker 1:But I like what you said because I think when we talk about the mandated planter now, like what is our role and what is it looking like for now, in the future, really educating our kids at home?
Speaker 1:Like really taking that role as being a primary educator right, because everything first happens with us, and I think for so long that we trusted a system to educate our children and it almost kind of made us more lazy, or last two days ago in that sense, right, it's like okay, they're going to school eight hours a day. They should be learning something, right. So me, as a mom, what I'm going to do is make sure my household is straight, which is, you know, making sure that I'm providing for my kids. They're eating, they have clothes and things like that. And now that we see is like, even though we're sending them to institutions where they're supposed to be getting certain things right, they're not like they're being fumbled in some way or the other. But I think if we get back to really what you said earlier is really being a primary educator, we can really see a difference in our, in our, in our society.
Speaker 2:Definitely, definitely. And I recall what I was thinking of. I had to retrace my thoughts Right. So I started talking about that meeting.
Speaker 2:I was at an ASALH meeting in Philly some years back. I was talking to an elder and the elder was talking about how, when she was a young girl, this woman was probably like in her, maybe her 80s she's talking about as a young girl growing up in philadelphia. She lived in a community where there were blacks and jews and she remembered that, like every wednesday, that the jewish kids in the neighborhood they could never come outside because they would have to. Well, after school they couldn't come outside, or either they couldn't come outside or they didn't stay outside that long because they had to go to you know Hebrew school, right? So every Wednesday they would go and be educated about Jewish culture, about Hebrew culture, and it was every Wednesday and it wasn't something that you know. So they wasn't waiting to go to school to learn that If they went to a public school, they wasn't expecting the school to teach that.
Speaker 2:They probably didn't even want the school to teach that. And that's another thing I think of too. Sometimes, if you want something done, right, you got to do it yourself. So it's some things that I think I have an unpopular opinion in terms of this, some things that a lot of people that I respect that fight for to be taught in public schools or charter schools. I actually don't want the schools to teach it because I know they're going to mess it up, they're not going to do an appropriate job, they're not going to do a good job at it, they're not going to train the teachers appropriately, they're not going to tell the story properly, and if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself. So I don't even want them to mess with it.
Speaker 2:And also, like it's an issue of what is it you know, I don't want to share. I don't want to expose too much information to the wrong people anyway, because some things that just like those Jewish kids that the elder was telling me about, that wasn't for everybody. They didn't invite the black kids to that so they could learn about it. They didn't invite nobody else. And that was just for the Jewish kids, right? That was just for them to know. Like this is, this is our information. They coveted that. Like this is for us, this ain't for nobody else. We about to go over here and do this Like y'all y'all, can I come? No, you can't come. No, it's not. Why not? It's not for you. That's why and I think what happens is another issue with the emphasis on inclusion, it puts us into the mindset of always wanting to be included.
Speaker 2:When you're always trying to be included, you can't simultaneously go and create your own space because you see inclusion as the goal. And as long as you see inclusion as the goal, the person who controls the space that you're trying to be included within will always have power over you, because they know you're always trying to get in. So all they have to do is say, well, no, you can't get in, and they'll just make you. And then, if you ever stop and examine that, you'll always just fight harder to get in instead of saying, well, let me just stop fighting and just go create my. I can take the same energy and go create my own, and I think that's what we have to do. So I think, like them, the Republicans or the conservatives are like playing in our face and they're kind of like daring us to get us to go start our own, because they're like behind closed doors. I'm sure they're saying like, and been saying for years. They're not going to go start their own. So what difference do it make if we take this away? They're just going to fight harder to get it back. They're going to fight harder to get back into our space that we control. Mm-hmm, you know, and it was. I mean, both sides. Both sides of it made valid points and I think that, like I said, I think DEI has some value, but I don't think it should be our end, all be all.
Speaker 2:I do also want to recognize that the way the programs are being taken away, the manner in which the programs are being taken away by this administration, is vicious. It's very vicious. It's the way it's being done and also the way it's being marketed. Harm is being caused. I think that, while we try to challenge the administration that's doing this, I think we also have to be spending energy creating space and institution building and building infrastructure that can't be taken away.
Speaker 2:At least we're not without a fight, you know, but yeah, but I think that you know, in terms of education, like you know, I mean, yeah, your child going to a private school that you know is not of its own community can be fine. If you go in there. You're trying to stick and move. Go in there. Look, I'm trying to learn what I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to. I'm going back home because I mean that's what happens.
Speaker 2:I mean people. I mean even on a global scale, geopolitically, like people, like you know, the ruling class of certain countries will send their children to go study. Like you might be, I don't know, from Japan, and they might, you know some wealthy people from Japan, japanese, may send their children to go study in France, but they don't send them for the purpose of we want you to go become French. I mean, this might happen, but the goal is not for you to become assimilated into French culture. Become French, you know. Marry a French woman, marry a French man, and never come back to Japan. No, if they have resources that we need and things that we can learn from, go over there and learn all you can and then bring it back to us so that we can benefit from it. Not go over there and learn you know what you can, and then get caught up and sucked into.
Speaker 2:Now, but I'm french now. I'm not japanese, no more now. Now you know, I'm not even speaking japanese, no more now. I'm speaking french now. Now, I'm just. You know, I'm trying to be trying to party with the french women and then the french men and all that, and I'm I'm just hanging out in paris now. I'm an honorary french person. Nah, you're there for a purpose. So that's what it should be for us. We have to look at it the same way, but we have to culturally ground our children. And that still goes back to what you said parents being primary educators. If you're the primary educator and you don't have educating them properly, you don't have as much to worry about, because they're there for a good time, not a long time I think I think also like parents knowing that they are the primary educated and that they can do this, like you can do this.
Speaker 1:I think that there's some lack of like confidence in it as well, and I think that if we really as as and that's where the community comes in, I feel like that's where the community comes in. It's like helping, helping each other understand like we got this, we can do this and we can be this like community. That's how community is supposed to be like helping one another, reaching a common goal. You know, I even think about you know we talk about the Black Wall Street and other Black communities who their community was thriving, right, and even if we step outside of just the Black community, when I look at any other community, it's like their communities are thriving and it's like can we get together and get our communities to thrive as they did before, even though, even if our communities will be threatened to be shut down, burned up fire, however, you know they decided they want to do it drop a bunch of dope in it, whatever, some fentanyl in it, it like can we still figure out a way how to fight and get our community where it needs to be?
Speaker 1:Because even when you look at any other community, like their communities are just thriving, even if they're being threatened by the government I don't think it may be at the same level as a black community or even a different, like a hispanic community, like mexican american community, because they're being down on too. But even like I think about the Asian community, the Jewish community, like all that money is spent in that community and they're helping one another, they're owning their land in that community. They're not written, but if they do allow you to come in, if they allow you to come in, they're written to you. You're not owning nothing in their community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I think it goes back to the education you know, because education is supposed to instill value. You know in who you are, and I think that's another reason we have to educate our own, because you know, the history that we learn really teaches us. You know who we are and a lot of the history that we learn, we get stories about ourselves and about our ancestry that a lot of people would be ashamed of. When I talk about chattel slavery and I think our children should learn about chattel slavery but the way chattel slavery is taught, it's taught in a way that I might be ashamed of if I was a child.
Speaker 2:My idea for teaching about chattel slavery is I only want to talk about and teach about. Well, at least primarily, not only, but I primarily want to ground a curriculum on slavery and slave rebellions Because I want to talk about when black people fought back. I want to talk about the ongoing war Because the way it's framed, as you know, these big bad, you know superhuman white people they just came to Africa one day and said okay, we're taking all of them right, put us on boats, took us across the Atlantic Ocean, started plantations, these elaborate plantations and whatnot, and beat us, killed us, raped us, and those are the stories that we hear, never hear about. The slave rebellions, never hear about. And there was so many of them and they're well-documented, even beyond just Nat it was the movie made about nat turner and his, his rebellion, but so many more. You know denmark, vc stono rebellion. You got queen nanny in the maroons and her brother cujo down in jamaica. You got the uh, christmas rebellion in jamaica. You got gabriel prosser, richmond, virginia. You got charles day long and down in new orleans. And I was teaching some people, some young people, about that last month because I wanted them to think about that when they watched the Super Bowl, since the Super Bowl was in New Orleans. So when you think of New Orleans, think about black people fighting back against slavery, right Revolting and rebelling, and these rebellions led to the Civil War. So you know.
Speaker 2:And then what happens is it changes your mindset, because then you're not thinking like some great emancipator, some white man, came to free us. You're like nah, we were applying pressure on a consistent and regular basis, so they made it politically expedient to end slavery, they made it more economically feasible to end slavery because we was fighting back constantly. We was always fighting back. We never wasn't fighting back.
Speaker 2:But the way they tell the story it'll make you feel like it does a lot to your self-esteem. It does a lot to your self-image, so you wouldn't want to learn about that. But when you learn the stories about you, know you winning and you know sustaining then you start to feel differently about yourself. You start to feel differently about yourself. Then you start to feel differently about somebody that look like you and you start to feel differently about somebody that look like you. Then you want to spend money with that person, then you want to trust that person. Then you want to have a family with that person. You don't want to.
Speaker 2:What Dr Umar say black queens forever, snow bunnies never. You might not want to go get a snow bunny because you, because you, you, you love, you love. You love the sisters right, because of the way you've been educated right. So you know. And then you may want to want to pool your resources and you may want to spend money in the community and have it recycled. You may want to build schools and create schools, right. You might want to make music that's more uplifting, that doesn't always cost every other word. You talk about shooting black people and killing black people and selling drugs to black people and exploiting women and doing that right, and killing black men. You may not want to make music like that because that might not make sense to you, no more, because that's how you've been educated and you're not worried about the fact that some white man is going to pay me a large amount of money and I can finally get my mom out the hood.
Speaker 2:If I tell these types of stories over a beat, that's really what happens, right? But it all goes back to, you know, the education. You know who's doing the educating, who's telling the stories, what are you know? But as long as we don't control that and we're not taking control of that, things will continue to be the way they are and, like you said, like you were saying, based on these government movements from this administration, things are going to get worse because there's going to be less resources and I'm really curious to see what the streets are going to look like, because when money dries up, people get desperate. You know people get desperate. There's like a trickle down effect. Everybody feels it. We just feel it at different times and in different ways, and there's a trickle down type, domino type effect and no, we're headed for some lean times, but we've been here before. We've been here before.
Speaker 2:There's been Republican leadership. There's been Republican leadership for the majority of my life. I want to say, yeah, I was born in 1980. Reagan was president for eight years, then his vice president, who led the CIA before that and helped to bring crack cocaine into the hoods all across the country, george Bush Sr. He was president for another four years. So that was the first 12 years of my life. I was living under Republican leadership. And then what was it? Clinton? Clinton was in for eight years and then George Bush Jr came in for eight years. So that was 20. And then, you know, and after that, what was it? Obama? Obama came in for eight years and then Trump came for Fordd and biden and back to trump. So so, akil, that's what? 28, 28 years yeah, that's the majority of my life. So we, we survived. We still here. Things are going to be rough, but you know we can. We can survive from.
Speaker 1:It's not the end of the world, you know so, akil, as we start to close this up because we've been on the hour, we know you can go much longer than that. So, as we think about the mandate and parenting right now, and given the climate that we're in, what can you? You know we've been talking a lot about education Can you give us some direction right now, what we can do right now to help prepare for the drop? Right, yeah, right. What can we do as parents?
Speaker 2:Let me think about that for a brief moment, trying to come up with like something concise and something that you could do immediately, right now. So there's something you could begin to do and I'm going to tell you. I'm going to say this and then I'm going to tell you why I'm saying this. If you're a parent that is and I probably said this before on your platform if you're a parent that's intimidated by math, stand up to your fear and go start learning math today. Start today, don't put it off till tomorrow, don't do like we do, but with the gym or with our diet or whatever. Start today, start today, and I'm going to tell you why. There's probably nothing better, no greater gift you can give to your child than math proficiency, and you don't want to wait for the school to do it. And with funds being taken away from government funded institutions such as public schools or charter schools and some private schools get government funding as well quiet as it's kept, but you don't want to leave that up to them and with the funding being taken away, it's going to be less of a likelihood, it's going to be even more difficult, I should say, for your children to gain math proficiency in those institutions. So the best thing you can do for you, one of the best things you can do for your child, is to learn the math that might have bullied you when you were a child and you hate it when you were a child. Stand up to it. Finally, go learn it so that you can help your child understand it when y'all are at home or wherever y'all at, when y'all are driving in the car, whether y'all at the grocery store or whatever store y'all at, because with math skills your child will be able to compete in a world that is uncertain, that has an uncertain future. Because your child is going to be up against a lot and with the changes that are going to be made, like I said, like we said earlier in the program, there are long-term effects. A lot of decisions are going to be made in these next four years in this presidency that will have lasting effects, that will be affecting people for the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years that we may not even really be able to fully see right now in a concrete way. Prepare your child mentally, give them that skill of math proficiency and with that they can leverage that into a lot of opportunities and also that's just job-wise in terms of entrepreneurial pursuits, but also, when they develop their math skills, they'll be able to be better problem solvers and critical thinkers. So that's what I'm saying to do right now, to do today. Start learning math now.
Speaker 2:And if you're not a parent that was not afraid of math and aren't afraid of math, then more power to you. Start helping your child with the math homework, if you're not already, and if you are, go ahead. Go ahead to the content from the subsequent year. So if your child's in third grade, start looking at some fourth grade content, your child's in eighth grade, start looking at some ninth grade content, and you can do online searches for a lot of this content. Or you can go to my YouTube channel. Go to my YouTube channel. Also, if you want to, you know, have a resource for you. If you want to, you know, get some ideas about how you can leverage everyday activity and make math lessons out of that. My book, how to Use All this Math, volume 1,. That's available, you know. You can find that on Amazon, you know. So that's what I say you could do right now Start learning math today. Don't wait till tomorrow. Do it today.
Speaker 1:Thank you, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Thank you, silence. Yeah, yeah, if you go to YouTube, just type in all this math, my page will pop up. You probably see one of my videos pop up. I'm either with me by myself, or maybe me with my daughter. She might be, it might be one of the videos I did with her more recently. And yeah, subscribe.
Speaker 1:You know like a video, drop some comments, share, tell everybody about it and if also you guys, we want to join you, this man, I encourage you to go to all this man so they can follow akil. Also remember to tap into, pan up to Parents With A Purpose. We are on actually there's a website, donnajonellecom with Parents With A Purpose, where you can actually find all the resources of Parents With A Purpose. You can find the YouTube page, you'll find the Facebook page, you'll find Instagram, you'll find all the podcasts for the last season, which is, I think I probably have about 50 episodes of the podcast a different topic that maybe you know, if you're unsure in certain areas or even if you just want to listen, and so, again, it's all about proving our parenthood right, because we want our children to be successful. So, tap into under donajanellecom and make sure you go to YouTube. All this math and there's just hear more from us. We will be coming again every every week, we're going to jump on with a podcast to see how we can help educate our people not even just our people, I feel, like just people in a whole.
Speaker 1:Our goal is to make sure that we know the information, because you need to be educated right, but I also think that it does benefit other people to hear what we talk about so they can better figure out how they can help as well.
Speaker 1:Because, you know, one of the things that I constantly look at and hear stories about are even the even white people or even Jewish people, other other cultures that really help, even in the Civil Rights Act movement, and different things like that.
Speaker 1:So, even though it may seem like everything is separate, but there are still some people that are good-hearted people, right, some real authentic people that do want to push the vision and mission of making sure that we do get the rights that we deserve and that we're educated the way we need to be educated. So there's people who really do so into our community, who listen to our podcasts and read books and stuff like that to better understand us. And I think that's important, because one of the things that I've been reading lately been a lot of been a lot about the holocaust, right, um, just to understand some things that was going on. I think what triggered it kind of was, um, I feel like this, this trump era is almost like a modern day hitler. So I wanted to, I wanted to read and get understanding of, like, the thought of Hitler and what was going on and then really what the people was dealing with, so I could better figure out.
Speaker 1:Maybe you take some parts of that and figure out what's going on now, you know, but I think reading is very important in educating ourselves. So again, again, again, again. Akil, we know you'll be back on again, but I just love. I love you, I love your insight, I love how you just continue to teach us how to be better people.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that, appreciate the opportunity A lot of people have taught me, taught me a lot of things. I just want to pass them on. Yeah, I appreciate y'all sharing your platform with me and you know I'm thinking, thinking highly of my opinions and my thoughts and giving me an opportunity to you know, have these conversations with you, you and your audience.
