2.13.22 Afrofuturism and You

Well, good morning, everybody. Justin here. Welcome to Made for Mondays. I'm so glad you tuned in. As you guys know, on the second or third Monday. Sorry. Of every month or whatever Monday it is. I think it's the third Monday we try to get my wife on here. So that conversation is a little bit different. And so we're going to take a pause from our conversation about necessary endings and have a time to engage with Courtney. So welcome Courtney again. Hey, Courtney. How you doing?

Glad to be back.

Yeah. Welcome back to Made for Mondays and the cruiser with you and for you. So, you guys, you tune into a great conversation. We're going to talk about Afrofuturism. We're in the middle of Black History Month, and we're going to engage a little bit Afrofuturism, black futurism, black dreams, black thoughts. Because remember, you're Made for Mondays. You own your Mondays. Mondays don't own you. So I'm so glad you're here with us. Get ready to change your life today as we engage with your dreams, your futures on Made for Mondays. Welcome back to Made for Mondays. Let's jump into our conversation. Courtney, what are we talking about today?

So at our church, we're doing Black Future Sunday, and I really wanted to talk since it's February and February means all things. Courtney, myself. But all things black and all things love, I think would be a good topic. I was thinking. So it's Black Heritage Month for those that know. And have y' all noticed that, like, we have Black History Month, but every other culture has, like, Heritage Month, like, it's like, a celebration of their culture and ours is, like, looking back. And I do like how all the stores and all the things are, like, celebrating, like, new artists, new designers, new everything, and kind of holding that space on their shelves. But I really want to talk about the future and all that we are as black people because I think history is, like, super limiting. But before we get started, I thought we could play, like, a fun game of black this or that.

Okay. This will be fun.

Okay. So my first one is. Okay, Kool Aid or sweet tea?

Kool aid.

Sweet tea 100.

Easily Kool Aid. You guys, let us know in the comments on Spotify. There's a poll. Put these in the poll. So Kool Aid or sweet tea? At least Kool Aid.

Okay.

This one's like flavors on your Kool Aid.

I'm not a Kool Aid fan, but I did well, kind of. No. I think I make a once in my life.

Oh.

But I'm more Like a sweet tea.

My mom had this orange jug, and I used to press down and come up all that type of stuff. And so we used to do the Kool Aid and, like, make popsicles out of it. Yeah, all of it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's, like, quintessential. Okay, W.E.B. du Bois or George Washington Harbor.

Du Bois. Du Bois is an Afro futurist. So we're gonna have the conversation about futurism. Du Bois. Now, what I found out about Du Bois, did y' all know that, by the way? Okay, I have to tell the story.

Can you tell me about this?

You guys got to know the tea about WB Du Bois and his daughter. So did you know his daughter got married? Her husband goes on the. Goes on the honeymoon with his best man. And if you guys watch this on YouTube, I'll put the pictures up. But there's a picture of the husband, the. The bridesmaids and the husband, and how, like, the bridesmaids got these faces that look like sisters that are like, girl, he ain't no good. And then the boyfriend, the husband and the best man are like this, where the wife is, like, over here. Like, it is like this separation, like Star Trek. Like, it's a separation between the two of them. So then they're about to get divorced. Du Bois sends a letter to his daughter saying that, like, the reason that your husband wants to be with men is because of her lack of sexual prowess, right? And so because of her lack of sexual prowess, then, like, Du Bois daughter doesn't want to be with the husband, doesn't want to be with her. And then eventually the mom flies out to Paris because he was stationed in Paris, flies out to Paris to get her, move her back to America, and Dubois was all for it. So then there's schools named after her ex husband and the boyfriend. Then he went to school with this other really gay lip activist, James Baldwin. And then another guy went to school was Langston Hughes. Like, the Harlem Renaissance was just a whole bunch of insecurity. And so then he eventually writes this really long poem, beautifully written poem about what it means to be queer, what it means to be black, and how difficult it was. And I can only imagine it was in 1920s, what it meant to be queer, to try to find some.

I mean, it's a huge deal today, but especially in, like, the early 1920s, and just, like, how hard it was probably to live in dad truth. But yeah, that's. That's so hard. I feel for Swiss, though, like.

But getting to the original question, like, I'M a big. Well, I'm kind of questioning it now just because that. But the gift of black folk. Souls of black folk. My goal was to rewrite. Well, not to write to do another edition. Adding to souls to black folk through trifle and duplicity. Civil consciousness, dark implicit. And Carver's bootstrap stuff I just never really got with. I just pull yourself up by the bootstraps. That's so white. But I get it, you know, that's so white. Well, he.

But I mean his. So if you didn't know like the, the arguments and the two. Du Bois was. Was more so saying and looking at the future. I think the two differing arguments between those two were like his talent and 10th theory of du Bois. Du Bois saying that you know what, we all may not be successful like as black people. So let's Support the top 10% who can go out there and be like the greatest writers, doctors, lawyers, like the top of our, our black population. And let's support them how we can support them so that they can go out and win it for our race. Whereas Du Bois was mean, Carver was more like no, like we need to be rooted where we are. Like this is where we come. This is where we know. Unfortunately because of slavery, this is what we know. And if we all hunker down, we can all just kind of do this together. So it's just this big debate. I'm sure if you went to HBCU or any type of like historian or black history class, you already know this. But just different thoughts like where do you, where do you land on that?

Well, fortunately for me, I went to a pwi. I went to an all white high school. I didn't learn about any of this until my second masters.

It's crazy, right?

And so like all the people I knew, I knew about Douglas, I knew about King, I knew about Sojourner Truth, I knew about Harriet Tubman about them. But it was church that alluded to the boy. And then it wasn't until I got to Vanderbilt, my second masters, right. That I began to learn about. Well, I knew about Hughes is like one poem I didn't know he had. Like I thought he was just had one poem.

What poem did you think he had?

Wearing a mask that grins and lies and hides. Like all of that.

That's a deep one. That's like his most famous because my.

Dad recorded in sermons. Oh and I knew about the cage bird saying for my angel. I didn't realize my whole life until I was 24. I didn't realize that the boy had multiple poems, that Hughes had multiple poems. So Du Bois had multiple works. Hughes had multiple poems. Like, I didn't know anything about black history, going to a PWI private white institution and growing up in the suburbs. Like, I didn't know. And the only thing I did know was the stuff that, like, my dad would allude to in sermons or like, people would allude to in forensic sermons. So it's amazing what access does. So excuse me. So even learning about George Washington Carver, I didn't learn that until I got to Vanderbilt and then found out about, like, the differences between him and Du Bois. And then even, like, I didn't know even about, like, King, about, like, how he evolved. And, like, what killed him was his thoughts on Vietnam. And the government was pretty much just like, ask for it. Get rid of him. Like, you know, I mean, like, take our hands off of him and his thoughts about Vietnam or what got him killed.

Yeah.

You know, so just learning that not to get. I know we're not talking about that, but it's just amazing access, like, you're mentioning to know about all of that stuff.

Access is huge, and I'm gonna get back to that. This is my last. This or that one. Is spaghetti a side or main dish?

Does. Okay, so does the. What's the sauce? Is it with meat or without meat?

Well, all black spaghetti has meat. All black spaghetti.

Does the. Does the spaghetti have sugar in it?

All black spaghetti has sugar.

I. Spaghetti is a meal. I think it's Italian, but I think it's a meal.

It's a meal by itself. It's on a side.

Good spaghetti done well. Italian food is meant to. Black spaghetti or, like, real spaghetti?

Well, you know, a lot of times it's a North versus south thing. Right. So I think the north, they like Chicago per se, they put it as, like, a side. So you have, like, a catfish dinner. I know you're allergic, but like, a catfish dinner. And then they have, like, spaghetti as a side. But, like, in the south, it's just like, a meal that keeps on giving. You make spaghetti on Monday. You having that all the way through to the end of the week and through the weekend, like, that's a solo. So what do you think is spaghetti? That's the big debate. That's the new. That's the new sugar and grits.

Or not.

Which, by the way, I'm a big proponent of the salt.

So the way the spaghetti was originally made. Right. Understand the Italians, is that. Well, actually, technically, the sauce is separate and the pasta is its own thing. So we're gonna get technical.

We're not, I'm not talking about in Italy. Like we know Italy. This is not even how it's supposed to be done.

Nothing.

I'm talking about specifically black people. Cuz that's what we.

It's just a part. It's a side that runs into your green beans and puts a little piece up. Makes. Makes. I say fried chicken, the crust fall off.

I say when I'm in Chicago it's a side and when I'm anywhere else it can stand alone. I just, I'm sick of. I feel like it's that staple meal that you have growing up that last when you're like, I want to go to McDonald's. Like, no, we got food at home. There's always the food at home. Always love it home.

Listen you guys, as we get into our conversation, we'll take a moment for a break really quickly, talk to you guys a little bit about one of our books to promote it really quick. So take a moment, grab a hold of this. We'll be right back.

Well, hey, made for Mondays listeners.

Justin here.

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Welcome back to Made for Mondays. So let's jump into our talk. We've got a couple minutes. Like what I have for futurism.

Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to. I thought today would just be good to just reflect. I think too as I. You said something powerful. I think it's a quote from somewhere. Is that the way you stop a movement is to memorialize the person?

That's it.

Right. Like you stop the movement by memorializing them. Right. And even thinking about, we just last month celebrated Dr. King and just like all that he has done, right. And it's Just like, it's good to reflect. But I'm like, you know, even if he was still living today, I hope we would have. We do more. Like, we are going beyond. Like, it's not enough to just rest on what he's done. All of the stuff that he. He's done has been amazing. But why? Well, not all, but.

His.

His courage like that, honestly, that's really what it was. It's like his courage, when it wasn't popular, to stand up, to march, to do these things, to have a peaceful approach to things, like, that wasn't cool. Like, his boldness in that was what made him pivotal. But we stopped the movement by moment. Memorializing. I think a lot of, like, black history we do is we memorialize a lot of people so that we don't have to continue to, like, work, right? And when I say work, like, I don't think our job as black people is to, like, struggle and fight and to make other cultures understand, like, why we're so amazing. Like, we know we're amazing within the black community. We know that we're great. But I feel like a lot of us. And a lot of times it's us trying to prove how great we are, and it's like, I'm. I'm sick of that.

I think one of the issues is that we're spending so much time in Black History Month trying to get other cultures to know how great we are, right? We're juxtaposed to Latinx Heritage Month, Asian American Heritage Month. Like, whatever it is, none of them are like, look at what we did. Like, look at Alibaba, right? Like, Asians are not sitting there. Like, look at what we did. And like, you know, Latinx, not sitting here. Like, look at this. Try our food. Do this, right? But it's us, and we're over here, you know, but we did the stoplight, and we did this and we did that. And so we're trying to prove, did you know this? Did you know that? It's Black history factoids and black history like this, and it's like, but yet you have Latinx and Asian Americans. Or when they're doing it, you know, when they have Heritage Month and they're engaging in their heritage, it's all about, this is what we are currently doing. These are people who are doing it now. They're honoring. And I think that's a way. Like, that's why the future, to me, I like, that's why I love Afrofuturism. That what is not just the future, but like, who are we right now? And what are we using with what we have right now to build for the future? And I think that's why this podcast, and for me is so Afrofuturist, because it's just like, how can we conquer every single day without, like, that? Not just the fear, but constantly trying to prove yourself. Right? And I think the subtle way to keep you oppressed is the need to prove. Because then I'm always at someone else's beck and call. Right? And the same thing with immortalizing a leader so that the way you stop civil rights is by giving us Martin Luther King Day. Grateful. But the way it's like, so then, like, for example, there are four states in the entire union that don't have MLK Street. We looked this up when we ran Hawaii. Four states that will have MLK Street. Right, Right. And it's like, so then what happened is we had like, during COVID there's this big fight to get MLK avenues, MLK Streets, big fights for that and steady. No one was getting elected to boards, right? No one's getting elected to, like, leadership positions. We're not investing in some of these companies that are coming out. We weren't investing in TikTok. We were just downloading it. We weren't investing in Facebook or anything when they went public. Not that we couldn't afford certain things, but, like, we could afford. If we can afford. Like, I'm thinking about somebody else cross screen, right? So I forgot. I think the shares of Facebook were like $137 first in public, something like that. So if we can afford $210, like, I'm wearing $210 Jordans on my feet, right. I have six pairs in my house, right? So you double that if I were to buy 20 shares of Facebook or 100 shares of Facebook even, right. Over the course of a year or two years, how many pairs of shoes or clothes or whatever we're purchasing. Investing in Facebook, like, that's a totally different conversation. Investing in TikTok when it goes public, investing in Snapchat. Right? But the issue is we've been just on investing in that. The issue to me is that we are so caught up in, like, memorializing. So, like, more streets. Black Lives Matter Boulevard, what's it gonna do? So we painted Black Lives Matter. It's a drive over. The same way we're getting driven over in politics and we're getting driven over in finances. Like, but yet we're sitting here and it's just like, you know, but we did the street, but we did this. And like, but yet the judges. The Supreme Court is still the same because the Supreme Court's affected by your local elections.

Yeah.

So if we don't vote locally and don't give people local, like, the small local elections are what eventually give these people. Like, for example, the judge and I could talk about this a little bit like the judge in the Darryl Brooks case. She was in a small local Wisconsin, Walker Shaw, election conservative is all, get out.

Yeah.

Daryl Brooks gets convicted. She's on Law and Crime Network. She's on Court TV across the country. And now Judge Darrell is running for Supreme Court in Wisconsin, which sets her up for much larger, like Attorney General sets her up as from court in the country. Like, if anybody. If Paul Ryan or anyone from Wisconsin makes it to the to top level. Now here we're looking. And now the future is changed because of black crime. 1, 2. It's changed because of voting on a small. Like that small local election. Waukesha. Yeah. Is now setting us up to see another Supreme Court justice. And so it's little things like that. But if we're so caught up with MLK Day, MLK Weekend, Black Lives Matter, Boulevard, Harriet Tubman Day, Sojourner Truth Day, dress up like an old dead black person. Right? And it's like, but look how gifted we are. Like, think about the stuff you're doing, stuff I'm doing, but we don't honor that. Yeah. I suggested in my book that black people have been confined to the last two dreams, whether it was Du Bois utopian dream of blackness living in fullness, or King's dream of radical possibility. And we're confined to those two dreams instead of dreaming for, like, for example, today we're recording this on Sunday. So today in our church service, we have a poet. Our kids are dancing. They're taking all the TikTok dances and. And dancing on stage. I believe everything was made to glorify God. So they're dancing on stage.

Right.

But dj, part of worship. Little things like that, like how amazing those little subtle things are to dream. Like what? What? Oh. And instead of me preaching, our young adults are going to lead a conversation to me, that's the future, right? And it's like, if it works, great. If it doesn't, great. But I'm dreaming. My son said something so powerful. Sorry, I mean, keep going. But he said something powerful for me this morning. He said, daddy, I don't remember any of my dreams today. Last night. And I was like, that's okay. Because what I do know is that you may not remember it, but you'll see it. The reason that you're conscious about I don't remember my dreams is because now he enjoys dreaming. And I want us to get to that place as people as well. And for you as a leader in your business, I know a lot of you are listening to this and I know this is different because I talk just purely like leadership. But I want you to consider in your life, on your job, like, I don't want you to not dream. So I want you to dream. Like what makes emails easier. I can give you practical tips, but like for you, what. What dreams of, like a safe work environment do you have? What dreams of a safe home do you have? Right. I think the way we can start doing for our community is as we come, pull it all the way back, begin to dream for ourselves, right? Like not just like, you know, like I am excited about, you know, the world becoming amazed and all this. Like, no, I am like, I have great dreams for the wall. We just bought a house. Great dream for the wall of the garage that I'm gonna have because Courtney has the whole house. I get a wall in the garage. So I have great dreams for the wall of the garage in our new home.

This is the last thing before we go, so I need to put her whole name, but she. I follow. It's called the Nap Ministry and she wrote a book by Tatiana. I forget her last name, but I think along with that, like the dreaming, like, take a nap.

That's it, man.

Take a nap. Rest. She said something so powerful, especially around Dr. Martin Luther King Day. She said, let them do it. That's why he fought, so we can rest. He did not fight and have courage and do all the things so that we can have more work to do on an off day day, have the off day. He fought so we could have a off, so we could have the pto, so we could have the job, so we could have these things just like everybody else to rest, to do that. Cuz they're not fighting on Columbus Day. They're not making sure you understand Columbus Day.

The colonizers are not colonizing. The Native Americans are.

But they're also enjoying their culture within themselves.

I know. I'm saying that's the funny part and.

That'S the beautiful thing. And, and I guess that's my last word. It's like, take a nap. Like, as black people, let's relax, let's chill out, let's do what we want to do. Let's do what we want. Let's have a cookout, let's have the barbecue. Let's do something that we find enjoyable. Everything about our existence does not have to be traumatic, abusive, oppressive. A fight, a march, a movement of this, of that we are moving by ourselves. Who we are and how we see things and how we paint and. And the vision that God has given us and what we have, how we paint this world just a different color is just amazing within itself. And I just don't think that we take sitting here something this morning, like track our progress. I don't think that we have tracked our progress as black people to know, guess what? It's time for nap. It's time to just relax. It's time to rest. It's time to enjoy. It's time to bask. It's time to live the soft life. It's time to. To be. Because that's what this is. Our ancestors wildest dreams.

That's it.

This is not more fighting, not more.

Running, fighting and marching and working. That's great. Thank you, Kurt.

Yeah, thank you. I enjoyed it.

Thank you. Thank you. Here's some things that stood out to me in our conversation today. I think, first of all, I think it's so important for us to acknowledge history, but also acknowledge that we can dream. I'm grateful to Court for the conversation about Du Bois and Carver. I think number two, I think another thing that I learned today to take away from this, hopefully you learned as well, is to know your stories. As I mentioned before about growing up in PWIs in the suburbs, it's important to know your stories and to do your own work on those stories. So for you, if you need to learn about some movies, a few family story, a family history, family narrative, don't let it be until your second masters where you learn about a story that's been living the entire time. Thirdly, I told you guys also Courtney just mentioned too, but I think to lead to that, number one, number three, be okay dreaming. And know there's times that the reason you miss dreaming is because you didn't have them that moment. But be okay dreaming. Dream for work, dream for school, dream for your children, dream for your relationships, dreams for your job. And thirdly, and finally, fourth and finally, I'd say what Courtney just said, take a nap. Some. Maybe the reason you're not dreaming is you're not sleep in order to dream. And sometimes we're too woke and sometimes the best way to get woke is to get some sleep. Thank you for joining us for Made for Mondays Today, Corn to be again with be here again with us next month. The next time she's with us, actually, we would have just celebrated seven years of marriage. Yeah, seven years of marriage. So be there in the month of March. But before we go, let's say our affirmations together and we'll have an amazing day. Come on, repeat after me. Say, I am me. I can be me, and no one will stop me from being me. You're made for Mondays. Mondays own you. You own your Mondays. Have an amazing day. We'll see you here next week for Made for Mondays once again as we continue our journey in necessary endings. Don't forget, next week we have another special guest. We'll be kicking it with Camden a little bit. Have an amazing day. God bless you.