Afrocentric Style: Celebrating Black Culture in Modern Media

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How's it going?

Hello, welcome.

We love an intimate space, we really do.

Welcome to another Mahogany Books front row book event that we are having today.

My name is Brianna.

I am the events coordinator for Mahogany Books and of course, as always, black books do matter.

So I hope you guys are excited for a riveting conversation between Dr.

Gina Page and of course our featured author of the night, Ms.

Shirley Neal.

Come on out, guys.

Thank you, thank you.

I'm going to introduce Dr.

Gina Page and then she is going to introduce our fabulous author.

We're going to get started.

In 2003, Dr.

Gina Page Co founded African Ancestry Incorporated.

In doing so pioneered a new way of tracing African lineages using genetics in a new marketplace for people of African descent looking to more accurately and reliably trace their roots.

Paige has worked with and revealed the roots of the world's leading icons and entities including Oprah Winfrey, John Legend, Chadwick Boseman, Spike Lee, Condoleezza Rice and the King family.

Paige has served as speaker, presenter and or partner to McDonald's, Capital One, the Walt Disney Company, Booz Allen Hamilton, Wells Fargo, the Wall Street Health Forum, New York Times travel Show, United Healthcare and dozens of community organizations and faith based entities.

She's often a go to resource for African diaspora communities including the embassies of Cameroon and Ghana.

The year of return 2019 event from Jamestown to Jamestown with the NAACP, Back to Africa festival in Cape coast and various African tourism authorities and leaders.

Can we get a round of applause for Dr.

Gina Page?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Can you guys hear me?

Yeah, we did.

Okay.

Well, good evening.

I used to be a loud little girl.

So thank you all for being here tonight.

It is really a pleasure for me because in the spirit of full disclosure, Shirley and I are friends and our friendship began because of African ancestry.

So she has been a constant supporter and champion of our work for a very long time.

So it was the least that I could do to drive from northeast to Oxon Hill to celebrate her new book.

Shirley is a journalist.

She's an author.

She has produced television, she produces film, and she is a pop culture enthusiast.

And that's probably the biggest thing that you'll see throughout this book.

Her passion for pop culture is here in these pages.

Her work has focused not just on pop culture, but also Africa and black identity.

And all of those things are really combined, right?

Pop culture, Africa and black folks.

She's a graduate of Boston University.

I thought you went to Cleveland State.

I did for four years.

I graduated from Boston.

Okay, all right.

She's a graduate of Boston.

I was like, I found a typo in her new book.

She's a graduate of Boston University with a bachelor's in liberal studies, and she earned her professional certification as a literary ghostwriter from California State University, Long beach.

And.

Well, let me do my job.

She has served as a contributing writer and editor for Ebony magazine.

You all remember EBONY magazine and has produced and written more than 100 hours of TV programming and documentaries.

And I have been the beneficiary of some of those productions.

The issue of Forbes Africa, featuring her cover story highlighting Oprah Winfrey's work in South Africa, is among the franchise's most in demand.

She has received an Emmy for the Fox TV special US Olympic Fest and is a two time NAACP Image Awards.

That's right.

She just.

That's right.

That's right.

That's not a typo.

That's hot off.

That's breaking news.

Hot off the presses.

A three time NAACP Image Awards nominee for they Dreamed of Being first, hosted by Cicely Tyson Prince behind the Symbol and Afrocentric style.

A celebration of blackness, identity, blackness and identity in pop culture.

She's got a lot of other accolades.

You all came to hear her and not her accolades.

So we're going to get started.

Welcome, Shirley.

Thank you.

I don't know if my mic is working, but thank you.

Welcome to the DMV and to the district.

Let's jump right in.

So I watched you get ready.

I've watched you develop in your literary writing career.

And I thought you were.

I knew you as a ghostwriter.

And then one day you were like, I'm working on this coffee table book.

And we were telling me all about it.

Why was it important to you to tell the stories of pop culture?

To talk about black history, using black pop culture to talk about black history and identity?

It was Important to me because I love pop culture, and I love black history, and I love black culture, and black culture is American culture.

And I wanted to be able to take what I enjoy the most and kind of marry them together.

And this book started out as something totally different.

It started out really about my travels in Africa.

And I had a TV series on tv, one called Living with Soul, and it was about infusing your.

Your home design with African culture.

So this first book was to be exactly that.

It was looking at bringing African culture into your home.

And I was going to interweave stories about my travel.

As we started, my agent and I started to develop it, it became this.

Because they.

My agent learned that I had this passion for what was on tv, what was in books, what was on movies, and.

And I was often saying, did you know the history behind that?

Do you know the story behind that?

So it kind of evolved into this, and I couldn't be happier with it.

When we pitched it, it was much larger than just fashion, hair, and beauty.

And we had to kind of narrow it down, but it became this.

Well, how did you narrow it down?

Because when you talk about pop culture, that's extremely expansive.

You were able to narrow it down to fashion and creative expression, like beauty and hair.

But how did you get to those?

Those were the areas I was most interested in.

And an early publisher said, you can't put everything in there.

I wanted to cover Afrofuturism.

I wanted to cover ocean.

I wanted to cover black art.

And so one of the publishers said, just narrow it down to the things that you're most interested in or the things that you think would be more appealing.

What is it that people really talk about the most?

And it's those three.

It's hair, it's beauty, and it's what we wear.

It's fashion.

And those were the things I was interested in.

So it became this over time.

How many people watch the super bowl.

Halftime show or at least watch the Instagram clips afterwards to figure it out?

Right.

I have to say, I watched it.

In real time, and I did not get probably 10% of the references.

But, Shirley, your book is similar to that in you have this platform of the book.

You have these stories of black cultural moments, black identity moments, but there's meanings behind those that we know the moment, but we don't necessarily know the backstory.

So.

Yeah.

How'd you choose that approach?

Well, we often miss what we see on social media.

There are images that are trending.

We look at them.

We don't Know what they mean.

We don't appreciate what they mean.

There's historical images, same thing, that are very iconic.

And like you said with Kendrick Lamar, I wanted people to appreciate.

I don't really want them to question what's wrong with this.

I want them to appreciate that there's a rich history behind some of these images that they've seen over and over again.

And there's.

I get good feedback because a lot of people will end up saying, I didn't know that, or, I knew that, but I forgot it, or who knew that something like this had a history like that?

They don't know the backstories.

And that's one of the things that if I'm not telling you the history, I'm trying to give you a little something that you didn't know that you need to know.

And what I.

What I found is that learning the backstory makes it so much more interesting.

So there.

And the.

The way she writes.

So I was just going.

I was like, oh, my God, what's going to happen next?

And then I remembered she's a television film producer, so.

And screenwriter and all of that.

So it makes sense.

But that's what really makes this engaging.

So on page 12, when you guys get to page 12, you really demonstrate how you have mastered the craft.

So she talks about the Black Panther party and, you know, the Afros and the berets and the leather jackets and the camo jackets.

And the next thing you know, she's talking about Congressman Bobby Rush standing on the floor of the House with a hoodie on.

And even before then, I start with Beyonce.

That's true.

Who is dressed very much in homage to the Black Panthers.

But a lot of people saw her dressed the way Michael Jackson was dressed years earlier in a halftime show.

So I kind of segue, you know, you think what you see isn't exactly what the story is going to be.

So I always encourage people, you got to read.

Don't just look at the pictures.

You have to read to get the story.

So it kind of started with her and her homage to the Black Panthers.

Then you learned about the Black Panthers, and then you learned about Rush.

Bobby Rush was a Black Panther and a founder.

Founding member, at least in Chicago.

Chicago.

And then how he used fashion Right.

As a political statement.

On the House floor.

With Trayvon Martin.

With Trayvon Martin, yeah.

So, okay, I'm talking about the stories.

Let's get into the story.

Okay.

We've chosen a few of the stories in the book to share with you all.

Hopefully you will get enlightened as she describes what we're.

What we're talking about.

And you can read about these in the book, but I have a little video that kind of supplements it.

I start off in my introduction with a story that I do speaking engagements, and a lot of people are fascinated by this first story that I have, and it's.

It deals with Franklin, the Franklin character in the Peanuts comic series, if you can remember, in 2024, Black History Month last year, that was a big deal.

Everybody was excited about that, that comic, welcome Home Franklin.

But a lot of us don't know that that backstory is so rich.

It actually started with Charles Schulz.

I write about this in the introduction.

It started with the cartoonist who received a letter from a white school teacher actually in Los Angeles, who, after the assassination of Dr.

Martin Luther King, she felt that if he could integrate his comics with a black character, that might bring people together.

She was.

She was upset at what was happening to our country after his death.

So she started writing letters to him, pleading with him, can you integrate it with the black character?

He resisted at first.

He didn't want to patronize his Negro friends.

And so he had an interesting perspective.

I don't want to do it because.

I don't want to do it wrong.

How many people take that approach?

Sorry.

Well, he did it.

And they went back and forth and back and forth.

And before you know it, he actually, in July of that year, he ended up creating a comic with a black character.

He called him Franklin.

It premiered in 68, and he didn't have much of a presence.

So a lot of people who saw the welcome Home Franklin in February last year thought that that was the first time we saw Franklin.

But actually, it was here, and it didn't do well in the South.

A lot of the critics said, you know, if you're going to do this, don't have them sitting with the black kids.

Don't have them mix.

But Schulz put his foot down, and he said, if I can't.

If you can't run it the way I write it, then we're going to take it off.

So he fought for it to stay on, and eventually he came up with a TV special in 1973, a Thanksgiving TV special.

But what's wrong with this picture?

Franklin's.

What kind of Thanksgiving is this?

So, Right, right.

He made an effort, but he had poor Franklin sitting alone in this.

And this was in 1973.

So after that, not long after that, he ran into this.

This cartoonist, Rob Armstrong and Rob became a mentee to him, to Schultz.

And Schultz was fascinated with Rob, because this part isn't in the book.

This actually is something that I found out even later.

But he was fascinated with Rob and Rob.

He asked Rob if he would mind if he took his name for Franklin.

So that's why it's Franklin Armstrong.

And he liked the personality of Rob.

He liked that.

Rob liked Coltrane.

He liked his mannerism.

So that became this Franklin character.

And so after Schultz died, Rob, Frank.

Rob Armstrong ended up becoming a writer of this episode that we saw.

And he co wrote it with one of Charles's sons.

And Rob decided, I want to put a little something different in this.

So take a look at this little clip.

Charlie Brown, show me a thing or two about friendships.

They're not perfect.

I'm not perfect.

But we can get through the rough spots together as friends.

Hey, Franklin, we saved you a seat over here.

Come join us.

Ain't that what friendship's really all about?

But you can see what's happening.

I'll talk us through it.

They recreated the scene, but what happened is Linus is saying, hey, we got a seat over here for you.

So once Rob got involved, he decided he wanted to right a wrong.

And a lot of people couldn't appreciate this because they didn't know the backstory.

And so that's one of the things that I do throughout the book, I take it, so that you can either know the backstory or you can pull information from these images.

So that's just one example.

I love that.

And, you know, I knew that there.

Was a black character in the Peanuts, I think, but I.

He was in the background and I.

Didn'T see the special.

So thank you, Shirley, for teaching me something.

So in the trailer for your book, we really do know need the sound for this one.

Yeah.

In the trailer for the book, you show this scene of Whoopi Goldberg.

It was it her first one woman show.

It was her first one woman show on Broadway.

Whoopi on Broadway it was called.

Yeah.

And so you guys are going to.

Do you all remember this?

You remember at least this.

You might not.

You look a little young.

Okay, all right, all right, all right.

I'm being ageist over here.

So, yeah, tell us, what does this have to do with black identity?

Okay, we're gonna take a look when it comes back.

Okay, here we go.

Okay, here we go.

So let's take a look at the clip itself.

So this is from her one woman show on Broadway.

This is my long, luxurious Blonde hair.

Ain't it pretty?

I could put it in a ponytail.

Wanna see?

No.

You do.

Yeah.

Okay, let me get off my shoulder.

Wait.

See, look, see and look.

Now it's in my eyes.

And my mother made me go to my room.

Cause she said, this one, I'm about to shirt out my hair.

And I said, nah, this is my long, luxurious blonde hair.

And she said, nah, that's a shirt.

And I say, you a fool.

It's my hair.

And she made me go to my room.

But I don't care.

Cause when I get big, I'm get 50 million trillion million man elephants and I'm letting them go in the house.

They can trample on everybody.

And then she going to want me to make them stop.

But she ain't even going to know I'm there.

Because I'm going to have blonde hair, blue eyes, and I'mma be white.

I am.

Huh?

This was important.

This was important to put in the book.

I got a lot of comments about her wearing that on her hair.

And I wanted this in here because I did it.

I didn't want to be white, but I put a.

I put a towel on my head, but I put a black towel because I just wanted long hair.

I didn't need it to be blonde.

I didn't need to be white.

But this was something that was really going on a lot for a number of generations.

This happened to Toni Morrison, this happened to Maya Angelou.

And I talk about it in the book.

And I also talk about how Whoopi Goldberg transformed from that.

But this was all about identity.

And this is when Toni Morrison talks about watching Shirley Temple.

You know, this is what the Bluest Eye is all about.

And I cover that in the book.

Shirley Temple and Her Care.

Her main character there just saw Shirley Temple and that's who she wanted to be.

She wanted to be white.

She wanted to have blonde hair because she felt that that's where privilege was.

And she didn't have privilege being who she was.

So I talk a lot about identity.

And I want to share one quick story.

I was.

I think we're on the same wave because I was going to ask you to share this.

I had feedback from one little girl who got the book for Christmas gift.

Actually, it was a gift given to her mother.

She was adopted.

And so it was in the household.

And her mother said that she was concerned with her daughter, her adopted daughter, because she was being bullied in school because of her hair, because of her skin color, and she was suicidal.

And so the Mother didn't know what to do.

And the person who told me the story was her cousin.

And when he went to visit for Christmas, he saw her with the book, and she.

He saw that her personality was different.

And she told him that she had read every chapter on black hair.

And now she's proud of who she is.

She knows her identity, and it's okay to be who she is, to have the hair that she has.

And when he got there, she was reading about colorism.

And so that helped her really to appreciate who she was.

And she says, I'm not going to be bullied anymore.

I don't care what they say.

I'm proud of who I am.

And that's one of the things I really wanted to do with this book.

I wanted people to have appreciation for our culture and our identity.

How did that make you feel hearing that story?

Like, I know you.

You just said what you said, but how did it really make you feel?

Even when I tell it now, I get goosebumps.

Goosebumps.

I mean, it really makes me feel like I don't care if I make zero dollars on this book.

I don't care.

I just care about hearing stories like that, because that's what you write for.

You write for people to give you that back.

And that.

And that was just precious for me.

Speaking of pictures, I think you have, like, 200 pictures of just over 200 pictures in this book.

And, you know, I just turn to this one page.

This was just by chance, but the page I happened to turn to shows a little girl getting a little black girl, getting a perm, a little black muppet with an afro, a black Barbie doll.

So I say that.

To say that this.

This book is not just for adults.

You have done a great job of showing people of black people of all ages, of showing iconic moments across generations to really give everyone a sense of the past and the present.

And I try to make it an easy read.

You know, I learned when I was taking creative writing write at a sixth grade level, and I've always done that.

If you ever read my articles, even if you look at my scripts, there's nothing complicated.

I want everybody to be able to read it and understand it and appreciate it.

So it's an easy read for kids and adults.

Yo, It's a gift because I'm not lying, because she's my friend, y'all.

I was like, what's gonna happen next?

I was reading this on the Metro, too.

I was like, maybe, I don't know, a third of the way Through.

And I keep looking up at the stops.

Cause I wanna make sure that I don't miss my stop.

You've done an excellent job of that.

Okay, so speaking of colorism, how many people remember the show, Frank's Place?

I know you don't you remember it?

Okay, okay.

You said you hated the way they cut it off.

Kept it up.

Yeah, Frank's Place.

She was asking.

I'm sorry, did I say Franklin?

No, you said Frank's.

But she was asking what.

What the show was.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

So in, in this.

What was that?

Right.

Yeah.

Well, Frank's.

Frank's Place was a TV series really ahead of its time that aired in the early 80s and it starred Tim Reed and he was also an executive producer on it.

And actually I had never heard of the.

The term, the black.

The brown paper bag theory until that show.

And I remember interviewing him years later and I asked him about that.

Did you make that up?

And he said, no, that's very true.

It's very real, unfortunately.

And he said, we got a lot of mail asking the same question about that.

So I mentioned that in the book.

I go into it, but I also want to show a clip of it so you can have a real appreciation.

And this is really about colorism.

Are you familiar with the term colorism?

Alice Walker coined that phrase.

And it's really pretty.

I think the best way to mention it or to describe it is it's basically within a race.

It's discrimination.

Discrimination.

That's the word I couldn't come up.

Discrimination within a race.

And so I think based on the.

Color of your skin.

Based on the color of your skin.

So let's take a look at this from Frank's Place.

I'm colored.

What do you mean?

I'm colored.

I haven't heard that word in 20 years.

It's nothing, Frank.

No, I want to know.

See this bag?

Yeah.

Which is darker, me or the bag?

You.

Which is darker?

You are the bag.

What are you talking about?

The Capital C Club in the old days, Frank, if you were a light skinned black, you were Creole.

They spell Creole with a capital C.

If you were dark skinned, it was Creole with a little C.

And there was a big difference between the two.

Skin color used to be the big.

Separator in New Orleans.

Right.

Still is.

They just ain't as out in the open about it.

That got a lot of mail back in its day.

And, and it's very true.

What I did is I expand on it in the book and I also show some images from modern day artists that are very supportive of making sure that we, we don't just ignore this topic.

And so the one on the right is from an incredible artist and he did a whole exhibit on colorism and he had the brown paper bag and is basically, am I accepted?

Now the one on the left is from a young artist and she's done incredible work that deals with identity, black identity.

And with this one, it's interesting because she says that she was a victim of, of colorism when.

Even when she is.

What led her to do this?

She was.

And I talk about it in depth in here, but she was invited to a picnic and they were trying to form some kind of social club in her area and she realized that she was only one.

They only wanted to invite her because she was of dark skin.

They wanted to keep out any light skinned people.

So it's, it doesn't, you don't have.

It's not just being light skinned.

It could be.

It's just discrimination, period, within our race.

And I think that's something that's worth exploring.

So I cover some, some heavy issues in here, and one of the things is I want us to talk about it.

I wanted to spark discussions.

And when I keep going back to the Kendrick Lamar, I think that's what he was doing.

He was, he's a storyteller.

It took me four times to watch it, to get everything, but I, I even joined the conversation online and started to write about what I believed he was trying to say.

And I think that's what I want in the book.

I want people to read it.

Don't just look at the pictures, read it.

Let it spark discussions.

How do you feel about that?

How do you feel about colorism and how do you feel about some of these other topics that we cover that all have to do with our culture?

I think it would be a great intergenerational conversation too, especially because of the time frames that you cover and the various topics that you cover to think about.

When you think specifically about hair, beauty and fashion, those are very, those can be very polarizing.

Like, I got on 15 different colors right now, right.

Some of you might look at me and be like, why didn't she just pick a color?

Whereas someone else might be like, okay, it's a full expression of herself.

She must have gotten those clothes in Africa or something like that, right?

So I think it's a perfect foundation for intergenerational.

It is.

And particularly even when I talk about hair and I cover everything, I cover natural hair straight Hair, weaves, wigs.

I look at.

I give examples from movies, from TV shows, the.

The famous image of Viola Davis on How to Get Away with Murder, where she.

She takes off her.

Her.

Her wig because she's ready to pretty much get.

Become who she really believes she should be.

As a lawyer.

She had to look a certain way.

She had to have the wig.

She had to.

To be a certain way.

But when she finds out that her husband is cheating on her, she slowly takes off this wig and she pats her hair.

And it's all about.

And it's.

It's not just her saying, you know, let me just pat my hair.

She's ready for business.

She's ready to be a black woman.

And she's really showing her identity.

And so I kind of COVID things like that that really make you think.

So this is just a sidebar.

We keep mentioning the super bowl performance.

You could have done a whole book just on music, right?

Oh, yeah.

There's no way you could include everything, but I can't even imagine what the music equivalent of this would be.

Yeah.

A lot of people are asking me, will there be another book?

Another book?

The biggest thing.

This started out being a thick book.

The one thing is to have all of these images have to be.

They have to be licensed, and that's very expensive.

So I had to be very, very careful with what I selected.

And I really wanted the most impactful images possible.

But, you know, maybe one day there will be another book.

There's a lot to cover.

Yeah.

To have to choose.

I know that we're coming up or at the time for questions from the audience, but.

But I just want to say there is a.

You have a whole chapter in here dedicated to one person, and I wondered if you could just touch on why you gave Kirby.

Kirby.

Jean Raymond.

Who's Pierre Moss?

You all know him.

The athletic wear designer.

Yeah, he's a.

He started out as a sneaker.

He always wanted to be a sneaker designer.

But his fashions are incredible.

And one of the reasons I devoted a whole chapter, Raymond and Race on the Runway, is he calls himself a disruptor.

And he was probably the first to the first designer to deal with Race on the Runway and all of his shows that he staged.

And you can find them on the Internet.

I feature a lot of them in my book.

All of them.

Everything that he does, he wants it.

He wants to tie it to black history and black culture.

He has the model.

If you can find the picture of the beginning of that chapter.

A model on the Runway with just curlers, that was an ode to Madam C.J.

walker.

And in that particular Runway show, all of the models wore something that was an everyday item that was created by a black person.

And so with that, he wanted people to realize we're everywhere and our inventions are everywhere and we just don't get credit for it.

And he covers black cowboys, he covers the Black Lives Matter movement.

And he's just such a prolific designer.

And I just.

He does what I'm trying to do with the book uses imagery to get us to appreciate who we are.

So should Brianna.

Should we take questions now?

There's one.

I have to run a show in front of me.

Hello.

Hi.

I'm going to try to like wrap this to where it makes sense.

You spoke about colorism and pop culture and I really wanted to get your take in your opinion of today's pop culture because.

So I'm 29.

I remember while I was in middle school, Girlfriends was still on.

That's what my mother would watch.

She had all the Living Sequel DVDs.

I would watch it and then like as I got older to my late 20s, I did a rewatch to like really get it and understand it.

Like now that I'm the age of some of those characters.

And now I feel like currently as a 29 year old, I don't have that media.

You know, I had Issa Rae insecure.

That's gone.

They just canceled what was Harlem on Amazon.

I don't.

I feel like we're almost regressing in a sense.

When I look back at old 80s and 90s media for black culture, I feel like there's a golden stand ups coming along.

Like I remember UPN was all of those shows and now here I am and I feel like I don't have nothing like that currently.

For me, I'm watching Old Girlfriend's episode that's still really basically to today.

So I feel like I'm seeing a progression in that and also the like the erasure of like more darker skin tone black women in certain media products, projects.

Like they'll either get she's biracial or she's very, very fairly light skinned.

It's like everybody else in the family is dark skinned.

Husband, the son, but mom and dad, they're lighter, they're fair skinned.

So as someone who's impulsive, I just wanted to get your take on like what do you think on that after where we are today versus where we used to have.

Yeah, sadly I think you're right.

I think we're regressing the industry.

And the sad thing is, I think with the political climate the way it is, pretty much trying to get rid of diversity and inclusion and whatnot, I think we're not going to see a lot, at least for the next four years.

And I hate to say that, but I think that's the situation.

And I'm not producing very much right now in sitcom genre, but I still keep up with it.

I try to stay on top of it and I don't see anything coming out, frankly.

I think.

And that's, that's, that's a sad state of affairs.

I think the reason we're seeing more biracial was that the, the advertisers and we're seeing a lot of that more in commercials.

The advertisers had a mandate to pretty much have inclusion.

But I think that's going to go away too in this next four years.

I hate to say it's.

There's not good news about it, but Tyler Perry, though, is trying to do what he can to have as many black faces.

And yeah, he's, he's, he's not going dark.

Dark, but he's, he's trying to give it an effort.

But I, I don't have good news about that of what's coming up.

Wow.

If I could add as a business person, what this says to me is that there's an opportunity when you don't see something that exists.

It's an opportunity for you as a young person interested in media and pop culture, to find a way to create that which you want to see.

I agree.

Question.

Oh.

Good evening.

I'm just very inspired at.

Me and my wife purchased the book recently and when seeing a figure like Hattie McDaniel, it was just so inspiring to see that it was in color.

You know, it felt.

So you're saying it resonated with me being in this moment and understanding the licensing.

You're saying challenges.

But how do you, you're saying like you, you utilize the Sankofa moment.

You know, reaching back to.

You're saying that propel us forward.

Forward.

How do you, you know, pull from the past to propel us for.

You're saying to go into the future.

Because when I look at so many different, you know, oppressive system systematic is just saying barriers that we have with culture vultures and trying to take our culture, make it.

Make it their own.

Like how do we continue to take back with our, our own narrative, you know, saying through that Sankofa because like when you just put with Hattie McDaniel just reminded me of the journey that she had to get that Oscar.

But also it brought back her narrative how she.

You're saying she would withstand all those.

Those types of barriers.

So, so the question is.

I'm still not clear on my question.

Oh, I'm sorry.

So you're saying just asking how we continue to pull from our past to propel us to the future, that we don't lose our own story within the.

Within the oppressive dynamics that are taking place now.

Yeah.

Do you not my answer.

Because you asked her.

No, no, no, no, no.

I think it's.

I think it's answering no.

Well, what I was going to say is one of the things that you see throughout the book is the way we wear our movements.

And I'm guilty of that.

I went through a phase where I wouldn't wear a T shirt if it didn't have something black on it.

And now I'm hard pressed to wear some clothes if a black person didn't produce it.

So that's one of the ways is motivated by what she talks about here is we can wear the symbols.

And that's almost like a.

It's a very loud action, but it's a sight.

It's a passive action.

So that's one suggestion I have.

No, and that's excellent.

And we're doing more of that.

If you look through here, just for the whole Black Lives Matter movement, there was a lot of resistance in a lot of.

From the NBA to tv, there was a lot of resistance for speaking out about Black Lives Matter.

But again, because of what they wore, it was subtle, but it got the message out there.

And it caused change in the NBA, it caused change in the wnba, it caused change on red carpets, it caused change in how our films were made.

So I think that's a good point.

And I also think that we have to actually live the activity.

So you have to keep looking back.

I have to keep looking back.

We have to constantly remind ourselves to remember who we are.

And it.

It all like the blueprint exists.

There's nothing that we're doing today that hasn't been done before.

Well, very few things.

Right, right.

And so the blueprint is there.

We just have to be.

We can't wait for someone to show us the blueprint.

We've got to go into our resources in libraries, in black owned bookstores, black owned books for us by a shout out to mahoganybooks.com to find that blueprint and follow it.

And that's the same with what you're saying even with TV and film blueprint.

And one of the.

That's a great.

I love how there's a reason why I invited Gina to be with me on this.

As the president of African ancestry.com, she's all about black identity.

And that's why I said she needs to be here to answer the tough questions.

Very good.

Thank you.

First of all.

And.

But when I came in, you all were talking about the Kendrick Lamar thing.

And I thought when I read.

Haven't read the book yet.

But when I realized that the book is about.

I said, man, that sure would have helped after the Super Bowl.

But what happened was when the Kendrick Lamar and Drake thing first got off, there was this wonderful young lady, Gen Z or Millennial, I don't know which, came on Radio 1.

Not Radio 1, but serious, urban, and explained so eloquently what the beef was.

I said, man, because I had heard all kind of chant written, none of it Lynx.

But when she came on explained nothing.

Beef was.

It was clear to me.

And so after the super bowl, she gave an exclusive.

What can you say?

I said, you know what?

But prior to the Super Bowl, I had developed a real appreciation for Jenny Flemont.

I didn't listen to Adam.

I could talk like grad kid in life.

I boy, but I didn't know Adam built his music.

I may have known something that he did, but didn't know him right.

But it was so eloquent the way she explained it.

It made me have sort of more a respect for Kimmy Gomera.

And then when she came back, I was sue the bowl.

It just made.

It just made sense.

So I just want to.

And then everything you all had said about that right now where we are in America's cup, we don't know what our history exactly.

There are so many people trying to pervasive.

Our kids don't know, and we just haven't taught them.

So if.

If we get anything out of this moment right.

Is that we need to tell our children we need to stop shielding.

But beyond that, I just commend you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I think it's very timely.

I think context is the most today.

Context is important above all else.

When you're listening to the news, when you're listening to comments, when you're listening to politicians, you don't know context.

You can become very.

And there's so much on the Internet now where they're twisting stories or they're just giving you that little bit.

So that's why definitely you have to know the backstory.

You have to know context.

And one last thing.

If you haven't got your African ancestry.

By this lady right here, you miss me?

Thank you.

I am Lonnie.

When you all get yours, you'll know.

What we're talking about.

But it is the most incredible thing.

And I've got mine so long ago that it.

I feel like I'm.

I was so ahead of the fact I got.

Thank you.

Thank you for the shout out.

This is not my own, but I did want to say we're not talking politics now.

That was intentional.

But she has some great imagery and backstory behind Nancy Pelosi, Gwen Dikentech.

The first husband, the first gentleman, second gentleman, Drake and Kente.

So she does cover politics, too.

And I talk about with the Kente Club specifically.

We own it, and we're wearing it all the time for Black History Month and graduations.

We wear it in church ceremonies.

But do we really know why and do we know where it's from and what it really means and how different fabrics are different and is it okay when someone else wears it?

So we cover all of that.

Okay.

And I have an ending question for both of you, if you don't mind.

So you mentioned the story about the little girl feeling very comfortable in her skin and her beautiful blackness.

So what is one Afrocentric specific style that's just us, right, that you guys both really appreciate?

I don't know if it's like head wraps or something.

I'm going to hand you back the mic.

You go first.

Okay, I have one.

I think it's our.

Our freedom to wear colors.

I just got back a couple weeks ago from spending two weeks in Nigeria.

We visited several cities in Nigeria, and it's not just in Nigeria, but driving down the street, walking down the street, it's just like a color burst everywhere you look.

The men, the women, the kids, the old, the young are unapologetic about wearing colors.

And I think that that's something that's uniquely African centered.

For me, It's.

It's with hair.

And I talk about it here.

And I was sharing with.

I'm from la, and I was sharing with Gina that it's so different.

LA west coast, and here, when I was doing some people watching, I noticed that most of the women had natural hair.

In la, it's almost the opposite.

And I write in the book about how it's okay to wear your hair whichever way it makes you feel, wherever your identity is, whatever you care about.

I cover all the hairstyles But I also write in the book about how I got flack for wearing my hair straight and is it does it make me a sellout?

No, it's about preference and I talk about that.

I go deep into that and I think that's one of the things that that really was was important for me to talk about where our identity comes from.

Our hair is our identity but it's all about wearing it the way you're comfortable with and that's identity to me.

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