The Talk (SPF Edition) - Ep. 45

Why is "racist" the only word in America that hurts the people it describes more than the people it destroys?

And if respectability politics is just sunscreen — temporary, needs reapplication, and still doesn't stop the burn — then who exactly are we dressing up for?

White people have been cosplaying colorblindness so long they've forgotten they wrote the dress code. Antonio said Trump is racist and nine thousand people with no punctuation showed up to defend their comfort. The sun doesn't care how well you're dressed, it doesn't care how well you speak, and it has been burning us since 1619 — and this country keeps handing out SPF 15 and calling it justice.

Thanks for joining us. Still got questions? Other things to say? Hit us up at Three for the Founders on Instagram, Facebook, or  YouTube and let us know. Til the next time...left on Founders...we out! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Did you read the text message he just sent?

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Yes! The fuck, LeBron. Duck. That's why the fuck exists is for moments like this. Why?

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Duck. Oh man, I forgot to say yeah. D-A-F-U-Q. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

F-U-Q-C-F-C-F-C-F-F-U-Q. African American vernacular English. A A B E is an accepted form of communication in many parts of the world. Englewood, Compton, Santa Monica.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

The South Side, mind you. You know, okay, AAV. I couldn't believe it.

unknown 0:37

The A.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Yeah, you saw it in the textbook. I was like, what? They actually put this in textbooks.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Do they really?

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Yeah, and you said American vernacular.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

And you said, the fuck?

SPEAKER_02 0:50

The fuck? I'm like, how about when I taught all the white girls had their own language? Dude, like, uh, what? Like, like, wow, like they would say like like 75 times percent. I'm like, where's little white girl vernacular? Why can't we not got that in the book?

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Uh, you know, they not like us. They not like us, they not like us.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

That's like like like they're not like us.

SPEAKER_03 1:13

Like, like we're brothers, we're happy and we're singing and we're colored.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Give me a high five. All right, cut and print. Beautiful guys. Dynom like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Welcome to Three for the Founders, where brotherhood meets the breakdown. We've been having these conversations for years, and now you are invited to join us. We'll say the things you are afraid to say and ask the questions you've always wanted to ask. Three brothers, all truth, no filters. Let's go. Okay. I'm like, really?

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Sorry, he said all of that. Yes, he's no of that. No, you didn't misinterpret. LeBron gave no intro. I shouldn't just board it too.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

This is just you. This is coming from my friend LeBron James. I don't know why I thought it was that. And then it's like a bunch of chaos in my house today. I'm like, that tracks. Yep. That's LeBron. You're like. Oh my God.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

I heard blah blah blah. I have my granddaughter.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

I guess we have to have a whole new paternity episode.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

For real. How many children do you have? Two. That I know of.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

That I know of. I know of. Three for the grandfathers. Here we go. I had no idea.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Who are we? Reynaldo Antonio here. I'm a public historian, a dean of students, and a voice who names the system before the room is ready to hear it. I've spent my career studying how American institutions were built, who they were built for, and why that still matters today. I don't do euphemisms. I do evidence. I bring receipts, and the uncomfortable sentence that everyone else circles around is my main course.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Woo! Oh fire. Let's go. Damn. All right, here we go. I got next. I got next. I know I got next. I got next. I'm looking. Yes. I'm LeBron James, an educator, mathematician, and brother who believes that numbers never lie. Although most people do. I've spent my career in classrooms and communities teaching people how to find the truth behind the data they've been handed. I'm one of the three brothers of three for the founders, and I'll show you the math that they tried to hide from you.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Go Mob. Go Mob. I'm John Augustine. I'm a speaker. I'm a thought leader. I'm a musician. I'm a coach with over 30 years of experience, of leadership experience. I use music to show how listening, embracing discomfort, and broadening our perspectives can move us from Discord to discovery. I'm one of three for the founders, and I bring everyone with me.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Yo, yo. So uh one of the dogs, Luke, had an abscess on his neck. So he he went to the vet, they punctured it, they pulled all the stuff out, and then they left a piece of plastic, like a drain, okay, in his neck, and they were like, oh, just put a cone on him and then monitor him for three days.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

Three days.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Three days. Three days with a cone of shame. With a cone on.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

So I spent yesterday, yeah. I spent yesterday basically sitting next to a dog telling him not to scratch. Oh that said every three seconds?

SPEAKER_00 4:58

God, man. Right. That's exhausting.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

That said, I had time. So I was on threads and I posted so Jackson Dart, the New York Giants QB, can go out and introduce the racist president. And ain't nobody saying nothing, but Colin Kaepernick kneeled during a song, and all of a sudden, all hell was breaking loose. I didn't hear about it. You didn't hear about Jackson Dart? No. He post he he introduced Trump at a rally like three days ago, four days ago. Okay. Um he's a starting quarterback for the New York Giants.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Which in some circles is considered a professional football team. And so um when he did that, I was just like, like, you say, do what you gotta do. First amendment says you have a freedom of speech and you can associate with whomsoever you want to. If you want to support a racist, do you do you boo?

SPEAKER_00 5:56

And so I posted this, and apparently a Confederate flag in Tennessee.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

It found its way to the MAGA verse because I guess MAGA likes football.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Yeah, slowly becoming a diminishing resource. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

They started they started to come for me. They started to like, oh, he's not a racist, and and I hadn't seen this level of uh misspellings because I I don't teach I teach middle school. Um uh lack of punctuation, oh my god, uh incoherent sentences, yeah, yeah. And I was uh surprised, and I said, you know, I got time for you today.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

I don't need to be disrespectful.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

They picked the wrong day. I had I'm sitting next to the dog who's scratching, and I got to tell him not to scratch. So I tell him not to scratch, I tell you not to be a bitch. These are the two things that I was doing all day yesterday. And when I say to you that I was surprised somewhere in in my I was like five hours, I was like, people do this on the regular. Like I just threw something out thinking, oh, this will be fun, you know. This is what people get people start, you know, flame wars all the time. That's what Twitter is now. It's a bunch of racist racism racing itself.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

And so, wow, I just racism, racism.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

I was like, let me throw this out there. And they were coming for me.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

And I was like, Dude, give us an example.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Do I have one? Hold on a minute.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Oh, do I have one?

SPEAKER_01 7:47

I will just open my threads because I started instead of replying to them, I started reposting them with my reply.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Right?

SPEAKER_01 7:58

And so, hold on a minute. Your legacy. At the same time. Oh, and then I had to, you know, I had to block a few because they I don't know, they were in their feelings. Let's see. What's a good one?

SPEAKER_00 8:14

And while you're looking that up, Antonio, I just have to laugh at the fact that I I do think that one side of the political spectrum is a little bit more adept at misspelling than others. So I just but you can edit.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

But they yeah, you have to threads lets you edit. You have to want to be you can spell check.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Yes, you can. You have to have to be a priority of yours. And sure.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

You have to want to speak the Queen's English or African American vernacular English, because I can spell both of those correctly. Yes, you can.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

There you go. But Antonio, remember, debating is intellectual, racism is emotional. So they're just trying to get it out. They're not worried about punctual, you know, and I'm just wondering do non-MAGA people have that same energy as MAGA people? Because they have an unbelievable energy. I mean I did.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

I had it yesterday. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

So on our behalf, yeah. I said, here's my new social media policy. If we wouldn't have been in the same reading group, I'm not going back and forth with you. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Shots fired. Riff. Reading is fundamental.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

If we weren't in the same reading group. If we weren't in the same reading group, I am not going back and forth with you. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Any response to that?

SPEAKER_01 9:44

The post got nine nine point six thousand views. Whoa.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

You call Trump racist. You found uh you found a key to proliferation. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

But I wish I had borrowed this before yesterday. Too many misspellings, grammatical errors, lapses of coherent thought, gaps in logic, lack of empathy or comprehension, and just poor expression for me to enjoy the conversations. I have no problem asking. Say more. I said that five or six times. Tell me. Well, you're the racist. Say more. Say more. I have time. The dog got to sit right here. They were not. The dog had to. I had to watch the dog. Yeah. I had to watch the dog. You had two things to do.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Watch the dog and straighten out the racist universe. I had time. Dude, to LeBron's point, I'm telling you, man, it people people cannot, white people cannot be called racist because we just we we think you're calling us KKK members. So when you say Trump is racist, here come the defenders because they don't know. They have not experienced the nuance. They have not experienced the interest in finding out more and the conversations like you and I have. You all have walked me through me realizing, yeah, Trump is racist. Remember, like early on when we were talking about it. Early on, yeah, you were racist.

SPEAKER_03 11:05

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

I mean, and I think back then, LeBron, you might have called me one of the good white people. Maybe not. I'm still crawling towards it. But it's taken me what, over a year of talking to you all to go, yeah, Trump's racist.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Thank you, 37.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

Yeah, thank you. But but John, I don't under if what do white people think they are if they don't think they're racist by their actions, by their words, by being complicit. What else do they think they are then?

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Like what do they think Trump is, or what do they think we are?

SPEAKER_01 11:40

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I have to call back. I've been listening to us all day. Not the conversation we were going to have, but the conversation that we're having.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

We're having. Yes. LeBron, what do we think we are? We think we're just I don't, I think it's what we think we're not. We think we're not racist. Like, like but then what do you think you are, though? Just inheritors of a history that favors us and it's gotten better, and get over it. That's a thing of the past. That's what I mean. I love we were talking about this the other day.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

I love white people's language. Like, hear what you said, John. We are inheritors.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Inheriting that would be heirs in the Queen's English.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Yes. The King's English, sir. The Queen has since passed. It is now. Yes, the King's English. Do you know that they do that in England?

SPEAKER_01 12:32

I don't recognize Charles. You don't think he's they recognize Charles?

SPEAKER_00 12:37

They do. Do you know that's not that they have to change all the currency? Then they still have to be. No, they don't.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

They change, oh yeah. They changed God saved, they changed the song.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

Yep. God save the king. They changed the currency. They say the king's English? Um the cost associated with changing the the currency. Can you imagine? Good thing she lived with 99.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Queen Camilla. I'm I'm a I'm a I'm a you know Was she the side piece? I'm a she's not a side piece, right? So here's the thing. Here's the thing. She was not the side piece. She was the main piece. She was the one he wanted from Jisump.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Oh. And his mama made him marry Diana.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

Gotcha. Even though Diana was. His mama knew better, but okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

But Diana wasn't problematic. Diana was.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

I'm saying the mom was right. Diana was better than this trash.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

This uh editing himself. He said this trap.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

The trap. The trash.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Yeah. The tragically. I'm not even. So here's what I'm not mad at.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

I'm here's what I'm not mad at. I'm not mad at Camilla. I think Charles is trash. I think he could have. Who's the one that abdicated the throne because he was going to marry his brother. No, no, no. So his uncle's brother is the one who's being investigated for hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein. Right. His uncle's the one that abdicated the throne. His uncle. His uncle abdicated the throne and was like his great uncle, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Because something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

No, it was it was a little, it was like in the 40s.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Yeah, because his mom took over from the person you're talking about. Yeah, it was his uncle. It was great uncle.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

No, his mom took over from her dad, who got his brother. That's what I'm saying. Not her brother, his brother. So that's his uncle.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

His great uncle. That's Charles. Because Charles is the son of Elizabeth. Elizabeth is the daughter of the uncle.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Elizabeth is the daughter of the daddy's king. Because the principal abdicated uncle.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

Yes. So it's his should be his great uncle. Great uncle. Why is he great? Because his mother was the queen. Yes. Her brother, which would be his uncle. No. No. No. Her uncle. Oh, gotcha. Her uncle. Got it.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

This has been history of the royal family in the 20th century.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Anyway, if you were a man, what does it mean to be a man? See episode, whatever it was, because I listened to it today. Right? If Charles, Charles really loved Camilla, and Camilla really loved Charles.

SPEAKER_03 15:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

And he could have just stepped the f out and not been the heir.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

He could have abdicated. He could have abdicated. He wanted that power. Right. He also knew mom was gonna live for a long time, so he could just kick it.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

He didn't, he didn't know how long she was gonna live. I mean, nobody's the longest reigning monarch in English history.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Yeah. She she was holding on.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

No. So LeBron, you're you're taking to task my my language, my use of we are inheritors.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

Yeah, just like when people of color come to America, they're immigrants. When white people go anywhere, they're expats. I've never heard anyone call a white person an immigrant. Like we white people go to Mexico, they're called expats.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

LeBron, LeBron is racism everywhere. Racism you didn't see coming. Here it comes around the corner. White people are expats, everybody else is an immigrant.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah. So yeah, if I like a lot of Americans are moving to Portugal, a lot of Americans are moving to Spain. Yep. And they're they're being not called, they're not being called immigrants, they're being called expats.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

A lot of Americans are moving to Mexico, which started during COVID, because they could work remotely. And all of the sudden they can move to Mexico, and that's fine. But Mexicans moving here, that's an immigration problem.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

Yes. See what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 16:41

And a lot of uh the Mexican citizens were having a hard time in Mexico City, and they protested. It was they spoke up. But go back to the language, John. Keep going. You asked me what do white people think we are. So Antonio pushes out a social media post saying NFL quarterback introduces Trump, racist president, and a bunch of MAGA people makes in the MAGA verse, a bunch of MAGA people say he's not racist. So the energy behind their response, Antonio, was them defending Trump saying Trump is not racist, correct? Was that what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 17:13

And the education or lack thereof behind their response was right on display.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

It is so hard for white people to see Trump as racist. Why is so hard for them to see? Because he's not a front porch racist. He's not screaming the N-word, he's not wearing a clan robe, and it takes a lot for us to differentiate between racism and prejudice. LeBron, you've done a good job splitting these hairs before. Like prejudice, everybody's prejudice. That just means to prejudge. That means if I'm walking down the street and someone looks unhoused, my judgment is I might get asked for money by this person. Or they might have a mental disorder that makes it hard for them to have a job. Like that's that's prejudice. I'm prejudging before I actually get to know the person. Everybody has that. Racism is a power structure, a system that you know oppresses certain people and uplifts other people. And it's it's it's just hard for white folks to go from like, yeah, there's a systemic problem, there's some historic problems in our country for sure. I bet even the most heinous of these MAGA people, not maybe not the most heinous, but a number of them, Antonio, if they were honest, they would go, yeah, slavery was bad. Like they probably would admit some of those things, but then they would some most of them, probably some of them, wouldn't.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Not the ones in my mentions.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

I was just saying, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

But for them to accept in one sentence coming at them saying Trump is racist, I'm telling you, 80-90% of white people be like, What are you talking about? He's not racist. Even the ones who think he's an asshole are not gonna say he's racist.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

No, they're not, yeah. Because racist.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Yeah, because to me, I'm realizing that I thought it was MAGA who didn't think he was racist. Then I realized, oh, it's Republicans too who don't think he's racist. Then I'm like, oh shit. Democrats don't even think he's racist. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

So even my fraternity brother John didn't think he was racist. Man, where do we go from here? I think we need education. We need uh maybe, maybe like obligatory military service. Maybe all white people should just have like two years obligatory like true history education on you know white privilege, on what racism is and what it isn't. Maybe that's why we have this podcast is to help some white folks. We to help us. I'm it's still me, I'm still one of them. I'm still it's me, it's us, it's me, it's I to help us see the racism.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Yeah. That's why you have this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

That's not why you're right. No, you had this because you wanted to show off t-shirts.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

I know you floated the I know you floated the the big brother program. But as I said then, I'm ready to say now. I don't know what I'm like, is it a Denzel impression or something? I don't know. What is this? That was close. That was the equalizer, man.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

You you know who your daddy is, right? You know who your daddy is.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

You know who your daddy is. That would be a quote from Remember the Titans. And for those of you who didn't know, stop the podcast now and go watch Remember the Titans.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Yes, minimum. See Ryan Gosling before he was Ryan Gosling. True. I like the Big Brother program, Big Brother program. I think that's gonna be good, man. Every white person is born with a big black brother, black sister to walk them through. Show them what is.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

But see, you just get to walk and ask questions. I'm not showing you shit. But my question is, how are you gonna rip up the Iran deal that Obama negotiated and then get a bullshit deal and then be like, I'm the best. I'm the best president ever.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

That's all he does. That's all he does is rip off people and take credit when it goes well and dismiss his responsibility when it fails. That's his entire playbook.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

John, the reason he's still in office is because of racism. That's why he can do all that. Because if Obama just said, I'm going to edit the agreement, and I'm gonna have my cousin be director of homeland security, oh, he'd have been out.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

And I'm gonna get a flush fund of how many billion dollars for everybody that's gonna wear that.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

I was gonna wear the t-shirt today that said they talk about immigrants, but we saw who who raided the Capitol on January 6th, just so I could, you know, have some visual evidence and I could apply for some money. It's a slush fund, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:17

It is a slush fund. And what is it, how many billions is the slush fund? 1.8. That's a lot of millions, y'all. I mean, it takes a thousand millions, math man, to get to a billion, if I'm not correct. Yes. So that 0.8 is a whole lot.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

I also listened to the reparations episode today.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

How many trillion do we owe y'all?

SPEAKER_01 22:38

112 trillion. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

I got five on it.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Grab your phone. Let's get a key. What is it? I got five on it.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

That's all that time you spent in the sun, dude. You got to get out of there, man. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

I got I have to continue to be a person of color. Because if I show can you see the ring? Can you see the ring line?

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Yes, we can see the ring line. There it is. It is what it is. To perpetuate certain stereotypes, I surfed for a couple hours in Malibu this morning and uh got more sun on my face than I should have. Because I know that you all live in the world of lotion, like during the day. We live in the world of lotion out in the sun. It's a different kinds of lotion. You put lotion on. You put some on.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

I had to put sunscreen on.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

I had to. Sorry, when do you put this is a great, this is this is the conversation. Here we go.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Here we go. Here we go.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

We asked the questions you've always wanted to ask. Do black people wear sunblock?

unknown 23:38

No.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Only on my face. Except why you're so pretty.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Last weekend I had uh, well, he's he's just pretty all the time. I had an event on Saturday where I was out in the sun for four hours. And then on Sunday, we went whale watching for five hours. That's right. And then on Monday, I had another thing where I was out in the sun for two hours. And on Thursday, all of a sudden, I looked like a cancer patient and skin was flaking off in the shower. I'm like, what is that happening?

SPEAKER_00 24:12

You got head and shoulders with just the scalp?

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Well, no, my wife looked at me and she was like, if you got a sunburn, that's that's what that is. And if you had used sunscreen, then you wouldn't have gotten burned. And I was like, but you know, mi gente no necesita sunscreen.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Dude, five decades on planet earth, and you're only now getting the lecture about sunscreen. Okay, listen, you all sit down. No, I hear that. Uncle John's gonna talk to you. No, Uncle John's gonna talk to you.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

The sun is trying to kill your people. I understand that.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that's not what has happened to me. Well, no, but do you know how you all have the talk? And within black and brown communities, yes, the the talk is understood. It's universal. When you say, when did you have the talk about police and that all that yeah? We didn't have any of that. Now, what is our version of the talk? Tell me. Sunskript. Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Oh no, I'm done.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

The talk that Antonio's wife just gave to him 54 years, 55 years. Into the game. Yes. We had that talk. Like as soon as we were like up and able to understand English, our parents are talking about sunblock. LeBron's like, what do white people talk when you get together? Do we talk about racism? No. Do you talk about money? No. We talk about sunscreen.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Sunscreen. So, John, I need you to role play the conversation you had with your with Jake when the first time you had to break him and said, Look, Jake, I don't know if you know this. We white folks.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

You cannot go out this house without sunscreen. Well, his was delayed. Do you want to know why, LeBron?

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Well, because you were in Sacramento and you just went out on the lake?

SPEAKER_00 25:51

No. Well, because his mom was Mexican. See? Oh, so that bought him like 17 years. That's what I'm saying. Uh-huh. Right. You thought you didn't need it, but no. Truth is, he's got enough white in him. And look, man, the Italians tan too, but not like you all.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

Yeah, exactly. We got Polish fellowships. The original Italians did, but that's a lot of the things that we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Time out, time out. So there's being in the sun, there's tanning, which is where white people are trying to become darker. Yes. And then there's sunburn. Right. Right? So I had like today, I was out doing some honeydew shit. And I'm in the yard, and about an hour in, I'm like, it's hot. I feel the hot. I feel the heatness on my skin. The sun is coming. The heatness.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

The whatemaliness, my natural heat. Anyway. My natural heat.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

That would be the birdcage. Thank you. Thank you very much. We love that.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

Oh, it was lovely. And so um, I came inside and I literally put on sunscreen. My man. So that when she got home, I could say, Hey, I listened to you. I heard you.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

This is like my kid. They don't do it to not get skin cancer. They do it to get their mom off their back.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Yes. Oh no. I know word about the cancer. I worried about the relationship. I don't want to hear nothing. It's marriagism. I don't want to hear.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

Did he just say marriagism?

SPEAKER_01 27:33

No, he said marriagism. I'm caught in him. I didn't want to hear nothing. I put it on and then I went back out for another five hours.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Now, now the question is, are you willing to admit she was right? I'm always willing to admit when she is right. Always believe she is right.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Yeah. Okay. No, I'm telling you, I was in the shower last week and I went like this to wash my head, and it I was like, what in the f I could build a whole new me out of all these skin flakes. Out of all this skin flakes.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

I could clone myself with all this DNA. It was crazy. It was crazy. And Antonio, no, it's not the talk was not about how to get a suntan. That was, I mean, the 70s and 80s, it was crazy, white people trying to get all dark all the time.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

You mean when they were putting on oil to burn their skin to become brown?

SPEAKER_00 28:26

You could put like vegetable oil on your skin. You're literally just baking yourself in the sun like you're in the oven. But no, eventually it was, you know, sunblock, sunblock, sunblock to not get sunburned. And look, man, all you have to do is get really burned one time as a kid. You're like, that sucked. I couldn't sleep for three days because my skin was on fire.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Actually, I'm gonna uh I've been burned before. I'm light-skinned. I don't know if you know. I'm light-skinned. And he's red bone. I mean, am I? I like to say cafe au lay. That's me. Okay. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 29:07

LeBron, I'm gonna ask you a question. LeBron, I'm gonna ask you a racist question.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

That's not a racist question.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

It's a white question, John. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

It's a white question. Go ahead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

Have you ever been sunburned? Yes. He's a goddamn lie. Yes. Look at him. He has to think about it. Probably not then. No.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

I can't maybe, but I don't go ahead, finish that sentence. Go finish it. Maybe. I mean, like, have I ever had a time where it had skin pill off? Yeah. But I didn't know. Not like probably like y'all. No.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

You didn't know it was sunburned. That's the problem. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. No, you're true. Yeah, I didn't know that. I'm being real. Hold on. Let me straighten my glasses. I'm being real serious. It took Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Thursday skin peeling for me to go, oh, I got a sunburn. The darker you are, the less you relate what you did 27 hours, 59 hours, 78 hours ago. Thank you. With the peeling of the skin. Your point was like you did the talk. You was like, I'm going to the beach. Your mama said, Hold on, baby. Let me tell you something.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Everybody come over having the talk. Spray tone.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

That was not part of we get the lotion before you leave the house. So you don't look like you were kicking rocks or kicking sand. Thank you. I can't be right. Tremaine got how much hell in San Diego because we were like, are you rubbing your feet together to make a beach? Like, what are you doing? You ashy, Negro. What is happening? Okay. But we do lotion in order to not be ashy. Right. We don't do lotion because of the sun.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Right. That's what I'm saying. Yep. You lotion to not be ashy, we lotion to not be dead.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

But why is sunscreen? Why is that such a pivotal conversation?

SPEAKER_01 31:25

Because they go outside during the day.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Yeah, I mean, it's just like asking, why is it a pivotal conversation for parents of black and brown children to talk about the cops? Because the reality is you are going to have a situation in which you're going to need this knowledge. If you're a light-skinned person, a white person, if you go outside, you are going to have to deal with the conflict of ultraviolet race. And uh yeah, man.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

That's what's on the conversation we were gonna have, but the conversation we were having.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

Look, man, we might as well. That's on our tagline. You know, we said we say the things you've always wanted to say, we ask the questions you always wanted to ask and need to ask. And and in the earliest, earliest conversations. You all know exactly where I'm going with this. I'm sitting in our first chapter meeting of five minutes big book. White dude sitting on a couch with sterns. Like, okay, all right, this is cool. I guess, all right. Somebody said, Hey, who's got some lotion? And I shit you not, at least six black arms. J butter. Oh, the smell, I mean, the smell of that room got so delicious. And I was like, what did I just did? I come in, is it Sephora? Did I play Sephora? Hey. That's what it was like for me. I didn't know they brought all these sunscreen. I didn't know they had some. No, you all, and all right, now so now I have a question. Yes. What did your parents tell you about being ashy? Why is being ashy so bad? Because it makes you white.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

Wait, hold on.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

Just on the ankles, just on the ankles and the elbows. Elbows.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

So you know how I see around corners? Yeah. This is a corner that's about to get serious. Because it's about respectability politics. Okay. Because you can't go out of your door without being presentable. And being ashy is not being presentable. It's the reason that we, you know, we joked about it before, but it's the reason that I speak the Queen's English and African American vernacular English and sort of can speak some Spanish. Yeah. You can't go out of your door without being presentable.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

I can't go out with my pants hanging down and you see in my draws and in slides and a head do-rag. That's not a thing.

SPEAKER_03 33:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01 33:59

I'm not gonna leave my house being ashy. I'm gonna I'm just not gonna do it.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

John, I'm giving you a math formula. White people are to black people with the sun, it's to white people.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Just trying to kill you over time. Get too close, you get burned. Get too close, you get burned. You better put on protection if you're around it. Oh my god, this is the perfect analogy, man. This is it. I think we're on to something.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

So holy shit. So this is a book called King a Life. It's written by Jonathan Eagle. I think that's how you how you pronounce it. Um, and it is a step-by-step about who Martin Luther King Jr. was. It talks about him being named Michael, it talks about him using ML, it talks about him growing into who he is. And the reason that I bring that up is there have been several times where you know LeBron was talking about Latinos pulling out and being away from the California public school system and what that would be and the impact of it. And he talks about how they got to that point, right? And so as we're moving forward in this, and we talk about respectability politics, and we right, we're joking about what it is that black folk and white folk talk about when they're in their homes. It just feels important to understand that these are not new situations, and that thought experiment that we did about the Confederacy, about what happens if you punish white supremacy, what happens if you eliminate white supremacy is important. Right? I didn't get a sunburn because my wife was right, and I put on some sunscreen, which you would have known from the jump because you went you know surfing in Malibu, but you had to talk. But like there's so much in what we're doing. There's so much in this conversation that's true that people don't know.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

And I'm glad you you changed the tenor of the conversation because even though we are laughing about it, it is dead serious because you have me thinking about other immigrants, white immigrants, European immigrants, who were held up the American dream if you work hard, if you assimilate. And assimilation for them meant learning the language, going to school, and it was a lot easier. It you didn't have to change the color of your skin, you just had to present a certain way. And like dirt under your fingernails at a job interview, or in a social situation where dirt under your fingernails is seen as less than because you're probably working on a farm or you're working the land because you're poor, or because you have to clean you know houses or something like that. That's the equivalent of the ashiness, but the ashiness is a whole other level because you know we had it much easier because we present it as if we are you know white folks who belong here. Maybe just you know, it's gonna take a generation or so to prove that. So yeah, the the parallel to the ashiness and uh I just I can't get over LeBron the metaphor that white people are to black people what the sun is to white people. Oh, it's real.

unknown 37:38

Damn.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

Like you need you need it to survive, but you get too close, you get burned. Um you don't use stay around it too long, you get burned. Oh the sunscreen. How often do you apply the sunscreen, John? If I surf, it's every single time. I don't I don't apply sunscreen every single day, but I know folks, especially women who who do it every day. I know that like face creams that women put on usually have some sort of SPF sun protection factor. Did you know that's what SPF stands for, Antonio? Sun protection factor. I did. I've noticed. Uh but yeah, when I'm uh the thing, the funny thing is when I was growing up, there was this product called Bullfrog, and it was it was sunblocked for your face. Do you remember Bullfrog? I'm familiar. I'm familiar. It was like in this little this little tube that with the pop-out thing, and it was like like gel, and it was meant for being in the water, like it's gonna stay on the water longer because you know, and you you go in and out of the water in the ocean, you're constantly rubbing your face to like rub the water, water out of your eyes. The best you can get is about 40 minutes of safety out there. Like if you have 80 on your face or 100, I usually use like 60 or 80. Uh you're you're at most gonna get 40 minutes. So I'm out there at like an hour, hour and a half, and I'm and the sun's right there. I'm like, I'm not getting out of the water and reapplying this. I'm just gonna have a sunburn, I guess. Uh yeah. Sunblock, sunscreen. Lotion for ash. Ashiness.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

Sunblock, sunscreen. Sunblock, sunscreen. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

Quickly. Waves. What's the term? What's the term for skin cancer? There's a anyway. Melanoma? Yeah, melanoma.

SPEAKER_02 39:29

Man, for those who lack melanin.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

Melanin, melanoma. I think there's a lot of white people who wanted to ask that question. Do you do you get sunburned, LeBron?

SPEAKER_02 39:40

You know, I've had white people ask me that question before. And my question, Barbara. No, it's not. Because my question is, how long would you survive without sunscreen?

SPEAKER_00 39:51

It would take a long time. I mean, that's the thing about skin cancer, is you know, years and years and years, depending on how light you are. And, you know, the lighter, lighter northerners, the northern Europeans, those of descent, the snow people. Uh well, and the great, the gray, rainy places, the Irish tend to be very light skinned, right? All the Nordic folks, they would die sooner. They would die quicker than my Mediterranean people. And that's why my my blood mix is hilarious because the way my skin tone changes through the year. It's so funny. The conversation we're having. Like, there's a point with surfing where during the time of year, you know, you go through the winter and usually changing next to your car, getting in your wetsuit, like you're not your skin isn't exposed very long because it's cold outside. So, you know, I get you know, and now that I live close to the beach, I can put my wetsuit on at home and just walk down. But like you get to the point where the sun starts to come out like springtime, yeah. Now you're taking your shirt off for longer. And there's like that first one after winter and early spring. You take I take my shirt off, I look down, I'm like, oh god, I'm white, I'm super white. This is terrible. I hate the way it looks. But my progression is I go, you know, winter, I'm really light-skinned, my legs, my my torso. Yeah, and at some point, every single time I spend a little bit too much time out in the sun. And the and the overcast days are the worst because you don't feel it, but the sun's still coming through. My worst burn was ever falling asleep on the beach when it was sun, it was overcast. I'm like, oh, it's nice, and my legs got torn up, dude. So bad. But my point is like early spring, I take my shirt off. I'm like, ah, I'm pasty. I'm pasty. And then at some point I'm gonna get burned because I'll like have my shirt off or something. So I get red, then I turn orange, and then I get kind of tan, and then I try to I try to ride that tan. And they call us colored. We're the colored ones. I have at least four colors every year.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

He said he was gonna be the most colored person on this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 41:52

That's right. And guess what, LeBron? When I'm cold, my lips get purple, my skin turns blue, I am colored as fuck. Oh my goodness. Red when I'm embarrassed. Yeah, man. Antonio is done with this conversation. He's like, what the f how did we end up here?

SPEAKER_01 42:13

There's not a problem with the three of us getting together because the three of us get together all the time. Thanks for joining us today on Three for the Founders, where we took a left turn into sunscreen and sunburn and melanin and melanoma, and why the talk looks different depending on who you are. We appreciate you. We love you. And as we always say, left on founders. Left on Founders. We out.

SPEAKER_02 42:45

Boom.

SPEAKER_01 42:47

All right, go get us.

SPEAKER_02 42:48

Thank you for joining us. Still got questions? Other things you want to say? Well, hit us up at threeforthefounders.com on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or TikTok. Or send us a text through Buzz Sprout. Remember to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast and share the pod with someone you think can benefit from it or add to the conversation. Till the next time, Left on Founders, we out.

SPEAKER_00 43:17

Thank you for listening to the Three for the Founders podcast. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of any professional or academic institution. The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only. Listen at your own risk of becoming woke.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

All right, go get a second for button on that.

SPEAKER_02 43:40

That was done.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

Yeah, he's the button man. Help me, Mr. iPhone Man.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

Sheesh. When he gets back, I'll do the intro for it. Or you can do the intro for it. That'd be great. Um so go to your settings.

SPEAKER_03 43:54

Yep.