Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

'1. Hello.

My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership Lessons from

the Great Books podcast episode number one forty.

The history of The United States is complicated

and multifaceted, and it's not all

negative and terrible. Over the last few decades,

though, the wounds of the people of The United States have been opened and explored

again by some for the purposes of writing

polemics and protest nonfiction.

And others in The United States have opted not to explore any of

this at all. Your point of interest in exploration depends

and will depend very greatly on your starting point,

and everyone starts at a different point on the map.

But this is not a new exploration in the long cultural history of

the American Republic. As a matter of fact, once

every twenty years or so, right on time like clockwork, an ethnic generation of

Americans, an entire generation of Americans is

suddenly mugged by the reality of life with other ethnic

groups on the same continental spread.

Occasionally, though, you will get writing clear eyed entrenched analysis from

people who lived through the previous great, quote, unquote, yawp twenty

years previous and may provide wisdom, anchoring, and explanation

that is appreciated by critics, ignored by activists,

and exploited by political opportunists, all of whom invariably and

blindly miss the point.

The author we're reading today, whose seminal essays and books

about race, culture, and class in The United States, were written from the viewpoint

of someone who had been through all of the younger generation's outrage before in

his own time and was promptly ignored in his own

time, much like contemporaries Thomas Sowell and Shelby

Steele were ignored, and Glenn Loury was ignored about

ten years later. And now in our own time, folks like Adam

b Coleman and Coleman Hughes are ignored.

Today on the show, we will be pulling leadership lessons. We'll be

calling leadership lessons from a long

essay that's actually a book, and it reads part of

a longer argument for the Americanness, and I'm

making up a word there, that lies deeply

embedded in all of us trapped by

geography together on this continent, whether we like it or

not. Today, we will be reading

from the Library of American version,

Albert Murray's The Omni Americans.

Peters, the transference of racial and cultural wisdom based

on life experience and book knowledge across generations continues

to be a challenge for which there seems to be no

immediate solution. And, of

course, today on our podcast Yeah. We were just talking about

this before we hit the record button. We are

joined by our co host, Tom

Libby. How you doing, Tom? I am

living my best life, Hasan. Loving it.

Awesome. Well, normally, Tom does not join

us on Black History Month, not because Tom doesn't have anything to say about

black history, but because, normally, we have DeRollo Nixon

joining us. But, unfortunately, DeRollo was taken away by other

obligations, for the remainder of the month. And so I reached out to

Tom and asked him if he would like to show up today,

while we cover Murray here. Again, an individual

that, which should not surprise any of our regular listeners, an

individual who he had not heard of before this episode

today, nor who had he read any of his work. But

that's okay. Hey. Listen. I I

spent I spent a little of a I spent a little time doing some

research on this guy. I will tell you from all of the

I I I must have one thing I I let me just back up for

a second. One thing I love about this episode that we're doing right now is

this gentleman was alive in this century.

He'd passed away in 2013, which which

was interesting for me because I the first picture I

saw of him when I looked him up, I was like, I know this dude.

Like, I was like, I I I don't know why. Because, again, as you

anybody who's listened to this podcast will know, it's not like I'm a screaming

literary expert. Like, I'm not like you know? But for some reason,

I knew who he was, and I was like, I know this dude. Like, what

is why do I know him? And it took me forever to realize it was

his ties to music that I realized that that that's where I knew him from

because he was a really, very well written,

critic of blues and jazz and things like that. And so

I that was like, I knew I knew his face, and I was like, that's

where I know him from. So, anyway, I act I ended up watching a bunch

of interviews from him over the weekend. So, I'm

he's he's going on my list of people I would love to have lunch with

if I were to be pick somebody from history. I just like listening to him

talk. I I really enjoyed listening to his interviews and stuff like that.

So, anyway, I just thought I'd throw that in there. Yeah. No. He was,

he was known for and and it really isn't this essay that we're going

to read today, the Omni Americans. He made his he made his argument

really first that, jazz

and we'll we'll talk a little bit about this today. But the jazz is the

is the fundamental unique

representation of America. Yeah. It's the art of the The art

of the that America created. Yeah. Exactly. And that the

Europeans couldn't have done it. Africans couldn't have done it.

Asians couldn't have done it. We're the only ones that could

have put that together on this continent by

virtue of how we think about ourselves. And

that's an interesting perspective to explore,

particularly in light of jazz critics like Stanley

Crouch, who would come later on, and even jazz players who eventually

became critics like Wynton Marcellus, who

maybe took a little bit of a different approach to,

to thinking about, the jazz medium.

The other dynamic is I'm a big fan of jazz music, and so I knew

about this guy a while ago, but I hadn't had a

chance to really fully explore, all of his, all of his writing

and all of his work. And so for this podcast, you know, I did a

deep dive into him as, as well. And in addition to reading his, his

essay, the omnimemergans, which we're gonna cover today, I also,

looked at, his other book, which I really do enjoy,

south to a very old place, which I love that title. It's very

Faulkner ish. I love that title. He references

Faulkner a lot in his interviews too. He does. And, you know, the

interview link that I sent you from the interview that he did in

1996, it's

interesting sort of how the interviewer is trying to pull him

into something, you know, with the questions, and he just refuses to go there. Doesn't

like yeah. I saw that too. I I I

I realized that as well. It was interesting. I love that.

It it it means it it well, what it indicates to me is that he

was he was he knew exactly well,

and we'll talk about his literary life here, but he knew exactly who he

was, and he knew exactly what he was, what he was about.

Yeah. Very sharp too. Very sharp.

Yep. Absolutely. Alright. Let's go

ahead and, jump in

to the Omni Americans. We're gonna pick up in the section

labeled, pale face fables, brown

skin people. And I quote,

the self conception in terms of which most Negroes have actually lived and moved

and had their personal being for all these years, however, has always been, as

they say, something else again. Perhaps self indulgence

causes white people to public outcry against the fact that a

document whose statistics are at times clearly ridiculous and whose central assumptions

and embarrassingly sloppy conclusions make a travesty of scientific methodology

is by way of becoming a veritable handbook of race relations in some parts

of the country. Now pause. He was talking about and writing a response to the

Moynihan report, which was released in the nineteen sixties,

and which described the decline of,

yeah, the decline of inner

city black families, in Chicago, Detroit, and and up

north, and then was tying this into larger challenges of

segregation, in America. And by the way, that report was made

by, a a gentleman, who at the time, I believe, was a senator

or would later become a senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. So when he says the

report, that's what he's talking about. Okay. Back to this.

But then not very many Negro social science technicians have come

forth to even take issue with dark ghetto either. Not even those

ever so prideful black nationalistic spokesman who otherwise display so much

suspicion about becoming victims of brainwashing whitewashing and who

express so much militant concern about improving, quote, unquote, the blacks' the black

man's image in America, seem in the least aware of the fact

that almost every chapter of dark ghetto not only supports the stereotype that

Negroes have always been extremely sensitive about, but also provides a quasi

scientific refutation of the very elements of Negro American history upon which

contemporary Negro leaders must build. Dardhetto, which

is a strong which is strong on political indictment, but as we'll be seeing weak

on psychological insight, are reasons Negroes as substandard human beings

who insist in a sick community, who subsist in a sick community.

Its image of Harlem is, in effect,

that of an urban pit writhing with derelicts.

According to the impression the author creates, even if his figures do not,

black despair has driven most of his inhabitants either to crime, narcotics,

addiction, prostitution, and the like, or to obsessive imitations of something which

he calls, quote, unquote, the white man's society. See you, if any

Negroes, he goes so far as to claim, ever lose that

sense of shame being dark skinned in self hatred. The obsession with whiteness, he adds,

continues past childhood and into adulthood. It stays with the Negro all his

life. It's extremely difficult to believe, Italics

added. It is extremely difficult to believe that the evidence that Dartigano represents

presents in support of such sweeping generalization would meet the scientific

standards of, say, Talcott Parsons, who cannot fail to note the Clark's

overestimation of white well-being is almost worshipful.

I'm gonna go back a little bit and read this.

The nature of Negro moral outcry polemics, it should also be remembered,

is now such that the most glibly self confident and even the most smugly chauvinistic

black spokesman and leaders readily and frequently refer to themselves as being fear

ridden, emasculated, and without self respect. No wonder white Americans continue

to be so shocked and disoriented by the intensification of the civil rights struggle.

Instead of relying on what is now known about the nature of social uprisings, white

Americans keep allowing themselves to expect the theoretical Sambo promised as it were by

Stanley m Elkins in slavery, a problem in America,

institutional and intellectual life, implicitly confirmed by the pronouncements of

Kenneth Clark in our ghetto and conceded by so much self deprecating rhetoric.

But what these same white Americans keep running up against is such a bewildering,

outrageous, and to some of them terrifying behavior as the intransigent determination of

leaders like Charles Evers in Mississippi, the mockery and high camp of media

types like H. Rap Brown on all networks, and people like those in Watts,

Newark, and Detroit who respond to the murders hysteria of white

police and national guardsmen with a defiance that is often as derisive

as it is deep seated. The compulsions

nourished by the folklore of white supremacy seem to

be that such that white Americans are as yet unable to

realize that they themselves are obviously far more impressed by their own show of brute

force than black insurgents ever seem to be. They still do

not seem to realize that what they actually see on television during all of the

demonstrations, and as the saying goes, civil disruptions, is not a herd

of walleye black natives cringing before white authority. What

they see are heavily armed, outraged, and slaughter prone white policemen and

soldiers smoldering with rage and itching to perpetrate a massacre, confronting

Negroes who are behaving not only as if the whole situation were a farce

and a carnival, but also who have time to grant television interviews

in which there is as much snap course social science jargon as

street corner hip talk. Like, it's either upward mobility or

burn baby burn. As one character in For Whom the

Bell Tolls, shaking his head, kept saying of the Spanish during the civil

war, quote, what a people, unquote.

Indeed, as Negroes are forever saying in delighted puzzlement of each

other, my people, my people, ain't nothing like them. Man, when you're

talking about us, you're talking about something

else.

And this is where we begin with Albert

Murray and the Omni Americans.

Now as usual on this show, we're going to do a little bit

of a dive into Albert Murray and into his,

literary life. We're going to sort of explore a

little bit about well, we're gonna explore a little bit,

about who he was and where he came from.

So Albert L. Murray, born 05/12/1916, died

08/18/2013, was an American literary and music

critic, novelist, essayist, and biographer. His books include The Omni

Americans, which we're reading today, South to a Very Real Place, and Stomping the

Blues. By the way, I'd recommend picking up Stomping the Blues if you're a fan

of blues music as well. He

attended Tuskegee Institute on scholarship and received a BS in education in

1939. One of his fellow students was Ralph Ellison, who would later write the

novel Invisible Man, published in 1952, who we

covered on the podcast last year. Go find that episode.

In 1941, he married Mozelle Manefi. They had a daughter,

Michelle. While based at Tuskegee, he completed additional graduate work at

Northwestern University in 1941 and, interestingly enough, at

the University of Paris in 1951.

After briefly returning to his position at Tuskegee, he became a member of the

active guard reserve in 1951. Over the next decade,

Murray was stationed in a number of locales ranging from Morocco to California to

Massachusetts and taught a geopolitics course in the Tuskegee

ROTC program. In 1962, after doctor's exam

revealed signs of heart disease, he retired from the United States Air Force as

a major. Murray did not publish

his first book until 1970. The

Omni Americans, which, again, we're reading today, contained a series of essays and reviews

on such topics as protest literature in the Moynihan report on black poverty.

In the introduction, he wrote that quote, I love this quote, and this is what

encouraged me to pick this book up today. The United States is in actuality not

a nation of black people and white people. It is a nation of

multicolored people.

I love that. Tom,

what can leaders glean from the life and times of Albert

l Murray?

What that's a question to start with. Yeah. Well

Well, let me let me just say first things first. Right? Like, I I

think if you think about the think about the time

frame that he actually lived through and what that man saw in

his life. Like, if we can't learn from him,

like, what are we doing here, people? Like, seriously. Like, think about, like,

again, like, from Jim

Crow to the the, like, the the,

the the civil rights movement to

like like, he he's seen so much. It

just even if he wasn't a great writer, just a person who's lived through

all of that, again, whether it was black, white, red, brown, whatever.

Like Mhmm. Just think of the the sheer amount that we could

learn from those people and whether or not we choose to do so

or not is actually the bigger question to me.

Like, why would we not? But yet we Right. Constantly discount,

discredit, or push aside people who are in that

that age group. And and, again, today, we're probably not seeing

anybody that was born in, you know, in 1916

anymore. And now it's like we're we're pushed twenty years past that. So

now it's people in the you know, born in the thirties. But but,

again, it's the but I think we

can learn a lot from him. I mean, they one thing that that I know

I I don't remember if we had hit the record button on on the

podcast yet or not, but one of the things that you and I were talking

about on the fact that this man knew who he was. Mhmm. He didn't

deviate from his principles. He had a moral compass

that was clear to him, and he never allowed anybody

to, you know, to to overshadow or

to skew his visibility of that moral compass.

If you can't, as a leader, take just from that

alone, then you shouldn't be a leader. Mhmm. So

Yeah. So, I mean, again, even from the simplicity of it, and I'm

again, not not even to go into into deep conversation about the

type of person he was and the interactions he had with the people around him.

And and, you know, you mentioned you took a deep dive into

I I I ended up watching

I ended up watching at minimum three speeches that were

given about him from people that he impacted their lives.

There was two, two black gentlemen and a white and a white

gentleman, all three of which referred to him as their grandfather.

Right. Because that's the kind of person he was. If if you

were in if you were in with him, you were in with him. It wasn't

like he didn't keep from what I gathered from him, there

was basically two people on this earth, people in his inner circle and people

who weren't, and that was it. Like, I don't think he really had

that. So to answer your question, to go back to, like, what can we learn

from him as a leader, I think that's very compelling. Like, he

was overly trusting of the people in his inner circle. He

he valued them beyond belief. He looked

he looked to teach them and to learn from them. He looked to like, there

was a lot there was a lot with him. And there was one person

in particular this this gentleman was talking about. He couldn't find a

babysitter for his four year old son, and he had to bring him to,

mister Mori's house. And he went, like, he sat his son down,

like, for this long conversation saying, don't touch anything. Don't look at anything. Don't do

it. Like, this this person, like, is not used to having little kids in

this house. And at the end of the visit with with,

Maury, the little boy tugged his father's jacket and

said, you said to treat this house like grandpa's house. Like, what do I how

do I say goodbye? Like, do I shake his hand? Do I say do I

just wave? And when he turned and told Albert

Mori that conversation that the little boy had to him, Albert Mori

literally opened his arms and just grabbed the little boy and hugged him. Like,

it's the first time he ever met the kid, and he treated him like a

grandson, like, right out the gate. Like and it's not that he

didn't see. And and and I say I I

gotta be careful how I word this because, like I said, a couple of the

people that that he that I want, like, some were black, some were white. Like,

it it and it's not that he didn't see color. He

saw the difference in their color, but he just didn't care. Like, it was that

the color it's not that the the color wasn't important or that

it didn't matter. It was more about the color

not being the reason Right. Or

whichever for whatever. Right? Like, the reason for good, the reason for bad, the reason

for what he just didn't allow the color to be the reason. Right.

But he appreciated all of it. Like, I just I found him fascinating.

The more and like I said, it didn't matter whether people were white, black,

brown, whether people were male or female. Every person that

I heard, in the interviews that I listened to over the weekend and now, like

I said, there was quite a few. I listened to, because I listened to them

on 1.75, by the way.

I I was able to get through literally, like, a dozen, like, a dozen

interviews with him over the weekend. And Yeah. Or not interviews with him.

Sorry. I listened to the interview that you sent me, but I also was listening

to people give speeches on his behalf, whether it was

accolades or introductions to an award that he won or

whatever. Mhmm. Mhmm. It just seemed like

and, again, like I said to you earlier, I'm putting him on my

list of people. Like, when you when you say, like, if you can talk to

anybody in history, like, you know, whatever note any time

frame, I would love to talk to him. I think he would be fascinating to

just sit and have a conversation with. I I was,

exposed to him because I'm a fan of jazz music. Right? And

so, I haven't really talked about this on the podcast in a long time, but,

my wife and I cofounded a jazz festival in, in our

local, our local town, because we're fans of jazz music.

We're fans of jazz musicians. We like hanging out

with them, and talking with them. We even bring our kids around them

because they tend to be because of the nature of jazz

music, and and Albert Marie would agree with this. Because of the nature of jazz

music, there's no room for at least

not in my time. There's no room for prejudice or discrimination. There's just not. Like,

you're either good or you're not. Right? And it doesn't matter if you're

it doesn't matter if you're an Asian cat. It doesn't matter if you're, you know,

if you're black. It doesn't matter if you're white. It doesn't matter if you're Native

American. It doesn't does not can you blow? Can you

play the drums? Can you bump on the cello?

Can you do the thing that needs to be done in an

improvizational sort of environment? Right?

And what I loved about Murray was he took that

concept, and I don't know whether it came first or came second. And

when I studied his life, one of the interesting things that

I noted was he didn't stay in America. He went

other places, and so he brought in his geopolitical,

his geopolitical, worldview and frame

to include folks from other places. Right? And,

you know, I think just like with a lot of people

who struggle, right, to

to navigate the racial and ethnic waters in America,

you don't really realize, black or white or whatever,

you don't really realize how unique America is until you have

to go someplace else. Yeah. And going from, you know, Morocco

to Massachusetts, is going to give you that kind of education.

You're going to see that. You're going to see how Arabs treat other Arabs.

Right? You're going to see how, Germans treat other

Germans. You're going to see how Russians treat other Russians.

And you're gonna be able to put that into a context, I think,

that is going to influence, or not influence,

but it's gonna you're gonna put it in context. It's gonna change how you think

about being an American. And then the improvisational pieces from

jazz come over because and this is the we

talk about this every year, in July when we talk about declaration of independence and

the constitution. So I'm gonna repeat it here because it's worth repeating.

The the thing that unites all of us as

Americans, the thing that brings us all

together, regardless of our skin color or ethnicity or

even religion, is a common creed. And

Murray talks about this in the Omni Americans. We

consistently are asking as people

in America. We are asking America to live up to the words of its

founding, and we are constantly pushing the words of its

founding and and constantly

critiquing and poking and

improvising, around those words. And so And

interpreting. And interpreting those words.

And interpreting those words. Correct. Right. Well, that goes along with the improvisation.

That's that's all part of jazz is that interpretation. And so,

you know, I found it interesting that one of his fellow students was Ralph Ellison.

You know, the two giant black literary figures of the nineteen

fifties were Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright.

And those two guys, I won't say they were big fans of each

other, but they operated in they operated in two different spheres,

kinda like Booker t Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. And we talked a

little bit about that on this podcast as well. But Murray

was seeking to, I think, make a broader

argument about the nature of what it means to be American

while avoiding the easy trap of,

well, it's just this race or it's just that race or it's just this era,

just avoiding the easy traps. And so he he's intellectually challenging to

read because you can see him improvising as he's writing,

and you can see it in, in the Omni Americans.

Okay. One other We just talked about too. Like, isn't it

it was, like, amazingly fascinating to me that to to find out

that when he taught at Tuskegee Mhmm. That he taught the

Tuskegee Airmen. Oh, yeah. I was like, that just blew my

mind. I was like, wait. What? Like, this guy, he was their

professor. He was their teacher. I was like, that was that that was just crazy

to me. That's that's You know, he was he was with that he

was in that generational intergenerum between World War one and World

War two. Right? He was born in that period. Yeah. And

that's the period. And most people in America don't really think about this, black or

white. But that was the period of black people

experiencing black excellence,

at the at the sort of the post civil war height, right, of

black excellence. There's the Harlem Renaissance. Right?

Seeing black people from from jazz players, speaking of jazz players, from jazz

players to football players. Right? Or not football. Sorry. Baseball or basketball

players. From from boxers to drug dealers. Right?

You know, everybody was seeking to be excellent,

not in opposition to white people, but in

in in but encased in their own identity. Right? We don't

need to define ourselves in opposition because we just are. By the

way, Zora Neale Hurston came out of that milieu too, in her

writing in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Right.

Okay. Let's let me ask you this question because this is gonna lead into what

does it mean to be an American because I wanna wanna talk about this because

this is this is fundamentally the question that Murray really pokes

at. In the introduction

to the Omni Americans, as I already mentioned, Murray stated,

quote, The United States is in actuality not a nation of black people and white

people. It is a nation of multicolored people. What do you think about

that? Well, it's funny it's funny that because

I I I read that quote as well, and I I found it fascinating

because and and those of you who've listened to this podcast before

have probably known that I I've done a I've done a lot of lectures

at the local colleges and universities here mostly on, you know, Native

American history and and, and culture.

And I tell the audience all the time, if your family has been in The

United States for more than five generations, you're probably

multicultural at this point. Whether you know it or not or whether you buy into

it or not or not buy into it, but, like, live it. Meaning, like,

it it's it's almost impossible for,

let's say, Irish or Italian families to come over here for

five whole generations and continue to marry into their own

race. It's almost impossible. Right? So, like, so if you've been here

now think about it. Like, so my my family has been here since

the sixteen hundreds. Like, you know, the my the the white the white side of

my family. You're telling me from 1600 till now, we didn't

intermarry with anybody else, but people from there's no

way. So I'm assuming that if you take my my 23

and me is probably gonna look like like a like a like one of the

like a like a cylinder, like a colander with all the holes in it. Like,

I I couldn't even imagine the the the the how

wide of the variety of races and cultures would be in

my history if I were to look at it that intently.

Right. So to your question, I found

this fascinating because I think it in my

brain, it it it kind of it speaks directly to

my own narrative. Right? Like, the whole idea of, like, the

color of your skin does not dictate who you are. The

history of your family dictates more of it than anything.

So, again, for all I know, I could have black relatives back in the

day, like, at some point back. Not that I identify as black, and I wouldn't

do that as as a as a matter of,

as a matter of my own identity, but it

it's and and I certainly wouldn't say because let's just say I don't know. Let's

say it's seven generations back that there was a a a, you know, a black

person in there somewhere. I would never in a million years say that I understood

the plight of the black person because seven generations ago, I had

somebody married into a black I mean, that's ridiculous. That doesn't that doesn't

have but but to his point and to and to what I was try

like, the way I'm trying to wrap this into my brain is

but I can still look at that ancestor seven generations

back regardless, black, white, red, brown, and still say they were

American. I know they were because they that's how long my family has been

here. So I could look at my own genetic makeup and

and see exactly what he's talking about because I don't I I

could eat very easily. I and, again, those of you who know me and if

you're looking at this video, I could very easily discount

and discredit my entire native heritage and just say that I'm white. It'd

be very easy for me to do. I don't think that serves

me anything, but I could. And I think I think that's

kinda what he was talking about. At least, again, when when I'm looking at it,

if you think of the black people in The United States today, regardless of the

actual color of their skin, if their history goes back to the slave days,

then, you know, or or back before. And and they Mhmm.

Again, seven generations, whatever. You you're just

American now. Like like Right. I I like, if

you're if you consider yourself Irish American or Italian

American, both of your parents are probably Italian. Both of

your parents are probably Irish. They both either your grandparents came over on

the boat or like, sure. I get that. But if you

say you're Irish American or Italian American, your family's been here

since eighteen o two, Come on. You're not Irish American anymore. You're just

American. Let's just be realistic about this. Like Well

So Yeah. Let's be realistic about this. Let's hear what Murray has to say about

this because he he hits this right early. He does. He hits this right

early in the Omni Americans. So let me pick up here.

And he says this, and I quote,

thus, though recognizing that the depths, which after all are bottomless, have

not yet actually been plumbed. There is no truly urgent reason to

trace the origin of US Negro style and manner any farther back in time than

the arrival of a Dutch ship of war in Virginia with a cargo of 20

black captives for sale in 1619, if indeed that far. By the

way, that's where the 1619 project comes in.

Negroes definitely were reluctant immigrants to the new world, but in view of the life

they had experienced in the land of their origin, they could hardly have regarded it

as a stronghold of individual freedom and limitless opportunity, nor could they have

been unmindful of the obvious fact that Africans, quote, unquote, back home, whereas

actively engaged in the slave trade as were the Europeans and Americans.

By the way, we have to point that out. Many contemporary

Americans, both black and white, obviously assume that the slave runners simply

landed their ships and overpowered the helpless natives at will. Such

was not the usual case at all. For the most part, such entrepreneurs bartered for,

quote, unquote, black ivory, much as the same for elephant tusks.

The whites, Negro historian Benjamin Quarles points out, did not go

into the interior to procure slaves. This they left to the Africans themselves.

Spurred on by the desire for European goods, one tribe raided another, seized

whatever captives it could, and marched them in coffles with the leather thongs around their

necks to coastal trading centers. It is all

too true that Negroes, unlike the Yankee and the backwoodsmen, were slaves whose legal status

was that of property. But it is also true, as things have turned

out even more significant, that they were slaves, and this is what

he italicizes, who were living in the presence of more human

freedom and individual opportunity than they or anybody else had ever seen

before. That the conception of being a free

man in America was infinitely richer than any notion of individuality in the

Africa of that period goes without saying. That's a

bombshell, by the way, of a statement right there. Yeah. Really

is. That's a bombshell of a statement. Like, when he when he when he when

I read that, I went, oh, oh, oh, and I

highlighted that because that's a bombshell of a statement

that most people don't think about. Back

to the book, that this conception was perceived by the black slaves as shown by

their history as Americans. And now he's going to back up his statement. The fugitive

slave, for instance, was culturally speaking, certainly an American and a magnificent one

at that. His basic urge to escape was, of course, only human, as was his

willingness to risk the odds. But the tactics he employed as well as the objectives

he was seeking were American, not African. In his

objectives, he certainly does not seem to have been motivated by any overwhelming nostalgia

for tribal life. The slaves who absconded to the fight for the British during

revolutionary war were no less inspired by American ideas than those who fought for the

colonies. The liberation that the white people wanted from the

British, the black people wanted from white people. By the

way, I laughed when I read that. As

for as for the tactics of the fugitive slaves, the underground

railroad was not only an innovation, it was also an extension of the

American quest for democracy brought to its highest level of epic heroism.

Nobody tried to sabotage the Mayflower.

Just pointing that out. There was no bounty on the heads of its captain, crew,

or voyagers as was the case of with all conductors, station masters, and passengers on

the northbound freedom train. Given the differences in circumstances, equipment, and above

all motives, the legendary exploits of white US backwoodsmen,

keelboatmen, and prairie schoolmen, for example, became

relatively safe when one sets them beside the

breathtaking escapes of the fugitive slave beating his way South to Florida,

west to the Indians, and North to faraway Canada through swamp and town

alike seeking freedom. Nobody was chasing

Daniel Boone. Or to take another area

of American experience, the pioneer spirit of American womanhood

is widely eulogized. But at no time in the history of the republic has such

womanhood ever attained a higher level of excellence than the indomitable heroism of runaway

slave named Harriet Tubman, who kidnapped over the 300 of her

fellow men out of bondage and of whom William h Seward once said, quote,

a noble or higher spirit or a truer seldom dwells in human form,

close quote. Harriet Tubman was, like Sojourner

Truth, already alleged in her time. Ralph Waldo Emerson,

Bronson Alcott, by the way, Bronson Alcott, I believe, was the father of

Louise May Alcott, the author of Little Women, and

Horace Mann, among numerous others of that golden era of national

synthesis, immediately and eagerly acknowledge what the dynamics of racial one

upsmanship have obscured for so many succeeding students of American civilization.

Tubman was not only an American legend, she also added a

necessary even if still misapprehended

dimension to the national mythology. Another

example in such an ethical figure as that of the mulatto fugitive abolitionist

and statesman named Frederick Douglass, contemporary American Negroes can find

all the fundamental reassurances as to their identity and mission as

Americans that the Joseph of Thomas Mann found in the man from

Ir Khashdim. Indeed, not even such justly canonized founding

fathers as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson represent a more splendid image and pattern for

the contemporary American citizenship of anyone. On balance,

not even Abraham Lincoln was a more heroic embodiment of the American

as self made man. After all, Lincoln, like

Franklin and Jefferson, was born

free.

I am reading this book, and I wanna fully acknowledge this,

as we are in the middle

of what the writers on sub Substack and the

folks on Twitter call a vibe shift,

but I think it's more like the ending of a political realignment.

And, by the way, our political parties go through this once every eighty years.

Eighty years ago, Democrats were, quite frankly,

not that great, and Republicans were, quite frankly,

on the side of civil rights. And there was a shift that

occurred, and Democrats became very much

in favor of civil rights, and Republicans backburned that

as a secondary consideration to making money. And

now we are having another shift eighty years later where eighty

years long from the civil rights movement where Republicans

have captured, if not almost all as

a party, a lot of the territory of civil

rights action. And if you don't believe me, if you're looking for actual

lived evidence of this,

Both the forty fifth president of The United States and the forty seventh president of

The United States increased funding for historical black

colleges and universities by the stroke of an executive pen

and did it without any fanfare. The Democratic president in

between just kinda passed on it when it was

offered to him. There has been a shift

in politics, but it takes a while for it to show up.

And when political realignments happen in

chaotic turnings like the one we're at the end of,

we always, as a people, ask the question that we've all been

asking for the last twenty years of chaos. What does it really

mean to be a, quote, unquote, American?

Now I might have gonna have a position on this, and Tom is gonna have

a position on this based on, as I said in my opening, where you stand

on the map, right, where you're starting from with the territory.

But we also ask this question when activists upheaval from populations

demanding that America as a political entity live up to the promises of

its founding. And when those calls begin to spread as

they were doing when Albert Murray was in his forties and fifties

from a younger generation of African American activists,

when those questions begin to spread, we also

get political upheavals and realignments.

But Murray figured out something that I think most of us have to

reremember, and I think we will reremember it as we come out of this

chaos and move along the other side of it by

2028 or so. The very people of The United

States live in tension. This is what, Murray

meant by we're not a nation of black people or white people. We're a nation

of multicolored people. That's how he framed the tension.

And we don't wanna look at the hard truth. And the hard truth is

this. All of us humans on this continent within this political and cultural

entity known as The United States, regardless of skin color, ethnicity, or

even religion, demand that we be treated as amorphous

and undefinable and,

specifically, that species human known as

American. We can't define it, but we

want to be treated that way.

Even to Tom's point in Tom's background, even the

folks who were here when all of us showed up on ships

and started doing what people do when they show up to new lands,

just walking around, making trouble, and spreading around.

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's I mean,

Albert Murray has hit on some has hit on a truth there. Right?

Like, we're I always ask this question whenever an

activist yells at me, and they do all the time. They're gonna we're gonna do

the color purple here coming up. They're gonna yell at me because of my take

on that. It's fine.

Where are we gonna go? Like, to your

point about Irish, Italian, whatever. Like, they're not no part nobody

who claims to be an Irish descent is going back to

Ireland for any reason whatsoever. Let's visit.

Right. Maybe have a Guinness and kiss the bloodstone. It's a You gotta kiss the

bloodstone and come right back. Or, like, they may go

to Italy to, like, have some some good pasta

and maybe look at the David, which, by the way, I wanna go to Italy

and look at David, and look at the Sistine Chapel, maybe go say hello to

the pope, and then go home. Tony

Soprano went to Italy to do more criminal stuff.

Like, he didn't go to Italy because he felt Italian.

What does it mean for leaders

to be Americans? First off, Tom, what does it mean to be an American? What

does that mean? Yeah. Go ahead. I'm gonna ask you the hard question. What does

it mean to be an American? I mean, you know, have

you ever seen I I think you and I might have talked about this briefly

at one point, but there's a scene in, was it the newsroom, I

think it was, where Yes. Daniel was sitting on stage, and there's a

a young a college girl that says, you know, why is America the best

country in the world or whatever? And the two it was like a panel discussion

and Yeah. Just goes off. And if you

actually sit there and listen to him,

it's like like, that that's that speech really

resonated with me. Right? Because to your point, and

and there's there's a lot of there there's another part to this too that it's

gonna sound like a little bit of double talk here, but there's

a there's a there's a lot of Americans that don't feel like America needs

to be the police of the world. Right? Like, we don't need to be the

big brother of the world. You know? We don't need to be uncle

Sam to every country across the world. So why is it

always our responsibility to go in there and either help negotiate

peace, support one of the, you know, support one of the

one of the fighting sides that are we feel are on the side of good

versus evil, whatever. But, like but inevitably, we

do. And part of it and if you go back to the the the

the, reference that I was making with the newsroom with Jeff Daniels

is because it's not about being the

richest country in the world or the high or the best

economics of the world, the land of the free home of the brave. Like, it's

it's not about your your rights and civil liberties that a lot of other

countries have today. The United States is not the only country in the world anymore

that is democracy. More than half the countries in the world right now are democracy.

They're considered a democracy. So Mhmm. They have a voice.

Their their population has a voice a voice. They can vote. They can get their,

you know, new leadership in there. All that stuff exists.

So when when you but but go now, again, like I said, it's gonna sound

a little bit like double talk because when you go back to what it means

to be an American, it's because at one point, we stood up for something that

was bigger than ourselves. Right. It's we stood up we

stood in the way of injustices as a

nation even though there were injustices happening within our

own borders Mhmm. It was still

something that we felt like like, yes,

there are injustices. Yes, there are things in our within our country that we don't

think are perfect, but we can work on them them internally. What we don't

wanna see is all of the things that are happening inside The US that are

injustices become plagues on the outside.

Like, they become, like, things that run the world into the ground on the other

side. So The United States stands on principle. And that well, let me rephrase

this. We used to stand on principle. Like I think I I

I think we still do. I think we still do stand on principle, but

I don't necessarily think that it is,

always our leaders that stand on principle. I think the average

American person on the street I do. I fundamentally believe this

because of the places I've been and the people that I've talked to. Yeah. You

know, any group of multicolored people in America, you get them in

a room together, and I'm not talking about the elites with the status. Forget those

people. They're out of the they're out of the conversation. They're playing different games in

a different sort of arena. But people who are making, you know, a hundred

thousand dollars or $50,000, which is the vast majority of people in The United States,

those people still have the American principle. They're they're matter of fact matter of

fact, they don't understand why the elites can't get to get

on board with the principle. But, I mean

but to your point, but I I think that's I think that's what it is.

Like, I think that we it's almost like

it's almost like we we sit we sit on a high horse viewing

everybody else beneath us as Americans, but yet we

don't recognize that we sit on the high horse. Right. Yeah.

No. I I think that that's really what it is. Right? Like, we we're gonna

we're gonna have some sort of moral high ground. We're gonna stand on that

moral high ground, and we're gonna shout from the rooftops that we

are standing on the moral high ground even even when

the moral high ground is not so high. Right? Like, it like, we're we're not

Well well, what is it? We stand collectively on this moral high ground.

Now, again, if you go back to, like, we're not always on the same page.

Sure. But when we're not on the same page, we, generally

speaking, are still trying to do the right thing. That's, like, that's the

principle of it. Like, we feel like we stand on the on the right

side of, of of the thought process.

And we just want we want to make sure that nobody else feels like

they're they're getting suppressed like that in other

which is why we we still feel now we can complain all we want about

maybe we spend a little bit too much money. Maybe we spend a little bit

too much time or resources policing the rest of the world. Sure. You

wanna you wanna cut that budget down, I I'm okay with that, but that doesn't

mean that we just don't do it anymore. Pre pre World War two or pre

World War one, when if you think about pre World War one, the United

States had a a a federal a a national, essentially,

a national, not motto, but it was

basically a a rule of thumb where we just didn't get involved in international politics.

We stayed to ourself. We wanted, like, we wanted to control what we could

control and let the rest of the world fall to shit. Sorry. Excuse my

language. But post World War one, when we were forced to get

involved in that war, that just went out the window.

So now, like and there's some shift now that people are like, well, we should

probably get back to at least a little semblance of that in which,

again, would be cutting funding to, you know, underprivileged

third world countries, you know, cutting funding for, you know, our

military allies. Like, you know, like, sure. If you wanna cut some but we

can't just be nonexistent anymore. That that those days are gone. Right. So

Well, well, they also But but we do feel, to your point, as Americans, what

makes us Americans is that we do feel like we are on the moral high

ground throughout the rest of the world. Right. Well, and and an inch above when

you're standing on a platform, an inch above somebody else, you are high. I mean,

you are technically speaking higher than them, which is an inch, but

it's high. Or you're just high. Or you're just high. Right? Yeah.

Exactly. Now I think, you know, I think what you said

there is very important. I would also add

that the we used to have leaders. This is a leadership podcast,

and this is one of my bugaboos for many years. We used to

have leaders that explained to people

what the hell they were getting into. So Roosevelt explained to

people what the hell they were getting into. Even

even Truman and Eisenhower explained to

people what they were getting into. And it's

that lack of explanation, I think, that's frustrating people in

addition to bureaucratic opaque

systems where no one seems to have any accountability. Meanwhile,

I'm walking around the world, and I've got accountability left and right.

And if I screw up, my kids don't eat. If I screw up,

I get fired. If I right. You know? So so there's this

disconnect. Right? So we have an opaque bureaucratic system

where no one or where very few leaders are bothering,

and I'm looking congress, I'm looking at you directly. You should be doing this.

But very few people explain to the population what they're

doing. Instead, you have activist talk or,

you know, getting money from donors, from people, you

know, that $5,000 a plate deals, you know, and not engaging in

leadership. People,

every person across the world wants leadership.

This is a failure. Most of our problems in the last twenty years have been

failures of leadership. By the way, both Republican and Democrat, I'm

paying you both with the same brush. You you failed leadership. Okay?

Lofty rhetoric or just telling me to go shopping is not leadership.

It's it's dame that ain't it. Then the other dynamic that I

think exists inside of there is

and I think this is very important. We've

always had and you see this in when you study the the history of the

constitution. So one of the interesting things that came out when I

was studying the history of the Federalist Papers was that Patrick Henry, mister

give me liberty or give me death, right, who was a great polemicist and

narrator and or not narrator, sorry, orator and, had

great oratory skills. Right? He was supposed to go to

the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, at the end of

the revolutionary war. Thomas Jefferson actually told him

to go as a representative of Virginia and Kentucky at the

time. And Patrick Henry and this

is this is what I'm talking about. Patrick Henry turned

Thomas Jefferson down. Because back then, Thomas Jefferson wasn't

Thomas Jefferson. He's just some dude. Right? Which I think is great.

And Patrick Henry was like, no. I'm not gonna go. And the letter that the

line he has in the letter is, that he writes, and you can find this

in the anti federalist papers, I think. He basically says,

I smell a rat. I want the articles of confederation left

where they the way they are. I don't wanna be united with the rest of

these people. Leave me alone. And that

streak and and

Murray references this with the Yankee backs back woodsmen.

There is a streak of people that came over here on boats, and now

it's it's it's in the DNA of the culture who who

don't want government

of any kind telling them what to do. They want to be their own kings,

and this is the place as far as they're concerned, this is the

place where they can be their own kings. And so just leave them alone. Dorel

and I were talking about this when we were talking about the Federalist Papers and

the Anti Federalist Papers a couple years ago on the show. And Dorel made

this good point. He said, leave them alone and let them go up into the

hills. Just leave them alone. Let those people go up in the hills. Because, like,

if you go up in the hills and you try to, like if the FBI

FBI does not go into the hills of, like,

North Carolina Yeah. Appalachian. Right. Just leave those people alone.

Just leave them alone. Why would you follow them there? That's why why do you

think the Cherokee went there in the Trail Of Tears? They left they just they

weren't following them there. The the there was a a certain number of people from

the Cherokee Nation that went up in the North Carolina Hills. And,

technically, the federal didn't follow them. They just they took everybody else. They just went,

just leave me alone. I don't wanna be part of your

game. I don't wanna play. And so that streak,

which is a counter tension to the streak of we need to

go out and help other people in the world, that's a massive tension in

America. And it gets exposed when we have chaotic times. When we

don't know what's going on when when we have failures of, failures of leadership.

Okay. So how do leaders define themselves then in in The

United States Of America? I always sort of define what it means to be an

American full attention and all of that. How do

leaders define themselves, their teams, and their cultures in

The United States Of America?

If I'm start because if I'm starting a company and I have more than one

person or, actually, not even more than one. I got one person. Congratulations. I'm a

leader. And that person more likely than not is an American. More likely than

not. So, what how do they

define themselves? And, I'm not sure I'm not sure I understand the

question. Like Well Do they, like We haven't we've

never really talked about this on the show, but

should let me frame it let me frame it this way. Should leaders

allow all of that

external stuff that doesn't seem to matter to the mission to come

in to how they're running their their thing, running

their team, or running their culture. Because, like, I'm just thinking of a conversation I

just had with somebody who's leading me, right, on a project that I'm working on.

I literally just had it before I came here, on the before we hit record.

And that person's perspective

is uniquely American even though

their skin color is closer in pigmentation to mine.

They're still an American. Like, there's things that come out of their mouth that

that you wouldn't you wouldn't hear come out of there's just assumptions,

not even things come out of their mouth. There's assumptions that are built into how

they view the world, which is what Murray talks about, an assumption of freedom and

assumption of individual agency. And I love it when he makes

the point in, in that section in the only Americans that we just read.

You know, Harriet Tubman wasn't trying to get folks on the underground railroad

back to Africa. Yeah. Wasn't what it wasn't what she was

trying to do. You know?

Yeah. You know, the funny thing that you just so there's,

I mean, there's also I think

I think it comes down there there's a lot there's a lot to unpack there,

by the way. Oh, yeah. Because There's a lot Like, you think about, like like,

from a leadership perspective, like, what is the culture of your company?

What is the because I remember growing you know, coming into the

professional workforce. So, you know, when I was outside of my,

you know, my my high school days and the the little side jobs that you

do in high school. But when you start hitting the professional thing, your professional

landscape, and they're like there's, like, these

unwritten rules, right, that your that leadership kind of can talk,

like, shouldn't be talking politics in the office. You shouldn't,

like, you know, don't talk about religion in the office because

well, they just they because they're not they're not equipped

to handle that kind of conflict resolution. Right? Like, if

Mhmm. If if you have two employees that just one's a Democrat, one's a

Republican, and they just hate each other beyond belief, and you can't make

them work with each other, like, how does that just translates that you're a bad

leader? Whereas if you just kinda don't

allow the conversations to happen in the first place and you don't know what your

political views are or their their political view they don't know what your political views

are, but you guys can coordinate to to get this project done just

fine. Like, I I don't know. There there's a there's a there's a there's a

lot of weird oddities there, right, that you just gonna have to decide

what kind of now there's another there's on the flip side to this. There

you can say that I'm the kind of leader that stands for this, that

wants this, that wants my team to react like this. And if you

can't get on board with that, then you shouldn't be here. So it's not it's

not about democrat and republican. It's not about Catholic and and

Judaism, or it's not, like, it's not a religious thing. It's not it's about

it's about principles and morals and and and, like, we're going to do this.

Now you can sit there and say, well, I'm a Democrat, you're a

Republican, or you're I'm a Republican, you're a Democrat, and we don't see eye to

eye on anything. But if you don't know what your political stands are

or stances are, but yet your company culture

dictates this, this, this, and this, and you can stand behind that, does it

really matter? Mhmm. You know, like, the the the Mhmm. Does your

political view really matter? I I I love our current

administration. I hate our current administration. I don't care about our current administration

because they're gonna be gone in a couple years. Like Right. You know, does any

of that really matter if you have a project in front of you that needs

all of your attention and that you can actually get something done? Like,

stop talking about it. Like, you know, we don't talk about Bruno.

Right. You know? Like, it's now, again, is

that fair? No. Is is it is it is it, like, is it fair

to to to say that when you're in your work place that you're that certain

topics are off limits, that you shouldn't be able to express yourself?

I mean, maybe not. I don't know. Like, again, it goes back to, like, think

about a couple years ago in the NFL when they were a lot of these

players were kneeling down, and and there was a lot of debate on who gets

to control that. And then we found out we found out by by

the way. And for those of you who don't know this

Go ahead. It can be controlled. This is an employer

employee conversation. Turns out Turns out all

those billionaires work for somebody. Right. These

people can be told don't do that or you're fired. Like,

I was I was even baffled by this. I was like, wait. What? This is

I think that's a first amendment kind of violation. And

I guess it's not if it's an yeah. Your employer dictates

how you act when you're being employed. So and I was like, holy

crap. Amendment if you're getting a paycheck. Right. Exactly.

So, anyway, so so when you're asking, like like, what, like, what

are leaders supposed to how do they define themselves? I

I I think I think that you've you've got you've got a handful of

things that that you have to be very selective about. Right. You

have you have principles. You have, like, guiding principles that

that tell you or dictate to you that in order for me to

make money, satisfy

these this moral compass or these principles that I stand

on. And if I can't stand on these principles and make that money, then

I don't take that money. And I think that's a very powerful thing for

employees to see because then you can decide what kind

of company you wanna work for, what kind of leader do you wanna work for,

and it's relatively clear and transparent that this company

like, we talk about, in in another project that you and I

are are are partnering in. We talk about being public benefit

corporations, companies like Patagonia, where their, like, their

mission is to save the environment in one jacket at a time or

whatever, however they word it. I I I'm not a marketing person for them, so

I have no idea how they word it. But and I don't buy their a

lot of their products just because they're expensive, but not had not no other reason

than that. But but if you wanna go work for Patagonia

and you say, alright. I I know if I go to work for these companies,

I will never have to bend on this principle, and that's why I

wanna go work for them, that's great. If you can define yourself on

principle, you can define yourself on moral compass. You what you

in my opinion, and this is just my opinion, what you just can't

define yourself was on profit margin. Like, when you tell

people I'm gonna be the kind of leader that just makes us all a lot

of money, that seems to be the weakest link in

that chain of how I can define myself.

Yeah. Well, it it it only really works, and then we'll go

back to the book. I just wanna I wanna say something about that because I

think you've hit on something there as well. Profit margin only really

works when everyone is getting

rich together. Yeah. And almost

at almost no time is 100% everyone getting rich together.

Like, it's just, you know, that's just sort of react not sort of that's

just reality. So there's gonna be stratifications. There's

gonna be people in the middle, there's gonna be people at the bottom, there's gonna

be people at the top. And

we are we are so historically and culturally,

and I can see it when I read books from authors like Albert Murray who

were writing in the sixties and seventies or Eldridge Cleaver who we just covered on

the podcast for the Soul on Ice. Right? Or

Malcolm x. Right? We are hidebound.

Regardless of political party. We are hidebound to a

phantasmagoric vision of the middle of the twentieth century that

probably wasn't the truth.

And that vision of the middle twentieth century was a

vision of, if you're a Democrat, you know, top tax

rate was, you know, 65%. You know,

Franklin Delmar Roosevelt, there'll be no wartime millionaires, and then we're gonna, you

know, we're gonna reduce that to, we're gonna reduce that

to, to, to 40%, and it's gonna stay that way until Kennedy. And

he's only gonna bring it on, like, 30%, and then Reagan only really brought it

down to, like, 20% or something like that. And we're

gonna take your we're gonna take your money. Right? But corporations are gonna respond to

that by getting in bed with unions, who

are going to engage in policies by pitting one

employer against another across the street, and it's all gonna work out. And that's if

you're on if you're on the left. If you're on the right, you know,

a man can make enough money to be the sole provider, the sole

breadwinner in his home, and the woman can

stay home and raise the kids, and there's social

norming that comes from the neighborhood. It comes from

people, knowing who their neighbors are. It comes

from people understanding, that religion,

whether you believe in it or not, is an irrelevancy, get you behind church

heathen. Like like, you know, this and this is from the right, like, the

cultural things. Right? And so we're both both the right and the left in America

are hidebound to this vision of the mid twentieth century.

And because people change and times change even

though they don't always change that much. But

people change, people change, times change, and so we move forward. Right?

And, again, a failure of leadership. Right? We don't have leaders.

And I used to think it would be the elite leaders as I already mentioned,

but now I think it has to be the guy or the

woman who's in that business, who has to be the example of

leadership. I I I I got on this a couple years ago. I don't

think we can rely on the congressman or

even the mayor of your town, and I won't even go as high as the

president. Forget that guy, or even your your national congressman.

Your local congressman, your local mayor, can't be the

leader for you. You've gotta be the leader. You've gotta be the leader in your

family. You've gotta be the leader in your community. I don't care whether you're a

man or a woman. It doesn't matter to me. Be the leader. Right? Be the

person who who who who stands up and does that because that's the only way

we're going to evolve into something else from that hidebound,

phantasmagoric vision that we all seem to be trapped by. By the way,

here's a side note on that. I have I've been thinking lately

that five hundred years from now when they write the history of this era and

we're all dead and gone and the podcast is scrubbed from the Internet and it

won't matter. It's gonna be archived, Tae

san. We're gonna we're gonna live we're gonna live forever. It could be archived.

Oh god. Please. Please no. Please just scrub me from

the Internet. It's fine. But, five hundred years from now when they write the

history of this era and everybody who lived here is gone,

I wonder if they will look at the mid twentieth century as being an

outlier, not the norm, the outlier. You know?

Because there were certain unique historical

things that occurred, particularly between 1939 and

1945, that were linchpinned that everything else

circled around. And it took people a while to figure out, to Google a

half century, almost a full century to figure out how to get back to a

norm. I've been thinking about that quite a bit. And that

has that has implications for leaders. That has implications for leaders in

communities. That has implications for leaders in towns and cities,

and even implications for leadership in your family. You know?

We can't be hidebound by the past. I mean, think about it this way.

We have an entire generation of people that's being born right now, of which my

youngest son who's eight is part of that generation, who have

zero historical memory of the twentieth century at

all. It will always be a history book thing for

them. It won't be something that they were born into. It will be something that

is way past to them.

And for many of us, that's weird to think about.

Yeah. But that's happened that's happened already a few times. Right? Like, if you think

about it, like, all all the westward expansion, manifest

destiny, all that stuff up until 1890 Right. You were born in the

early, you know, like like, Albert Murray here was born in

'25 1316. Right? Nineteen sixteen.

To him, that entire thing was a history book. Right.

Right. Oh, I'm not saying it hasn't happened before. Yeah. Yeah. I was saying, like

so we talk about this a lot. And and and and my favorite phrase has

been on this podcast about a hundred times so far, which is like, the more

things change, the more things stay the same. Like, we've got we

keep doing the same thing over and over.

It's like the human phrase is the definition of insanity. It's it's the

human condition. A a good friend of our a mutual friend of ours,

would say that in his, in his courses. It's his ethics courses.

It's the human condition. And he's exactly right. He's not wrong. It's the human

condition. You know? Alright. Back to

the book. Here's another piece of the human condition, transferring wisdom. Talk about going

from generation to generation. How do you do that?

Alright. Back to the book. Back to the Omni Americans by

Albert Marie And I

quote, as an art form, the blues idiom, by its very nature,

goes beyond the objective of making human existence bearable physically or

psychologically. The most elementary and hence the least dispensable

objective of all serious artistic expression, whether Aboriginal or sophisticated,

is to make human existence meaningful.

Mayad's primary concern with life is to make it as significant as possible, and the

blues are part of this effort. The definitive

statement of the epistemic the epistemicological

assumptions that underlie the blues idiom may well be the colloquial title

and opening declaration of one of Duke Ellington's best known dance tunes from the mid

thirties. By the way, I love that sentence. He managed to put in epistemological,

idiom, and colloquial all in the same sentence. Love this guy.

Of Duke Ellington's best known dance tune from the mid thirties,

quote, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.

In any case, when the Negro musician or dancer swings the blues, he is

fulfilling the same fundamental existential requirement that determines

the mission of the poet, the priest, and the medicine man. He's making an affirmative

and, hence, exemplary and heroic response to that which Andre

Malraux describes as la conditien humane, the

human condition. Extemporizing in response to

the exigencies of the situation in which he finds himself, he is confronted,

acknowledging, and he is confronting, acknowledging, and contending with the infernal

absurdities and ever impending frustrations inherent in the nature of all existence

by playing with the possibilities that are also there. This does

not mean the player becomes the man. The player become man,

the stylizer, and by the same token, the humanizer of chaos. And thus

does play become ritual, ceremony, and art, and thus does

also the dance beat improvisation of experience in the blues idiom becomes

survival technique, aesthetic acquire equipment for living, and a central

element in the dynamics of US Negro lifestyle. When the

typical Negro dance orchestra plays the blues, it is also playing with the blues. When

it swings, jumps, hops, stomps, bounces, drags, shuffles, rocks, and so on, its

manner not only represents a swing of the blues attitude toward the bad news that

comes with facts of life, it also exemplifies and generates a riffing the blues

disposition toward the rough times that beset all human

existence. The blues idiom dancer, like

the solo instrumentalist, turns disjunctures into continuities. He is

not disconcerted by intrusions, lapses, shifts in

rhythm, intensification of tempo, for instance, but is inspired

by them to higher and richer levels of improvisation. As a matter of fact, and

as the colloquial sense of the word suggests, the break in the blues idiom

provides the dancer his greatest opportunity, which at the same

time is also his most heroic challenge and his moment of

greatest jeopardy. By the way, that's that's an excellent description of what happens

in a blues in a blues song or even in a jazz song.

But then impromptu heroism, such as is required of the most agile

storybook protagonists, is precisely what the blues tradition has evolved to

condition Negroes to regard as normal procedure.

Nor is there any other attitude towards experience more appropriate to the

ever shifting circumstances of all Americans or more consistent with the

predicament of man in the contemporary world at large.

Indeed, the blues idiom represents a major American innovation of

universal significance and potential because it fulfills, among other things,

precisely that fundamental function that Constance Roark

ascribes to the comedy, the irreverent wisdom, the sudden changes in

adroit adaptation she found in the folk genre of the Yankee back woodsman

Negro of the era of Andrew Jackson. It provides,

quote, emblems for pioneer people who require

resilience as a prime trait.

I like that description of what's happening in the blues,

because you can see it on the floor. You can see it when you go

to a blues club or when you go to a jazz club.

You can also see it in the struggle

that people have, and this is why I read that section, the struggle that people

have in

distributing through improvisation and idiom,

not necessarily dance, but this idea that Murray has of style.

You're transmitting wisdom. What have you learned from this

improvisation? What can other people pick up from it?

And, this is not something new. I mean,

everybody, has struggled with wisdom transfer. When I was writing

this script, I thought of, some of the

sections in bury my heart at wounded knee. Right? When the old men were talking

to the young men and wanted to go off and fight the white people, wanted

to kill them all, and let god sort them out. And, well,

you know, that's the heisan, translation. And

and the old the old man the old men were like,

it might not be a good idea.

Or you see it in feminist writings when we cover books by Zora

Neale Hurston or Virginia Woolf, talking about

and and engaging in opposition to older female writers like,

Jane Austen or earlier female writers like Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte.

Right? You also and African

American writers, like Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver,

who were in rank opposition to the wisdom of a

previous generation. There's a excellent essay in Eldridge Cleaver's

book, Soul on Ice, where he describes being on the prison

yard, and an older black man basically

shuts the young bucks up with some wisdom that they don't want to hear.

And they don't have anything to say.

It is probably his best essay in that book.

Wisdom. Wisdom

can come through culture transfer. Right? And in The United States, we do have

unique pieces of culture. We have blues. We have jazz. We have

baseball. I threw movies in there and cinema even though we

ripped that off from the French and then made it better. We're

we're almost the BASF of countries. Oh, we did. Oh,

we did. That's I mean, come on. Let's be real here.

I I wasn't arguing. Pardon pardon my French, you

know, viewers and listeners when was the last great French film?

Don't worry. I'll I I await with bated breath your emails and

your tweets. But, you know, when we

think about the modes of cultural transfer,

and wisdom transfer, those idiomatic identifiers of class,

culture, and race also come through, and they also impact that

wisdom transfer. But eventually, they fall away, right, revealing

the core elements that need to be reserved over the course of time.

We have a real struggle in our own era because of technology.

The writer, that we just covered, on the podcast,

Walter Benjamin, talked about this in the nineteen thirties, and the storyteller

talked about how the novel basically destroyed the oral tradition. The

technology of the novel and the technology of the printing press destroyed the oral

tradition. And I I am of the opinion

that cell phones and social media and the Internet in

general, because cell phones and social media sort of built on top of that.

But the Internet in general has destroyed wisdom transfer because everything is

right now. Everything is in the present. Right?

To your point earlier, you know, about me being scrubbed from the Internet. Yeah.

I might be archived in the Internet Wayback Machine, but eventually, no one's

gonna care. Right? Because I'm in the Internet Wayback

Machine. I think this is a real challenge for

leaders, and I think it is one of the core things that we are struggling

with. And so, Tom, how can we transfer wisdom,

particularly to the young bucks that don't wanna hear it from generation to

generation?

This this, again, is is probably one of the tougher questions here

because, again, like, to your point so

sometimes how well, let me let me rephrase

your question because I think there's a there's a component that's missing from the

question. So how do leaders transfer wisdom across generations

without compromise? That, like Okay. There there's because

because the transfer of wisdom with

compromise is a lot easier, and it's a lot easier to stomach.

For example, you know, I'll just take our own culture, as

a a very easy or quick example. Right? So

Mhmm. You're you're teaching a a younger kid how to

a a particular dance. Let's say, like, a men's northern fancy dance or something like

that. Not that any of your listener our listeners are gonna have a clue what

I'm talking about, but let stay with me for a second. So when

you're trying to transfer that wisdom into why the regalia is designed the

way it is, what it's supposed to look like, what it means to

to wear that regalia, and then enter the circle and dance in a particular

style that's very traditional and generational. It's been

crossing generations for for a long time. And that younger kid

says, but I don't my moccasins

hurt my feet. Can I wear my sneakers? And you compromise

and say, yeah. It's just a pair of sneakers. Go ahead. Go wear your

sneakers. Right?

Where the like, so as a as a leader, you have to

decide, is the wisdom of that

overall dance, regalia style, dance

style, education behind why it exists, where it exists, and

for what, is it important enough to compromise this

one thing that he doesn't wanna wear moccasins and he wants to wear

sneakers? And if the answer is yes, then that transfer of

wisdom from generation to generation is successful. If

it is not and you try to reinforce why they should be wearing the

moccasins and it's lost on them and they don't wanna dance

anymore because moccasins hurt their feet, and

they they're not gonna dance unless they can wear their sneakers.

Right? Like so, again, it's they're I think I think

I think generational wisdom transference

has compromise all over the place, and we just don't recognize it

because it's subtle. Or at least I don't

think we we try we we try to view it as

transfer of knowledge or transfer of wisdom, but there's always these

compromises that we are so subtly willing to to give into.

And I think that for us to stand firm and

say we're not giving into these compromises anymore, I think

that would be devastating. I think the I think that the younger generation would just

stop listening to us altogether. There's also

there's also there's a different style of transfer of wisdom

where you're not physically preaching and teaching or you're

physically not talking, but I'll give you another another example

of this. I have five children. My youngest daughter was

almost never punished. She was almost never in trouble.

And from an outsider looking in, they go, it's because she was the

baby and she was spoiled. No. It's because she

watched what her older brothers and sisters got in trouble

for and didn't do those things. Didn't do those things. Yeah.

She was she was a she was a student. She was a

student of her environment. She didn't need anybody to transfer that

wisdom to her. She did it on her own by watching and observing what

was happening in our family unit and saying, I'm not

doing that. So can that happen in the workforce? Absolutely. I did the same

thing when I was really early in my career, I worked in the restaurant industry,

and I was trying to move up the the managerial chain, so to

speak, and become a general manager. And every manager that I

worked under, if they got in trouble for something, mental note,

I'm not doing that. Whatever that guy just got in trouble for, got yelled at

about, or got rid like, I'm not doing that. I'm gonna make a note. I'm

gonna learn from that on my own. Nobody has to teach me that. Nobody has

to tell me that. I'm gonna observe it and learn it on my own. I

think part of what we're seeing and what you're talking about, especially from the social

media components, people aren't doing that anymore.

People aren't observing. Like, people are seeing people get famous on TikTok or

whatever, not realizing that they're sacrificing their entire family unit.

They're not spending real quality time with their family. They're they're suffering

from loneliness and depression and all this other stuff. But they're

what they're learning is look at the number of likes that they get or number

of followers they get or number of views they get on their videos. It's

it's the the the the transfer of wisdom

is still there. Well, let me rephrase this. The transfer of

information is still there, but is it truly wisdom? Is Yeah. Again, another

part of the question. Because that's another thing that you know? And that's the the

younger generation, when they're looking at us and we're

trying to explain something or tell, I can't even tell you, Haysan,

how many times my youngest son has come to me and said the words,

dad, you were right. Because I don't

force feed it down his throat anymore. I tell him my thoughts. I give him

my opinions. I tell him what I would do, and then he goes and does

his own thing. He makes his own mistakes. And then when he comes back and

says, dad, you were right. I go, okay. Now do you want help

fixing this? And then the answer is yes, and it's genuine. He actually wants

it. If we don't allow young people to make some of their own mistakes, then

this transfer of wisdom is not gonna happen either.

So okay. So you said a bunch of different things there, and I think I

said a lot of things. Yeah. I said a lot of things there, and they're

all valuable. No. I I think

so. The thing that I land on is the

the challenge of holding the line. And it's not really the challenge of holding the

line. It's the challenge of knowing where the line is.

So

if I

I'll pick something obvious. Right? So,

yeah, I'll pick an outrageous obvious one. Murderers, murderers, murderers all the

time. Right? Like, you you okay. Like okay.

And yet we

can have conversations, and we do with this society,

both about abortion and the death penalty, although

less about the death penalty as of late, of

the last ten or fifteen years that has sort of faded out of the public

conversation. But I I think I think that'll start coming back in in a few

years here as well as conversations about euthanasia.

And, you know, remember Jack Kevorkan? Fourteen. Yeah. That's gonna come

back. You know? I think. Physician assisted suicide. There you go.

Yeah. Well, even that even that even that that that acronym

right there, right? Physician assisted suicide, right? And as a

person who's fascinated by language, I am

convinced more and more every day that

the battle of reality is a battle of who owns the dictionary, who gets to

define the words that are in it, and who gets to define what words

even go in it in the first place. So I guess the

question out of all of that that comes to me is because I loved your

example about sneakers versus moccasins.

What is the line we're preserving there? Can we

articulate that? Can we articulate why the

moccasins are better than the sneakers? And can we do

it in a way that honors

the person who wants to wear sneakers,

but that also honors or or or creates

a great chain of being going back to the people who

wore moccasins. And by the way, by the way,

this is sort of what I think about. I always not always. When

conversations like this occur and when we're making points like

this, I think of my grandma. Right?

And my grandmother would have ordered groceries off the Internet if she'd had

it in, like, 1930 whatever, And she woulda

used that. So it's not the sneakers maybe. It's the line.

It's the chain of being, right, from the moccasins to the

sneakers. How do we talk with people about that? How do we do

that in a way that's compelling for them to even listen to? Because to your

point, it can just come off as information and

not actual

wisdom. Yeah. So I I again, it's

it's I I think I

think part of it is I think part of it is, is

principally driven. Right? So so, again, I'll I'll give you and and,

again, to to your point, I'm not gonna sit here and and and

view or judge the way that somebody teaches their family

and their compromise, and I'm not gonna judge them based on my

what I'm willing to compromise and not compromise. Because just for the record,

all not not a single one of my kids would dare step foot in this

in one of our ceremonial circles with sneakers on. They were they were in their

moccasins. If they're in regalia, they're in their moccasins. It's that simple. And I

think part of it is because I I feel like from

a family perspective, we put a lot we put a tremendous

amount of weight on

if if our if our most recent

ancestor was alive Mhmm. Would they approve?

If the answer is to your point and and by the way, there are a

lot of things, that they would approve on. For

and for example, like, we my my, my mentor

and father-in-law and and and teacher, who passed away in

02/2020, he would say all the time, like,

why would you not use a hand drill, like a power drill? Our

ancestors would use that if they had it available. Right? Like, they they would use

that. Now would our ancestors use sneakers instead of

moccasins in the circle? Probably

not. And the reason I say that is because sneakers are not new.

Sneakers have been around for a hundred years. Mhmm. And

our ancestors from seventy five years ago did wouldn't wear

sneakers in there. Fifty years ago, wouldn't wear sneakers in there.

This is a very modern thing that the next generation is

trying to do. Mhmm. So it's, you know,

it's we don't have to go back two hundred years. This is not something that

we're, like, we're trying to hold on to for no reason. Like, this is something

that that now now, again, I go back let me

switch gears gears here because there's a completely different and if anybody listens

to this podcast that happens to be native, I'm gonna make a little bit of

a distinction here, a distinction with a difference. Mhmm. You're at a

powwow that's a competition powwow versus a powwow that's a

ceremonial powwow. It's different. When you're at a

competition powwow, the comfort of your feet are important. You

also can't slip and fall. And there's a lot of things that sneakers

actually there's a benefit to versus a ceremonial powwow

where it's not about that. It's not about competition. It's not

about winning. It's not about winning a a a pry piece of, you know, prize

money or it's not about that. It's about paying homage

to our ancestors. That's the the point of it.

So, again, there's a little bit of a distinction with a difference there. So

very traditional people who are who

go to these two different versions of pow wows may have two different pieces

of wisdom to give to their kids, grandkids, great grand grandkids as they're

learning how to interact with this environment. So

from a leadership perspective in the workforce, maybe there's a similar

applications here where it's, you know, do as

I say, not as I do in this case, but, you know, not in this

one. Like, I I'm gonna lead by example in this case, but do as I

say, not as I do in this case, and it may make sense. But as

a leader, you have to make it make sense. You can't just you you can't

just say and and call it martial law. Like, it doesn't work that

way, especially today's workforce. Today's workforce needs to know the why.

They need to have an understanding of like, you're asking them to run through a

brick wall, and I'm willing to do it, but I need to know that my

willingness to do it is gonna be worth it for both myself, my

both for you, myself, and my principals. So I I

think there's there's, again, there's a I think that could be a podcast all by

itself. Like, these these kinds of this kind of question. Well

and it's it's but it's it is the you're right. And it is it is

the question that we are going to be covering on this podcast for the

remainder of the year. It's it's one of those things that I think is going

to be key for us as leaders to wrap our arms around,

particularly as we switch over from being

in and I and, again, I'm gonna keep saying it. I'm gonna speak it into

reality. As we switch over from being

in in chaos, and in chaotic

times to being in what I do fundamentally believe is

going to be a cultural high. I do. I I

I think we're I think we're I think we're poised for that. People are tired

of the chaos. People are tired of nonsense.

People do want wisdom. That's the they they finally come around to this is

the thing we're missing. We do need to get back on track. A lot of

the things that we've talked about here today and what does on track mean, what

does wisdom mean, these are conversations that are worth while to, to

have, and every generation has them.

It's just how are we going to get

that knowledge across? How are we going to get that wisdom across?

You know, every generation has to relearn the wisdom of the previous generation just considered

to be table stakes. Right? I mean, this this is what you show up for,

and this is what what it is around

understanding reality and existing in the world and preserving the gift

of feedback. I also think that

there's some technologies, and I'm I'm kind of obsessed with this idea now.

There's some technologies that are better for transmitting this wisdom.

So, you know, I don't know that I'm

I'm not down on the novel. Otherwise, why would I be doing this podcast?

But, I do think that there are

some inherent challenges in the fragmentation of information,

that we haven't really we haven't really gotten our arms

around. And and what I worry about, and

I've said this you said this last year on the podcast, I maybe

not worry. What I caution, right, is that

people our age who did go through all the chaos and do have genuine

wisdom, I don't wanna see us shuffled to the

side like those pair of moccasins just left in the corner.

Right? Because

because the kinds of things we've learned from from going through the hard

chaos of the last twenty years at various

levels, is valuable. There is a value to that,

and it does need to be, it does need to be transmitted.

Alright. Final thoughts on Albert Murray, final thoughts on the Omni Americans

as we close today. Last word,

Tom.

I I, honestly, I think if somebody's listening to this podcast and it sparks

their interest even a little bit, googling this guy

is easy. And there is like I said, I there's a

tremendous amount of information about him, not even just

about, not sorry. Not about not even just him

himself doing interviews, but the sheer volume of people that

speak about this guy in in the ways and and

the the the but it it's it's fascinating.

So the the last word for me would be, if anything on this

podcast had has struck your attention or really has has resonated with you and you

wanna learn more about Albert Murray, I would highly recommend

you go and just Google the guy and start listening to some of the interviews

with him. I I saw an interview with him, the one you shared with,

Hamilton, College. I saw an interview with him,

with Charlie Rose, who was a

journalist back in the day. Like, either they did a TV show. I forgot what

the name of the TV show was, but it was a Yes. He did. Charlie

Rose show. Yeah. And he he interviewed him, and the interview with him was

was exceptionally well done. There was another, there was

another thing that was doing it was like believe it or not, it was an

anti Semitism,

not convention, but it was an anti Semitism

The A conference or something? Collective or conference or something like that. Yeah. There

were several, I mean, several doctoral,

people talking about him and his works and how he how

how they interacted with, you know, modern society and why it's

important. And the fact that the guy wrote, what, five or six books

in five years or six years from 1970 to 1976, he

produced almost all of his literature. He was fast he's just he's

fascinating. He's fascinating. He was smart. And as you read some of the

excerpts from the book and you yourself were impressed at some of the word

combinations that he used in a single sentence, the guy was sharp. And he was

sharp all the way until the last interview he did, which I believe was the

early two thousand I think 02/2006 or '7, maybe it was 02/2008. But,

he was sharp as attack. The guy knew his stuff. He knew who he was.

He was principled. And I I think the other thing that I

that I, that I thought was interesting about him, I found

it fascinating that he was able to talk about racial issues

Mhmm. Not from a position of hate, violence,

or, or, like, that you need like,

forced understanding, I guess, is the other part that I was thinking of. He

always spoke of it from a

experiential, influential, and

educational perspective.

Again, think about the time frame that he grew up in and, you know, black

people in America and that and almost through most of his life were not

treated all that crazy. Right. Yet he had no animosity.

Like, that's the other thing too. Like, he it wasn't thinking the world didn't owe

him anything. He's he was able to succeed through it. He would like, all

the things that he talks about was he's always positive. So

to your point about transfer of some wisdom, I think that the world today could

learn a lot from him. I really do. I think that the world today could

learn a lot from him. White, black, Asians, native, doesn't matter. I

think I think that that all of us could just just listen to him talk.

It was impressive. So, anyway, that's that's my my thoughts on Albert

Murray. Awesome. Well, thank you, Tom,

for visiting us today, joining us today on the

Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast. And with that,

well, we're out.