Welcome back! We have a lot to talk about in today’s episode. There are so many weights that need to be lifted off our chests this week along with more listener questions! Iggy Azalea's new video sparked a conversation about blackfishing. Do people darken their skin to easily hop genres? Where do we draw the line between appropriation and appreciation? Should the money Bill Cosby donated to charity be returned? We also discuss whether prison is meant for punishment or rehabilitation. When a person has paid their debt to society should they be absolved in the public eye? We get deep on this one guys. Let us know what you think, talk back to the show! If you have an interesting question to ask us please use this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSebwcH-zavRYLwvOO6Gq3tv7CmrkkqRF9Cj5uRdqENiR42MVA/viewform Tell a friend to tell a friend! Be sure to leave a RATING/REVIEW on Apple Podcast! Thanks for listening! FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/justin_aiiz/ FOLLOW THE PODCAST PAGE: https://www.instagram.com/polaroppositespod/ FOLLOW DONTÉ https://www.instagram.com/_donnie_f/ LEAVE A REVIEW & SEND LETTERS! If you would like a question answered on air, email us! We want to hear your feedback and offer advice on your situation! Ask away! polaropposites.pod@gmail.com
Welcome back! We have a lot to talk about in today’s episode. There are so many weights that need to be lifted off our chests this week along with more listener questions! Iggy Azalea's new video sparked a conversation about blackfishing. Do people darken their skin to easily hop genres? Where do we draw the line between appropriation and appreciation? Should the money Bill Cosby donated to charity be returned? We also discuss whether prison is meant for punishment or rehabilitation. When a person has paid their debt to society should they be absolved in the public eye? We get deep on this one guys. Let us know what you think, talk back to the show!
If you have an interesting question to ask us please use this link:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSebwcH-zavRYLwvOO6Gq3tv7CmrkkqRF9Cj5uRdqENiR42MVA/viewform
Tell a friend to tell a friend! Be sure to leave a RATING/REVIEW on Apple Podcast! Thanks for listening!
FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM:
https://www.instagram.com/justin_aiiz/
FOLLOW THE PODCAST PAGE:
https://www.instagram.com/polaroppositespod/
FOLLOW DONTÉ
https://www.instagram.com/_donnie_f/
LEAVE A REVIEW & SEND LETTERS!
If you would like a question answered on air, email us! We want to hear your feedback and offer advice on your situation! Ask away! polaropposites.pod@gmail.com
guys we're back with another episode thank you for being here it's another good week some good content for you guys we're excited to bring it to you thank you for listening to the show if you guys are new to the show my co-host dante and i talk about politics pop culture entertainment we talk about it all it's always a good episode because in a way you all don't know what to expect and we love keeping y'all on your toes so feel free to subscribe feel free to tell a friend to tell a friend about the show leave a letter more on that in a second and subscribe wherever you're listening we really appreciate hearing from you guys that's why we have the anonymous link in the description that way y'all can send in whatever you want ask us a question give us a comment a concern all of it we love hearing from you guys feel free to follow us on the instagram page all of that is linked in the description and get into the show dante did i leave anything out would you like to tell the listeners anything before we start we could use some ratings and reviews you know they never hurt but you covered everything else you know spread the good word to the people if you like it we love it tell somebody else about it so they could love it too actually let's let's talk about the statues thing so um in our episode a couple weeks ago we talked about statues it was actually for my off my chest if you guys are new off my chest is a segment where we get to rant about anything that we want so if there's something that occurred in the week that we must speak about that we have to get off our chest that is the segment for that so in that episode i was talking about how in brooklyn they unveiled a statue for george floyd and at first i was like okay this is cool but on second thought i was like i don't know if this is the right move i feel like in theory it might have seemed like a good idea to put a statue of george floyd somebody that was the face of the black lives matter movement through his death but whenever the bust of him was unveiled i was like maybe this isn't the right move because i feel like we shouldn't be erecting statues of people that were killed due to police injustice we erect statues of heroes and to me all george floyd did was die and not that that's all that his life's value is obviously he's a human being and human life has value but in the grand scheme of what he represents he was somebody that was killed unjustly so i felt it was kind of weird to then create a statue in memory of him when i don't think the statue of him is what we should be reflecting on it's more so the continued fight for racial injustice or racial equality so i feel like maybe a black fist or something would be better suited for a statue rather than an individual because i kind of think it opens a pandora's box where when somebody dies due to police violence oh they get a statue and they get a statue
and soon it'll be like a graveyard of all these people that have died and i don't think that projects the feeling that a lot of people think that it projects but that's just me so dante told you all that he'll marinate on it and come back next week and give us his thoughts on it so here's his space to say whatever he needs to say about it i like how you talked about the uh you get like sounding like oprah you get a statue you get a statue you get that was good but the broader point and the more serious point that you made about you know this could open a pan's doors box and now we're just it's basically a statue graveyard of all the people that we're putting up how i feel about statues is it's to immortalize something or someone and what you said about george floyd is true that the movement and moment is bigger than the individual in this sense so there could have been a better i don't know better imagery or something used to put the statue there i am not extremely opposed to it like i said on here plenty of times and anytime you can get me talking about it i'll be happy to share my thoughts that statues that i oppose are confederate statues because these people committed treason against the united states and raised arms against this country so that's not american that's not american history they were traitors and they shouldn't be immortalized or celebrated at all so those are the statues that i have problems with but besides that you know i'm not i'm not super opposed to the george floyd statue i understand what you're saying about it and you know like we said on our last episode about sometimes you have to draw the line places and where do you draw the lines actually was on the shakira richardson episode you know where do you draw the line okay we're gonna give her a pass because she failed a drug test because her mom died but what happens to the next person that their grandparent died or something do we say okay it's okay or do we make a rule that okay if you had somebody in your family die it's okay if you fail a drug you know what i mean like it just it can snowball and turn into a bigger thing but on statues i'm only opposed when it's people of evil that's how i feel about it yeah i mean i just think that we should just give things a second thought i feel like like i said earlier things in theory sound good but then when it's actually enacted it's like maybe we should have thought about this more before we put it up because maybe some people might view it as it's not fair to put one of george floyd but not one of trayvon martin or tamir rice or all the other people that have been killed at the hands of police i think that if you're gonna do one for one individual you have to do it for everyone and since maybe a graveyard of dead people that are police victims isn't what we want maybe we should rethink that and i don't know give things a second thought but that's just me maybe y'all agree maybe you disagree that's the point of the show we love to debate and discuss things so if you guys have a thought about what we said tell us what side of the fence you fall on in terms of statues and what they represent i guess the next segment that we have is listener questions so y'all came through we asked and you guys answered and y'all came through with some questions so we're going to answer one this week and if you guys want to know how to leave us a question click that link in the description and if you follow us on instagram there's a link in the bio where you guys can access the link to ask us anything and it is anonymous i have to say that on every single episode because some people think there's a way that we can see who sends stuff in there isn't and i'm glad that we don't see who it is there's an element of surprise that i really appreciate so in that case when y'all do send a letter let us know where you're tuning in from so we can connect the dots and look at how cool it is to see how we're connecting to so many people but dante you have access to the question what is our listener question for this week all right our listener question this week the person goes on to state great show guys continue to keep up the great work i have a question for the two of you i have a friend who's wanting to experience being in a relationship since they've never experienced one and i have had to remind them that there's nothing wrong with being single because it's better than settling with the wrong person it seems like they're understanding but at the same time they're not what advice would y'all give them as single people not wanting to be single anymore okay okay so uh first of all thank you for writing in we love hearing from you guys so continue to write stuff in we love it um as the resident single person on this podcast i don't think there's anything wrong with being single but at the same time i don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to be in a relationship i think that the problem arises when you're wanting to be in a relationship at the expense of your happiness it's cool to be in a relationship but also there's issues when it comes to being in a relationship and sometimes it's not all what it's cracked to be my advice would be get on the apps get on your tenders or whatever um put your foot in the water and hot summer summer it's hot girl summer have yourself a hot girl or hot boy summer i don't know if you're a guy or a girl but um have yourself a hot boy or a hot girl summer and just test the waters and i don't know we're all young so i feel like test the water see what you like see what you don't like and you never know how a relationship might manifest from that you might not even be thinking seriously about a relationship but things happen and you might like somebody and then hit it off well and then you're in a relationship but at the same time if you're single and if you're happy being single there's nothing wrong with being single don't compare yourself to anybody else your time will come just do you and if a relationship comes then i hope it's a good one but sometimes people force themselves to be in a relationship just to be in a relationship i think we all know those people that break up with somebody and immediately they have to be in another relationship without getting time to readjust and reevaluate themselves what they want and how they've grown from that previous relationship and they're just relationship hopping and not you know growing as a person and i don't think anybody wants that so you know enjoy your singleness if you know the right person comes along explore those options and then let us know how that goes for you oh that was great i want to touch on the last thing you said there you really need to take time to unpack between relationships and i know that this person that you're referencing has never been a relationship but i wanted to expand upon what justin said there because that's super important like you have to take time to unpack from previous relationships before you should go jump into another one because that's not healthy you know my advice to this person is sort of along the lines of what justin said you know start driving the boat get out there live your life um but here's the thing you can't force a relationship like you you don't look for love like love just happens i'm a firm believer in that you don't go out looking for love you don't go out and say i'm going to fall in love with this person it just don't work that way um you can't force feelings and chemistry and things of that nature you can fake it but you can't force it so say that one more time one more time for the people you can fake it but you can't force it that goes for love for chemistry this is why we have dante on the show look at him in his little catch phrases by the way these are not rehearsed dante did not rehearse that he just comes up with these this guy's crazy yeah i was off the top of the doom um i should have been if i was born in a different generation i should have been a slam poetry session person spitting that hot [ __ ] but um
no on a serious note you don't want to settle and be with the wrong person and make every aspect of your life miserable and you'll have hate in that person resenting them and that's not what you want out of this life so what i suggest you go out there you live your life you you don't block blessings and different things that could come to you you just go with the flow and live life see what happens and if you end up connecting with the right person explore it and see what happens but to make sure you don't get yourself hurt you should tell people hey i'm out here [ __ ] around just to [ __ ] around i'm looking for something serious because that way no lines can get crossed nothing could get blurred everybody's on the same page and expectations were set from the beginning that's my advice to you and i think that's good advice we really try with these letters that y'all sent to give the best possible advice we love your letters keep sending them in you i'm talking to you that's listening right now you probably haven't sent something in make this the first time that y'all send something into the show we want to hear from you guys so never feel afraid to reach out even if it's not the anonymous thing we're really active on instagram so if you guys want to follow us or chat with us in the dms feel free to do that one of us will you know get into contact with you and thank you again for sending that hold on that's not always true because if you message us and tell us that you've never listened to our show but you're messaging us we're not going to respond you know who you are that gets on my nerves we get so many random dms from like sponsors and all these different people trying to get us to have them as a guest on the show and they started off with i've never listened to your show uh that's the end of the story that's all i need to hear thank you come again i'm all good i stopped reading after that i was like oh so you never listen to the show what the [ __ ] conversation should we have now how about you go listen to a couple episodes and then we can talk do your homework do your homework nobody wants to come into anything cold so there's that but thank you for writing in so let's move on to off my chest justin's chair dante has got to get
all right thank you julia so dante you go first for off my chest what do you want to get off your chest this week what i want to go with my chest is kind of something more positive or yeah listen you should be unapologetically you at all times you shouldn't change yourself or what you're about for other people and that's a lesson that i learned a little later in life it's not so much i care what like people around me thought but like in terms of career and everything i cared about a certain image i had to uphold a certain image i had to you know present and now now i'm unapologetic with me what made me think about this is i'm unapologetically black like i'm showing up to these meetings in my suit with these braids in my head because what you're going to say to me are you going to say that's not my natural hair is that breaking some sort of code or rule so i want to stand in that like i'm unapologetic black you know i'm going to live my life the way i want to and i'm black so i can't live in any other way don't feel pressured to conform you know to the people out there don't feel pressured to conform your hair or whatever it may be live your life you know if you got piercings you know wear your tattoos out you know if you want don't feel like you need to hide it like the workforce in the world is changing and we're gonna be the people in charge shortly so be you and we if we establish this stuff now it will be the norm when we're in power it's true it's called breaking the cycle breaking the chains we're staunch believers of not bringing to this generation the traumas of the past not saying that conformity is trauma but it could be trauma for some people having to conform and change who they are in order to adapt to the standards of society that's not fair not everybody can fit this cookie-cutter description of what is the ideal person everybody is different and i think that we're a better society when we accept those differences and embrace them because diversity is a good thing don't let anybody fool you be you love it revel in it and if they don't like it kick rocks that's the censored version of it you heard it from him you heard it from him dante and i were talking before we started the show and we were talking about cultural appropriation you know we like to think we like to talk we're always having deep discussions and we were talking about what is and what isn't appropriation so i was telling dante that i went to my favorite i don't know how to say gyro spot it's middle eastern food and i love it and i was telling him that it was really good and then dante was like oh is that cultural appropriation because you're eating another culture's food and i was like i don't know i don't think so but from that conversation we started talking about you know different people coming into other people's community and profiting off of stuff that's theirs and then i was like you know all those asian businesses that you know sell black hair care i think that's appropriation but then i was like wait is it appropriation because the hair that they're selling isn't hair that grows naturally from black people's head remy brazilian yaki this and that i'm like that is not you know hair that grows in our head naturally so are we appropriators or is that not appropriation that they're having these black hair care businesses what do you think i mean i said i want everybody know i said that to justin and jess like that was a joke when i said eating somebody else's you know another food is appropriation like i don't believe in that you guys know how i feel about the appropriate stuff a lot of times it goes way too far we're going to open the pandora's box we're going to get down to a point where it's like hey you know if your people didn't invent this you can't do it you can't listen to this you can't eat this you can't wear this blah blah i don't give a [ __ ] about none of that that's that's the saying of my life i don't give a [ __ ] about none of that i'm gonna do what i'm gonna do i'm just not gonna disrespect people you know if i feel like i want to go eat chinese food that's what i'm doing eat chinese food that's not appropriate somebody's culture that's if anything that's patronizing your culture and enjoying it and sharing in it i wish we would have been recording when justin i had that conversation you could hear the light bulb switch on in his head like i did he was like but wait a second if the hair isn't black or what's going on here are we appropriating the culture i don't know that that's the first time that you know that thoughts crossed my mind when you brought it up you know if black people are putting the hair of another people in their head is that appropriate in culture if they're putting it in a black style like what are we doing here this is the [ __ ] that i hate man this is [ __ ] that i hate what are we doing here you know what i think that maybe not the hair that they're selling is appropriation you know if they're profiting off of stuff that is ours i think more so with the hot combs and the the edge control and the hair sprays and stuff that we use the pomade and stuff y'all aren't using all that like that's stuff that black people use so i think in that sense that is appropriation because they're profiting off of stuff that only we use i'm not saying that a white person can't come in and buy a hot comb i'm just saying that traditionally who uses that stuff who uses relaxer and all that black people do so i don't know why you know somebody that's not black would be selling stuff like that and profiting off of stuff that's from our culture i think that in a way is appropriation right and that i can understand and get behind but to just you know if you were on here saying hey these hispanic people went to a soul food restaurant and enjoyed the food or these white people you know hispanic people whoever they wore a braid in their hair for their playoff game or their mma fight like come on man that's not appropriate nobody's culture like we're all people like it does get tiring i will say when i listen back to last week's episode you brought up an example of like a lemonade stand and i think you said that if white people have a lemonade stand if a black person does it is that appropriation i don't think that has any cultural ties like a lemonade stand how does that apply to somebody's culture white people did it first that's that's how right like how can you know like i don't know like that's what i'm saying that's why a lot of the conversation to me is frustrating because it's like okay so we're just having a draft and saying okay we claim this and we claim this and then you know how what happens when you open a pandora's box things get a lot more segmented so then you'll be like lysine people light-skinned black people did this or uh black people who immigrated to america did this and then we could just keep going down and down and down the rabbit hole we're missing the point i don't think it's about people enjoying other cultures thing i think it's about giving credit to the people that pioneered certain things because we saw what addison ran to tick tock dances she didn't come up with those dances but yet she was propped up there on jimmy fallon and it's almost like she's the originator of all these trends when it's the black people that created all of that stuff so that's what people are talking about with appropriation and that's what i agree with yes yeah that we did a whole episode that i agree with like cite your sources that's fine but speaking of appropriation i know there's something else you want to get to yeah so dante actually put this story in our queue and it's about iggy azalea the once famous rapper from australia
the once famous rapper who that who that i iggy why had to she's back again with another song that i don't think people are really paying attention to i think the song is called i am the strip club oh my god i don't know who's listening to that but she released a video and in the video she had noticeably darker makeup and the article that dante sent me was about black fishing is that problematic that she's darkening her skin to achieve a certain look and if you guys don't know what black fishing is let me quickly look up a urban dictionary definition black fishing is commonly perpetuated by females of european descent which involves artificial tanning spray tanning and tanning boots and using makeup to manipulate facial features in order to appear to have some type of black african ancestry the general point of black fishing is for a female of european descent to appear of african arab or hispanic ancestry some consider it to be equivalent to modern day blackface because it capitalizes off the looks of historically oppressed groups of people by people who come from more privileged backgrounds so that's basically what black fishing is people trying to emulate certain features it's kind of like futurism in a way where people maybe they don't want to be black but they don't want to look white how about we say that they're trying to look racially ambiguous yes that's it right there i call it spicy white it's an aioli and not a mayo right being white is not okay anymore you have to be something else in order to get some edge or be trendy or whatever like being white is not enough and i don't know why that is i do know why that is that's what i was going to say like this goes into my off my chest like love yourself love your features like of course if there's something that about you that you think can be enhanced then do that right like women get their nails done men we get our hair cutter we grow our hair out we have certain hairstyles that we like all that stuff but if you're trying to change the core of what you look like like that's a problem this ain't the lady that was in that fancy video and that's the problem that i have with it because you're you're out here trying to look like something completely different than you're not and it's not halloween it's not a costume like you're being serious about this and that's the issue that i have with it right and i've always had this issue or i wouldn't go as far as to call it an issue but i've always thought it's weird like tanning in general darkening your skin to look something that you're not like ariana grande there's plenty of people that aren't familiar with her but think that she's not white she's a white woman and she heavily tans and looks a certain way and i know her fans have come at me before and said you're not being fair that was a bad picture i think that she tends to look a certain way i think it's easier for her to get away with maybe making trapped music if she has a darker hue don't you agree or do you disagree i mean first of all can we talk about how her last name is not grande what is it grandi it's grandy my grandpa said granny so should we all be saying grandy well my brother kind of changed it to grande because like granny was kind of like the like i guess americanized version of it you know like made it more like you know chill like whatever and then my brother was like we should say grande it's so fun to like say it's like funny it's like a funny name uh yeah um so you know whatever we're not gonna i don't want to upset the whatever her legion of little 14 year old fans are called y'all can keep that noise can you say that again for me sorry answer your question yeah i think that there's certain artists out there that really play on trying to look racially ambiguous so people aren't sure what their race is so they can get like i guess i don't know what to call it clouds or cool points for not being wise over appeal yeah across over appeal so they'd be like hey i can get played on this station i can collab with this artist and nobody's gonna raise an eyebrow like i think about uh the pussycat dolls and nicole scherzinger you look very spicy your last name is scherzinger that don't sound spicy so what's going on here you know i mean so that's the type of people that i think about when you bring this up but iggy no we know who you are you know what i mean right there ain't no question about that and what bothers me is that it has effects on our society and people like justin you're going too far but it really does if you look on certain threads on twitter people will see a picture of some white woman with a tan and be like oh she got some black in her she's not black what's wrong with y'all it's almost like we've forgotten what a real black person actually looks like like these people are not black just because somebody has some curly hair or a little tan that doesn't make them mixed or anything but you know what it's crazy because as a black person sometimes it's hard to tell like i sent you somebody before i think i don't know if it's a celebrity well i was like yo is this person black justin are they just spicy right i mean the person is white like let's just call it what it is and i think that it goes back i'm telling y'all it goes back to the whole idea of the one drop rule where we classify anybody that has a drop of black as black i think that's very harmful but i think that we need to stop claiming people as black or claiming people as whatever and just call them mixed and then they can choose whatever they want to identify as because i feel like sometimes i have to choose one or the other but i think that we shouldn't be going out there and be claiming oh alessia cary oh she i think she's black because i don't know if you know who alessia cara is people are like oh i think she's black are y'all blind
she's the scars make you beautiful girl yeah so what is she then she's uh she's white i think i think she's not black she's not black or mixed or anything i know for sure she's not black let's just keep it at that you learn something new every day because you could you could have got me i could have thought that that little girl was uh at least uh on that half and half the house is not black according to the streets i don't know but i'm not claiming anybody into the street she doesn't even look racially ambiguous to me that's what the streets are saying i'm just reporting what they're saying so y'all don't take it out on me but it's true justin reporting live from the block i'm telling y'all a lot of people are trying to you know get away with looking racially ambiguous for clout and i'm calling a stop to it i don't want to see it anymore because i'm glad i remember this michael jackson i don't know if you remember in an interview with oprah back in the day he was talking about tanning even back then he talks about how these you know european and white people tan their skin and make their skin darker to look like something that it's not and nobody ever says anything okay number one this is the situation i have a skin disorder that destroys the pigmentation of the skin is something that i cannot help okay but when people make up stories that i don't want to be who i am it hurts me so it is it's a problem for me okay i can't control it okay but what about all the millions of people let's reverse it okay what about all the millions of people who sit out in the sun to become darker to become other than what they are nobody says nothing about that i've said in an old episode that we need to look at tanning the same way we look at black people bleaching their skin like why don't we look at it the same you hate yourself and you're trying to make yourself something that you're not here's my thought on that i think that they're not looked at the same way one of the reasons is is because tanning is not permanent the bleaching of skin to my knowledge is permanent if i'm wrong please let me know i know that you love to let me know when i'm wrong so you will let me know if i'm wrong but i i think if that's the case i think that's why it's like that different a permanent versus a temporary you know what i mean but the thing is if there was a way for people to permanently darken their skin to be medium or whatever they would do it so just because a method hasn't been found yet doesn't mean that they wouldn't do that if that was available to them i'm not discounting what you're saying i'll just let you know that that's probably why they're not viewed the same because one's permanent one's temporary right tanning is bad for your skin and bleaching is bad for your skin so i think in our society we need to look at them both the same way i think it's strange love your white skin what's wrong with that oh and you know another reason it might not be looked as weird if we're talking specifically tan and booth okay i get what you're saying there but if we're talking about just naturally being out in the sun it occurs naturally that your skin is going to get darker by being in some because it happens to us too so maybe that's why i'm just playing devil's advocate here no no you're right to play that in the sense that if you're out in the sun like some people do get darker and that's fine i'm talking about artificially making your skin something that it's not if you're doing that why are you doing that love yourself that's the message of this podcast love yourself that's all we're trying to say as some of y'all's goat would say you should go and love yourself that's some of y'all good it ain't my goat but i heard the song before it's one of the two songs of his that i know bieber bieber bieber one day we'll talk about him but today's not the episode for that you guys if you don't know who felicia rashad is she is the actress that played bill cosby's wife in the cosby show you know she's regarded well in the black community people love her and she's also a dean for howard university so when we talked a couple weeks ago we talked about how when it was announced the bill cosby was getting let out of prison she tweeted immediately and was like thank goodness a big injustice has been reversed and people were in her dms and calling her out and she turned off comments on her post and released an apology so i guess in this headline it says return the millions cosby donated if you want to fire felicia rashad the actress tells howard so since she's a dean of howard obviously there's a conflict of interest there if you're a dean and you're publicly saying that bill cosby a serial rapist you're happy that he went free and you're a dean on a college where rapes happen i wouldn't trust that you would make the best decision for your students so a lot of people have issues that she's still you know in place at howard university so there are calls for her to be fired and because of that i think she responded and said if you're gonna fire me return the millions that bill cosby donated if you want to fire me so this got people talking dante what do you think about what she said should howard have to return the money if they're gonna fire her me personally i love the energy that she's bringing to it you know they can come out and have all these strongly worded statements against what she said even though she was wrong you know against what she said and against bill cosby as a person but yeah return the money that cosby donated to you then if you find him so abhorrent don't act like oh we're you know we disagree because we're going to take his money now if you stand that strongly about it give the money back you know we see time and time again over the past three years these companies will say the right thing until it affects the bottom line or they'll start doing the right thing in air quotes when it affects the bottom line last month certain companies changed their logo to rainbow colors in support of pride month but what are you doing for the lgbtq plus community right so i think she i don't know if this quote was directly from her but whoever said it and if she did say it i agree with you put your money where your mouth is get that money back it's tainted money give it back allegedly allegedly let me say that since i didn't read the article that's just the headline but in that headline it says the actress tells howard so i believe that that's what she said or at least something along the lines of what she said allegedly allegedly so you know i actually disagree with you well i think that bad people can do good things bill cosby i don't think is a good person but i do think that bad people have the ability to do good things when cosby donated that there wasn't all of this you know fervor about his rape allegations and all of this so he donated that in good faith and they accepted it in good faith i think it would be different had he donated the money now and they accepted it then i would say no if you're standing against him don't accept his money but if you're donating to charity and you're doing it in good faith and we think that it's coming from a good person that's a good faith charity donation so we're going to accept that i don't think they owe him anything if they don't stand with what he's doing right now he donated in good faith so we're not going to go back in time and retroactively demand for money back no you did a good thing let that money stand we're not going to accept your donations if you try and donate in the future and that's how it should be so that's interesting that you talk about the retroactive piece of it you know somebody can be employed by a place but old tweet resurfaces and you just said you know bad people could do good things right old tweet resurfaces and they can get fired retro you know for something retroactively that they said or did but in this instance you're saying that howard shouldn't pay the money back retroactively no because they already stopped hold on hold on hold on hold on so yes obviously they already spent that money and it's not like the man is probably hurting for money it's the principle is what they're talking about i'm assuming from reading this quote right i think they're standing on the principle of it you think i'm bad give me the money back that i donated you to help you out right okay retroactively they should you're you're saying retro actually they shouldn't do it because at the time they thought he was a good person doing it in goodwill for good reasons correct i wholeheartedly believe that's what they thought was going on but retroactively people can be fired for something that comes up from their past right how do you delegate between the two because i i'm very interested in hearing it because it's a donation you're giving money to charity so if you go to prison one day should the charity have to give back the money that you donated i don't think so because you donated in good faith now let's say that you're a murderer and you decide to donate to charity that charity doesn't have to accept that and if there's calls for them to reject your money i feel like they have every right to listen and make the best decision for them when it comes to a job and people tweeting you know that's a completely different thing because you're adding value to the company by working there but if you and your beliefs or whatever are antithetical to what we stand for as a company then you don't represent our values and we should let you go right what you just said is very interesting you know about a murderer donating money to an organization the organization could turn it down but what if they're going to help people by getting that money that goes back to your point about saying bad people could do good things if you were in that position would you take that publicity l to be like hey look i understand everybody's you know concerns about this and how you feel about it but then they by us accepting this money we're going to be able to help people and that's been our mission from the beginning no because they're university there's other ways to receive money you know if they don't get this donation from bill cosby they're not going to crumple you know as a university make a character judgment check and if you don't want to do that they don't have to do that if they don't want to personally if it was me i would not accept the donation if he's donating right now with his credibility being that of a serial rapist if it was before then yes but now no and you know i guess by rejecting certain people's donations if they're a abhorrent person you could get 10 more donations from people being like hey i like the way you stood up to that because you turned down money that was going to help you and help help you help people here's double of what he would have donated like that stuff can happen so that that's a good way to look at it yeah that's the way i see it you know stand on your principles and if you don't feel comfortable you know accepting his donation don't accept it but if he donated like 10 years ago and felicia is asking that they give that money back no because it's been 10 years that money has probably been spent so we're not giving that back if it was a good faith donation because that's weird then anybody can be like well this person you know because honestly if you think about it anybody who's ever donated somewhere i'm sure they've done something terrible at some point in their lives so should they have to you know should these companies give donations back to all these people that did terrible things i think that that would be stupid and that would be you know a lot of energy spent when it doesn't need to that's why we have this show so we can talk out these thoughts yeah and opinions real quick before we move on uh to another topic some of y'all's favorite app i enjoy watching on there it's like going to walmart for me just online twitter said they're removing fleets on august 3rd because they're working on some new stuff so you know post your videos while you can your little snaps and august 3rd you won't be able to do it anymore a lot of people thought that they were biting from instagram who bit from snapchat so this is where we are they're working on something new and i know justin will be on there using the new thing as soon as it drops and he'll be able to give us a review of it no i don't use twitter i don't but i will say for those of y'all that do use twitter i don't know a lot of people that tell me that they use fleets and under this tweet somebody commented that they should remove threads remove quote tweets remove comment options just keep the retweet and like option and remove accounts that spam remove accounts that fight remove abusive people remove school going students thank you so do you agree with that you gotta keep quote tweets so many people have gotten the smackdown on a quote tweet or just like a picture like this you about them contradicting themselves like you gotta keep quote tweets that that's the lifeblood of it um but everything else i'm cool if you get rid of everything else keep likes retweets and quote tweets outside of that i don't have a need for anything else because that's what i was gonna ask i was gonna say if they're removing fleets what updates would you like twitter to do to make the experience better because i know that for a while they had 140 characters and then i think they doubled it to 280 characters and i think people are liking that so what else would you like to see twitter improve on or should they keep it the same sometimes if it ain't broke don't fix it and i feel like the fleets they were trying to fix something that wasn't broken because they were trying to keep up with the joneses you know leave well enough alone as dante says sometimes maybe that's the case sometimes leave well enough alone what's our last story here justin so what we're talking about for this last part is i don't know if y'all know but alice it's not even funny i don't know why i'm laughing allison mack she used to be an actress on smallville y'all might have known her as chloe the blonde haired girl so apparently she was like a recruiter for like a sex cult and she was sex trafficking people or recruiting people for a sex trafficking operation it finally got busted a couple years ago and i think she pled guilty and she outed a lot of the you know members that were deep within that cult that she was a part of and it's crazy that she went from you know a working actress to now a recruiter for a sex cult but basically she got three years for what she did and she did a lot of damage there was a lot of girls that they recruited and a lot of girls and women that were harmed by what she was doing so the guy that was the head of this i think he was sentenced to 120 years in prison but her she pleaded guilty and she also ratted out a lot of the people that she worked with so because of that and because of how cooperative she was they're deciding that they're only going to give her three years and it's interesting because i always talk about how this justice system is not fair it's interesting that this white woman gets three years but i tell you all to think all the time if she was not white do you all think that she would get only three years in prison ask yourself that what i want what i took away from that obviously it's a very serious crime that she committed but what the the thing that stuck out to me is that you said the leader of the culture ring whatever it is called got 120 years do you think when sentences like that are given that it's supposed to be a deterrent because obviously this person is not going to live 120 years to serve all of that sentence do you think it's like hey this is what happens um if you commit a crime or is it a number that they have to give because they got found guilty on so many charges that the total adds up to that i think that that's just the offense that he committed and that's what they felt would be justified based on what he did i don't think that it's supposed to be a deterrent because if there was a deterrent we would see no crime in the world but crime still occurs so i don't think crime is a deterrent or people getting punished with 120 years or the death penalty as a deterrent because people still do those things anyway so if it really stopped people from doing that then we wouldn't see that happening in the world but obviously that's not what's happening right now right gotcha gotcha okay that's what i wanted to ask about it so we kind of wanted to bounce off of this story by talking about crime and punishment and whether crime is supposed to be you know rehab or is it supposed to be punishment for the offenses that you committed so dante wrote down if somebody has paid the price for their time or offense should it follow them forever so my question to you is like what specifically are you talking about what kind of crimes do you think should or should not follow people well i mean that that's tough and that's kind of why i wanted to open up the discussion because i think that obviously there's there's levels to this you know if you're a serial rapist if you murder somebody if you touch little kids things of that nature it should follow you forever because what you did is evil um but if we're saying that somebody got arrested for selling drugs they did their 20 years and now they're back in society should they always be punished for this should they not be able to have job opportunities to improve and build on you know try to make a better life for themselves after they've paid their debt to society that's really what they call it right you get sentenced you fulfill that sentence you're supposed to be even now that's the way it's supposed to work in court you know um so i guess that my question is more so about the court of public opinion and not the actual judiciary i think it depends on what you did like you said if it's murder if it's rape or whatever i feel like that follows you forever i don't see a way for those people to come into society again and just act like everything is normal and we fully embrace them again but some people out there do and if you have that opinion i'd love to have you on the show to pick your brain on crime and punishment in this country because it's a complicated issue that people have a hard time answering what is our prison system supposed to be is it punishment or is it rehab maybe it depends on what you did if it's like a drug offense maybe it's supposed to be rehab we're gonna put you in for this time but at the same time we want you to learn your lesson and learn why what you did was wrong and we're gonna push you out into society again but at the same time whenever you're an ex-felon you can't do certain things there's certain jobs that you can't apply to if anybody's applied for a job they'll have that thing are you a criminal or whatever and when they see that people don't want to hire you so it's like if you're sending me out into the world to be a better person and to make changes why are you limiting my opportunities is that just the way it works because of what i did is that my scarlet letter that's what a lot of people are asking and you know you you said like we both said on here right there's levels to it so here's an example i want i would like to ask our listeners and write in and tell us what you think about it dms do whatever you got to do michael vick right we all know the dog fighting thing he spent his two years behind bars when he got out of prison he was able to go play in the nfl again do you agree with that you know he served his time that the court said hey this is the time that we're assigning to you based on the crime that you committed is that fair you know i kind of want to pick people's brains on this and see what they think about it because certain things shouldn't follow you forever but like we said there's certain uh atrocities that you can commit that should follow you forever but we're talking about you know average run-of-the-mill like let's say it was tax evasion or something like that should this person ever be able to work or vote again i don't agree with that isn't it true that whenever you go to prison and come back you're not allowed to vote anymore and take part in our democracy yeah if you're a felon you can't because people think that that's not a good thing that we have that system in place where if you commit an offense you're not able to vote anymore and they take that away from you people say that that's infringing on your rights as a human being and as a united states citizen would you agree with that do you think that people should be allowed to vote if they you know came out of prison if you served yeah this mean that's what we're coming down to in this conversation right if you served your time yeah you should be able to have your right to vote i'm on the spot thinking about this you know maybe if it's a thing where okay you have to wait a period of time after you get out before you can vote again you have to go apply to vote again and all that stuff sure we can we can discuss stuff like that but i don't think that you should not be allowed to vote the rest of your life even if you commit murder or rape like we said there's levels to it so for certain offenses i think it should come with different levels of uh punishment even continuing outside of when you are released if you're ever released in those cases but if we're talking about anything that's non-murder non-physically harming a kid or raping someone things of that nature i think you should be able to have your right to vote okay so you think that it depends on the offense so you just said like murder rape what else is a bad thing that people do murder rape touching kids touching kids molestation you said for those things that they shouldn't get the right to vote anymore yeah that's what i'm thinking as we're talking through this you were so you know you got caught i mean how many times have we seen this is a true story right person gets caught selling weed not a substantial amount but because of mandatory minimums they have to do time behind bars so now this person can never participate in our democracy again say i caught selling weed i just don't agree with that well i like what you said and for somebody being on the spot i think that you had a pretty good response to my question you said that maybe there needs to be some kind of system where you have to apply to get your right to vote again they strip it from you but when you're putting yourself back into society again you apply for that and then you get your right to vote again if it's not murder rape molestation or whatever terrible thing that we can't think of right now right right right i think that's interesting i think that's interesting some people said it's both like prison is rehab and punishment i say if it's rehab you can't take away people's right to vote because if somebody's supposed to be a better person if you learn and you're a better person now why don't you have the right to vote anymore if you made a mistake as terrible as it may be you know i don't think you should get your rights stripped if it's not murder molestation or whatever other one that we listed that i can't remember right now i don't know if the point is re-indoctrinating these people into american society they should be able to have the full rights afforded to them again because they went in their time and now they're coming out and hopefully they won't do those things again because it's rehab and they're teaching these people how what they did is terrible and they're working on how they're going to fix what they did to be a productive member of society exactly i think that it should be both like you said i think that it should be rehab and punishment like you should be in there serving your time for the crime you commit but you should also there should be a system in place that it's is trying to rehabilitate you'll make you a better person and be a functioning member of society so you're not struggling when you as soon as you get out you're not lost the min the moment you leave uh that facility well i have to ask the question like do you think that a molester can be rehabbed is there something wrong with them mentally that can be fixed to allow them back into society again um if you're talking objectively without bias i can't give you an answer on that i'm not i haven't studied that and researched that if you're asking my you know how i feel about it there you can't come back from that in my opinion you harm little kids defensive little kids there's a special place in hell for you in my book and if people disagree with me that's fine it's my hill to die on i'm not backing down from that and what we didn't mention like violent criminals should they be able to i guess get re-acclimated to society again so that's the one that's interesting you know like how does somebody how do you really rehabilitate something like that you know you went to jail for assault or like you said domestic abuse you know is there that's why the system should be better whether you're making these people take classes and make strides and you're getting to the cause of why they like to hurt other people and do all this stuff instead of just having them in there making license plates you know what i mean like that time and those tax dollars should be allocated to making these people better functioning members of society so when they get out we're not paying for them still because that's how you get conservatives on on board with it hey let's invest in them why they're in there when it's cheaper so when they hit the streets we're not paying for them that's just me being an optimist and idealist right because some people might argue that certain people are too far gone like if you're a repeat offender or maybe we need to look at it holistically and say let's say that you're not a repeat offender and maybe repeat offenders we can put into that category of murders and rapists and molesters people that have done it multiple times and something's not clicking and nothing will ever click so we'll throw them in that category of people that we say shouldn't get the right to vote if they ever come out right right right that's fair like first time offenses maybe that's something that you can learn from because you did that one time yes and and for the most part and unless it comes to certain things like we've mentioned on here people [ __ ] up when people make mistakes if you constantly make the same mistake that is a pattern and that is a trait i can agree with that somewhat because it's one thing to do something once but two three five six times there's a pattern there and after a while especially with the offense depending on what the offense is i don't think that you can rehab that person but you know what this is interesting because i was reading an unpopular opinion on reddit and somebody said felons should have the same rights as everyone else and they go on to say if an individual makes one major screw up and ends up in prison it can ruin their entire future i completely understand and agree with inmates being punished for their crimes and having their rights limited during incarceration i can even support limiting the rights of parolees because they are on a probationary release but once an individual has completed their parole they should have all of their rights as a citizen reinstated in most cases a felon permanently loses the right to vote their right to own firearms and by being required to disclose their felon status lots of them have trouble finding meaningful work because people refuse to hire them even when the conviction has no connection to the job they're applying for the system is basically designed to create repeat offenders because we won't allow them to rejoin society as equals ever if a person cannot be trusted to rejoin society they shouldn't have even been let out of prison in the first place if they've done their time then let them move on with their life unimpeded there's a lot to unpack there and before i forget i want to talk about the one part that they said about finding employment if an employer runs a background check on you something comes back and it doesn't have anything to do with the crime and the conviction have nothing to do with the role that you'll be performing or doesn't impact it or correlate in any way usually they're not going to take a look at that but to say that you know they said you know somebody making one mistake and [ __ ] up their life forever yeah that's life right if i decide that i want to drive 180 in my new car and i crash and i die well i made one mistake but there's [ __ ] consequences to it so you get in the fight with somebody you beat him to death you're a murderer forever one mistake but you gotta [ __ ] live with that so to me that's a cop-out answer you know one mistake yeah i touched a little kid once i don't ever want to hear that what the [ __ ] do you mean um and then talking ab a violent offender should never be able to own firearms again i completely agree with that right like why you're giving a person who already had problems controlling their anger a [ __ ] killing machine makes sense we talked about one-time offenders and how if they did something one time they should be given the chance to rehab themselves and become a better person right and but we were talking about that in the case of levels this person is talking about period point blank hey one mistake does this so a violent offender that beats the [ __ ] out of their wife they come out and now they have all their rights again and can own firearms and can threaten this person's life again if they're still in their life or they could end up stalking them we know it's too much can happen right so you think that that one offense is too bad to allow them the excuse of oh it was just one time though but it was still pretty bad so we're going to throw that person in the category with the rapists and the murderers and the molesters right violent offenders like that that did it once yeah i think all of this should have levels and categories right like if you're a violent offender it's probably best that you shouldn't own firearms again i do think there needs to be more work done on being able to get these people employment because the one thing that they talked about that i agree with is creating a cycle at times you know i don't have to agree with your full statement but you can make great points that i can agree with and get on board with right and voting shouldn't be a privilege in this country you should be automatically enrolled to vote when you turn 18. now if you do something like what we just discussed in this conversation to lose that right it should be a right not a privilege but you should be able to lose it if you commit certain crimes and you are a convicted felon and you've done certain things yeah i agree with that but i don't know that was just a little a little tangent there how i felt about voting no i mean i agree with you i think that we made some good points in this episode and the point that i liked that you brought up on this episode is that applying for you know voting rights again if we're letting you out and we're saying that it's rehab you've served your time so now you can apply to this system to get your voting rights back kind of like people have to apply for their visa so they can get you know stay in this country so maybe that's something we should look into because i don't know i do feel some type of way about people that pay their debt to society like you said that's what we call it their debt to society so you're free or at least that's what you should be so i don't know why we're still punishing them by stripping away their rights and i'm not saying that they're like great people or whatever but if we have a system in place that's supposed to be rehab part of rehab is learning from your mistakes and becoming a better person from that certain people can be saved but like we said certain people are too far gone and they're in the category that cannot get their rights back right and exactly and i mean we could talk about you know creating that cycle we could talk about the prison industrial complex but we don't got enough time we're going to end this episode now we all got enough time to go into that honestly we brought up some good ideas do you all agree do you all disagree if y'all have thoughts on anything that we said in this episode please please please don't be shy let us know your thoughts even if you disagree like we love hearing from you guys and seeing what different perspectives y'all bring to what we say on this show and i always say we don't have all the answers we're just starting a dialogue on the show this is the point of the podcast to have you know interesting conversations like these so if you felt compelled if the spirit moves you as dante says hit us up hit up the anonymous question bank and ask us something subscribe to the show um y'all leave us a rating too it's been a minute leave us a review leave us a rating we love to see it but no i think this episode was really interesting yeah no i i enjoyed it um thank you everyone for listening thank you for the engagement the support you know we do it for you guys we enjoy doing it and as long as you're enjoying it we're enjoying it it's going to keep coming to you like share subscribe tell your friends to tell their friends about it anonymous questions send in more of them we love interacting with you all and reading them and giving you answers and if you wrote in one before and we answered your question write in again and tell us what you thought about the answer and how it played out for you i want the follow-up like that's what i'm dying for i want the follow-up i'm nosy right it comes to this you brought me into it you can't not share with me now because you brought me into it it's almost like teasing us like how are y'all gonna tease us with the juicy listener question and then not tell us how it ended like come on you cannot do that right yeah that's not cool but write in give us uh the listener questions but for justin i'm dante has been another episode of polar opposites and we will catch you on the next one bye guys world