On this week's episode, we cover the complicated topic of code-switching! What is it? Is speaking “white” a thing? Why do people feel the need to change their voice, clothing, or name in order to fit in with society? We talk all about our experience with people telling us we "aren't black" just because we don't fit into the box society put us in. Sometimes we code switch to survive but at the end of the day, no one should minimize themselves to make other people comfortable. Be yourself! Let us know your thoughts! Off My Chest (03:45) Your President Is Impeached...Again (07:00) Code Switchin' (18:00) Send us something spicy! Use this link to send an anonymous question (make it good lol): 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_alzi/ FOLLOW THE PODCAST PAGE: https://www.instagram.com/polaroppositespod/ FOLLOW DUPREE: 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
On this week's episode, we cover the complicated topic of code-switching! What is it? Is speaking “white” a thing? Why do people feel the need to change their voice, clothing, or name in order to fit in with society? We talk all about our experience with people telling us we "aren't black" just because we don't fit into the box society put us in. Sometimes we code switch to survive but at the end of the day, no one should minimize themselves to make other people comfortable. Be yourself! Let us know your thoughts!
Off My Chest (03:45)
Your President Is Impeached...Again (07:00)
Code Switchin' (18:00)
Send us something spicy! Use this link to send an anonymous question (make it good lol):
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_alzi/
FOLLOW THE PODCAST PAGE:
https://www.instagram.com/polaroppositespod/
FOLLOW DUPREE:
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
i'm down hey my bad big dog ain't none bro you didn't even stuff the forces [ __ ] how to get myself to fade right quick you're stupid bro on god though i'm trying to get like you now i'm trying to get like you yo stay up there bro devon i've never heard you talk like that before how do you talk to black people the same way i talk to white people are you serious you don't have one of these what you don't have a code switch no how does a code switch work well it's a little tricky but let me break it down for you
welcome welcome welcome to another episode of the show it's me justin and we are back with another episode i hope you guys have been doing well i've been doing well trying to keep busy trying to stay healthy last week was dante and i's birthday so mine was on the 11th of january and his was on the 13th so thank you guys for your birthday wishes dante thank you for posting that beautiful picture of me we love it i know how much you enjoyed that picture so i'm glad i'm very glad yes how was your birthday it was good i can't complain you know kept it low-key that's the story of my life right now especially during this pandemic you know keep it low-key private affairs in a tighter circle you know like like the beyonce song that's how we live and how was yours it was good it was good more low-key than i usually do every year i usually do a dinner with all my friends but you know covet considerations had something to do with that so i ended up just hanging out with my friends and just doing something more low-key but it was good it was fine you know i'm just happy to celebrate life because i know so many people obviously didn't get to do the same so i'm just appreciative of everybody and their well wishes and we're capricorns i'm not into zodiac signs but whatever capricorn is do i match up with those vital signs but anyway it was a good birthday listen great people are capricorns that's what they say like i said yeah for real we get [ __ ] done that's what capricorns are known for getting [ __ ] done and just being you know strong driven good people i always told you like i'm not too big on the zodiac sign stuff but i always told y'all what i think the worst sign is out there so we don't need to get into that just in case any of our listeners are that sign which one is it sagittarius men are horrible people really not without a doubt horrible people damn for the most part i know a couple good ones and if you're a sagittarius write into us let us know yeah maybe you know i might think you're a good person but by and large man the vast majority of sagittarius i've met are horrible people damn hate to see it hate to see it sorry about that if you guys are new to the show this show is all about bringing together different perspectives we talk about music pop culture entertainment politics and we have a good discussion about all of it so thank you for joining me be sure to leave a rating leave a review tell a friend to tell a friend and also if you want to send us an anonymous question click the link in the description of this episode type up whatever you want if there's a scenario that you want us to read if you're going through something if you want our advice on something let us know and we'll get through it and we will eventually read it on an episode time permitting but yeah follow us on social media follow me follow the podcast page of course follow dante you know get in touch with the show we love communicating with you guys we love cultivating a community so definitely don't feel shy to reach out to us if you guys feel compelled to do so this week dante is actually mad at me by the way i need to mention this at the beginning of the episode so last week we recorded an episode it was ready to go i had it backed up and actually you know what let me just get let me just get into off my chest justin's
chest dante has got to get
justin and dante gotta get it off there
all right so dante is mad at me because we recorded an episode last week it was ready to go i was editing it it was backed up and for some reason my laptop was running out of storage and it told me hey you need to delete some files so you can continue editing so i was like okay since i've already uploaded my audio into the editing software there's no need for me to hold on to the original file since i already have it where i need it then all of a sudden after i deleted it it would not let me edit the episode anymore so all the hours i spent editing were thrown out the window and the file was no longer usable anymore so the whole you know episode that we edited was gone and not retrievable anymore so now dante and i are re-recording the same episode all over again and giving it to you guys so i hope you like it but i'm sorry dante things happened it's the episode so nice we had to record it twice that's what it is so but that's what i need to get off my chest this week mine is a little more light-hearted like off my chest i have a question for all the fashion designers and brands out there why don't women's clothes have pockets why is it that women's blazers and their dress pants at work they don't have pockets on these clothes like it has a fake pocket a faux pocket as you would call it but they don't have real pockets that's annoying because i don't want to be putting all your [ __ ] in my pocket call me a socialist call me radical but i think everybody should have pockets hmm this radical you know why they don't have pockets is because women carry purses there's no need to have pockets if you have a bag to carry all your things in most of us don't wear purses so there's no need for us to have a purse so that's why we have pockets so they're trying to keep us in mind with everything i think that's the reason to all our female listeners out there you hear it right there justin is saying that you do not deserve to have pockets oh there he goes again i want you to have pockets so just so you know where we stand since i'm the pro don't even try that do you see how he tries to make me seem like i'm crazy i'm not crazy you're the one that's radical not me i'm left of center and you're all the way to the left no after last week what we saw you can't ever call me radical again what we saw in the capitol last week i don't think it's fair to call me radical about anything anymore
because of the trumpanzees and the magats and whatever but yeah that was a wild scene we will probably brush up on that a little bit in this episode but that's an interesting take women why don't you have pockets is it reinforcing the patriarchy because y'all don't have pockets do women not have a right to own things what is this saying about society these are deeper questions and this is why we have the podcast to talk about it so what do you guys think about that but um let's see let's see so let's get into in the news so in the news this week y'all's favorite president is the first president in history in history let me say it again to be impeached twice no other president has been impeached twice and on top of that impeach twice in one term dante what are your thoughts on the house going through with the articles of impeachment and sending it through to the senate are you all tired of all this winning yet all you trump supporters are you tired of all this winning yet you know got impeached twice and for those sp like there was only 10 house republicans that voted uh to go along with the r was impeachment the rest of you are spineless cowards if you can't condemn somebody and remove them from their job for inciting a insurrection a riot for desecrating the capital of the united states the bedrock of democracy where's the line at where's the line honest to god i truly believe in my heart that let's say those terrorists would have captured mike pence and harmed him or nancy pelosi and they did these impeachment hearings though some of those republicans still still would vote to protect trump i believe it i believe it um it looks like twitter decided to suspend his account permanently so because of this a lot of people have been saying that this is sensitive territory because we're heading into a space where free speech might be limited do you think that's true because twitter decided to de-platform trump is a little too late what do you think about the conversation about free speech in the future with technology and all the apps for me it's all too late right all these apps all these corporate industries you knew how much of a piece of [ __ ] he was and how divisive he was but i think at the time what was 14 days left in this presidency you want to take a stand and seem like you're on the side or right that's because people gonna stop giving you their dollars because you support that piece of [ __ ] so no i don't think there are any heroes or their consciences in the right place all comes down to the almighty dollar but i do have to say they're getting in some sticky territory about this first amendment stuff people should probably brush up on the first amendment because it doesn't give you the right to do whatever the [ __ ] you want it's not it at all and all those trump supporters who are saying you know what about the bill of rights if you looked at it you know there would be freedom of the press how many times has he kicked certain uh outfits out of press meetings in the briefings and everything so you can't have some and not have the other honestly there is nothing in this life that will happen to him that is too good for him so i don't give a [ __ ] about him or his rights hmm you know i actually disagree with you when it comes to the first amendment because twitter is a private company so they're allowed to do whatever they want basically because we all agreed and read through the terms and conditions right so if that's the case you know they can do whatever they want i don't think it's limiting free speech because it's their platform because the government doesn't run twitter whatever his name is dorsey jack dorsey he runs twitter so whatever he says goes so it'd be one thing if the government had a platform where we were all on and they decided to boot somebody from the system then that can be a situation where we're seeing silencing and we're seeing people not being able to express their views no matter how crazy radical or dangerous it is so to anybody that says oh free speech is on the attack no it's not you have freedom to say whatever you want but you're not free from consequences and i think that's the distinction that people need to make dante always says that you can show up to somebody's door and do whatever you want but you can't control how the other person reacts to it and the same thing goes with free speech say whatever you want but whatever consequences come your way because of what you did that's you know something that you have to follow on the sword about so free speech is not under attack but i do think it's interesting because pandora's box is always open people sometimes think about the now but they never think about the future and the implications of their actions there might be the dark web that emerges where people are planning attacks and are using that as a way to communicate with each other because they feel like twitter doesn't allow them to freely say whatever they want to say when we saw what happened in the middle east with you know invading iraq and then we got isis so whenever you do something you can't control the outcome of what happens afterwards so i think that we have to be vigilant about the situation and we can't turn a blind eye to what might happen now that trump is booted off of twitter another thing that they're hypocrites about like you mentioned which is a great point and i always give you credit for that thank you it's a private company they can do whatever they want remember when y'all wanted to go to the supreme court and say that this baker didn't have to make a cake for a gay couple for their wedding the supreme court ruling in favor of a colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple because of his religious beliefs this is a religious ceremony that goes in direct conflict with my faith baker jack phillips's case landed at the court after a lower court upheld the colorado civil rights commission finding he had violated state laws against discrimination by refusing to bake a wedding cake for charlie craig and david mullins in 2012. we don't want other couples to go through the same thing so you know it's not just about us it's about our community as a whole but on monday the justices voted seven to two in favor of the baker deciding that he wasn't given a fair hearing and writing the state of colorado's ruling exhibited religious hostility against him same principle same merit it's the same thing so remember how y'all used to deny certain people's service and places to say hey it's my company it's my place of business it's true i think his name is jack dorsey it's his place of business pick whoever [ __ ] he want off of there so cry more snowflakes
but the last thing i was gonna say is that things might be bad for trump now but give it a few years and he'll be making all the rounds on all the late night shows people will be glorifying him and having revisionist history about him and what he did during his presidency the same way they did george w bush is the same way that they're gonna do trump over the weekend former president george w bush released a video message calling for unity amid the coronavirus pandemic prompting some democrats and many in the media to reminisce about his presidency and praise his tone compared to that of donald trump george w bush is not your friend he's still the guy who used fabricated evidence to drag us into an intractable war i know you think of him now as the guy who gives out free candy and does weird portraits of vladimir putin but those are red flags too and hey you can criticize one bad president without praising another bad president yes things are bad now but let's not forget bush gave us the iraq war torture the financial collapse the katrina disaster you're hearing it from me i said it first and when it happens you heard it here you heard it here yeah i strongly disagree with it i think he's going to be shamed and you know like like the crazy people that believe he's jesus sure they'll follow him off a cliff but the mainstream the people that are you know have some uh verifiable brain function nah it's it's a rap for him and he'll probably be in jail to be honest with you so i hope so i don't see it but i hope so um there will be some technicality where he gets off but i think everybody should be held to the same standard and if you're gonna commit a crime as a president you should also you know be free to face those consequences same with me if you and i committed a crime we're gonna go to prison it doesn't matter if we're the president crime is crime punishment is punishment and he has to deal with it the same way we all have to deal with it this is interesting let me ask you something because i mean like objectively right like i know a lot of the things we say on here are our opinions and our feelings and it's sometimes very subjective but objectively which if you guys don't know the difference just look it up i don't feel like telling you here now but objectively means with no bias right you gotta imagine that obama's stock rises a lot in the way he's gonna be viewed in history the person that before him was very horrible person after him was very horrible like he has the uh distinction of being sandwiched between two of the worst presidents in modern history so you gotta imagine that history's gonna look favorably on him for that well he had a scandal-free presidency you might disagree no he didn't no he didn't we gotta be fair he wore a tan suit justin he wore a tan suit okay you know god forbid he lied about a pandemic you know god forbid he tried to overturn a government no he wore a tan suit and a hell broke loose what's upsetting is that it just showed him relax it just showed him that he was on vacation people are dying people so it reinforced the wrong image oh it was a nightmare and only the democrats and only liberals could actually elect a guy with a tad suit when nixon and kennedy debated nixon wore a tan suit and that didn't bold well for him did it it wasn't a suit of strength look at that that horrible light tan suit lynn evans writes me on twitter a serious businessman wears dark blue or black to important meetings i think it's assigned to enemies that he's a wimp i mean the guy come on seriously he needs to burn that thing because it looks very he looks like he's just got off the links and it's not good if y'all don't know like years ago obama decided to switch it up you know he has some style and some stylus so one day he decided to you know show off a new tan suit and on fox news people lost their minds what are they so mad about they get mad at obama for wearing a tan suit but then when trump does all this when he causes an insurrection against his own nation they defend it they say it's antifa and make up lies people are living in two different realities where people are believing fox news and the echo chambers and all these lying senators people are taking their words as truth and they're looking at us like we're the crazy ones isn't that something else it's interesting i guess like i said man guy wore tan suit guys it's almost unconscionable that he would do that it's below the office of the president in my opinion one more thing i i hate that although i can't wait till we're done [ __ ] talking about trump i really too oh my god i feel like it's taking years off of my life one last thing i see these like these apologists far right outfits he's the most masculine president we ever had let me tell you why that's not true he ran from military service and got doctors notices said he had bone spurs not too masculine there teddy roosevelt was a black belt in jiu jitsu judo and was a professional boxer pretty [ __ ] masculine you all seen obama's jump shot pretty masculine trump can barely golf i mean i don't i think he's good at golf because of shifting all that weight so fast you know what i mean um and one of the biggest lies this man's ever told you and that this is it i promise one biggest lies this man ever told when his uh you know annual physical came out and they said that he's 6'3 230 pounds listen i was almost 240 pounds last year when i got fat and i'm six too he looks like me and a half so i'm pretty sure he's closer to 340 than he is the 240. trust me it's true i believe you that's why when he had coveted he was in the hospital for a while because the more unhealthy you are the worse those symptoms are gonna hit you so enough of this chomp
so let's get into our main topic this week the main topic y'all have been waiting for what are we talking about this week we are talking about code switching dante what is code switching so code switching as it's most commonly referred to as a when some if you're a person of color when someone says oh well you know you're speaking white or you're acting white or you're dressing white it's basically being a social chameleon i would say to fit into your surroundings people say that it's adapting to society some people say it's changing who you are and that it's wrong the answer is kind of blurred i think it's a mix of both i think there are negative traits to each of those interpretations when it comes to code switching code switching is something that i think that we're all guilty of our parents did it we do it to fit in you all know i went to predominantly white high school and i grew up you know in those kind of neighborhoods so of course that's the kind of schools that i went to so a lot of people adapt to their environment you're gonna speak like the people that speak like you the people that are in your environment that's why people in the south some people have country accent that's why when you listen to dante talk he has a little bit of joysy twang to his voice it's regional you know we all have accents that are based we all have accents that are based on where we're from but sometimes i feel like in order to either make ourselves feel comfortable or to make other people feel comfortable some people change the way they speak the way they dress around different groups and i just think that's weird i think that if you are changing yourself in order to adapt to whatever is the popular thing in order to adapt to what is you know most consumed in that area i do think that's a little bit problematic because i think that in any situation you should be who you are because i don't think you should have to change yourself to make other people feel comfortable because i feel like there's a lot of people in this country that don't have to change themselves to fit into any room they can exist in one world and exist the exact same way in another world so why does it have to switch when it comes to us i think there's a very big difference between code switching and assimilation right like what they did to native americans at the turn of the century cut their hair off and gave them different names and made them learn a new language and learn a new religion that's assimilation that's somebody forcing you to be like them code switching like i said before it's like being a social chameleon right people speak different at times based on the people that they're around and i don't think that you know and me and justin might disagree on this to a certain extent like code switching is just a way of survival right like i'm not going to talk at work and use the same vocabulary in the same words that i do if i was out with my friends i just wouldn't do it like there's a level of professionalism that comes into play with being at work it's not that i'm acting white like it's it's a you problem but i'm speaking directly to people of color right it's a you problem if you associate being intelligent with being white that's your low standard having ass that ain't that ain't my fault that that's what you associate being intelligent being successful with being white that's what you prom maybe you should look yourself in the mirror but that ain't on me that that's what you're associated with because i have a robust vocabulary you hear that robust yeah right yeah refined yes a robust vocabulary means that i'm speaking white nah man you got to do some soul search and look in the mirror but as we talk about all the time on this podcast it's very hard for [ __ ] to look in the mirror very hard it's not only black people that do that because whenever i was in school it was white people that also said that too they would say that you talk wide you act white what does that even mean and i feel like we can't just say that it's black people even though some black people are guilty of doing that it's also white people too because what exactly does that mean we're always put into a box as black people we're not allowed to be ourselves we have to fit a stereotype and when we break free of that stereotype everybody's like oh you're different like why are you acting like that i've never seen that before and i think the reason is people are uncomfortable with things that they've never seen before or sometimes they even hate things that they don't understand i think that's a big problem with society because something is different people see it as a threat people see it as different they exclude it they try and make those individuals feel like they're not part of normal society and i don't think that's fair every individual person is unique and based on where you're from your experiences your parenting your environment makes you who you are so i don't think anybody is like it's purposely changing themselves to fit a certain mold or have people look at them a certain way now there are coons though and coons might be people that do that to be looked at in a certain way by white people and i think that's very problematic because you shouldn't have to change who you are in order for white people to be like yes i like you you are a good one you're not like the other blacks you're you're different you know conservatives love having a black friend that thinks the same way that they do if they're racist sometimes if that black friend is saying racist stuff it's confirming you know what i'm not racist i have this black friend that's saying the exact same thing so i can't be racist don't look at me like that if your black friend goes to super cuts to get their hair cut they ain't really your black friend let me just tell you like that they're exactly exactly um but no you made an excellent point about people are scared or they even hate on things i mean we live in that we grew up in a society where like hey like it's not cool to express your feelings and if you're hurt don't say it if you're scared don't say like you got to be tough blah blah blah blah blah all that toxic masculinity you're just like hiding your feelings [ __ ] and it's funny and i want to go on the tangent here but it's funny because now the generation below us now all they listen to is all this sad emo rap rock music about being sad all the [ __ ] time anyway yeah people are scared or they they hate on things that they don't understand or that they've never seen somebody who looks like them do like i remember growing up like and you know the people that know me and that are listening this could tell you like i was the first dude first person of color in my school that was wearing skinny jeans and hollister and all that [ __ ] i had my lip pierced and all this stuff and dudes are like yo that's weird like why are you wearing that blah blah blah like because i like clothes that fit me differently that's why i'm wearing it maybe you should hop off the plantation and figure out who you are i'm telling you it's one of the most liberating things i learned it my sophomore year in high school that i got to be me i have to be me and i have to know how to love myself because i can't love anybody else my mother my father my family anybody i'm dating unless i love me so i learned how to be okay with being me and that meant i wanted to you know do something different whatever whatever the spirit moved me to do i was going to do it and [ __ ] was like oh well you're wearing them jeans you wear jeans like my girl it was like my jeans weren't that tight for the for the record because i was like oh you wear jeans like my girl like and i could take your girl if i wanted to homie like what's up straight like that it even came down to like the music i listened to like i was playing basketball and like before the game [ __ ] is listening to whatever rap was was out at the time like lil wing and all that crazy [ __ ] rick ross and like i enjoyed that too but like i'm sitting here listening to like bob marley and jimi hendrix and they're like why do you listen to that music like i don't know because some of the greatest music ever made like step outside of that mental plantation at you on don't discount things because society and history has told you that oh because you look this certain way this is how you always have to be because you're black you can never go listen to a country song it's all trash because you've been programmed to think that it's all trash and programmed to think that all rock music strategy been programmed to think that certain things are for certain people right but it's weird because black people by and large and i don't like making stereotypes here but black people by and large love anime do you ever hear somebody say oh you acting asian yeah nobody does that they just consider them weird see what i'm saying anything that's not the norm they consider weird and i think that we all do that because you i mean i think the anime kids were a little bit weird though so let me oh yeah if you were one of them people running down the hallway with your arms behind you yeah you they had to keep an eye on you you might have had a list but you should one you shouldn't hate on things that you don't understand oh he's black but he dresses a certain way or he listens to certain music or she does her hair like this but like black people don't do that well this black person does that black person does like get out of that that mental state of this is only meant for black people or this is only meant for white people because i'm i know of white people have felt the same way where they're living their truth and other white people were like why are you doing that that's where black people do that or spanish people do that everybody does it everybody does it not only black people not only white people it's an insecurity thing to be honest i think that people who aren't secure in who they are they question things that are different from them guys are supposed to listen to rap and when you don't you listen to something else oh you're not really one of us and it's stupid like that example of those people like questioning you based on what you're wearing maybe the person questioning you has always thought to experiment and wear different things but because society told him that no a guy wears baggy jeans shorts and some baggy a baggy shirt that's what i have to wear that's stupid i think that you should be who you are and i love the point that you made about being comfortable and who you are because we're all individuals we're all unique and we like what we like so if you want to dress a certain way and listen to a certain style of music go for it it's not an indication of your race or your your gender it's just who you are individually and what you like and i think that's how we should see it we need to stop putting people into boxes because that's how stereotypes are given life i know there's some truth to stereotypes but for the most part they aren't true because they cannot apply to every single person it can't there's black people that don't like watermelon there's black people that don't like kool-aid and fried chicken and that's okay that does not make them any less black than anyone else they like it or they don't like it unpopular opinion here but uh i truly believe in my heart of hearts that white people enjoy fried chicken more than black people do um who's cooking like you know how you always anyway you know how you like see on social media those like four boxes and it's like okay here's tacos cheeseburgers fried chicken and like seafood or something that and you gotta get rid of one of these foods man fried chicken is always going like kentucky fried chicken ain't marketed to black people you know i mean like i'm looking at fried chick commercial right now as we're recording this live so white family there i truly believe white people like fried chicken more black people do everybody likes fried chicken everybody likes fried chicken people are just dumb we need to step out of our comfort zones and allow people to be themselves i feel like maybe that's part of why people struggle so much with mental health because they're dealing with personal traumas but then they're also dealing with societal traumas where well society told me to do this society told me to act like this dress like this or whatever because you feel different it leads to depression i feel like if we just left people alone there would be a whole lot less you know depressed people walking the streets you should be able to water the flower that is your life and you should be able to explore the things that you are interested in the color of your skin it shouldn't put a limit on what you do for yourself and what you explore you know and i think it's i mean i know it's prevalent in every uh racial community but it's very prevalent in the black community because i dealt with that growing up you know i mean like oh black people don't do this black people don't do this you're being weird that's weird that's strange that's different like your mama like it [ __ ] i
and so what different weird that's the thing why does everybody want to be like everybody else that's boring let's imagine that we were all marbles and we're all red marbles it'd be cool to be a blue marble or a yellow marble why do you want to be red why do you want to be like everybody else that's boring the people that are famous that we idolize today are the people that were called weird are the people that were called different that did not fit in and because they did not fit in they were excluded and that exclusion that they felt is part of the reason that they're famous because that makes them who they are i got really bullied and i you know i had uh you know a nice group of friends uh but getting picked on in school it sticks with you for life and i don't think i realized how deeply it affected me until i started to become more successful and suddenly there's lots of pressure and you have to be a role model and i had to look inside myself and say well what do i have to offer because for so many years i felt like i didn't have very much to offer but i see similar struggles in my fans and so together through the show and through the music we find liberation from our challenges and our identity struggle because they chose to be different because they chose to live in their truth they have gained the following of people that love them for who they are nobody is going to love you if you're just like everybody else because guess what you cannot remember somebody if they're just like everybody else it's the unique people that stand out the people that we remember that's what i always preach to myself every day i don't want to be like everybody else that's fine do you but i'm going to do me and live my truth because there will never be another justin you will never find another i'll tell you that like i say you probably find someone but you'll never find another put that on a t-shirt but no like like that was an excellent point that you made right like i'll name three people prince david bowie lady gaga i'm pretty sure growing up people gave them all types of hell like yo you are one strained you're a strange bird man you fly to the other side of the flock three of the most famous people ever walk the face of the earth timeless so live your truth man i just hate that and especially i mean we're talking about the standpoint of the black community because that's the community we grew up in is like why do you handicap yourselves and others that look like you by telling them they have to be a certain way they have to dress a certain way they have to look a certain way it's just wrong let people expand their horizons and maybe we can open more doors for ourselves by trying different things it's true if we're going to have this conversation dante we also have to be honest with ourselves too you know how we look at black conservatives you know black people don't have to be democrats black people don't have to be liberal people are allowed to be conservative too and i think especially when you're black since black people primarily seem to vote with the democratic party honestly conservatives that are black are seen as pariahs the earth revolves around the sun fact two times two is four in fact black people aren't republicans we just aren't we vote for democrats and it's not just an obama thing he could have drop kicked this baby and i still would have voted for him but the fact of the matter is being a black republican is something we just don't do oh hey son how was your day oh great i joined the young republicans club at school fact junior may not be a donkey but he's definitely an ass people hate on them they say they're anti-black or whatever but shouldn't black people be allowed to explore whatever they want politically as well without people telling them that they're not black i don't think it makes you any less black being a conservative or republican you know there's a black senator from south carolina tim scott he's a republican i don't think it makes him any less black for being a republican defending this president the way he has in his actions you know questionable right but who am i you know i'm just a guy behind a microphone right now i'll keep my personal opinions to myself but overall like just because you're a black republican no i don't think that makes you a [ __ ] if you're going out here saying [ __ ] like terry crews you cooning you uh or candace owens you definitely cooning can you insult a black person without being a racist that's just a question i think the minute that he went with lazy he was you why are you why are you saying black people are lazy no but that's why does the word lazy thank you that is no it is not i've actually i've never been called lazy in my entire life so the question is why does the word me no no i'm asking a question i asked you a question you said that lazy makes you think of black people that's what you're saying that is a common racist truth so that's that's within you not within him that is not a common racist like an example i was trying to get into it earlier but with code switching i was mentioning that everybody has done it and we do it to make other people feel comfortable we do it to fit in i don't know if y'all in new jersey if y'all had these shoes called sperry's do you know what those are bro i got two pairs of sperry's in my closet right now my boat shoes yeah when i was in high school those shoes were very very popular and everybody wore it fast forward to now i would never be caught dead wearing that i feel like sometimes we feel like we have to have the latest trends to fit in with everybody else and i definitely fell into that because i bought them and i wore them in high school but i would never wear that now i feel like my style has evolved and changed and that's no longer what i like wearing so everybody falls into it you know at some point but nobody helps the situation that they're born into you can't help the people that you're around if you go to a school with all white people you're gonna speak like the people around you speak you're gonna you know maybe dress like them like i was wearing sperry's i would never wear that now so you know it's part of our environment and that's why we shouldn't judge people because you don't know somebody else's situation a problem in society is that we expect that everybody goes through our same life experiences so thus they should see the world the same way we see it that's unfair and that's impossible because nobody lives the exact same life that you live unless they're your brother or your sister they're not gonna have your same experiences so i think when you know that you can look at everybody as an individual instead of acting like they should be part of a collective when they might not relate to the same things that you like i think that you know there's something important in there that you said um about you know your surroundings and where you grow up there's two things that really form who you are as a person in your early years and i mean probably for the majority of your life right it's nature and nurture your nature is where you are in the world and what's around you right nurture is the people around you who are tasked with raising you and making you into a functional human so if you're a black person and you grow up in a town that is you know 90 white you might not have a lot in common with people who grew up in a town that's 90 black i mean that's just fair to say because that's the nature that's around you or if you know your hispanic person and the school you go to is predominantly asian you want to be trying some different thing you're exposed to different stuff and i think that's what those experiences make you who you are and i think like you said we should stop judging people based on what you see from them because you don't know what their backstory is right you know where they came from how they grew up all that stuff you know yeah and then i feel like code switching and assimilation they kind of go hand in hand because um you all know i'm nigerian my parents immigrated over here and they had us here they easily could have gave us nigerian names of course the tribe i belong to is called ebo and they could have given me a traditional ebook name as my first name i have a lot of friends their nigerian name is their first given name my parents decided to do a switcharoo they named me justin and that's my first name that's the name that i go by but my middle name is my nigerian name they did that intentionally because they wanted me to fit in as best as possible in a way you know there's advantages because of that there's disadvantages because of that even like with work and stuff i feel like based on your name your name says a lot your name is very powerful cassandra and her daughter who has a very unusual name in fact we can't pronounce her name but we can tell you it has over 1 000 letters we had to create a special graphic for her name take a look that is her name that makes leticia lashon look simple leticia lashawn chante her birth certificate is two feet long she has the longest personal name in the world according to the guinness book of world records and we want to ask her mother what were you thinking i had to do something to break a guinness book record i had to make sure that her name was going to be unique i didn't want her name to be like anybody else make sure what is her name what is her name it's roshandia tonician vision kitchen simon drew schlenderscher ninja shamika netanyahu connie marinette clemson divine yeah
and i think that when my parents came over here they didn't want me to be discriminated against they didn't want to see like uh chukwudi or something like that and then have a hiring person say oh this person is probably an african or black we don't want them so they just wanted to give me a traditional american name and they did that to assimilate as best as possible it's almost like a survival thing i don't know i don't feel any type of way about it it is what it is i can't control that i'm interested to know because your first name is dante do you think that your name has played a role in any situation that you've been in versus if you were given like a traditional i don't know american name like chad or johnny or timmy no so i mean traditionally the name dante is uh italian right and my last name is french so people who have probably read my resume before they've ever called me and talked to me on the phone they there's a good chance they thought they were talking to a white guy or they were contacting the white guy maybe i don't know i'm not in their heads um but you know i don't my mom didn't have when she named me dante she probably didn't have in mind about like actually you know what my mom is a very forward thinker and thinks about you know long-term so she probably you know maybe there is another name she wanted to name me and decided to name me dante i don't know i'm going to actually ask her about that maybe she wanted to name me like tyrese or something yeah i don't know right tyrone yeah but like you said it's a it's a way of survival i've read and watched documentaries on how when uh asian people move over here they give their kids these names these traditional white names from like the 50s like amy and sue names that they saw white characters have on tv like i dream of genie and leave it to beaver names god this is literally where they've gotten it from like i've i've read a report on this thing and watched a documentary on it so i'm sorry for saying traditional white names they feel like their kid will have a better chance of success you know somebody's just judging you based off a piece of paper so they give them these traditional american names so that people can't predetermine who you are and what you're about by your name and that is assimilation that's kind of heartbreaking now it is listen to me you talk about like your parents and why they you know gave you the name justin right that's kind of heartbreaking because i don't think that anybody should shed who they are in their culture in order to assimilate into another culture and you know that this country has a very bad history when it comes to its treatment of immigrants so just the thought of immigrants having to shed their culture in order to be a part of this bigger culture it's sad because our culture should be celebrated we shouldn't have to name our child a different name just because we want them to fit in if you have a traditional name from whatever country you come from it'd be cool if you went by that too because we get to learn a question i have for you is do you think that we should look at people a certain way if they do decide to give their child a name that is traditionally black like latavia and laquasia are they in a way like shooting their child's foot when it comes to success in the future just based on their name alone because you can have all the qualifications but you know if somebody sees like a latavia laquavia and all that they're gonna have preconceived notions about who that person is beyond what the resume says i mean for sure they are and i mean that's sad but that's just a society that we live in right the harder it is for somebody to pronounce your name if it has too many consonants in it you know the less likely people are to engage with your resume i guess we're told in a professional setting here right and i really feel like south asian people have a big problem with that often that i've seen from working uh in this industry because people can't pronounce their name they don't want to take the time to look through this person's credentials like that's wrong i don't think your name and your heritage and who you are should be a hindrance on your prospects in life exactly exactly i think you're right and you know what i hate one of my biggest pet peeves is when somebody has a name that isn't amy or dawn or chad if they have a quote-unquote complicated name they try and shorten their name to make it easier for people to pronounce no no no no that's not fair if you have a name help them pronounce it say your name don't shorten it to make other people feel comfortable because other people didn't have to do that to you so why do you have to do that to them say your name and be proud of who you are and i hate that because i know a lot of people nigerians even that have names that people are used to and i think it's a good teaching moment because you're teaching them about your culture rather than just assimilating and saying oh my name is chica but you can just call me c no call them your name so they can learn who you are because that's part of your humanity and your culture and they should never be minimized at all a lot of people do that and even in the workplace even oh you have a complicated name just call me this no call me by my name that i mean yo so my mom has a huge pet peeve about that but like my nickname isn't shortening or taking anything away from my given name of dante right like my nickname is actually longer than my real name but um she hates when people call me donny and she said i named you dante i remember one time when i was i'll never forget i was like i think i was in middle school i was at the doctor's office and uh the lady tried to tell my mom that my name was dantes and my mom was like i birthed him i know his name is dante i have his birth certificate what the hell are you talking about i'm like yeah my name ain't dantes bro there ain't no z on the end of this thing dantes that's funny that's funny you have several tattoos maybe this relates to the episode maybe it doesn't what was the reasoning behind your tattoos how many do you have and do you regret them i have one two three four five six six it looks like four so no so i got my tattoos for a sentimental reason i have uh on my left arm my left bicep my grandmother's name and a rose and her favorite color underneath of it and then on my uh right arm i have my mother's name and a rose in her favorite color underneath of it and then i have uh an angel i mean basically my left arm is dedicated to my grandma yeah so no i not for a moment do i regret my tattoos at all perry point blank honestly i forget that i have them at times like i'll just look down be like oh yeah that's there but no i don't i don't regret having them at all um i didn't just do it to be like oh well i'm 18 now or i'm 17 now and i think i should get a tattoo no there was a reason behind me getting mine and they mean something to me that was a good answer and that's actually a good transition segway king because respectability politics is something that we also have to talk about because respectability politics i have a complicated relationship with my dad is really big into respectability politics my dad would never in a million years allow me to get a tattoo if i got a tattoo he would disown me he would tell me to get it removed and i think that's the case for a lot of nigerians like piercings they freak out about tattoos they freak out about changing your hair they you know freak out about my younger brother has like twisties in his hair and they were freaking out about that they don't want him to be profiled in any way or seen a certain way but i have problems with that because people don't care if you have tattoos people don't care if you have gold teeth or dress a certain way if you're black in this country you're treated a certain way regardless of the other things that define who you are or your makeup on the outside i gotta push back on that one a little bit because i've noticed right that walking on the street or walking to you know in a store or whatever it may be people look at me different and treat me different if i'm in there in my suit in my [ __ ] movado versus if i'm in there in my joggers in a hoodie you know what's [ __ ] up about that is like after that trayvon morton [ __ ] a lot of black men did not feel comfortable wearing hoodies anymore it's true i felt like that like i still think about that [ __ ] like oh man i can't go out in public in a hoodie because somebody might decide to shoot me because i look like a threat because i look like a threat what does a threat look like full circle let's just be tomorrow what does talking white sound like and i don't know if it's the media coming up with images of scary black people so whenever somebody sees a black person with the hoodie oh they must be up to no good it's not fair the way you dress and all that is based on your environment so if everybody else has cornrows and you know wearing a singlet it's called the wife beater but i don't call it a wife beater because i think that's probably yeah i appreciate you not calling it that man yeah that anymore either because like i said before if you put your hands on a woman i think you're a [ __ ] he said it but that doesn't define who you are how you dress and the things that you like is kind of based on your environment so i don't think that we should be judging somebody's character based on how they dress but i will say how you represent yourself says a lot about you and if you want people to think that you're not clean or whatever dress like that if you want people to think that you're clean and that you take care of yourself then the way you dress will represent that so i think with respectability politics it's that aspect that i agree with i don't think that wearing a suit will protect you from you know not being shot by the police because there is a story about a college professor i believe who lives in like an upper scale neighborhood and he was having a hard time getting into his house his neighbors called the police on him they arrested him for trying to get into his own house he was probably wearing a nice suit this guy is a professor so him wearing nice clothes had no determination on him being arrested so we have to push back on this idea if you're clean cut and if you have a fade and you tuck in your shirt you will be a-okay no you're not at the end of the day we're still black in this country and that's something that you cannot rub off unless you're bleaching i didn't say that it's like the magic cure or anything like that i'm just saying that i noticed in my personal life that for the most part i get treated different walking into a place or being in a place when i have my suit on versus you know if i just got done working out and i have joggers and a hoodie on or something like that and you know what like people do give you different looks depending on the age that they are i remember being at work one time i was at a work function i had my current company but one before because we wore suits every day nobody ever knew i had tattoos like unless they followed me on social media or whatever and then one day we had like this outing and like i wore a t-shirt and my director was like oh man you're tatted up i didn't know that i was like does that change anything it probably did in his mind i'm being scared am i still performing does it change anything that i have these tattoos because tattoos have a negative connotation for me i'd probably never get a tattoo because there's nothing really important or sentimental that i really feel like i need to permanently put on my body that's just me i don't have anything against tattoos but for me it's not something that i'm into when it comes to dressing nice i think that there's studies that show that people respect people that wear suits they take them seriously because it's like oh this person you know has a good job or this person knows more than i know they must be professional in some way i think it's scientifically proven that we just take people in suits more seriously and i mean that you know what that person in suit that could be fake in the funk right because there's people out there that are trait that have trade so like somebody that might be a plumber or a mechanic might be making way more money than the person that's wearing that suit so that suit don't mean [ __ ] because you could put somebody standing in a suit that's making and i'm not disparaging anybody here right but somebody stand there in a suit and let's say they're making 13 an hour right they're standing next to a plumber who's all dirty looks trashy you probably wouldn't give this person two dollars if you saw him on the street and that person's making a hundred thousand dollars a year you gotta stop judging people for what you see that's why i always have something to say about all these rappers that are showing off their bling and their jewelry and all this like they're showing to the outside world that i have money you really are wealthy you don't have to do that there's so many people in the world that are humble that are proud of what they have but they don't feel the need to show it off to everybody so everybody knows that they have money it's a bigger issue i know we always connect everything to black culture but with black people a lot of black people are flexors they like to show what they have and we know the reason why when you have a history of not having a lot of being oppressed as soon as you get something as soon as you feel like you've made it you feel like you have to show everybody in the world that you've made it to you go out and buy a nice car you buy a nice house you buy some jewelry so people think of you in a certain way i feel like a lot of africans even do that my dad was the oldest of nine siblings you know he worked really hard and became a pharmacist so because of that my dad was able to afford you know nicer things he bought a nice car a nice house and i think maybe part of the reason why he did those things is to show hey i've made it dad be proud of me and it was great when my grandfather eventually came over to the united states to visit he was you know proud of my dad and everything he accomplished so i think part of what my dad did with buying a nice house and a nice car was to show that he's mated but there's other people that just do it to impress people that they don't even like and this goes into a theme that i always say on every episode stop caring about what other people think about you especially people that don't like you you're hurting your pockets more by feeling that you have to keep up with the jones or live this outward appearance of wealth when either you don't got it or the people that you're trying to impress really don't care that you have a nice house or a nice car who are you on the inside people will remember you for who you are and how you treated them not the things that you have
dab yourself off real quick because as a prayer cloth moment dante get out
i would like to add on that what you were saying right i feel like social media has only compounded and exacerbated that problem of feeling like you need to show off not just black people everybody of every color because it's like hey somebody else out there is living their best life i need to show you how i'm living my best life and that's why you make fun of these people that post their trip to miami four years ago every week like take me back stop it you're making a fool out of yourself you're showing off and you're flexing from people who really don't give a [ __ ] about you they truly don't you know either they're going to double tap that picture they're not but does that really give you validation as a person is that what helps you look in the mirror say you know what yeah i am attractive or yeah people do like me because i had a hundred people like this picture of me that's sad if you asked me in my opinion that's how people live their lives with the satisfaction and the gratification from people from the outside world that really don't care about them i feel like people need to live for themselves i think that's the theme of this episode code switch to survive code switch to fit in but ultimately we have to all live for ourselves because if you're not making yourself happy who are you trying to impress who was i trying to impress by wearing sperry's in high school make yourself happy because dante made a good point in the beginning of this episode you cannot love other people if you don't have love for yourself and you don't know who you are on the inside that's what matters very true and one other thing i'd like to say you know there is a flip side to this right like how we talk about people flexing for people who really don't give a [ __ ] about you you know sometimes you're doing it for yourself right like i love retro jordans i have a closet just for my sneakers okay i ain't doing this to impress nobody else trust me i'm doing this because i work my ass off and i can pay my bills and still buy the [ __ ] that i like my parents weren't going to spend all that money when i was growing up like hey when you get a job you can work for it and get it yourself guess what i can do that now so i buy this for myself and i don't go post them every week and like oh look at my retros nah i got it because i enjoy it because i like them because i wanted them since i was younger now i'm in a position to go take care of that but if you're a person that's struggling let's say you're walking to work or something like that then why are you buying a gucci belt who are you showing off for like oh my god this guy is speaking honestly like ladies and and please let us know and tell me if i'm wrong here but i don't think that you're going to make the determination on if you're a guy or not based off of if he has a gucci belt
and you guys can call me on this i think anybody's a liar if they say hey nobody else's opinion there's like yeah there are select few people who if they you know came to me and said something i'm really going to take into consideration what they said you got to have that it's very healthy to have that because you don't know everything on your own and you have blind spots that other people can point out for you those followers that you have on ig or if you're letting them determine the course of your life and what you view and think of yourself it's a sad place to be in man and i hope that you get out of the wilderness and you find whatever you're looking for but that ain't it
honestly we were just preaching on this episode we need to dab ourselves get your prayer cloth out dab your forehead get those sweat droplets out dab it dab it dab it off your head cloth darling and y'all the listeners at home are doing the same thing too i'm very grateful and i'm very thankful for you guys that listen because you guys are the reason why i do it everything is not about numbers for me but it is though because if there weren't people listening to this i wouldn't be doing it i want to have good conversations i want to open people's minds and also want to learn it's not about coming on here and preaching i'm open to criticism i'm open to hearing your feedback that's why we have the anonymous thing so if you guys want to send in a question if you guys want to ask us anything or follow us on social media feel free to do so but i do it for you guys my goal with this show is to cultivate a community and that's what i'm doing so thank you guys so much for your birthday wishes thank you to all you guys that reach out to the show it means a lot dante what do you have to say we give you all this heat for free just think about 99. um you know free 99 and hopefully it'll always be 3.99 but i'm just telling y'all y'all boys we're on the verge of something here guys so quiet as a skip but um no thank the community thank all of our listeners whether you listen in good faith whether you listen in bad faith whether you hating whether you loving i don't care thank you for listening you know subscribe rate review unsubscribe subscribe again no listen again um like i said the brand is strong you know we wouldn't be doing this without you guys so thank you so much continue to interact with us continue to support like justin said reach out you all know my dms are open man if y'all got an anonymous question let me know if you got a question that you want to put your name behind say with your chest let me know if you have an opinion you think we were wrong if you're coming in good faith let me know if you're on that hey yeah if you were on that last that on january 6 was 1776 and it was patriots you don't need to say [ __ ] to me um but outside of that yeah let us know love it thank you guys again i second everything he said thank you guys for listening thank you to the secret fans thank you to the real fans thank you to the fake fans all of you guys we appreciate you guys so much you all be safe and with that being said we will catch you guys on the next one i refuse to soften my tone or remove slang for my vocabulary just to be compatible with the system created on stolen land and slave labor oh yeah speak on i'm gonna talk how i talk like ryan coogler he'll be on the view signing black as [ __ ] even whoopi be confused