BEP Narrator:
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A Black Executive Perspective now presents Need to Know
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with the award winning hyphenated Dr.
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Nsenga Burton.
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Dr.
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Burton.
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What do we need to know?
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Dr. Nsenga Burton: Hello and
welcome to Need to Know with Dr.
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Nsenga Burton.
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I am she, Dr.
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Burton.
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I am happy to see you today.
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Today, I would like to talk to
you about um, a couple of things.
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One, there's an article about,
uh, Billionaire's kiss in the
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ring, um, of the 47th president.
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That's coming into office on January 20th.
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Dr.
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Martin Luther King's national holiday.
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Yeah.
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Uh, and then, uh, there was a
wonderful, um, Video it's not a video.
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It's an Instagram post of, uh,
by Keith Boykin talking about the
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same thing and how it is really
compromising media and media companies.
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Because you have these billionaire
owners who are literally doing
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whatever they can to curry favor
with this president, because they
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know how punitive he is and how he
demands loyalty and they are in fear.
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Of what may happen or what may
come once he comes into office.
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And so now we are really in a place
of we being the public are in a place
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where we have to really think about
whether or not to trust our media.
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In a way that we haven't before, um,
because we have, as Mr Boykin says,
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and it might be Dr Boykin, but Keith
Boykin says, uh, slow marching into
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authoritarianism and we are complying.
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We're complying by responding to
settling lawsuits that are frivolous.
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We are complying by, uh, pulling
endorsements of national, uh,
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presidential candidates, um, which
is what happened with the Washington
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Post and the Los Angeles Times.
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Uh, we are complying by getting rid
of our DEI, uh, uh, uh, policies, uh,
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that really were put into place, not
because, not to give people, uh, fear.
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not to give people opportunities
they hadn't earned.
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It was because people had
earned those opportunities and
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still were not getting them.
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And so it's like you at least have to
interview someone or what have you.
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And if you look at the stats in
schools and what have you, um, the
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only people who are really being
affected by the erosion of the DEI
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policies are other students of color.
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Our numbers aren't going up or down
because you weren't admitting us anyway.
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I'm a college professor 23 years in.
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Um, and so I know that to be true.
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So, you know, with all the in
place, it wasn't helping us.
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It was really helping,
um, you know, white women.
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It was helping in some cases, white
men, because white men, if you
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looked at those numbers, they have
been going down significantly in
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terms of those who are choosing to
enroll in college and universities.
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Right?
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So it was helping them.
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Get in even though they may
not have had the best grades.
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Um, and then even with this happening,
you know, the folks whose numbers are
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dropping, Asian American students, Asian
students, um, are trying to sue black
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students for taking their spots instead of
people who have, um, benefited from legacy
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emissions and all that kind of stuff.
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And so there's just this laser focus
on black people having anything.
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Anti black racism is pervasive
throughout the world.
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Right.
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It is pervasive in this country.
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So people literally think that
we shouldn't have anything and.
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The reason that they think we
shouldn't have anything is because
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they think that we're less than right.
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So we don't deserve to be in these places.
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We haven't earned our spot.
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We were in servitude slavery for so long.
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How dare you think that you
should be here or there?
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So I'm bringing all this back together.
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All of this is part of
the same poisonous fruit.
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And that is called racism and
it's called anti black racism.
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And so basically, what you all are doing
when you are settling these cases, when
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you are allowing him to escape, um,
and have allowed him, but, you know,
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by and large to escape, uh, serving
time that he would have been, uh, he
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would have been, um, made to serve.
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Had he been a regular old person, um,
you know, it is, you know, The hypocrisy
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of holding people in jail who haven't
even been charged when you have someone
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who is now going to be president of
the United States with the number
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of felonies and convictions that he
has is just, uh, it's preposterous.
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It's a boring every all the S.
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A.
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T.
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words.
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It's all of those things.
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Um, and so what I'm saying is.
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What is happening is that people are
getting misinformation and disinformation.
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But in addition to that, what is happening
is the erosion of our institutions
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that are supposed to be the foundation
to our society to our democracy.
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And so, if you can't trust your media,
if you can't trust your HR, your HR
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professionals, if you can't trust your
admissions counselors to colleges and
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universities, then where are we going?
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And where we're headed?
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You know, we live in a democracy.
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The beauty of a democracy is that
everyone allegedly has a voice that you
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can correct, uh, damage that has been
done to people populations or what have
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you, you can change things as a populace.
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You can say, hey, this isn't work.
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Segregation isn't working for us anymore.
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So let's see if we can create some
opportunities so that everybody has
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equal access to resources didn't happen.
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But, you know, we aspire to it.
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Um, you know, part of being a democracy
is not only just having one vote, one
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person, which, of course, we know that
hasn't happened with the Electoral
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College, which has to be done away
with, um, if we ever want to have any
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type of power, the people, the populace
over our lives ever again, um, that
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those things are in place for a reason.
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And so when you have people.
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Who own these media companies,
and, you know, the irony is
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someone who works in media.
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The irony of these media companies is that
the people can afford to buy and sell and
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trade and do all the things that they do
are typically not media trained people.
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They may be business people, but
they're absolutely not journalists.
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They're not media or communicate.
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media makers or communicators.
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So they don't have the
same level of ethics.
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They don't have the
same amount of training.
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They don't really understand that
we are the fourth estate, right?
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There's the executive branch,
the legislative branch, um, the
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three branches of government.
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I'm having a brain fart on the other
one, but the fourth estate is the press.
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We're supposed to be the watchdog, right?
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Um, and we're supposed to be there for the
people to make sure that, um, we are, uh,
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Not being abused, used, mistreated, um,
by those different branches of government.
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So I just wanted to use today to
say that sometimes, um, and to
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echo what Boykin said, sometimes
you just have to make a decision.
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You have to decide if you're going to
be on what I call the right side of
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history or the wrong side of history.
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And I will say that if
you are bending the knee.
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Kiss in the ring or any of those
things and basically selling out
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the people who have made you, i.
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e.
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your customers.
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Uh, IE, your fellow humans, your fellow
citizens, uh, your fellow, um, uh,
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colleagues, then it's, it's
not going to end well, it's
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not going to end well for you.
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Like, you know, we, we are, uh,
one of our foundations is violence.
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For this country, I hate
to say it, but it's true.
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It's violence country found on violence.
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It was founded on the elimination
or the attempt to eliminate
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whole groups of people.
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We don't have a great history when it
comes to our foundational principles and
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to be heading back that way as fast as
we can is very, it's not scary for me
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because I'm a historian, you know, you can
see these things happening in cycles, but
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it is problematic and I don't think that
people know what they're signing up for.
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So.
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We have to hold our people accountable.
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Uh, that includes the businesses.
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Um, you know, you have to figure
out how to vote with your dollars
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because that's the only thing that
people in this country understand.
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That's how capitalism works.
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So be mindful of what you support.
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What you do.
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Um, you know, I'm in the process
of figuring out how to get myself
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off of Amazon and off of prime.
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I've already, and I worked for the,
uh, an organization that was owned
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by the Washington post for 10 years.
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Um, but I canceled my
Washington post subscription.
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I canceled my LA time subscription.
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Um, I'm getting off of Amazon and
I'm going to finish watching cross.
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I got three more episodes cause I
just cannot say no to Elvis Hodges.
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Um, but after I finished cross,
Uh, prime's gotta go too.
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And uh, it's just unfortunate, but
it's just like, you're not going
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to run my people into the ground.
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And have me help pay for it.
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I'm just not going to do it.
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So, you know, Walmart is like literally
walking distance from my house.
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I go all the way over the target
and pay more targets are messing up.
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I'm just gonna have to
do away with them too.
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We just got to figure it out.
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Um, and I think, you know, 1 of my
friends said this weekend that it's going
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to be really hard to actually Purchase
things ethically anymore because of how
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the country is, um, being structured
and just being structured to be run by
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major corporations and billionaires.
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Uh, and basically the people are supposed
to, we're supposed to bend our knee and
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just pretend like this is normative.
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And we have no say in it.
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Well, I don't believe that.
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And, um, I am here to say that
I'm not going to be a part of it.
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So if I can in any way, shape or form do
anything, it can be the slightest thing.
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And it might not be a big deal to you.
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Uh, but when I look at my tax, when
I started doing my taxes, I see
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how much money I spend on Amazon.
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I think it's going to be a big
deal if enough of us do it.
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Um, and then that's what I'm going to do.
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So I think you need to know
that you do have some power.
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You can exercise it in a myriad of ways.
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You know, it can be
doing what we're doing.
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Tony and I are doing.
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Talking about what we're talking
about, um, you can do it with
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your exercise and your dollars.
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You can get off of X, which
I've done that as well.
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I'm now debating on blue sky because I
just don't trust the platforms anymore.
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I don't know what they're
gonna do with our information.
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I don't know who they're gonna sell it to.
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I don't know how they're
gonna sell us out.
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So I'm just, you know, in that
frame of mind, because all of them.
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You know, it's Instagram.
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It's threads.
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It's all of it.
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Mark Zuckerberg.
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It's Jeff Bezos.
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It's all of the billionaires.
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They have been at the knee.
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And so I'm like, well, I can't trust you
with my information anymore, or I can't
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trust you with my people and not that we
ever really did, but it's just like, okay,
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well, you know, commerce is commerce.
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So this works, but when you
are basically saying to a white
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supremacist that whatever you say and
do, I'm going to go along with it.
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You can't do that with my money.
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And with my identity and my
information, you just can't do it.
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So I got to figure this out.
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I don't know how I'm gonna stay in
business, but some of us are having
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some meetings and trying to figure
out how to stay in business aside from
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being on these social media platforms.
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We have websites, obviously, we
own those, but, um, you know.
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It's just a matter of time before even
those, those places are purchased as well,
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the people who provide those services.
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So, um, I say do what you can now.
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Do what you can that feels good.
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If you're not ready to give
up, Aidis Hodge on cross.
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I understand honey.
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You ain't got to do it right
now, but work towards it.
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Work it out.
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Like let the brother get
his, you know, his shine.
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He's going to be on some other stuff,
but you know, he always lands nicely.
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Um, but if you're not ready
for that, that's okay.
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We're not judging.
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I'm just saying try to do
what you can most of the time.
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So you can stay out of Walmart easily.
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You can stay out of Publix easily.
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You can't stay out of
certain places easily.
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There are other things that you can
do other places that you can buy.
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And actually Amazon, you
just get up and go out.
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There's the benefit of Amazon
just comes to the house.
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It's not even more affordable anymore.
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It just comes to the house.
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So just get up, take a walk, get
up, get in your car, get on the
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bus and go get what you need.
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All right.
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So that's it.
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I wish you a wonderful day.
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Please tune in next week to
a black executive perspective
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podcast, and we will see you then.
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Happy holidays.
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BEP Narrator: A black
executive perspective.
