Understanding AFS To Be Better Leaders And Entrepreneurs With David Hamilton

 

Be a better entrepreneur and a better person as well. With all the things going on, we have to know how to execute effective leadership and develop ourselves in the process. In today’s episode, David Hamilton teaches us about AFS and shares his journey to give a management perspective on becoming better leaders. He is the Founder and Chairman of The America’s Future Series. The AFS is an 11-year old speaker series focused on U.S. Global Competitiveness & National Security. He has also helped numerous businesses and non-profits grow revenue by using the novel approach to business development. He also shares why he sees his challenging childhood as a blessing and how he was shaped to become a great entrepreneur. Finally, he shares how we could bounce back on the challenges that we may face to make ourselves more competitive in today’s market.

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Understanding AFS To Be Better Leaders And Entrepreneurs With David Hamilton

As always, I am excited about this show. I have David Hamilton with me. He’s an experienced management consultant and entrepreneur. He is the Managing Director of Windsor Morgan, which provides strategic introductions to top-level executives, government leaders and military leaders. David is the Founder and Chairman of the America’s Future Series, which is a speaker series focused on US global competitiveness and national security. He has raised over $6.5 million in donations and proceeds for worthy military and other causes.

He’s here with us to teach us more about the AFS, share his journey and share some knowledge that he’s learned from management and executive perspectives on how to be better and lead ourselves. Also, how to bounce back from the challenges that we may face to make ourselves more competitive in the market in terms of the things that we do, being entrepreneurs and overall better people. Without further ado, let’s welcome David Hamilton. Welcome to the show, David.

Thank you, Rodney. It’s great to be with you.

Great to be here with you as well. First, I want to thank you for what you are doing for the US government by creating the series. I understand the value that it’s providing to executive members of the US government, therefore serving the US military so thank you for that. Let’s talk about why you come up with this idea of America’s Future Series. What is that all about? Why did you bring that forward?

First off, I want to say it’s an honor to be with you. Your particular story is an inspiration to me and I know too many others. I tip my hat to you. It’s great to be around great guys like you who have an indomitable spirit and a positive mental attitude and one that wants to help other people. I want to say thank you for letting me be with you and I enjoy getting to know you.

Thank you, David. I appreciate it.

If I back up a little bit, I feel like I was blessed to grow up during a challenging childhood and meager circumstances. A lot of people today are cursed a little bit with affluence. We probably live in the best country in the world at the best time in world history and we don’t want a lot of things. Some do but most of us, we’re doing good. A lot of people would like to be here. They’d love to be in this country. We’ve got it good.

My father did a little over three tours in Nam when I was a kid. He was a Special Forces guy. He was a Ranger airborne and he spent a lot of that time in the bush with the Manjar tribesmen. It’s a bit of a Colonel Kurtz character if you ever saw the movie Apocalypse Now. He did not come back home. He left us when I was eight. He left my mom with three kids and no money. He took all the money, paid no child support and all that good stuff. We were briefly homeless. We moved quite a bit.

I went to twelve schools by the time I entered the tenth grade. We did our fair share of day labor, picking cotton, you name it. That’s a blessing because you learn how to fail and learn how to pick yourself up. You’re moving all the time. You either become a wilting flower or you’ve never met a stranger. Those things are formative. People say hardship or forage makes people stronger. That’s a little bit about my youth and growing up and moving so many times, etc.

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We live in the poor part of town. Sometimes we were the only Anglo in an all-Black or Hispanic community. I became a fighter. I did a bit of boxing. I was blessed to meet Muhammad Ali. He introduced me to the Nation of Islam and a bunch of other organizations, etc. That set me on a journey, which was rewarding and interesting. I was active in the civil rights movement growing up.

What happened was I got through high school, college, grad school and all that. I worked for Accenture, some consulting firms and fiduciary firms. A friend of mine, a wealthy lady named Linkie Seltzer, lost all of her money in the Stanford Ponzi scheme. She’d given a lot of money to Big Brothers Big Sisters. She was big on mentoring at Big Brothers Big Sisters and all that. She asked me, “David, I can’t give any more money. Maybe you could help us raise some money for these kids.” I said, “Absolutely.”

We applied what I’ve learned in consulting and business development. It’s hard to reach people. We put on some events. One of their interns, a young lady, said, “We’re talking about America’s future here, our children. Why don’t we call it South America’s Future?” America’s Future Series came from that. We thought we would create something that would bring business leaders and thought leaders together and give a chance for Big Brothers Big Sisters and some of these other charities that we were helping. A chance to connect with people and maybe we could be tugged on their heartstrings a little bit. Maybe they’d reach for their wallet.

You have rubber chicken dinners, where you overcharge your rubber chicken and money goes to charity. Through that, people like Randall Stephenson of AT&T gave $900,000 to Big Brothers Big Sisters. We start off with T. Boone Pickens. He was the host. We inducted people into his mentoring hall of fame. General Joe Robles of USAA gave $1.5 billion when they saw the good we were doing. Especially for entrepreneurs, they understand that gaining access to contact equals contract. If you can’t get in front of somebody, if you can’t get them to sit still long enough to hear your value proposition then you don’t get a chance. You’ve got to be able to knock down doors, get in front of people, etc.

When you’re attaching yourself to a worthy cause, when you’re part of something bigger than yourself then that gets easy. People want to be part of something like that. You get to know people. We all know that everybody likes to do business with people they know, like and trust, have similar values, etc. We’ve built up this little ecosystem and over the past several years, we’ve been put on these events. I like to think we’ve done some good. We get people smarter than us and together, we have to give a platform to talk about what they want to talk about.

Hopefully, we’ll move the needle. In the area of national security and our defense, we don’t want to move the needle. We want to break the needle off of the backside of our new peers. We got to stay ahead of the Chinese and some of the other groups out there. We talk about all the stuff that’s in the news right now. America needs to be a serious country and we need to get our act together. We like to think we’ve brought some people together and made a little bit of a difference that way.

That’s my long-winded answer as to how I got started doing this stuff and why America’s Future Series exists. I would love to have you on it. We were talking about that. We do that virtually with several thousands of people at a time. Your audience may want to participate, etc. What’s interesting about this thing is it creates a meeting setting device. It’s a vehicle for connectivity. It helps people connect with people they’d like to connect with.

It provides a number of different things and different benefits. I’ve decided in my older years that this is my baby and this is what I want to focus on, which is giving a platform for people to talk about things and give solutions to make America a stronger, more noble and more generous country. That’s our mission.

In fulfilling that mission, what are some of the areas you think need attention as it relates to leadership and getting over some of the barriers and obstacles that we face as a nation?

 

The first thing is you’ve got to know thyself. You’ve got to understand yourself. Sun Tzu said, “If you understand yourself, you’ll win half the battles. If you understand the other guy, you understand what half the battle is. If you know both, you’ll win it all.” One has to be self-aware and truthful with oneself. We shine a light on some of the things that we think are important that we need to do that maybe we’re failing.

We give people an opportunity to speak about things that matter. We’re rapidly nonpartisan. We say we care about policy and not politics. We don’t allow any kind of argument, no Jerry Springer moments, no chairs getting thrown, no names being called. If you’ve got a solution then great. One single thing we’ve got to do to get over ourselves and make America a stronger, more noble and more generous country is to get over partisanship.

The one thing you’ll hear me preach on with regard to politics is that partisanship is the single existential threat we face. If we can’t figure out a way to get along, we can’t fix all the big problems that we’ve got. I don’t care if we’re talking about global warming, the North Koreans, the Afghan situation or whatever. If we can’t work together and we’re tearing each other apart, none of the rest of it matters.

I can’t help but think that you may be alluding to some of the social unrest and social issues that we’re having here in America. I can’t help but agree with you. I haven’t spoken out a lot about this habit as a leader. I have quite the feeling about it. One thing that I’m willing to talk about is the fact that we need each other. The one thing that we all have in common is that we are going to face obstacles and challenges.

Another thing is we all have something to contribute to this world. With that being said, everyone has a role, a contribution and a way of serving. Everyone should have the right to bring that forward, whatever their contribution is because it’s for the overall good of humanity. To me, we’re on the same team, in the same fight, on the same field, against the same opposition.

That doesn’t make you unusual because not everybody agrees that we’re all on the same team and we’re all fighting the same fight. Not everyone agrees that the other person is a good person with their heart in the right place. If we could do that, if we started with an assumption that the other person is not an evil son of a gun and the world had your attitude, that would be game-changing.

The purpose and the mission of America’s Future Series are to focus on US global competitiveness and national security. If you’re living in America and you’re an American citizen, a taxpaying member of the country then we’re all on the same team. In my opinion, I feel that if you are here and you love this country, want to see this country flourish and want to be a part of its success then you’re on my team. You get my vote.

Having the liberty to express yourself to the maximum extent during your lifetime is your liberty and, in my opinion, something that everyone else would want. I want you to be successful. I want you to express yourself 100%. America’s Future Series is your contribution and your way of expressing who you are. It’s part of your existence here. If you weren’t here, would we have this? We don’t know but you are and this is what you bring forward. It’s for the good. Every human being should have the ability to do so.

As a matter of fact, we should encourage that. We should encourage everyone especially here in America, to be their best selves and not hold each other down but bring each other up. If all of our team members are strong and confident in who they are and they have economic strength, strong identity and a willingness to serve, to me, that makes the country stronger. It makes us as a unit stronger.

You probably heard that analogy about the bucket full of crabs and one of the crabs tries to get out of the bucket. They don’t have to worry about the bucket whenever they get out but crabs are pulling them back in. They’re sabotaging them, etc. I see a little of that in America, where we fight amongst ourselves. We’re blessed not to have an immediate existential threat. We don’t worry that the Chinese are going to blow us up. We got some threats but we’re protected on both sides by water. We got the friendly Canadians above us. They like the Canadians and then you’ve got people south of the border wanting to come here.

We’re not fighting for our lives every day. We have the ability to stare at our neighbors, worry about this and worry about that and get into arguments with each other. We’re both blessed and cursed with that safety afterward. Therefore, we can squabble amongst ourselves, etc. We didn’t do that in World War II when we thought, “If I was going to take over the world, we’d all unite it.”

This idea that you have, this idea that we’re all one, we’re all part of a team and we all should want the other person to succeed, it seems like the longer we are not under threat, the further we get away from that. It gives us more freedom to squabble amongst ourselves. We have to be strong mentally. We have to think about our attitude to say, “No, there are big problems out there. They may not be affected immediately now.” America is a great nation, even with all of its warts. With that being true, we need to work together.

You brought up the topic of readiness. We’re fighting against ourselves but are we ready to fight against the enemy?

Do we have the will? People have studied flocks of birds, schools of fish and herds of animals. It only takes 4% or 5% of that population to decide which direction that herd or that group goes for the entire group to go. We all watch the school of fish suddenly change direction. How do they know to stay together and go together? They’re there with each other. It doesn’t take much, 5 or 6 of convicted people who are strong-willed can change an entire mentality of the country or civilization or people.

There’s a lead cow. They call it a bell cow. They put the bell around its neck because all the other cows follow. People are animals to a certain extent. If they’re a small convicted unit. The Spartans were unified. The Spartans had a purpose, grit, tenacity and willingness. They were committed. Look at the Persians, 100,000-plus of them. They were like, “I got a wicker shield. I’m not fighting for me. I’m fighting for the guy behind me that’s poking me with a spear in my back.”

If we would unite and we all recognize that we’re part of the same team, if we have commitment, that’s a small group of people who have your message and can get the platform that you’re providing, “Let’s unite. Let’s have a positive attitude. Let’s prepare to be responsible for ourselves. Let’s help our neighbor.” If we can get more and more of that out, we can make a difference. You’ve got to fight the noise of all the people who are upset in the planning and all that.

To me, David, this is America. This is supposedly the greatest country in the world. Why do we have a hard time getting a few people to go in the right direction? This isn’t hard. This is basic knowledge, loving your neighbor. That’s what we’re talking about here. Why is that so difficult for the greatest country in the world, in your opinion?

I’ve done a lot of thinking about this. Every person in almost every civilization throughout time has wanted to have their life make meaning. They wanted to belong to something of importance. They want to be part of the cause. They want to be important in some way or another. Certainly, all of the folks that join our military want to belong to something bigger than themselves, a greater cause.

I grew up on the Left. I was a follower of Alinsky, all of that, etc. A lot of the people that are unhappy with America aspire to be part of something greater than themselves. They want to right a wrong. What drives that mentality is a fundamental sense of unfairness. The world is unfair and they need to be a warrior and fight that. One could say that when their hearts are in the right place. Folks are saying, “I’m going to slay the dragon but I can’t be a hero if there’s no dragon. If there’s no bad guy, I can’t be the good guy. I can’t be Batman if there’s no Joker.”

A lot of this is fueled by distrust. They’re looking and trying to look at the hearts and minds of another person and try to figure out what they think. You might ask them as opposed to assuming you know. You might look at their works. We are known for our works. I have lived that. Now that we’re talking politics, I call myself a radical moderate. It’s an oxymoron. There’s such a thing. There’s a whole bunch of people in the middle who go, “America’s not perfect but it’s great and it could be better.”

It’s not that if I don’t agree with you 100% or 200%, that apparently I’m your enemy. Can I agree with you the 80%? Can I agree with you 90%? What does it take? If I don’t fall in lockstep with you, am I the enemy? I appreciate the sentiment of trying to make America a stronger, more noble and more generous country. That’s what we’re trying to do but you can’t tear it down. Some people do believe that the way to do that is to tear the country down to its foundation and start over.

The rest of us have to remain strong. “I don’t think I want to go through that turmoil. I don’t want to go through that upheaval. I don’t want that for my children. I want to take what’s been built and make it better.” I’m not going to think you’re an idiot, a moron, a bad person or whatever. People do what they do for a reason.

It’s a bad analogy but Hitler thought he was right. He was convicted. He thought he was on the side of the angels. I would argue that no longer does America have a cultural war. That’s not our issue. We have a reality war. We look at the same thing and see things differently. We look at it with a different lens. Our view is so significantly different that we can both look at the same thing and come away with two entirely different perspectives, two understandings about it. It’s because we don’t listen well and we assume certain things about the other party.

If we would give the other person the benefit out of the doubt, sit down and have a conversation for a second and let that conversation be nuanced because it can’t all be black and white. I’m right. You’re wrong. Your audience, to my understanding, is the kinds of people that aspire to do more in their lives. They’re overcoming some hardship, some tragedy in their life, etc. They’re trying to do more. They’re trying to be the best that they can be. Those are the leaders that need to spread that message of positivity, inclusion, collaboration, cooperation, etc. It’s not that bad. It’s not perfect.

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I want everybody to know, I’m old and I’ve got an old man’s disease. Old people want to take it back, “When I was young, we had to walk uphill both ways to school in the cold.” It’s better but it’s not perfect. Every person I know that’s happy is happy because they have an attitude of gratitude. They feel blessed. Unhappiness, by definition, is unmet expectations. You always hear unhappy people using the word should. “That should have been that way. That should be this way.” If you hear what should come out of their mouth all the time, they have unmet expectations. “I should have been president. I should have won the lottery.”

We have raised a couple of generations that were told at a young age that not only were they unique but they were special and that they could change the world. No pressure but you, one individual, can change the world. A five-year-old young boy with a shirt on that said, “I’m going to change the world using Kroger.” Don’t put any pressure on your son. How about if you contribute to the world? How about you do the best you can do? How about you be a net positive?

We’re all told that we’re not only unique but special. Everyone’s unique. There are no two thumbprints that are the same. No two retinae are the same. No two snowflakes are the same. That doesn’t make you special but we’re all supposed to be special. We’re all supposed to win the Olympic gold or whatever. We’re all live the Kardashian life and then we’re unhappy because we don’t have that. There are people who would crawl over broken glass to get here.

About 4 billion people are living on less than $10 a day around the world that would love to be here and yet we’re unhappy. How can you live in this country and figure out a way to be desperately unhappy? That’s an accomplishment. Being happy is a choice. We are the choices we make. Let’s pick one. Let’s choose to be happy. Let’s not choose to be complacent. Let’s choose to be grateful for what we do.

It doesn’t address the issue. There’s still an issue. I agree with everything that you said. There’s a part of me that says, “Regardless of the issues, you still can be happy, successful, can contribute and conserve,” and yet there’s still an issue. If Martin Luther King was still alive, sometimes I ask myself, what would he say? Would he have speeches of I Have a Dream? I’m not so sure that he would based on my research and what I’ve learned about him. I don’t know if that would be his message because the dream has been realized. The message is, what are we going to do with what we have?

Martin was killed about 1.5-mile away from my elementary school when I was six years old. That was in the news and we’re all talking about it. I grew up being a huge fan of his. What he wanted at the time was fairly modest. It seemed unreasonable at the time based on the opposition he was going up against but he was looking for tolerance and equality. He was looking for equal treatment. He wanted people to be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. That was a modest, “Let’s be fair. Let’s treat each other the same. Let’s not hold somebody back.” From back in the day, compared to the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s and stuff that I grew up there, America is much better. We have institutionalized that we should not discriminate against people.

It still exists. I don’t disagree with anything you said. The frustration is the fact that it’s evident that there’s still a division.

What MLK would say is, “You did a good job but you’re not done. I have a dream that you’ll keep going. I have a dream that you’ll also bury the hatchet. You’ll figure out how to get along together and not hate each other.”

How can we do that, in your opinion?

America’s Future Series is not about politics. I do believe that partisanship has risen to such an ugly level that it is now an existential threat and it’s a matter of national security. Every civilization that ever died, died for 1 or 2 or 3 reasons. One is that there was a natural calamity. A volcano blew up like Vesuvius or a big climate change. It could have that happen. It’s happened a couple of times and impacted them. By and large, the Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Mayans, etc. Why did they collapse? It was internal. They lost their will, cohesiveness, culture and values.

Culture, by definition, is what you care about and what you care for. It’s not just your food and how you’re close or your bagpipe music or whatever. It’s your values. The demise of almost every culture has been from internal fighting. The Visigoths, Goths, Franks and Gauls, all those guys that came into Rome came in because it was soft on the inside. Cancer had gotten them first before the invading bodies could come from the outside. This has risen to such a level that we are tearing ourselves apart.

By the way, we have outside forces that are trying to do that. The Chinese would rather have us tear ourselves apart than they’ll have to do it. The Russians would rather have us do their work for them. They spend a significant amount of time, the national security that we have, etc., showed me that they have thousands of people spending their time using our social media to influence our minds to get us to fight amongst each other.

They do it all the time and they’re good at it. The Chinese produce more computer scientists or more engineers than we produce all of the degreed people. If they’re cranking out more computer scientists, which can be hackers then we produce people with engineering degrees, business degrees, medical degrees and all that. How can you fight that especially if you’re not paying attention and especially if you’re helping them?

A lot of this stuff seems reasonable. Slavery existed. It was awful. It has repercussions. There are echoes of that and a lot of this fuels the fire of anger and resentment. It also fuels the fire of some people, which is the antithesis of your show, which is that you cannot succeed because the system is set up against you.

Critical race theory, as the founders said, “Meritocracy is racist because the system is inherently biased that even if you’re as good as the next guy, you can’t succeed.” Meritocracy, objectivity and all these things that you hear about are racist because the system is so inherently flawed that you can’t win. You have to break down your taxes. I don’t know if I’m ready to accept that.

Why not?

There are too many people like you that I see succeed. There are too many people in America who came up from meager humble beginnings through hard work, dedication, capability and mostly grit and will. We all know from the military that the single thing that determines success is not brainpower, physical capability or whatever. It’s grit, determination. It’s sticktoitiveness. The people who get through SEALs training get through not because they’re bigger, stronger, faster or whatever, it’s because they want it more. I was a professional fighter. Anybody that was any good that I thought had been in the joint and they didn’t have a choice. This was their career, “I’m going to go to college.” You don’t want it that tough.

Before you move on, is that an excuse for the system to exist?

The system, by and large, is a level playing field, in my opinion. Do people execute? Do you see what is called Selective Enforcement? There’s a law. I’m driving down the road and I see a taillight out and I’m a cop. Sometimes I ignore that taillight being out. Sometimes I go after it and I use it as a way to check you out. I fought for the ERA, Equal Rights Amendment. The Constitution says you can’t discriminate against a woman because she’s female but I didn’t have a problem with having a second layer of protection, the Equal Rights Amendment. I said, “Okay.” I fought for that.

That doesn’t mean that some people don’t carry around inherent biases, etc. but that’s also mean at the same time that nobody was saying, “Let’s try a little harder. Let’s have some hiring practices that we want to go through after we want to increase diversity. We want affirmative action, etc.” I argue that the system is imperfect but not systematically flawed but people are flawed and people don’t always do what they’re supposed to do.

People struggle with that. I struggle with the innate notion of evil as a young man. I didn’t want to believe in it. All I have to do is look at the Taliban and see how they treat women. That’s evil. There’s evil. They’re bad people. Here’s the interesting thing to me, America is the revolution. People came over here for religious freedom. They were getting bullied over in England and other places. These pilgrims weren’t pilgrims. They were religious refugees.

A pilgrim is somebody who goes to Jerusalem and Mecca. Those are pilgrims. They came here because they were getting picked on and they wanted freedom. The vast majority came over for that reason. We had a sponsor, a king, who thought he owned us from way over there and we finally said, “Let’s turn it upside down. You work for us. We don’t work for you. You can’t tax all our money. We’re not your serfs. You don’t own us, King.” That was the revolution. What’s interesting is that a lot of young people who haven’t studied history think, “We’re going to go do something new and fancy and interesting. We’re going to go to communism, socialism or whatever.”

Understand that communism is a direct parallel with a monarchy. It has a king. The head of the Chinese government, Xi Jinping, is emperor for life. He’s made himself chairman for life. He’s got royalty. He’s got nobility and the party. They’re in charge. They live better than the poor people. You’ve got all the poor people. How’s that any different than feudal England? Study your history. Look at the parallels. Understand that America is a great country but imperfect. MLK would say, “You’ve done a good job. It’s gotten better. It took a while to get here. It took you more than 60 years but you’re not done.”

Mostly it’s holding people accountable. Mostly, it’s our morals and our grips, etc. Evil prospers when good men do nothing. That’s a long-winded answer but I’m happy to be living now. It’s better now than I did back in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. We’re not done yet. I had a 103-year-old friend who passed away in 2020. He was a World War II hero and everybody asked him, “What’s the secret to your longevity? Why have you stuck around so long?” He goes, “I’m not done yet. My mission is not over.” Our mission is not over.

What’s the next step, in your opinion?

This is going to cycle through. A lot of the ideas, the consternation, the writing, all the stuff that we saw and a lot of the infighting we saw are relatively new. COVID exacerbated everything. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a rise in different topics, arguments, etc. Of course, social media fans that. We get all of our endorphin clicks. It makes us happy because somebody liked our thing, “I posted something and I showed him. I called that idiot.” We get a lot of that. We haven’t gotten used to how to live with social media and how it pokes and prods us.

We haven’t worked through all these questions, arguments, like, “Should America be burned to the ground versus improved?” Those topics have come up before but we didn’t have social media. It wasn’t 99% of what we talked about. This Millennial generation is the first one to have grown up all hyper-connected with social media. If you took their phone away from them, they would die. That’s a new world. Should we expect that we used to grow in pain? Should we expect this to be difficult?

 

We have an entirely different culture. We have people who much rather text you than talk with you. It’s going to take a little bit of time, unfortunately. The next step is awareness, self-awareness and checking ourselves, “Why am I being triggered? What’s making me act this way?” A small number of positive people, like we talked about with the fish or the birds or whatever, “Stop. I agree with you. It isn’t all right but we’re not tearing the thing down. We can make it better.”

We can only make it better if we talk specifics. We can’t just say, “It’s awful.” We can’t call people names anymore. We’ve got to stop calling people names. Every time we see somebody calls somebody a name instead of dealing with an issue or a specific and they say, “You’re an idiot,” or whatever, we have to call them on that. The kinds of people that love your message, those are the people that would be brave enough to say, “We should be able to have a respectful civil discourse, disagree and not want to hit each other over the head with a rock.”

How do you think those conversations start? I agree with you regarding having those conversations. Social media is something that exacerbates some of these issues but that can be for the purpose of awareness because things are still going on. Social media now is a vehicle that allows those things to be front and center so people can see what’s happening and, in some cases, real-time.

My response to the whole burning things down. It is a reaction. Probably not necessary but it’s an expression of frustration and the need to be heard and to desire. It’s the change that’s needed. Because the change hasn’t particularly or specifically come, it’s a reaction to that. It goes way back to the conversation that needs to happen, which has been a need for quite some time. What else needs to happen for that conversation to happen? It needs to happen at a high level. You and I could have a conversation but you and I won’t change legislation. We won’t change the hearts of people.

If people like you and I could have a conversation, not get an argument over and truly listen to the other person, a few million of those, it does need to be a larger thing. People, leaders and statesmen need to bring people together to figure out this conversation.

Also, make it known that this is what this is for because it’s going to get attention. It’s not a bottom-up thing. It’s got to be top-down. If it was an organization, management is not doing anything. Leadership is still okay with that. There’s not enough recourse for these actions. Therefore, how do I make a change? I’m not in a leadership position. Not me specifically but I’m saying that this is how people feel.

How can I influence this? What do I have in my reach? It’s like a baby when it doesn’t get what it wants. What does it do? It has a tantrum. It’s the baby’s way of communicating. We cannot look at the fact that something has been burned down and that’s bad behavior, “Shame on you. You shouldn’t act that way.” Why are you acting that way in the first place? Maybe they are being provoked.

I remember being in high school and having 70 to 80 people around me trying to goad me into fighting another guy, “Fight, fight, fight.” It’s that stuff all the time. They want to see people fight. People are agitators. People poke at whatever. A couple of things, one is you probably have time in your life where your significant other says, “We need to talk.” Does that mean we need to talk? No, it means you need to listen. I’m about to talk. I’m about to share something you need to hear. We’re not having a conversation. What we want to have here is me vent.

We have to figure out how we define what a conversation is. A conversation to my mind and your mind is two-way. I listen to you and you listen to me. One thing I don’t do in a conversation is as soon as you make a point, I don’t reflect and go, “What about so and so?” I deal with the thing that you brought up. I either acknowledge it or I argue with it. We’ll work that through but we don’t say, “You were mean to me when I was three.”

The other thing is we need to recognize that we’re hearing both leaders on both sides saying, “I will fight for you.” They all make a promise. Why do I hear the word fight all the time? Why is this a fight? It’s a fight because my way of being important to you is to fight for you. I will either go to Washington, DC and bring the bacon home.

I’ll bring you some projects, I’ll get you some money and I’ll get a bridge or get a nuclear plant built or whatever. That’s how I get elected. I bring home the bacon. Us, which is tribal, “I will win for us. I will fight for us.” We have a system that is set up to create fights. The fight over resources and to say, “Me and mine, I’m going to be your champion.”

That’s how I’m important because I fight for you. All I ever hear on both sides is, “I’m going to fight for you. I’m never going to give up in a fight.” Stop using the word fight. Let’s solve a problem. Let’s get along. I feel like Rodney King, “Can we all get along?” No because of the system. I’m a cold compensation and reward theory consultant.

Be careful what you pay for. You will get it. If you pay somebody for something, if you reward them for something, you’re going to get that. It’s the same thing with a child or your dog. Every time the dog goes outside, you give him a treat. We all know that. We live in a system that is set up to be adversarial because the people that are running it get power from being your guy to heading up your tribe, the Left, the Right or whatever.

That is a systemic issue. Earlier, we talked about how the system is not flawed but it is flawed. It’s not set up for division. Based on what you’re saying right now, there lies an issue. When we hear, “I’ll fight for you,” it’s implicit that it’s not set up for you to win. When you hear that, you know there’s a disadvantage. Therefore, you need a cheerleader. You need someone in your corner. You need someone that’s going to do the tough things for you because it’s not a fair or leveled playing field by default.

We agree to some disagree but we also agree that there are some people who blame their circumstances on everything other than themselves. This is the antithesis of your message. In the situation you found yourself in, you said, “I can complain about it or I can do something about it.”

Here’s my stance. In terms of my culture, my people, what do we need? We need economic strength. Regardless of the system or whatever, we have to figure it out. It may be harder and we may have to do more whatever. It is what it is. We’re the most resilient culture or race on the planet, as far as I’m concerned. We’ve already overcome so many things. It’s indicative of what we’re capable of. I don’t need to ask for anything, in my opinion, to change in order for me to get it. That’s the dog me. I’m that guy. Regardless of the situation, the circumstances don’t dictate how far I go. I’m not going to allow that to happen.

However, right is right and wrong is wrong. As a team, I’m not saying that there needs to be changed in order for one particular culture to be more successful or not. Within America, based on what you were saying earlier, this division internally within the team, the locker room is messed up. How can we go out on the field and say, “We’re going to pull it together, we’re going to win this fight and win the game?”

This is like a football team where you feel like, “I can’t get on the field. You won’t give me a shot. You won’t put me in the game.”

If the locker room is messed up, how can we work?

The coaches are messed up because they won’t give me a fair shot.

How can we get on the field and execute? How can we be cohesive as a unit when we can’t even talk amongst ourselves in the locker room?

We all agree that there’s a certain amount of that. We also knew the kid on the team who said, “Coach won’t play me.” The daddy in the stands is going, “Why don’t you play my son?” “Because your son sucks.” You’ve been a coach and I’ve been a coach. The system is broken. Not everyone’s a good guy. Life is unfair but we can’t use that as a crutch. What we’re having here is a nuanced conversation. It’s not a Black and White conversation.

The conversation you and I are having right now, which you don’t see happen often, is a conversation where there’s a little of this and this. It’s not all one-sided. You and I see this as a multi-variant problem. There are lots of different angles and issues and we’ve got to get them all right. We have to figure out a way to make the playing field as level as possible.

We have to oppose injustice every time we see it, hold people accountable, understand that people get elected and gain power by telling us that they will take care of us and fight the good fight for us. We need to understand that. We also have to have a little charity in our hearts and not assume that the other guy’s an evil bastard.

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That goes both ways. That’s a mindset, mentality and an approach to even this conversation into any changes that are put in place. That’s a fundamental mindset towards all of this. We have to look at each other in a light that is helpful and valuable to the solution of this problem as a whole. There has to be equality and there has to be the willingness to collaborate and see each other in a way that is going to be constructive to a new way of being. What I mean by that is a system that serves, that doesn’t create a division that is more collaborative. It provides equal opportunity.

You can’t do that if you have these biases in your heart or you’re looking at the other person as less than or if you’re looking at the other person as if they’re holding you down. We have to break all of those biases. We have to let go of what has happened in the past and figure out how we can work together collaboratively and equally going forward? That’s where we are. We’re going to need that.

I want to get back to your point about money and economic power. Let’s say we could never fix all this. I was friends with Malcolm X’s attorney and mentor, Percy Sutton. He was a lawyer counseling up in New York and he was a Tuskegee Airman. I thought highly of him. The thing that I loved about Malcolm X was that he said, “We have to do this ourselves. Don’t go over there. This is our fight. We have to be in charge. We have to own this. I’m not going to be dependent on you.” There was a lot of pride in that. Lack of dependence, “I’m going to do it no matter what. Failure is not an option.”

I remember I wrote an article a long time ago about Bill Cosby before Bill Cosby became the Bill Cosby we know. I said, “Back in the day, Bill’s no longer Black. He’s green.” The man is worth hundreds and millions of dollars. God bless the child that’s got his own. When you’ve got that much money, you’re not Black, you’re not White or whatever. You do have economic power.

Economic power is the secret here and economic power comes from all of those things that cultures do that perpetuate amass wealth that amassed its savings and all those things that you see in successful cultures. We look at the Chinese and Asian communities. Family sticking together. We have far too many. I was the son of a single mom who raised three kids on her own. No broken household and all that. We’ve got to fix those things and education and skills are number one.

We have a system in America where it’s free to go to K-12 or whatever. The problem is not all K-12 are the same. They’re not all equal and we continue to allow crappy schools to exist. We say we care about Black kids and yet we send them to schools where there are drugs and being done and half of the kids can’t read and nobody expects anything.

We send them to a school where a young man can graduate, get his high school diploma, having only passed three classes in his entire career. He was in the 50th percentile. He had a 0.19 GPA. We send young Black men to schools like that and we wonder why they don’t end up becoming model citizens so they might commit a crime.

This strengthens my argument about the system and the fact that it’s flawed because this is part of that conversation. This is the equity side of that conversation because not all schools are equal. Why not? If I send this kid to school on the North side of town, he gets an education that’s different from the guy that went to school on the southside of town.

I have an answer for that because we don’t have the grit to close the ones on the south side of town that aren’t working.

Why can’t we close them? Why can’t we ensure that the same education is being provided in both places?

The men and women who were in charge of the school where the kid graduated 50th percentile with a 0.19 GPA and only passed three of his classes are immoral bastards, in my opinion. We all love teachers. My mom was a teacher. For you to be at a school and you see that happening and you keep getting a paycheck, you stand idly by and you watch kid after kid graduate unable to read. If you want the anarchist in me, say, “Give them some money. Let them go to a better school. Give them Uber. Get them out of town.”

Why does that happen in the first place? There should be rules and regs that prevent something like that from happening or some type of cross trek. How can that happen?

There are no consequences but there are rules. There’s an expectation in every school district and every school that kids show up, show up on time, learn and prepare themselves to be productive and capable citizens. Since the beginning of time, that’s been the expectation. In some schools, the leadership, the people running it, don’t do their job. That’s not true. They may be sending some kids who maybe that’s something a mom and daddy don’t care so maybe mommy and daddy are to blame, too.

All I’m saying is, at this point, I don’t have a choice. I’m going to continue to wallow around this problem and say, “I support public education with public education not supporting young minorities.” There are a lot of poor Whites too. They’re more poor Whites than that are pointing to anything else, out of sheer numbers. We’re going to allow schools to exist that routinely and continuously fail our students and claim that we care about those kids. How can I say with a straight face that I care about young Black kids in the inner city if I send them to a warzone every day?

It doesn’t even need to be a Black kid. It’s any kid as a whole. That’s where the conversation needs to start. It doesn’t have to be Black kids. No child whether they’re Black or White, should have to go to that school, period.

I went to those schools. You might have gone to some of those schools.

I never went to inner-city schools. I never lived in an inner-city or a big city like that.

I lived in Houston but I lived in the poor side of town in almost every place I ever was. I was almost always the only Anglo. I lived in one time where we’re the only White family in the entire town. Flip Wilson and Redd Foxx were the honorary mayors. They were comedians.

What was interesting about that town because it was all Black, it didn’t have any bad performing schools. All the kids. There wasn’t a good part of town. It was all blacked out. I don’t know what causes that dynamic but I’m unwilling to live with it any longer. Give the kids some money and a bus or an Uber and let them go to one of the good schools.

I don’t want to inconvenience the kids. Using the example that we use, the kids on the North side of town don’t have to do anything special to get to school. They just go to school.

I got that but this is a war mentality and this is where we’re at. I agree with you but it shouldn’t be that if my house is on fire, I’m going to be inconvenienced. I’m going to pick up what little habit I’m going to get out before the house burns down.

I’m sure that people in the community feel that way and they feel like they want to go do that and some people can and some people don’t. Some people are able to escape that. They move out of the inner cities and go to other places.

It doesn’t happen often.

A lot of times, they can. Either they don’t have the economic strength, the family in other places, the want or the desire.

I want to be around my people and my culture. I don’t blame them.

Are we the only ones having this conversation? I don’t hear higher-level leaders having this conversation. We shouldn’t be the only ones having this conversation. Community individuals shouldn’t be the only ones having this conversation. This is something, in my opinion, that should be raised at a level that’s getting national attention and it should be addressed across all inner-city schools. Inner school poverty and lower education have been an issue for years. This isn’t new. This has been an ongoing and continuous issue. Yet, we’re still dealing with the same thing.

Every year some movie comes out right with Morgan Freeman coming in as the hard-ass assistant principal with a bullhorn and a baseball bat. He’s going to fix that school, one man who’s passionate about education. We’ve seen that movie a dozen times. They made a movie about that guy named Joe that had the bullhorn and all that.

The conversation goes like this. We all care. The answer is to throw more money at the problem. Paying teachers more is the answer, on one side. The other side argues, “Let’s have charter schools or whatever. Let’s hold you accountable. Let’s have rating systems and critiquing of teaching.” God bless the child that’s got us up.

 

If you give a mother and father or a single mother the right to choose where she goes, where she sends her kids and the capability of getting her kid there and I’m sorry if you have to go 30 minutes or 45 minutes across town. I was bused. I did the busing thing, 45 minutes to 1 hour each way but it beats being in downtown Beirut.

I went to twelve schools by the time I got to the tenth grade so I’ve seen a lot of them. I had the choice between being bused or getting an Uber, bicycle or whatever it was and going to the good school instead of the one where I was beat-up, shot and stabbed multiple times. Screw that. I’m going to a good school.

I would like to talk to some teachers from inner-city schools. Maybe a lot of them care and I would like to get their perspective on what’s causing this lack of education, what’s causing this school to not perform.

I’ve had that conversation with a bunch over the years and my mom being one of them. They said, “Little Johnny doesn’t want to learn.”

You can’t blame the kids.

That’s what the teachers and others were saying. They’re like, “We’re doing the best we can to give them what we’ve got. We’re doing the best job. We’re teaching. We show up. We show up on time. We’re ready to teach. Is the student willing to listen? Are they willing to learn?” A lot of them will say that. They will say, “It’s tough. We don’t have the same buildings or the equipment.” I go, “You can go to Africa, Asia, etc. There’s a blackboard or a chalkboard and kids are learning.”

In China, they’re coming up and kicking our butts. There is a lot of talk around this. It’s not new. It’s been going on for a long time. This is where the radical of me finally saying, “Teacher, I believe that you want to make a difference. Let’s give you a chance. Let’s have you and some of those students go to a school that’s working.” Not just the kid but this teacher. Take the bottom 10% of all the schools in the inner city. Take all those kids, teachers and you spread them out across the entire district. Run the experiment. We’ve never tried that.

Stop making excuses. Stop saying, “If you give us some more money and some more time or whatever and we do care.” If this was the football team and that corner kept getting burned, I’m sorry, you’ve been burned 32 times. This guy set an NCAA record for touchdowns. I’m going to get a new corner. I don’t have a lot of patience for that anymore. Either you care or you don’t care. Lip service.

Want a game-changing mentality? Let’s change something. Try the experiment. I’ve never seen a major school district that said, “We’re going to close the bottom 5%, 10% or whatever the schools, redistribute those kids around to the better schools and do whatever we have to do to get them there. Give them over.” It will save you a lot of money. We spend more per child in America on high school education than 90% of the other school systems in the world. It’s not money.

You let Little Johnny only pass three courses and you gave him a degree. You gave him his diploma. That’s not Johnny’s fault. Mama was called one time by the counselor, who said, “Little Johnny’s not doing good.” Mama was working three jobs and she’s like, “What? He’s passing. He’s going to graduate.” He is but he can’t read.

It has to be here, David. It has to be in the heart. It’s the only way we’re going to heal. You have to want change in your heart. You have to care not about yourself but about other people.

Do the right thing.

We need more of that higher level, in my opinion.

Your point about it becoming top-down is important but also, we’re the customer. The people are the customer and the customer has to say something. The leader serves us, theoretically. That was the great experiment with the American Revolution. It’s like, “King George, you don’t own me. I own you. You work for me.”

That’s a different conversation, David. A lot of people feel they are communicating from the bottom. A lot of people don’t like the way that communication is going but I agree and a leader has to listen.

It’s a matter of how much pressure you’re willing to look at this. We’ve seen a lot of pressure being put on public officials all around the outrage in the Black Lives Matter Movement and the mistreatment of blacks by police. We haven’t seen a lot of pressure saying, “Let’s fix the school system so little Johnny can be economical.” Let’s get to the root cause. Let’s get to something. Let’s give little Johnny the ability to compete in the workforce and make good money and not have to resort to some of the things you do to get by.

I have what society would call disability. Personally, I don’t consider myself disabled but society does. That’s the label they give. I realized that someone with a physical challenge may need certain things, for example, a curb cut so you can get up to extra-wide doors to go in and out of a bathroom and things like that.

When I think about it, the things that are necessary or provide accommodation for some other physical challenge benefit everyone. We won’t do that unless someone with a physical challenge raises their hand. There’s this reluctance to either doing it or it’s labeled as this is a handicap accommodation or disabled accommodation. I do have a specific hard time with that because if there’s something that can benefit everyone, that’s what it is. It’s something that benefits everyone.

A reasonable accommodation so somebody else could be a contributing member of our society as opposed to, “We’re going to shut them aside. I won’t make a small change. It’s better to shut them aside and have them not participate.” Make that small accommodation and you have everyone contribute.

I said that to say some of the things that we can do to provide equal opportunity. You may say it’s for Blacks or whatever. Make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity. It doesn’t have to be specifically for Blacks. When you call out a specific group, it creates a bias, in my opinion.

That was the point of that article I was telling you that I wrote about Bill Cosby. I said, “If you advocate based on need and based on merit,” if you say, “Poor guys need this or somebody who doesn’t have books or whenever,” you will disproportionately advantage those people who are disadvantaged. You will disproportionately help Blacks and the minorities if you do that and no one will argue with you on it. You will not get any pushback. A poor kid needs some tutoring. If 82% of those are Black, 42% Hispanic or whatever, if that disproportionately advantages the disadvantaged, no one will argue based on need.

If you say, “Here’s a poor kid who’s got good grades and he can’t afford to go to school and college or whatever,” but he merits it, no one’s going to argue with that. No one’s going to argue if it’s White, Black, or green. This was the point of that article I wrote in 1990. It’s still true now. No one argues on merit and no one argues on need. It’s when we make it identity on, “I’m White. You’re Black.” That’s when we start selling divisions. I agree with you 100%.

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Why do we need to distinguish between the different groups anyways? The way things are going now, you have different races that are dating. The world is changing now. There’s no need to classify it, in my opinion.

If we wait long enough, we’re all going to look Polynesian anyway. There are going to be no redheads in over 30 years. Being redheaded or ginger is a recessive gene. With enough intermarriage, that gene is going to die. Within 100 years, there will be no redheads on the planet. We’ll wait long enough and we’ll be all the same color.

That’s a major issue for a lot of people, if you realize that.

It is for the gingers. The need to identify is tribal. We grew up as a species fighting for resources. Ug over here, the big chieftain, he took care of his group and they fought with other guys with clubs or whatever and took their stuff. We’ve always been tribal fighting over resources.

That’s over.

It’s still built inside of a lot of us. We have to be aware of it. If we want it to be over, we have to recognize that it is innate human nature. We’re aggressive. Humans have conquered the planet. There are 7.5 billion of us there. We don’t have a real predator that can hurt us. We’re the dominant species and it’s partly because we want to be dominant.

I get it. The only reason I’m pushing back is that we can see that there’s a systemic issue. Is our programming years ago contributing to that? Call it what it is and let it go. We have to evolve. That was necessary for that time. It’s part of evolution. We needed to be that way in order to survive. This is a different time and error and we have to be aware of that. What does the next level of evolution look like? We need to take that on. It’s not a survival mechanism anymore. We don’t need that anymore.

Being tribal, vulcanizing ourselves, choosing sides is something we need to get rid of if we want to evolve and survive. We have to figure out a way to get along and not fight each other over resources. We’re all part of one country. Henry Kissinger said that any society or any country could survive and succeed if it is multiracial. It can’t survive if it’s multicultural.

Being multiracial can work. Being multicultural, if you have significantly different values, you will be at odds with each other. We can survive if we are multiracial. We can thrive if we’re multiracial. That’s diversity. If our core values aren’t the same, we will tear each other apart. We got to figure out a way to understand that we’re all one country, we have shared values and we’re not all identical. I care about you and you care about me.

We have shared values.

They’re not identical.

I don’t know if I agree with that 100%.

Take a spouse. You’ve got to be enough alike. Sometimes you’re a little different. There’s some spice in life. They say opposites attract and then they kill each other. Your spouse has enough in common with you. You’ve got shared values, shared interests, etc. You don’t have all the same interests but you’ve got to have enough in common.

The one thing that we all have to have in common is this desire to get along and to support each other. We are one. We are America and its allies. I can’t be America first. America and people who think as we do, who say, “Freedom matters. Freedom of expression matters.” Everybody’s got to work. Everyone has to be responsible for themselves. People who commit crimes are bad guys. We don’t tolerate that. If another country shares our values around freedom, democracy and self-determination then yes. America wants all of those countries to thrive.

Conversations like this, with a platform like yours and people being able to have a genuine conversation like we’re having, replicating that is the answer. I have Conservatives and I have Liberals on my board of advisors. I’ve had been asked a couple of times, “How can you have that guy on your board of advisors? He’s a Conservative. He’s a liberal.” I said, “The answer isn’t to exclude him. It’s to include you.” The answer is to have all of us together figuring out a way to have a conversation and treat each other simply.

That’s an example of diversity.

I’ve had people not want to get on board and so we got that guy. I go, “Yeah. He’s a reasonable human being. During my programs, he never says Republican or Democrat. He never says Left or Right. He never brings any of that up. He sticks to the facts, the policies, and the solutions. We’re all about solutions.” The answer is being able to not say, “I’m going to have a group over here that thinks like me.” It’s with people who have different opinions, sometimes different values, certainly different perspectives and have a real conversation about solving a real problem.

The key is being open to those ideas that may not come from someone that looks like you. It’s having that openness of mind.

Most of the stuff that we see around came from asymmetric warfare. The Vietnamese taught us that trying to fight a great big country like America. You can’t fight fair. They’re not going to go fight them straight up. The American Revolution, the same way. We didn’t go straight up into the Hessians and the Brits and fight the Redcoats. We shot them behind trees with school guns. There’s a lot of asymmetric stuff.

If you ever get a chance and you want to read Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, I would recommend it. It’s only thirteen rules. It’s on a page. If you read those rules, it talks about how to win pretty much at any cost. Rule thirteen is to vilify your opponent. Personalize things, isolate them, criticize them, attack the opponent personally. That’s built into the approach. Rule number four is to make your opponent live up to their own standards that you don’t have to live by. No one can live up to their own standards.

This is all about winning. We have to get over this idea about winning, “I’m going to beat you.” I see people all the time practicing it. They may not know they’re practicing Saul Alinsky’s thirteen rules for radicals but they are. It’s all about winning. It’s not about making things better. It’s about winning at any cost. That will tear us apart.

Not if we’re not winning collectively. If we got to win, we got to win as a collective. We got to win as a team, not as a group and not as an individual.

Thank you for your show. You’re doing the right thing. You’re bringing people on. You have over 230 shows with different people, all people that have a winning attitude, overcoming hardship and making the most they can out of their lives. It doesn’t matter how we got here. It’s where do we go from here? Some people thought they hit a home run or they were born on third base and they thought they hit a triple. They look at that and I go, “No.” Some people weren’t even allowed to get up to bat. If they could get to first, that was good given where they came from. You have to be proud of that.

We need to give everybody a chance to get up to bat. It’s not necessarily where you end up. It’s the journey that you do as much as you can with what you were given to work with. You maximize that. America has been blessed. It’s got a lot going for it. It was born on the third base. We got natural resources. We’re the wealthiest nation in the world. If we screw this up, my goodness. This is the best place to be in the world’s history.

 

There’s work to do. It’s a great team. We have more work to do amongst the team. There’s a lot of accountability here amongst the players and the coaches and it needs to be addressed. We have a lot of potentials. Now is not the time to give up hope. We got to remain positive and hopeful. We got to walk our talk. We have to do that.

That message is for the leaders who are empowered. I hold myself accountable. That’s why I’m doing this show. Any type of leader, we have to do what we can to make a difference to bring individuals together and to break down any flaws in the system. We have to do our part. If we were going to complain about it, we had to do something. If it’s okay with you, that’s something you might want to check. If it’s not okay, the question is what are you going to do?

I’m curious about several years from now. I don’t know if I’ll be here in several years. I wonder what this conversation is going to be like in several years? Would people be still having these conversations? Will they look back at this time around 2020 or so, at the age of COVID, a certain amount of unrest and say, “I’m glad we got over that. I’m glad that we get along better. I’m glad that some of this stuff has been settled.” Will we still be bogged down in a quagmire of discontent?

David, we need a quantum leap. At the pace that things have been moving, it’s been slow to me. At the same time, the generations that are coming up, I don’t know if they see Black and White as much as previous generations.

We talk about it all the time. I don’t think they’re prejudiced. It is the single biggest discussion we have, pretty much. How are the LGBTQ communities treated? How are Black communities treated? Black Lives Matter, Left versus Right and all of this stuff. I live in a small town in rural Texas. If I didn’t have social media, none of this would matter to me. I wouldn’t know what’s going on. I would go about my business, taking care of my house, my land, my family and my kids. I’m happy as a lark. I wouldn’t know. I look at Yahoo!, Fox News, MSNBC or whatever. It’s insane. Most of us, if left with our own devices, we’d probably be pretty happy. Now and then, I have to unplug.

We all have to get out of our comfort zone. I’m like you. I live in a culture where a lot of things are brought to my attention because things happen. When I think about a lot of the things that have happened in the Black community, I don’t stop right there. I think about all the communities, the veterans, individuals that are disabled, other groups and what they may be experiencing. A lot of times, the conversation stops at Black or stops at whatever ethnic group that we’re talking about for the day.

True collaboration includes everyone. Inclusivity is everyone. You have to allow the voices to be heard by everyone that’s on the team. It doesn’t stop at Black. Whatever we’re doing, let’s say we’re going to have a conversation about Black and White. That’s a limiting conversation. We’re not willing to have the conversation about individual physical challenges, veterans. We’re not having conversations about Latinas or Latinos. It’s a limiting conversation because the color of America isn’t Black and White.

Each of us is doing the best we can to contribute the way we can. I appreciate your show. Your readers, if they’re like you, I’d like to meet them of all. I’m looking forward to you being part of America’s Future Series speaking. Also, years of expertise. If your readers want to do that, we give people a forum. We’re on the right trajectory. I’d go back to what you said and what MLK said, “You’ve done some good but you’re not done.”

David, thank you for all that you do. Thank you for America’s Future Series. Thank you for this conversation. I’m like you. I wonder what the conversation will be like in several years.

I hope it’s all sunshine and roses.

As do I.

I appreciate you.

Thank you.

 

Important Links:

• Windsor Morgan
• America’s Future Series
• Big Brothers Big Sisters
• Equal Rights Amendment
• Rules for Radicals
• Is Life Knocking You Down? Read Rodney’s inspiring story – Get Up! I Can’t. I Will. I Did…
•  Recognize Your Positive Potential – Essential Assertions by Rodney Flowers
• Get Access to Rodney’s Daily Inspiration in your Inbox Today

About David Hamilton