Speaker 1: Welcome to j dot L, a production of iHeartRadio. What
Speaker 1: Up everybody? Hi, welcome back to J dot L the Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting here with my sister friends. You already know
Speaker 1: Laiah Saint Claus, Yes, hello, and Aja Graydon Danzler, you
Speaker 1: got it, Phillyonsay. And this is Jill Scott and we
Speaker 1: have the privilege in this awesome pleasure of speaking to
Speaker 1: two incredible people, Brian Sheffie and Donia Williams. Okay, Hi, welcome,
Speaker 1: Welcome to J dot L the podcast. There's so much Yeah,
Speaker 1: like Aja, would you would you guide us into this?
Speaker 2: The thing about it is that one of the things
Speaker 2: that we were really loving about this era of our
Speaker 2: show is we're been talking to some of our amazing
Speaker 2: day ones and how they grow so much beauty to
Speaker 2: the podcast. And so one of our day ones is
Speaker 2: Donia Williams, who along with her cousin Brian Sheffeye, are
Speaker 2: experts in genealogy okay, And so what they do is
Speaker 2: they co host a podcast, a streaming show called Genealogy
Speaker 2: Adventures Live. And they also have a company, their authors,
Speaker 2: their community activists. They are doing tons of work around
Speaker 2: helping African Americans in particular trace their family histories, understand
Speaker 2: where they come from, making good connections between us here
Speaker 2: in the US and the diaspora as well as the continent.
Speaker 2: So we're just really grateful to have them more but Donya,
Speaker 2: aside from supporting us since the very beginning, has also
Speaker 2: done a lot of chiming in on some of the
Speaker 2: past conversations that we've had around African American history, around
Speaker 2: personal family history, and so we wanted to have on
Speaker 2: and we're just really super happy to have both of them,
Speaker 2: So welcome you guys.
Speaker 3: Was that a good enough? Is that an explanation?
Speaker 4: That was awesome?
Speaker 3: And we love to see it.
Speaker 1: We love to see it because because we're here, we
Speaker 1: are you know, in this in this time, we're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out who we are. You know, everybody is
Speaker 1: really wanting to know because now the technology is such,
Speaker 1: you know, that we can find out where our people
Speaker 1: are from. All this time walking around just just not knowing,
Speaker 1: you know, wearing wearing cloths we don't know what they mean.
Speaker 1: Having art on the wall, we don't even understand what
Speaker 1: it is. But we've been searching and looking and reaching
Speaker 1: for some kind of connection with with a continent that
Speaker 1: you know was ripped from us in every possible way.
Speaker 5: Talk, but that's what it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm agent and I and like, yeah, we're all
Speaker 1: coming up in a neo soul movement. You know, the
Speaker 1: soul movement originally was really about connecting, connecting to ourselves,
Speaker 1: you know, all of that all that good powerful funk,
Speaker 1: you know, finding that that rhythm in ourselves. And here
Speaker 1: we are, you know, all of these years later, and
Speaker 1: now we have the technology to truly find out what
Speaker 1: it is in us that that makes us us.
Speaker 2: And you know that one of the big things on
Speaker 2: this show is you know, pointing out so many of
Speaker 2: the outside kind of structures that affect how we, you know,
Speaker 2: think about ourselves, who we believe we are. And we've
Speaker 2: been uncovering little by a little so much of you
Speaker 2: know how that you know affects our everyday lives. And
Speaker 2: so this is really on par with the conversation that
Speaker 2: we've been trying to have since the very beginning, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. And as we peel back those
Speaker 2: layers and we really see who we are, then we
Speaker 2: can start to better see those outside structures for what
Speaker 2: they are for the lives that they tell. So if
Speaker 2: we don't know who you are, then you can't even
Speaker 2: go out here and properly identify all of the different
Speaker 2: things that are coming at you. And what is the
Speaker 2: foreign matter, if you will, from you and who you
Speaker 2: are supposed to be.
Speaker 6: So but the fact that everybody just can't afford Henry
Speaker 6: Lewis Gates.
Speaker 7: And we're trying to navigate all these websites and stuff
Speaker 7: and figure out who we are by ourselves, and we
Speaker 7: get lost in these streets.
Speaker 1: That's how I.
Speaker 2: See may be not to mention in fact, Henry Lewis Gates,
Speaker 2: it's not the researcher on finding your roots.
Speaker 6: I just want to put that out there.
Speaker 1: He's a host, he's a whole. I personally think I
Speaker 1: maybe because I don't know any better, But I personally
Speaker 1: think that because I don't follow these things.
Speaker 5: I don't follow astrology.
Speaker 1: You know, I have a favorite number, but I don't
Speaker 1: live my life exactly by following the number. I think
Speaker 1: that that there's more way, more than just you know
Speaker 1: those things. Somebody else will argue with me and you know,
Speaker 1: trying to punch me in the chance about it. But
Speaker 1: you know, this is another aspect of finding out exactly
Speaker 1: we are, how we are, why we are.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for the invitation. Such a pleasure
Speaker 4: to be able to speak with all of you and
Speaker 4: to be able to speak to your audience. So again,
Speaker 4: thank you for inviting us to the show. Do you
Speaker 4: know that was the first time I've ever been introduced
Speaker 4: as an activist And as soon as that, as soon
Speaker 4: as she said that, I was thinking, it's really a
Speaker 4: shame that in this day and age, in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 4: I'm being called an activist for just speaking truth, just
Speaker 4: speaking truth about the African American experience in the United
Speaker 4: States of America. I will be pondering that all day.
Speaker 4: So thank you for that. And Jewel Ray's a really
Speaker 4: good point. We do know a lot more than our
Speaker 4: ancestors new but because our history, Black history still isn't
Speaker 4: honestly improperly taught in schools, there's still a lot of
Speaker 4: I don't want to say ignorance, because ignorance is almost
Speaker 4: like a choice. You don't know that you don't know
Speaker 4: until you don't know it. There's such a gap and
Speaker 4: our collective knowledge that people are actually trying to fill
Speaker 4: that gap of knowledge with I call it nonsense, but
Speaker 4: with kind of out there explanations about how black people
Speaker 4: actually arrived in this country, something that Donnie and I've
Speaker 4: been actively siding online for a for a long long time,
Speaker 4: so you know that that knowledge is really important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what what brings you guys to this work
Speaker 2: in the first place? Like, one day you're Brian and Donya,
Speaker 2: y'all walking around the world being black mind and your
Speaker 2: black business, your cousin, y'all going to the cookout, y'all
Speaker 2: seeing each other on graduations and funerals and things.
Speaker 3: And then one day what changes it makes y'all go
Speaker 3: into this word.
Speaker 4: So my dad was turning seventy eight. I was living
Speaker 4: in England at the time. They were still here. They
Speaker 4: were here and my parents were here in Maryland, and
Speaker 4: I phoned my mum and I was like, Mom, what
Speaker 4: do I get that? Because my father had everything, just
Speaker 4: every kind of gadget, every kind of music, just he
Speaker 4: had lowds and stuff. My mother's like, don't buy your
Speaker 4: father a single thing. She's like, we're trying to get
Speaker 4: rid of stuff because we're trying to downsize. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 4: because his parents divorced when he was really young, and
Speaker 4: his mother didn't allow him to have contact with his
Speaker 4: dad's side of the family. He grew up really knowing
Speaker 4: nothing about the Sheffy side of his ancestry, very little
Speaker 4: about his father's kind of He knew where his father
Speaker 4: was born, in a place called with County, Virginia, but
Speaker 4: that was kind of it. So I'm like, do you
Speaker 4: think he'd be interested in genealogy? And my mother was like,
Speaker 4: that is the perfect thing to give him. So that
Speaker 4: was my seventy eighth birthday present for my father, was
Speaker 4: his genealogy. I'm pushing it all the way back, even
Speaker 4: identifying his white Cheffie slave holding ancestor, and he was amazed.
Speaker 4: I found photographs and pictures of aunts and uncles that
Speaker 4: he had never seen before. Giving someone their roots, even
Speaker 4: at the age of seventy eight, was so fundamentally transformative.
Speaker 4: My mother said it was probably the most awesome birthday
Speaker 4: present I could have ever give.
Speaker 5: I want to do that for my mom, and I was.
Speaker 4: And at that point I was hooked. I was hooked
Speaker 4: on genealogy and there was a.
Speaker 6: New training back well for me.
Speaker 2: My mom is the baby at fourteen and Will thirteen lived,
Speaker 2: so I have seventy first cousins.
Speaker 6: So I always had this really really big, big family.
Speaker 2: And then my mom's last name is a very rare name,
Speaker 2: it's Yeldeale, and so you know, I was like, well,
Speaker 2: who are these people who are to yelled as because
Speaker 2: they didn't know anything about her father's side, but they
Speaker 2: knew everything about her mother's.
Speaker 6: Side, and I was like, well, I don't want to
Speaker 6: do all that.
Speaker 2: I started to find out how many people were in
Speaker 2: my family, just wanted to know that. And in the
Speaker 2: midst of me doing it, it was nineteen ninety six and
Speaker 2: I started doing this whole thing of just counting how
Speaker 2: many descendants my grandparents had, and long story short, it
Speaker 2: ended up being almost four hundred people just from my grandparents.
Speaker 2: After I did that, I was like, well, I found
Speaker 2: I know who they are. I mean as well dig
Speaker 2: and find out who the dead people are.
Speaker 5: And that's how I started.
Speaker 6: And then that's that's how I started it.
Speaker 2: But the funny thing, Asia you say, you know we
Speaker 2: were going to cookouts and reunions and graduations.
Speaker 6: Brian and I did not know each other.
Speaker 2: It was genealogy that actually introduced us to each other,
Speaker 2: and through a common family member, and in that research,
Speaker 2: we've now found out that we're cousins, like eight times over.
Speaker 6: What cousins are y'all?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 6: What grandparents through grandparents? A lot?
Speaker 4: A lot?
Speaker 3: No, that was cold. For first of all, don't be
Speaker 3: trying to put my family business out here.
Speaker 6: Okay, you know you know we won't tell it all.
Speaker 3: Baby lak black folks. We were like, we're gonna tell.
Speaker 8: It to a point to a parent, more real talk
Speaker 8: after the break.
Speaker 1: You can't see this, but your grandmother, I'm assuming that
Speaker 1: the lady left of your mother, well my left. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys, Brian, you and that woman look alike, can
Speaker 1: you get my bugging?
Speaker 5: Can you see it?
Speaker 3: No? No, no you're not. I can see it.
Speaker 4: No, I can see it.
Speaker 2: And the woman next to her is Mama Lula. That's
Speaker 2: her mother. So what you guys are looking at is
Speaker 2: five generations. It's my daughter on the very far end,
Speaker 2: my daughter, then me, then my mom, then her mother,
Speaker 2: and then her mother's mother. So that's probably one of
Speaker 2: my favorite photos that I've put together because it's five
Speaker 2: generations of women.
Speaker 4: But to put it this way, Donnie and I are
Speaker 4: related eight or nine ways in South Carolina alone, then
Speaker 4: we're going to be related more ways in North Carolina earlier,
Speaker 4: and then all the way back in colonial Virginia, we're
Speaker 4: gonna have even more shared ancest Wow.
Speaker 3: So is it safe to say or have you noticed
Speaker 3: that amongst African Americans that there are these multiple points
Speaker 3: of contact with people or is that just something rare
Speaker 3: for you?
Speaker 4: For y'all, I'm going to make you all out. I'm
Speaker 4: divorced twice over and people I lived just outside of DC,
Speaker 4: and everyone keeps trying to fix me up on blind
Speaker 4: dates and whatnot. And I'm like, listen, I will never
Speaker 4: marry anyone from Massachusetts or date anyone from Massachusetts to
Speaker 4: Florida because the great migration coming out of the South
Speaker 4: into the you know, scattering across the East coast. I'm
Speaker 4: related to so many people in DC alone, the Metro
Speaker 4: DC area.
Speaker 6: Everybody's from Carolina and DC. That's because everybody's.
Speaker 4: And Donnie will Donnie will be my truth guardian on
Speaker 4: this one. I will not date a cousin. Don't just
Speaker 4: not no.
Speaker 1: We talk about like we talk about, you know, other
Speaker 1: mammals that meet with mammals and their family, like, do
Speaker 1: you think we're nuts? Because it's a lot of interbreeding,
Speaker 1: whether we recognize it or not.
Speaker 2: No, I think that once you know who they are,
Speaker 2: it's harder for you to go and do it.
Speaker 6: It was something that happened back then.
Speaker 2: First of all, they were in small it was in
Speaker 2: you know, groups of areas where they couldn't go anywhere,
Speaker 2: so you was ending up dating your family anyway.
Speaker 6: But where our family comes.
Speaker 2: From, it just got it just got ridiculous, like it's
Speaker 2: it's so many. And then as we dug back into
Speaker 2: our research, we started to understand why it got that
Speaker 2: way because of a grandfather that we found. His name
Speaker 2: was Moses, and yeah, forty five children, forty girls, five
Speaker 2: boys with two women.
Speaker 5: He said, I'm taking my socks off.
Speaker 4: And I really want to clarify. Come on, Moses, he
Speaker 4: was not a breeder. He has one set of kids
Speaker 4: with one woman whose first name we don't know. We
Speaker 4: know that biologically she was a hay Good. She died.
Speaker 4: He got with a much younger woman, Mariah Stalwarth, and
Speaker 4: then had a whole second group of kids.
Speaker 6: Right, so it was twenty it was twenty.
Speaker 2: Girls and two boys with one woman. Twenty girls and
Speaker 2: three boys with another woman. But because of this, my
Speaker 2: mom is a descendant of both of those two women,
Speaker 2: because my mother is a descendant of at least so
Speaker 2: far four of his.
Speaker 4: Children, and we carry his prolific gene Yeah.
Speaker 6: But y'alla already mixed up? Then, so y'all are y'all
Speaker 6: are already?
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: So my grandmother and my grandfather are related to each
Speaker 2: other because of that, and my and my grandmother's grandmother,
Speaker 2: which is the older lady in the chaid that y'all see,
Speaker 2: she is also related to her husband because of that.
Speaker 2: And you're talking about this is like north rural North
Speaker 2: Carolina and.
Speaker 6: South Carolina all south.
Speaker 2: Yeah wow, But you know what, though, this is quite common.
Speaker 3: I mean, I just want to make sure.
Speaker 2: That people who are listening understand that this is actually
Speaker 2: quite common, because I've actually heard the story several telling us.
Speaker 2: Why I wanted you guys to speak to it because
Speaker 2: I think that that there is some romanticizing around what
Speaker 2: it is to understand your genealogies, specifically as descendants of slaves.
Speaker 2: And one of the things I want people to not
Speaker 2: miss is that there's a historical context that they that
Speaker 2: these two people have to understand in order to you know,
Speaker 2: really get their family his You've got to have you
Speaker 2: have to. And that's where understanding our history is so
Speaker 2: important in everything that we do because everything as an
Speaker 2: African in the diaspora is tied to a historical context.
Speaker 3: So we have to be able to understand that.
Speaker 2: I'm curious because I know that you know, there's a
Speaker 2: big boom. Like we talked, we start out the conversation
Speaker 2: talking about technology, and there's a big boom and technological advances.
Speaker 2: There's DNA, there's all this stuff that you can do
Speaker 2: to figure out and this really appeals to us as
Speaker 2: as African Americans or as Africans in the diaspora.
Speaker 6: What do you do?
Speaker 3: So you go out, you get this DNA situation done.
Speaker 5: And wait, is it blood?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 5: Is it? Saliva?
Speaker 3: Okay, saliva? You get it done, you get the results back.
Speaker 3: What are the next steps for us?
Speaker 2: Like you know, a lot of this information is hard
Speaker 2: to digest, it's hard to read.
Speaker 3: You don't know what this means for you.
Speaker 2: And for those of you who are fans of the show,
Speaker 2: you also know that we've done a show previously on
Speaker 2: this where that we went through African ancestry and I
Speaker 2: had a hard time. Of the three of us, I
Speaker 2: was the person who was not able to actually identify
Speaker 2: where my family was from on the continent. So kind
Speaker 2: of give me some top three things that we need
Speaker 2: to be kind of understanding when we go through this process.
Speaker 4: I'm going to do the pre bit. Donnia you can
Speaker 4: do the post one important step and Donnie you can
Speaker 4: jump in on this too. Please. That a lot of
Speaker 4: people don't think about is you have to mentally prepare
Speaker 4: yourself for a DNA test. I know that they're kind
Speaker 4: of sold as entertainment. Or spit in a tube or
Speaker 4: do a cheek swab and find out where you come from. Well,
Speaker 4: you can find out anything, including stuff you weren't expecting.
Speaker 4: You can find out that one of your parents is
Speaker 4: not your biological parent. Even though we know, or hopefully
Speaker 4: I think most people know that you're average African American
Speaker 4: with any length of ancestry in this country is going
Speaker 4: to have a degree of European DNA. Not every their
Speaker 4: pockets that wouldn't, but a lot of us are going
Speaker 4: to happen an average amount of European DNA. How are
Speaker 4: you going to respond to seeing that? Will that affect
Speaker 4: how you identify yourself. You have questions around that. You
Speaker 4: can discover through accident, that an ancestor was fostered, was adopted,
Speaker 4: that someone was raped. They're all, you know, we're talking
Speaker 4: about human beings. We're not a great species. We've never
Speaker 4: really treated each other, you know, our own species particularly well.
Speaker 4: But when you have, when you're involved in either slavery
Speaker 4: or if you were a poor family of color who
Speaker 4: were free during the you know, during the slavery period,
Speaker 4: anything can pop up in your DNA.
Speaker 2: Anyway, my mom's DNA helped ten different people find who
Speaker 2: their actual father was because her DNA is so very
Speaker 2: very strong. I ended up helping like ten different people
Speaker 2: finding out who the who their father was. And Brian
Speaker 2: and I are in a position where, you know, we
Speaker 2: do this as a business as well. So when we're
Speaker 2: talking to someone and we're and they're like, oh, I
Speaker 2: want to do DNA, Okay, hold up, time out, because
Speaker 2: DNA is going to introduce you to some things that
Speaker 2: you're not.
Speaker 6: You might not be ready for.
Speaker 2: So we we console before we even allow them to
Speaker 2: go into that, we give them everything that it's going
Speaker 2: to do. We give them all of this information that
Speaker 2: it may find and then you have to sit and
Speaker 2: think about whether or not you really want to go
Speaker 2: that route. You know, if you went all your life
Speaker 2: thinking that you were the only child to your parents,
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden you find out you
Speaker 2: got a sibling out there, and you're like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: who is that? I mean, that actually happened in my family,
Speaker 2: That actually happened.
Speaker 6: I'm looking at it.
Speaker 2: And matter of fact, the other thing that people need
Speaker 2: to realize is that when you start doing this stuff.
Speaker 6: Your family might walk away from you.
Speaker 2: They may not deal with you because you're finding information.
Speaker 2: You're digging into those secrets that a lot of families
Speaker 2: just wanted to take it with them to the grave,
Speaker 2: and you're digging into that. I have several family members
Speaker 2: that don't talk to me. I ain't tripping, but I do.
Speaker 3: I have seven.
Speaker 4: So again, it's it's not to scare anyone, and it's
Speaker 4: not to turn anyone away from taking a DNA test,
Speaker 4: but to realize there is a lot packed in our
Speaker 4: spit and you just have to advice. If you can't
Speaker 4: approach it with an open mind, don't do it.
Speaker 6: Don't do it.
Speaker 4: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 5: I'm doing it.
Speaker 3: I'm doing it.
Speaker 5: I'm doing it.
Speaker 3: I'm doing it again.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I want you to do it again. Let me
Speaker 6: say this.
Speaker 2: African ancestry tells you that they can pinpoint your tribe.
Speaker 2: They can tell you what tribe you come from. Now
Speaker 2: I want you all to take this. Take one parent,
Speaker 2: just one of your parents. They have two parents, so
Speaker 2: those are your grandparents. And then those grandparents have parents,
Speaker 2: so you have four great grandparents, and you have eight
Speaker 2: great grade sixteen thirty two sixty four you get.
Speaker 6: Then then you see where I'm going.
Speaker 2: In order for you to be able to pinpoint that
Speaker 2: tribe going back as far as they're talking about, so
Speaker 2: we're talking about hundreds of thousands of years, everybody back
Speaker 2: there had to be from the exact same place. So
Speaker 2: they're not pinpointing your tribe. They're looking at your largest
Speaker 2: DNA amount, that where your family came from, and then
Speaker 2: they're going from there.
Speaker 3: That's what that is.
Speaker 4: The DNA that they're testing isn't particularly made clear either.
Speaker 4: Human beings have three different kinds of DNA, well most
Speaker 4: I'm going to actually some have three, some have two.
Speaker 4: So we have mitochondrial DNA, which is noted as MT
Speaker 4: DNA that gets paused from mother to daughter also gets
Speaker 4: paused from mother to son that sons don't pass that on.
Speaker 4: You have why DNA which is paused from father to
Speaker 4: sons daughters don't get it literally mail to mail to
Speaker 4: mail to mail down the family line. So those are
Speaker 4: the two kinds of DNA that African ancestry actually tests.
Speaker 4: There is a third called autosomal, and that's like a stew.
Speaker 4: You get autosomal DNA from your mother and your father
Speaker 4: and it goes back, as Donnie was saying, generations. Now,
Speaker 4: siblings don't exactly they know two sip two or three
Speaker 4: siblings inherit the exact same mix of DNA is unless
Speaker 4: they're twins les or identical twins. It's a matter of
Speaker 4: what they're pulling in from each parent.
Speaker 7: So my question is, and because everybody won't be able
Speaker 7: to get to you guys, but is there a way
Speaker 7: because you know, like I said, people are out in
Speaker 7: the street already trying to do this work on their own.
Speaker 7: And it's each service because you know, there are at
Speaker 7: least three main ones that we're talking talking about the
Speaker 7: first one and then there are the other two. But
Speaker 7: they are they are all for different purposes, correct? Is
Speaker 7: there a way to use them for good?
Speaker 4: I'm gonna see the big three like Ancestry, twenty three
Speaker 4: and me my heritage family tree DNA, so those are
Speaker 4: all assumed a DNA testing, so they're looking at your
Speaker 4: mother and your father's side of the family. Now, what
Speaker 4: I would advise people is don't get too hung up
Speaker 4: in whatever ethnicity, kind of you know, whatever kind of
Speaker 4: cultural ethnicity, whatever you want to call them. DNA results
Speaker 4: you get whether you're getting you Tobago, Kenya, Nigeria, all
Speaker 4: of the kind of typical countries that we think of,
Speaker 4: and I'm along the west coast of the West coast
Speaker 4: of Africa because again those are very mixed populations. None
Speaker 4: of them are particularly clear about what they're in order
Speaker 4: for you to get a ethnicity result means that people
Speaker 4: were tested in all of those countries. Hundreds of people
Speaker 4: were tested in those countries. None of the DNA really,
Speaker 4: the commercial ones tell you how many people they tested
Speaker 4: in these different African countries, which is why you can
Speaker 4: get such a wide variance between ancestry and twenty three
Speaker 4: and meters about your different percentages. All it's really telling
Speaker 4: you is that you have a percentage of ancestry from
Speaker 4: a particular part of a country, wherever that country is
Speaker 4: in the world. I wouldn't get too hung up on
Speaker 4: the actual percentage. Just go, yeah, okay, I've got a
Speaker 4: couple of ancest just from Kaban. I've got a couple
Speaker 4: of ancestors from from you know, Nigeria. Maybe the you know,
Speaker 4: the larger the percentage, the more ancestry you're going to
Speaker 4: have from that place. The other part of the puzzle
Speaker 4: that gets missed out is, as Donnie was saying, it's
Speaker 4: not like people in Nigeria, Africans Nigeria were always in Nigeria.
Speaker 4: You know, human beings, we move, We move all over
Speaker 4: the place. Movement isn't new to our generation or you know,
Speaker 4: to modern times. In order to get to West Africa,
Speaker 4: our ancient ancestors started off in East Africa and then
Speaker 4: work their way over to the West. So DNA is
Speaker 4: just a really complicated thing, and it tells a very
Speaker 4: complicated story.
Speaker 6: And I think that it's nothing the truth. Brian, I
Speaker 6: don't know what it's about.
Speaker 2: The thing is this, The thing is this that our
Speaker 2: little Western I spirits pull together the plot in a
Speaker 2: thirty minute rom Com, let's get into it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he's the thing. This is, this is the whole thing.
Speaker 2: From the four places that the four companies that he named,
Speaker 2: at least two of them are entertainment. Remember that the
Speaker 2: twenty three and me is probably the one that's not entertainment.
Speaker 2: So you can go to you can go to twenty
Speaker 2: three and me, you can get the DNA information. They're
Speaker 2: gonna show you, they're gonna tell you different things when
Speaker 2: you get your information. But what makes twenty three and
Speaker 2: Me different from Ancestry not African Ancestry is the fact
Speaker 2: that with ancestry dot com you can actually connect records
Speaker 2: to your to a tree and start to build and
Speaker 2: bring it all together and compile both the DNA and
Speaker 2: the records together so that you can then go ahead
Speaker 2: and start finding your family and finding out more about them.
Speaker 6: And that's what we would love to do for you guys.
Speaker 2: We want to be able to build like that. And
Speaker 2: then the other thing is but remember ancestry is is entertainment.
Speaker 2: But because those records are there, it's why it works.
Speaker 2: So so let me just let me just try to like, Okay,
Speaker 2: so what you guys are saying is that ultimately that
Speaker 2: it is the story, the record, it's the the family
Speaker 2: members stories, the records, and the DNA as a as
Speaker 2: a body or a toolkit is probably the best kind
Speaker 2: of use of this type of work. So genealogy as
Speaker 2: a you know, as a study, so involves all of
Speaker 2: these things. That's exactly for us. We can't be fully
Speaker 2: dependent on one spoke in this wheel. We have to
Speaker 2: kind of figure, you know, pull in all of these things,
Speaker 2: which makes all the sense in the world, because I mean.
Speaker 1: Look at our hair. Yeah, how many textures of hair
Speaker 1: do you have on your head?
Speaker 4: You know what I mean? How many colors of hair
Speaker 4: do I have on my head?
Speaker 5: How about that?
Speaker 3: It's a four three.
Speaker 5: We're gonna take a quick break and then.
Speaker 9: We'll be right back.
Speaker 7: I can't wait to get into a more Brian and
Speaker 7: Dinet because I'm kind of like in live mode right
Speaker 7: now where I have two older parents and I use
Speaker 7: both two different services for each parent for two different reasons,
Speaker 7: right Like, I literally used the twenty three and me
Speaker 7: because I did want to know my averaging content and
Speaker 7: where we came from. But then I use the ancestry
Speaker 7: for my mom because she has no idea of who
Speaker 7: her father's people are.
Speaker 6: Like after the father, we don't know who the.
Speaker 3: Birth parents and things of that nature.
Speaker 6: So I'm hoping that that will help me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we can.
Speaker 2: We can definitely hopefully we will be able to help
Speaker 2: with that. The thing that I also want people to
Speaker 2: understand is.
Speaker 6: That with.
Speaker 2: We are not in any kind of way knocking African ancestry.
Speaker 2: I need for everybody to know that if you're gonna
Speaker 2: do that route, then buy all me do that route. However,
Speaker 2: you have to be mindful of the information that they're
Speaker 2: giving you. So one of the things that was said
Speaker 2: to Asia, and I promise you, Asia, I cried along
Speaker 2: with you that day. And I don't even know if
Speaker 2: y'all saw my tweets that day, but there is a
Speaker 2: halflo group for every last person and they told you
Speaker 2: that there wasn't.
Speaker 4: And can I just say that that Darnia is legit
Speaker 4: because it hit her to the core and she was
Speaker 4: crying on the foon to me as she was telling
Speaker 4: me about what was said on the show.
Speaker 2: She was, Yeah, that broke my heart knowing that knowing
Speaker 2: the kind of person everybody knows who Asia is that
Speaker 2: listens to this show, everybody knows you know why supremacy
Speaker 2: is that the problem? But I wanted to say that
Speaker 2: one of the big thing that was heartbreaking for me
Speaker 2: was again the way that we were discussing it with
Speaker 2: that it was being traced from mother to mother to
Speaker 2: mother to mother, and.
Speaker 3: On my mother's side, my grandmother's grandmother is a person
Speaker 3: who is a mystery to us, and so I was
Speaker 3: looking forward.
Speaker 2: To understanding more about her lineage because she's a person
Speaker 2: we don't know. My great grandmother was raised by a
Speaker 2: woman who wasn't her mother, and it's heartbreaking because her
Speaker 2: her mother who raised her, who was not her biological mother,
Speaker 2: is well documented.
Speaker 3: So she was an educator. She has all kinds of
Speaker 3: things that have been written about her.
Speaker 2: My family goes back many many generations in Loudon County, Virginia.
Speaker 2: So that means, Brian, you can never date me. It's
Speaker 2: a good thing. I mean, I know, I'm fine, but
Speaker 2: you know that's right. Knew yourself, okay, because we are
Speaker 2: probably related, but you know, but the bottom line is
Speaker 2: that you know it was It was heartbreaking on multiple levels.
Speaker 3: It wasn't just the like surprise age you're a white lady.
Speaker 2: It hurt it was like, not only did I have
Speaker 2: to find out that, but then now this woman who
Speaker 2: I knew I was gonna finally find something about her,
Speaker 2: it was just went up and smoke. So I was
Speaker 2: hurt and I and I thank you for just being
Speaker 2: in that moment with me. You know, of course I
Speaker 2: didn't want to make you sad, but girl, that's where my.
Speaker 6: I was more mad crying than sad. Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 6: keep that real with you. I was, yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 6: keep that. I was mad.
Speaker 2: I was like, listen, I'm like, if you're gonna give
Speaker 2: this information, did tell it truthfully? Because that's where that's
Speaker 2: where Brian and I, you know, that's what we live on.
Speaker 6: We live on truth and the light of things that people.
Speaker 2: Don't realize is taking American history, you have to add
Speaker 2: that Black history in it.
Speaker 6: It's just missing. It's missing. It has been taken out.
Speaker 6: So when you're doing your research and you're.
Speaker 2: Trying to find your family, you're gonna go through start saying, well,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, this.
Speaker 6: Was going on during American history.
Speaker 2: You mean to tell me my peoples was dealing with
Speaker 2: that at that particular moment, at that particular time, and
Speaker 2: we weren't. We weren't taught it. We didn't know that
Speaker 2: we had a hand in it. I'm gonna be very
Speaker 2: honest with you, y'all. I don't know how well you
Speaker 2: guys are on your history. Most people know who ch'all
Speaker 2: Sumner is, right, ch'all Sumner is the man that got
Speaker 2: beat on the Senate floor because he was did a
Speaker 2: speech against slavery. Yeah, guess whose second great grandmother was
Speaker 2: enslaved by the man who beat him.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And the way I learned it, I'm sitting here and
Speaker 2: I'm doing my research, and you know, your ancestors talked
Speaker 2: to you, and you're doing these things. They guide you,
Speaker 2: whether you want to realize it or not, they guide you.
Speaker 2: And I'm sitting here and I'm like, Okay, I just
Speaker 2: got this email from the place that I was working with,
Speaker 2: they saying, yeah, your your great great grandmother, Martha Brooks
Speaker 2: was enslaved by Whitfield Brooks, Preston Brooks, and Lemuel Brooks.
Speaker 6: Well, Whitfield was first, Preston was second, and Lemuel was last.
Speaker 2: So in most instances, when you're going to research, you're
Speaker 2: either going to start from the back to the forward
Speaker 2: or start from the front and backward. You're never going
Speaker 2: to go in the middle. Something in me said, look
Speaker 2: at Preston Brooks.
Speaker 6: So I did.
Speaker 2: And when I looked up Preston brook that's when I
Speaker 2: saw a picture that is still in history books today
Speaker 2: about a man holding a cane over Charles Sumner. And
Speaker 2: I was like, need to tell me that this is
Speaker 2: the man that I started this picture. I am sitting
Speaker 2: here learning my history in class and not realizing that
Speaker 2: it was my history that I was learning because I
Speaker 2: ended up being related to this man. So when you
Speaker 2: look at when you sit down and you're in school
Speaker 2: and you're trying to do your you're learning about history,
Speaker 2: and you're learning about all of the founding fathers and
Speaker 2: them doing this and them doing that, and then they
Speaker 2: get the slavery and everybody white turns to the black
Speaker 2: people because that's our history.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and pull them together all of the elements that
Speaker 2: at least you know that we are all, you know,
Speaker 2: tied to one another, though you know there's got to
Speaker 2: be some major like you know, y'all probably are really
Speaker 2: answered this because truth of the matter is that we
Speaker 2: can be more surprising than Hello, we related and three
Speaker 2: different times over I was going to ask, like, you know.
Speaker 3: What, there's something really like that your wig back about
Speaker 3: this work.
Speaker 4: Doing genealogy introduced me to American history, but starting to
Speaker 4: actually started giving me the names of ancestors. That was
Speaker 4: the first time I actually had a sense of an
Speaker 4: American identity. Now, I was born and raised here up
Speaker 4: until I was about nineteen, small Connecticut town. Dad was
Speaker 4: in the military, so, you know, but not too far
Speaker 4: from the naval base in Connecticut. Never felt like an American.
Speaker 4: I was never allowed to feel like even though I
Speaker 4: was born in this country with ancestry that goes all
Speaker 4: the way back to the foundations of Virginia and then
Speaker 4: further beyond my Native American side. How sad is that
Speaker 4: to not feel like you were an American until you
Speaker 4: start learning about your family and start naming your ancestors.
Speaker 4: And I said, all of this work started in when
Speaker 4: I was still living in England. So now that I'm
Speaker 4: back at state side, when white supremacists come for me
Speaker 4: on Twitter or anywhere on social media, I can clap back.
Speaker 4: When they're like, if you don't like this country, just
Speaker 4: just leave, I'm like, why should I come to think
Speaker 4: of it, Thomas Jefferson is a great grand you know,
Speaker 4: I'm not I'm not dropping names to be bigging up anything.
Speaker 4: This is America. We're talking about America. We're talking about
Speaker 4: people who are like all of us. You know, Thomas
Speaker 4: Jefferson is an ancestor. George Washington is a great uncle
Speaker 4: and a step great grandfather. Patrick Henry is an ancestor.
Speaker 4: All the kind of movers and shakers colonial you know,
Speaker 4: Donnie and I have colonial governors who are our ancestors.
Speaker 4: So it's like our ancestors, just thinking specifically about the
Speaker 4: black ones built this country. I'm ode and I ain't leaving.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then for me, what blew me back was Moses
Speaker 2: was Moses Williams the forty you know, because I was
Speaker 2: I was pissed when Brian was like, yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 2: do this research, and I'm like, no, I'm not.
Speaker 4: It was it was the forty kids that put Domnia
Speaker 4: off his research.
Speaker 2: For him, I have a I already knew that I
Speaker 2: had a second great grandfather named Moses, So when I
Speaker 2: was doing my research, I was looking for Moses.
Speaker 6: I was looking for that great grandfather.
Speaker 2: But when I found this whole article about this Moses
Speaker 2: Williams with the forty five children. He's looking fifty but
Speaker 2: he's actually sixty five.
Speaker 6: And yeah, this is in.
Speaker 2: An article, guys, And then they tell you. They're telling
Speaker 2: you everything about it.
Speaker 6: And at the very end of the article it says
Speaker 6: that it was verified. So this was true.
Speaker 2: And I sent it to him. I sent it to Brian,
Speaker 2: and I was like, Brian, this is Moses. I'm not
Speaker 2: doing this, you know, this research on him because we
Speaker 2: never told y'all his age. So Brian turns around and
Speaker 2: he goes and he finds an obituary note for him,
Speaker 2: and the obituary note simply says age man one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifteen dies.
Speaker 6: Forty three of his children are surviving him.
Speaker 2: So when I'm looking at it, like and in fifteen,
Speaker 2: now I know that my Moses was born in seventeen
Speaker 2: ninety one.
Speaker 6: This ain't my Moses.
Speaker 3: Who was this?
Speaker 6: So then Brian comes back and says, yeah, this is
Speaker 6: his father.
Speaker 2: I'm like, no way, now, no, I'm not doing this
Speaker 2: research because that means every last one of his children
Speaker 2: were enslaved and I am not going into that.
Speaker 6: And he made me do it.
Speaker 3: So forty five, forty five children all were enslaved.
Speaker 4: So to put Moses into context, he was born when
Speaker 4: America was still a calony. British pound sterling was the
Speaker 4: currency of the day. Well, briches or pantaloons or you know,
Speaker 4: the zipper wasn't even invented at that point. When he
Speaker 4: got you know, he was here for all those major wars,
Speaker 4: Polutionary War, War of eighteen twelve and made it, you know,
Speaker 4: the Civil War when he was born, in the Mexican War,
Speaker 4: when he was born in seventeen sixty nine, when he
Speaker 4: was old enough to remember the Revolution, he would have
Speaker 4: heard all those words about liberty and freedom, We're not
Speaker 4: going to be slaves to Britain. He would have understood it.
Speaker 4: He would have heard it, and he could never have
Speaker 4: conceived that he would ever be free. And he survived it.
Speaker 4: He survived slavery for a good few decades because he
Speaker 4: died in eighteen eighty four. His father, who was was
Speaker 4: also his enslaver, Daniel Williams. Daniel Williams wife was his
Speaker 4: aunt because Moses's mother was Daniel Williams enslaved sister in law. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: I'm seeing people's people's heads agains, but I.
Speaker 2: Do think this is a really I mean the context
Speaker 2: of where we are today, the idea that.
Speaker 3: We are being separated so intentionally.
Speaker 2: From this place around who is who is the most American?
Speaker 2: What history deserves to be spoken about and taught? What
Speaker 2: are our identity?
Speaker 3: Who are that? This is so let's go back to
Speaker 3: you being an activist.
Speaker 2: This is a revolutionary app because what happens is that
Speaker 2: we have to contend with the identity of ourselves, our families,
Speaker 2: the country that has been built around us, our part
Speaker 2: in that, and that It is not a cut and
Speaker 2: dry story. It is not a you know, no pun intended,
Speaker 2: black and white story. This is a story about a
Speaker 2: number of systems that have been in place since the
Speaker 2: fifteen hundreds that.
Speaker 3: In this country, and that now we are.
Speaker 2: Contending with what happens when you set up something like
Speaker 2: this and you insert human beings into it, and then
Speaker 2: you look at it four hundred.
Speaker 3: And what sixty five seventy some odd years.
Speaker 2: Later, right when I wrote my book, Brian and I
Speaker 2: because Brian was my editors completely, you know, he and
Speaker 2: I have done so much together. But when I wrote
Speaker 2: my book, he started doing something called characters and started,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 6: Explaining who each character was.
Speaker 2: And he spoke about Martha, the one that I talked about,
Speaker 2: and it was like she was speaking through him when
Speaker 2: he did it, and it angered so many people on Facebook,
Speaker 2: on that Facebook page, and it angered so many different
Speaker 2: people because they were like, why are you talking about slavery?
Speaker 2: You're not slaved, You weren't enslave. You weren't this, You
Speaker 2: weren't that. Why are you even discussing that?
Speaker 1: Why are we Why are we talking about the Revolutionary War?
Speaker 1: Why are we talking about who died on the battlefield?
Speaker 1: They were still carrying around a flag of the people
Speaker 1: that lost.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: Confederate monuments, why why are we to have these things
Speaker 1: are out there protecting Christopher Columbus statutes? Why why is
Speaker 1: your opinion of yourself so damn hi that nobody else
Speaker 1: can have a history?
Speaker 5: Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: It doesn't, And you know that's not why hold on.
Speaker 6: I gotta be quiet now.
Speaker 4: I was gonna say for people who couldn't and this wasn't.
Speaker 4: This is for the wealthiest, for people who couldn't do
Speaker 4: a thing for themselves, not a thing. They have black
Speaker 4: people to do everything for them, But they wanted to
Speaker 4: take all the credit for it, But what's the reason?
Speaker 3: Asia all the reason? And the chorus says why.
Speaker 9: More conversation after the break.
Speaker 2: Speaking of white supremacy, Guys, just asked a question real
Speaker 2: quick because I noticed in my little journey that while
Speaker 2: I was trying to find out about my et grandmother,
Speaker 2: that was limited information. But when her husband and she
Speaker 2: married was an Indigenous man, it seems like the role
Speaker 2: call that was kept on indigenous people is ridiculously meticulous.
Speaker 6: Am I tripping you?
Speaker 4: Guys? No, No, you're not, You're not. You know, there
Speaker 4: was a very I can't remember his name again, it's Virginia.
Speaker 4: It's either Virginia or South Carolina. I swear it was
Speaker 4: in the nineteen twenties. He was an avowed racist and he
Speaker 4: wanted to limit the number of people who can claim
Speaker 4: Native ancestry. So they have these things called the Eastern
Speaker 4: Cherokee Application Forms. You can get them on full three
Speaker 4: level form. It's an amazing resource because it has generations
Speaker 4: of family named. If you named one black ancestor, that
Speaker 4: was it. Your application was melin void denied Negro ancestry.
Speaker 2: Yeah wow, because that's that one drop, that's a part
Speaker 2: of that that one one drop. Well, you know that's
Speaker 2: interesting because we've had other guests come on and talk
Speaker 2: about some of the anti blackness within the indigenous communities
Speaker 2: and of course the somewhat unsavory history of slavery within
Speaker 2: those communities as well.
Speaker 3: So this kind of brings a little bit of that
Speaker 3: to the surface.
Speaker 2: But you know, of course it all gets introduced through
Speaker 2: you know, these kind of white supremacist lenses and things
Speaker 2: like this form where you know, but it is all
Speaker 2: about how they create these things. You gotta you gotta
Speaker 2: get into this lane so I can tell you what
Speaker 2: you can have. I should I feel this form out
Speaker 2: so that I can tell you that you don't get
Speaker 2: to live here this you don't get to have this. Yever,
Speaker 2: it's never for your benefit.
Speaker 1: We'll put your face up next to this paper bag
Speaker 1: and I'll let you know what you can get.
Speaker 3: We'll get back to you.
Speaker 5: I'll get back to you.
Speaker 4: Can I share a snippet of history that I hope
Speaker 4: is going to make your audience feel really proud about
Speaker 4: our people and kind of our start.
Speaker 5: Are you kidding?
Speaker 4: There was early Africans in Virginia, those sixteen nineteen Africans
Speaker 4: and a couple and many others who arrived between sixteen
Speaker 4: nineteen and sixteen thirty, but I'm going to concentrate on
Speaker 4: those sixteen nineteen. So we're told they were slaves, they
Speaker 4: would have been slaves, that they had ended up in Mexico,
Speaker 4: that's their original destination before they got captured by the British.
Speaker 4: Their definition here is pretty nepulous. I think the best
Speaker 4: one was called a bombed servant because they had to
Speaker 4: basically pay off the cost of a voyage that they
Speaker 4: never signed up to take in the first place. But
Speaker 4: that's another story for another day. They're here and all
Speaker 4: but one of them are able to buy themselves out
Speaker 4: of their bonds, and these people start buying up large
Speaker 4: tracts of land, which means they had to learn English.
Speaker 4: English was not their native for Okay, and a lot
Speaker 4: of them were in Goldin's who were Catholic were told
Speaker 4: they were savages, that they lived in huts. They did not.
Speaker 4: They came from a very cultured kingdom. It was a
Speaker 4: Catholic kingdom. So you had the Portuguese who were Catholics
Speaker 4: kidnapping Catholic Africans. The Pope is totally cool with this,
Speaker 4: by the way, Looking to make a profit. Now, unfortunately
Speaker 4: Catholics in Virginia not a good mix because it was
Speaker 4: a very Protestant colony at that time. But anyway, most
Speaker 4: of them buy themselves out of their bond. They've learned English,
Speaker 4: they've learned the English legal system. This is stuff that's
Speaker 4: never taught. Donnie and I kind of how to work
Speaker 4: this out between, like how did they manage to do
Speaker 4: all this stuff? Two of them became magistrates, four of
Speaker 4: them had white servants, and when they died, the Colony
Speaker 4: of virgin the bridges of Virginia that were like the
Speaker 4: governmental body started closing that door. When the last black
Speaker 4: magistrate died, they passed a law black people can't be magistrates.
Speaker 4: When the last one with the with the white servant died,
Speaker 4: there's a code black people can no longer hire or
Speaker 4: be monsters over white people. All of you know, their achieatment,
Speaker 4: they just kept making achievement after achievement after achievement, and
Speaker 4: when they died, there's a law, can't do this, can't
Speaker 4: do that, can't go here, can't you know, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: And from that point, fast forward to the Civil War
Speaker 2: era and their come and now they've been enslaved for
Speaker 2: all these years, and now the Civil War has come
Speaker 2: and gone, and now we're free again. They came out
Speaker 2: from Reconstruction era moving faster than the speed of light
Speaker 2: because they became doctors, lawyers. It was over fifteen hundred
Speaker 2: African Americans who was in any type of position that
Speaker 2: you can think of as far as government was concerned, local, state, federal,
Speaker 2: They were everywhere. They moved at the speed of light.
Speaker 2: They became teachers, they became doctors, they were everything. Within
Speaker 2: a fifteen year period, one hundred HBCUs were created because
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I want to go back to one of our
Speaker 2: early early episodes and I talked about reading Black Reconstruction,
Speaker 2: which is like should be required reading for any person
Speaker 2: in this country, period, but particularly for black people. WBD boys.
Speaker 2: Black Reconstruction really does a very good job. It's not
Speaker 2: the only book that does a good job at this,
Speaker 2: but it does a very good job.
Speaker 3: Of really talking about that time.
Speaker 2: Period after the Civil War and during that time and
Speaker 2: what was accomplished, what was taken away, what was structurally
Speaker 2: changed in order for it to never happen again. And
Speaker 2: we're able to see from each state's Constitution, which was
Speaker 2: ratified in each individual state. So when you hear white
Speaker 2: people say things like states rights, when they say that,
Speaker 2: that is a that is a dog whistle to Reconstruction
Speaker 2: era anti black laws that still exist on the books
Speaker 2: in almost all of these states.
Speaker 3: So when they say things like states rights.
Speaker 2: Or we don't want big government, we want small government,
Speaker 2: states rights, all of that is a dog.
Speaker 3: Whistle to anti black legislation.
Speaker 2: That means we don't want black people to have economic
Speaker 2: or political power, period. So don't buy into that, BS.
Speaker 2: And it's like when you hear black conservatives in particular
Speaker 2: spill out this same type of propaganda.
Speaker 3: It is a problem. Please know that.
Speaker 5: If we really are people that we will make a way.
Speaker 1: Yes will you will make a way to left to
Speaker 1: be excellent, to advance.
Speaker 5: We do these things right.
Speaker 1: So just imagine had this society and all the others,
Speaker 1: you know, if they hadn't had such a hatred towards us,
Speaker 1: there wouldn't be the issues that they have with us
Speaker 1: right now. I don't believe that people naturally gravitate to
Speaker 1: selling drugs or selling people for that matter.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think that that's a natural thing for us,
Speaker 1: but you put us in positions where we have to
Speaker 1: make a way or try to survive when everything at
Speaker 1: our cities are destroyed, our towns are destroyed, our education
Speaker 1: is denied. You know, so many things had we just
Speaker 1: been left the fuck alone.
Speaker 4: Huh.
Speaker 1: You're talking about people who started off not being able
Speaker 1: to read a language.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 1: People are forced to take a name that they doesn't
Speaker 1: belong to them at all.
Speaker 3: Right, dead, that wasn't their dead.
Speaker 1: That was dead, and save.
Speaker 2: A group of people that they didn't need to save
Speaker 2: because had it not been for those sixteen nineteen people,
Speaker 2: those twenty odd people, Virginia would have died.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's the killer. Because Donnia has spoke an important truth.
Speaker 4: That was the third time that Jamestown was on the
Speaker 4: verge of failing due to because they didn't know how
Speaker 4: to do anything. They did not send their best, in
Speaker 4: their brightest.
Speaker 1: They send the thieves, the same murderers, and they send
Speaker 1: the criminals stay in this place, and the.
Speaker 4: Rich and the rich men who didn't know how to
Speaker 4: do anything.
Speaker 3: That's right when Donna's embarrass.
Speaker 4: Yes, so when Donnia said, these people saved Jamestown, they
Speaker 4: saved Jamestown. They knew how to grow food, they knew
Speaker 4: how to rear the animals, they knew how to build houses,
Speaker 4: all of that stuff.
Speaker 2: And the response, the response to them to who they were,
Speaker 2: Like I said, this is really important piece of information
Speaker 2: that they learned early on. That the response was to
Speaker 2: learn from them and then use the systems to then
Speaker 2: say we will shut you down that once they are gone,
Speaker 2: then you say, okay, now this is not allowed. Because
Speaker 2: that's really important piece there, because I think a lot
Speaker 2: of times when we talk this is erasure.
Speaker 3: This is almost the.
Speaker 2: This is the definition of erasure. You people do a
Speaker 2: thing and then you outlaw this thing that they did,
Speaker 2: and then too it only takes a generation to come
Speaker 2: by before they never knew it ever existed in the
Speaker 2: first place.
Speaker 4: And I left your point about big states rights. I'm
Speaker 4: just going to put this out there because it's very topical.
Speaker 4: So we get the states rights argument. But at the
Speaker 4: same time, the same group of extreme conservative GOP people
Speaker 4: they want to be in your gynocologist's office with you,
Speaker 4: telling you what you can and cannot do with your
Speaker 4: own body. They want to be in the classroom telling
Speaker 4: teachers what they can and cannot That doesn't sound like
Speaker 4: small governments.
Speaker 2: No, that kind of sounds like, Yeah, hypocrisy is the
Speaker 2: is the American way.
Speaker 6: Isn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Only way, Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 5: Listen.
Speaker 1: Our strengths and our weaknesses, our tenacity, all of it
Speaker 1: derives from situations now and then and the blood that flows.
Speaker 1: We'll hate ourselves by design, but we can destroy the
Speaker 1: chains with knowledge, with comprehension of who we are.
Speaker 4: Inform yourself and realizing that the system has played us for.
Speaker 5: Generations, for generations.
Speaker 4: Cause if we were acting, I mean knew one people
Speaker 4: is ever going to be united. Human beings just aren't
Speaker 4: built that way. But if the majority of us can,
Speaker 4: I mean, that's probably the worst pot bubble for the
Speaker 4: group of people that we're talking about, white supremacists. But
Speaker 4: if non white people, I'm going to expand this beyond
Speaker 4: African Americans would just come together and say, you know what,
Speaker 4: we're drawing a line under the sand. Y'all had a
Speaker 4: good run of it. European descend to people for the
Speaker 4: hunt for centuries, you've made a mess of it. It's
Speaker 4: our turnout. We can't do any worse and what you've done.
Speaker 4: I was having this conversation with JOHNNYA in the car,
Speaker 4: I think a week ago saying indigenous peoples all around you.
Speaker 4: Think about all the places in the world that got
Speaker 4: colonized by Europe. Indigenous people are not responsible for climate change.
Speaker 4: We even create pollution. Our people or had religions and
Speaker 4: cultures about celebrating living in harmony with the planet. You
Speaker 4: look at any indigenous people, they have mythologies and a
Speaker 4: real sense of duty to take care of Mother Earth.
Speaker 4: Raping mother Earth was as foreigner news to any group
Speaker 4: of indigenous people as any kind of thoughtform told possibly be.
Speaker 4: But yeah, we're told that we're the Syphageans.
Speaker 1: That was just that was just a moment of silence,
Speaker 1: because yeah, it's deserved, it's deserved. This is if you
Speaker 1: have any questions, you know, we're going to give you
Speaker 1: some resources so that you can take your time and investigate.
Speaker 1: It's worth the trip. Knowledge really is power, and you
Speaker 1: are the last dragon.
Speaker 5: You are the last dragon, Paul.
Speaker 3: Power real rap.
Speaker 5: Listen, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Brian Sheffy, I said it right this time,
Speaker 1: I hope. Thank you Donnie Williams for being supporters of
Speaker 1: j dot Ilde podcast and being.
Speaker 10: So sough, so open, and so informative, being so multi dimensional.
Speaker 1: You are who we hope we've been speaking to. You
Speaker 1: are absolutely we feel like we're on We've been par
Speaker 1: for the course. So thank you for that, and thank
Speaker 1: you everyone for listening to j dot Ilede podcast. You
Speaker 1: are loved beyond what you know, and you can do
Speaker 1: more than you've done. I promise be good, y'all.
Speaker 3: How do You Eat an Elephant?
Speaker 4: One?
Speaker 3: By Cod.
Speaker 11: Hey listeners, it's Amber the producer here. I am so
Speaker 11: excited to dig deeper into my own lineage, and today's
Speaker 11: guests have so many resources to help us start this journey.
Speaker 11: I am so excited to dig deeper into my lineage,
Speaker 11: and today's guests have so many resources to help us
Speaker 11: start that work. Ryan actually wrote two books. The first
Speaker 11: one is called Practical Genealogy fifty simple steps to research
Speaker 11: your diverse family history and a Family Tree Workbook that's
Speaker 11: thirty plus step by step worksheets to build out your
Speaker 11: family history. You can find both of these books on Amazon.
Speaker 11: I'll link them in the show notes. They also have
Speaker 11: an amazing genealogy show that you can watch on YouTube,
Speaker 11: Facebook and E three sixty TV. They offer genealogy services.
Speaker 11: If you want to work with them one on one,
Speaker 11: you can drop them an email at Genealogy Adventures at
Speaker 11: E three sixty tv dot com. And just again, I'll
Speaker 11: drop all this info and all the links in our
Speaker 11: show notes.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, Hi.
Speaker 1: If you have comments on something we said in this
Speaker 1: episode called eight six six, Hey Jill, if you want
Speaker 1: to add to this conversation that's eight six six four
Speaker 1: three nine five four five five. Don't forget to tell
Speaker 1: us your name and the episode you're referring to. You
Speaker 1: might just hear your message on a future episode.
Speaker 11: Thank you for listening to Jill Scott Presents Jay dot lthepodcast.
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