Hey, they're John. How you doing, man? Hey, Glenn. How are you doing? I'm doing well. I miss you. We haven't talked in it seems like a month or something like that because of all this holiday stuff. Yeah, right. But we're back. We are here. Glenn and John. This is the Glenn show.

Formerly a blogger hits.tv. Now at my substack, Glenn Laurie does substack.com and also at my YouTube channel, YouTube, Forchlessy, Forchless Glenn Laurie show, subscribe, like, share, et cetera.

With John McWhorter with the black guys. And we talk every other week. We took a week off.

At the end of the holiday season, but we're back. So welcome back, John. And the meantime, a lot of momentum stuff has happened.

Just last week, we lost Sydney Portier. You are a follower of popular culture. Clote more close than I am. But even I know about the impact of Sydney Portier because actually, John, you were just the babe and arms.

It was Lily's of the field. When was to serve with love? When was in the heat of the night? I mean, did you ever see these movies in the theater? I doubt it.

I've seen them all not in the theater. But that's because I'm crazy and I'm obsessed with the past. But yet to serve with love, I think is 62. I know Lily's the field. There was a musical of it in 1968, which means the movie must be say five years or.

In the heat is that great year of 60. Is it 69? Doctor do little in the heat of the night. There were a bunch. See, there's 67 and 69. So yes, at that time, I'm a babe and arms. Where's you actually saw them? They call me Mr. Tips.

Yeah. And mine that will echo in film history. You know, with with him, I understand the iconic status. He was in a lot of great movies. He was a great actor, raising in the sun, which I took a look at.

But you know what? It's funny. There's something about him when I was a kid and even beyond. I never thought of him as iconic in the way that everybody else does. It's not that I didn't think it was good.

But I never thought, well, here was this pioneer, even though he was the first, you know, black actor to play dignified parts in one movie after another.

I get that intellectually, but it never, it was rattling around the back of my mind. It never sat with me that he was this black presence. And as I got older, I realized what it was.

It was a very interesting transitional figure in that he was Caribbean. He had an accent. And so the way that everybody read him partly because, you know, especially white viewers just basically saw all black men as one mass at the time. Some people would say they still do.

I doubt it, but certainly back then everybody saying, here's this black man on screen. But I always thought, no, here's this Caribbean on screen. He didn't talk the way Walter Younger would have spoken as a man who was grew up in Chicago.

You know, in guess who's coming to dinner. I didn't think here's this black man marrying this girl. I thought here's this Caribbean black man marrying this white girl. It's a whole different equation. And I know that in those roles, we're supposed to think that this character grew up in Chicago or Philadelphia or something like that.

But I never even started to believe it. And so now I look back and I realize that's the way it had to have been. I mean, he was a necessary transitional figure.

In 1959, if you're going to do the defiant ones or something like that, there's no way that it would have worked for white America if he were a black man who sounded like a black man from the United States.

It had to start with this person who actually sounds like he's from the islands. And so it kind of leavens what people thought of as blackness. And I get the feeling nobody was thinking about it much at the time. But he paved the way for black American actors to come in and be leads starting really majorly in the late 70s.

And especially in the late 70s and especially the 80s. That's how I always saw him. I thought of him as a Caribbean actor playing a black American actor.

But maybe I'm thinking too much, but that sounds like an insight to me, John. I think you ought to write it up if you haven't already.

I mean, what does he do? He embodies and projects a kind of dignity. I think that is the key word dignity and fury.

I mean, he could eat, you know, those things go together because after all segregation in Jim Crow, our mother fucker, man, they got there are boot. They are a literal knee on your neck.

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