This year I'm planning to go to Africa. It is the 400th anniversary or

commemoration of the first enslaved people, those 20 somewhat Negroes that landed here in 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia.

And there's been a lot of thought, some thought that I never thought I would have

about what it might be like to live somewhere

other than the United States of America. I've never my entire life imagined

that that was even a possibility but slowly is creeping in and I'm thinking I'm excited

to see what other lands look like you know it's a huge continent it's got a lot of

countries there's a lot of culture I don't know what I'm going to feel when I get there, but it's making me think, especially as every day I'm confronted with these stories from a Tatiana Jefferson, both am John, Alton Sterling,

Philando Kasteel, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, like I can go on and as you realize that the value of your life and the value of your contributions is through a lens that people can't quite see you, that your that you're constantly having to prove yourself, not to yourself,

not to yourself, but to the people around you

who hold the purse strings, many of them,

that you're constantly having to validate your intellect

and your personhood to people who just

seem to lack all manner of humanity and it just makes it difficult every day that you know

You live in a world where people could cast a vote for Boris Johnson that people could support Boris Johnson and cast a vote for

Donald Trump. It's weird but not weird and it is given rise to a lot of thought

about what is my place here in America. What is my

place? How am I tolerated? So I'm reading the fire next time which you guys know that I'm reading James Baldwin's great

Seminary work the fire next time and and he talks about a meeting with Elijah Mohammed and actually he's he's at the place that I am in the book he's at dinner with Elijah

Mohammed and there's discussion around the table as the men sit on one side and

the women sit on another and I know I'm going to do a podcast about that separation because it, you know, while there is a definite attraction to the dignity and the respect and the way in which men treat women, etc.

The separation bothers me.

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