Welcome to the Harmony

Welcome to the Harmony channel.

I'm Jason Whitlock, your host.

We're going to talk today about the Black First identity.

Stephen A. Smith, the ESPN broadcaster, had a conversation with a guy named Gary Chambers

and with Officer Tatum, Brandon Tatum, and they got into a discussion about what's wrong with

and how a black first identity is a priority.

I think it's the Gary Chambers that was arguing that he'll always be black first.

And Brandon Tatum was like, you know, I don't think that's appropriate.

And Stephen A went on to defend the Black First Identity cult.

I don't think black people recognize how a Black first identity cripples us and them.

But let's play the clip.

What the hell is wrong with looking at yourself as black first before you anything else?

Black before you're American? Black before, you know, you're anything else.

What's wrong with that?

Okay, because all black people ain't the same.

And like, for instance, we are all different.

So when I say on black, what does that mean? The color of my screen. Can I interject right there? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Black people from New York is different than black people from the South. Black people from Africa that came over here as immigrants are very different in African Americans. We're all different. We're diverse like anybody else. When white people say, I'm white first, what does that mean?

I would ask that, forget, forget, I don't want to mean forget white folks, but I'm like, forget, we're not talking about them at this particular moment. Let's stick with black people in this regard. When you talk about the slave trade and you said, we were enslaved and then traded all over the world. Who are those people? black people. What I'm trying to say, what I'm saying is my

answer. If you identify with that from an historical perspective, this is my, these are my ancestors,

this is what we endured. This is where I come from. And that's what I identify with first. Because to

some degree, I'm still feeling some remnants of that, even in today's society. I'm saying if you identify yourself as black before you identify yourself as American, what you're doing is saying coming out of the womb, I'm going to be at a disadvantage because I'm in America and I'm going to have to scratch and call and have an uphill climb. Now that doesn't mean you give up. That doesn't mean you use it as a crutch. It doesn't mean that you sit up there and use that as a reason to be lackadaisical and have a defeatist attitude and don't work your way and maneuver your way through that terrain in order to get to that point. But it does mean you at least acknowledging that, Joe, there are historical, insidious acts that are associated with this particular nation that I live in.

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