Preserving Our Shared Humanity: Karen & Tyler Merritt Critique a Caller

0:00Welcome to Karen Hutton's Awesome. We are in a crisis in this country in the United States of America. It's global. We're in a crisis of character and a crisis of humanity. We are. At that point. And it is very stark and it is very palpable. A few weeks ago, I talked about a young man who walked into traffic in front of a truck and took his own life in utter despair. And it is a story that shook me because it just spoke to how little humanity seems to be left or how much people are willing to be quiet in the face of in humanity, which is how these things happen, right? For all the people who look at the atrocities of the Holocaust or even in slave men, how could that happen? We're in it right now. And it's happening.

1:00And if you are silent about it, you're part of the problem. Silence is acquiescence in this point in this part. Your silence is acquiescence. And that means you agree with it. And if you don't agree with it, let's start hearing from the silent majority. So I invited Tyler Merritt, one of my favorite people in the whole white. We're all Tyler Merritt. He has a book. Several books actually. I take my coffee, Black is his first book, and this changes everything. And he is suffering through or battling two forms of cancer. The man is a warrior. But he's also a human being is one of the most sentient human beings that I've had the pleasure of knowing. So I wanted to have this conversation because before the day before he came on, I got a call at the end of my radio show on Series XM, by the way. I host the Monday through Friday, 3 PM to 6 PM live broadcast on Channel 126 on Series XM. One of the last callers on a day before he came on, I was talking about this gentleman who happens to come from Haiti and came here legally.

2:01And then the game got changed on him. And now he's wearing an ankle bracelet. And now he's dead, right? And I'm having this conversation about our responsibility for letting this happen. And I got a caller from Jersey, Chrissy, who said, after them immigrants, because I also told the story of the Cubans, Cuban natives who came here legally, you know, we had a law that allowed you to set foot here from Cuba and stay here legally. And then the law got changed. And now you're illegal. But there being shipped not to Cuba, but to Africa to a country they don't know anybody. I said, this is, this is human trafficking. Chrissy said, after these people, they don't, they didn't vote right. They don't care about us, after them. And it didn't sit right with me. I don't know if it sat right with you, but it didn't sit right with me. So I had to have a conversation. And up next is that conversation. Take a listen. We talked about Pierre Demas Bell, who came to this country in 2014 to reunite with his parents. He got a job. He's in school. He played soccer. And recently, ICE, a department homeless security put an ankle bracelet on him because his

3:05status, which he was here illegally, got snatched from him. And now he's not here legally. And they're criminalizing people. And there was a post that he put out in July. He said, I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn't come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone. Yet I'm walking around the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience. His father wrote a letter that the pastor, pastor Carl Ruby, who I saw on social media in different places, read a statement on behalf of his father. The father said after my son was outfitted with this ankle monitor, he felt like he was treated like an animal. He took two trips to Cincinnati and Westerville, Ohio, to plead with the officers to remove the bracelet since he's a soccer player. And he felt embarrassed and humiliated. Then he said, he called me at 803 on a video call and he said, Dad, I'm not feeling okay. I'm not thinking right. And I told him, come home so that we can talk. And around 11 o'clock, please show up at my door to report that my son had thrown

4:07himself under a truck. After talking about this, we get a call to the end of the show yesterday. And I took it. I saw the subject and I was like, I want to take this call. Chrissy and New Jersey called up and said this. Chrissy and New Jersey, hi. Hi, Karen, real quick. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I listen to you guys all the time. First time caller. Yay! Okay. Thank you for that. Yeah, so I caught your segment midway, but I did hear you talk about the non the Cubans who are being sent, you know, being sent out of the country. And it's your point. We have a minute. It's your point. Yes. My point is I don't care. That's my point. My point is I don't care. I don't think that African-Americans should care. These are just not just them, but also the Haitians. These groups of people, they don't care about African-Americans. They don't. They talk shit about us all the time.

5:09You know what I mean? They came to this country. I don't know what they have against us, but they're not on the team. They're not on the team at all. And I don't feel like we should, as African-Americans, we should be the ones always having to, you know, be the bigger person. Now we're done with that. You showed us already who you are. And what should we do when you show us who you are? We should really take that into it. Okay, yeah, we see who you are now. You're not on our team. Before I respond, yeah, I see your face, Tyler. Thoughts? I feel like any context, because I want to believe this is not the call that she made after talking about a human being committing suicide based on coming into the country legally through Biden. An election happening.

6:11Him now being illegal and him doing things like going, can you remove this so I can play soccer so I'm not embarrassed? I just want to believe that that's not the phone call that this person decided to make to that to come out of her mouth after this individual unliked themselves. Like I just, I, I, I, here's what I think. No, no, no, no, because I've had a night to process, you know, a real time. You hear this. We are conditioned to viscerally react to things and there is kind of these camps that exist in this country. There are, my ancestors were brought here in chains. These people come from these countries. They disrespect black people and then we lump them in, right? Not realizing that this is how we get lumped, y'all. This is how we get lumped in. All black people are discriminals, you're doing the same thing and it could be your lived

7:12experience because when you run into somebody from a country, maybe they do it. They don't treat you with respect and dignity. I'm saying it's not about them, it's about us. It's not about whether or not they are standing in line, you know, out there protesting or, you know, making sure they're voting the right way. This is a larger issue and it's hard for people because you want to find a sense of power what I heard from others. Like, if them people, they're not down for us. So why should we be down for them? And I'm thinking, I'm not, I'm down for people and I'm down for us. And this is part of it to be outraged about something that's inhumane across the board makes you human. And the one thing this regime can't do is steal your humanity. And if you allow for your humanity to be taken, then there's nothing to fight for. There's nothing to fight for. There's no reason to be here. So I just, you know, it's sad, but at the same time I get the utter powerlessness, a lot of people feel to be in this condition right now in this country with no voting rights

8:14or reproductive rights or regime that's round the people up. The people who could have voted, didn't, the people who could have stopped this, didn't, and there's anger. There's real anger, Tyler. But that anger has to get some stuff done, not turn itself into, you know, because you're actually hurting us with that mentality. Well, what she was saying though, you could replace the who? Yes. And it would sound, it would sound like a Trump support, I don't mean that. You know what I'm saying? If you take off the who and go, those people, and she, there was a lot of they as if she was talking about, as if they're a monolith, you know what I'm saying? Like that's just not factual anyways, you know, and I hear her frustration, but I also want to be like, and this is known, this is no insult to her, but kind of is, I want to be like, who hurts you, man? Like who hurts you? That that was your first, that you thought, you know what?

9:17I need to make it very clear that they ain't for us, so I won't be for them. So I don't care what happens to them. You know, someone's having a funeral today or soon for him. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like dad, I don't have any hope that's something drunk. I wasn't aware of the phone call or the communication with his father. I looked into it, but I didn't hear that part. That's hard, man. That is hard. That's something that his father's going to have to carry with him forever. I think what you said about replace Haitians and Cubans with black people and the voice on the other end is a white person. That's a manga, that's clan, that's Nazi. There's no difference because it's the same, the same drive, even though we can argue that she may be speaking out of, you know, a lived experience of oppression, you know, because we're the oppressed class here. But you know, there's a larger thing to consider that we are in a particular period of time in history and the only way to get out of it will be through community, through a notion

10:19that when I look at somebody, they, I'm looking at myself. Thank you for listening. And if you want to stay in contact, follow me at Karen Hunter Show dot com. Leave me a comment. I so appreciate the support and I do love you. That's an actual word. See you next time.