Octavio Blanco (00:00)
Welcome to Uptown Voices. From Harlem to the Heights to the northern tip of Inwood, we're here to celebrate our people and together seek solutions for the difficult issues we're all confronting as neighbors. Regardless of what hood you represent, we share the same goal, creating the best community we can.

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Led Black (00:45)
Yo, what up everybody, it's Led Black and we're here on the Uptown Voices and with another special Black and Blanco. This is just me and my brother Octavio chopping it up about what was going on in our world, in the world at large. Octavio, how you doing my brother, what's going on?

Octavio Blanco (01:00)
Man, I'm good. As you can see, my background is different. I'm down in North Carolina and I'm visiting my folks down here where they live. And it's very nice. It's a different world from uptown Manhattan. But it's a...

Led Black (01:09)
Nice.

Octavio Blanco (01:16)
It's cool to be here, it's cool to see my folks, they're getting older, so it's really great to see them. I love them a lot and I always wanna, I live far away. So it's good to come down and visit and check in and spend good quality time with them. So yeah, everything is good, it's a different world though and it's been crazy stuff happening today.

pretty events, some pretty big events, right? Right, Led?

Led Black (01:34)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So today is September 10th. you might as well get into it, right? Charlie Kirk was assassinated. And again, you know, it's funny because there's so many things to talk about with this particular topic. And what I thought off the top of was Malcolm's quote.

Octavio Blanco (01:39)
Yeah, let's get into it.

Led Black (01:49)
Right, when Kennedy was killed, Malcolm said, he said, being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad, it always made me glad, right? And I don't mean that to be facetious, I'm not happy that this happened, right? But I say it to say that Charlie Kirk was a hate monger, right?

every, every, he lived in this world was just about hate. Today alone, before the assassination, he was on Twitter, basically just spewing hate against black people, right? This is his thing. He's been spewing this hate and this is the hate that comes back, right? It's a rebound. So I don't think this is a good thing, right? I think it's a bad thing. I'm not rejoicing because the people that are going to feel it the most are going to be the black and brown people now, right? I think that these are the things that lead to race wars. These are the things that lead to

to white people losing their coof and going barbaric, right? And I think that's what's gonna happen in the throes of what's coming with this assassination, right? This is going to be bad for this country.

Octavio Blanco (02:49)
Well, yeah, I mean, I I

100, 1000 % agree with you as bad as it was already with Charlie Kirk, spewing hate. And let me just stop myself there before I go any further to say that I agree with you, Led, that it's terrible. It's I'm 1000 % against.

⁓ violence of this kind. Nobody should be killed because of the words that come out of their mouth, ⁓ even if they are awful, which they were. But you know, for you and I, two people who are out here in the public speaking about what's important to us and offering our opinions, our takes, I think it's so important that we also, you know, let everybody know that it's for us,

It's just not right for anybody to be murdered or assassinated because of the words that they say. We just published our episode with Felipe Galindo, who's been censored for his artwork's point of view. And we're 100 % against that. We are for freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and freedom to say what's on your mind. Now, you're right.

Charlie Kirk was hateful. Charlie Kirk, all he was trying to do was to irritate and arouse the ⁓ hateful end of politics. All the people who might have been having these thoughts, he was trying to get them riled up. In fact,

when he was assassinated, the question just before his assassination was about gun control. And he is a staunch believer in the freedom to possess arms. And he's always said that gun deaths are ⁓ the, well, basically he says it's the price that we pay.

Led Black (04:31)
Right, okay.

that you paved to,

yeah, yeah.

Octavio Blanco (04:36)
for

having freedom to bear arms. So they have not captured the assailant as of.

As of yet, there was all kinds of videos that were floating around about somebody who they had arrested, who they thought was the killer, but that wasn't the case. The person who actually pulled the trigger, as of right now, September 10th, at about, ⁓ I guess it's about 6.20 in the afternoon, ⁓ that person has not been apprehended. So we don't know even who it was. So before we start to make our own views about like,

what it means I think all the ⁓ all the pieces should be collected although I think you're right I mean people are gonna make up their own minds even without

without having any evidence as of yet. And I think it is a dangerous time, you know, in terms of like, what is this gonna do about race, especially for young people. I don't know if it's more about race relations or if it's more about it's gonna really consolidate this extreme right wing of young people in college campuses that revere Charlie Kirk.

Led Black (05:42)
Right, but it's always gonna be race, right? We're in America, race is always gonna be there, right? And again, what I'm saying is like, all he talked about on Twitter today was the case of the, I guess, the Ukrainian woman that was killed by a black man.

Octavio Blanco (05:47)
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Led Black (05:56)
Right. And he was he was doing his best to say, like, basically these animals. Right. If you remember, there's a time where he says, if I get in the plane and I see a black pilot, you know, I'm to be scared. Right. So this is the kind of stuff that he that he was peddling in. This is this is garbage. Right. This is racist. And it came back to to bite him. Right. But the problem is that political violence is never good. Right. It's never good because this is just the beginning. So what I'm saying, I think we had to talk about this today because this is an important moment in American history.

What people don't really understand, and this is gonna sound crazy, right? Because I don't think people understand history, right? And again, I don't want my white friends to get offended. Please, it's not about offending anyone. But in this country, right, white people have done horrendous things in anger.

Right? And this is what was going to happen. We're to have like the kind of race rights you had hundreds of years ago where you just random killing of black and brown. Right? If you see on social, they're already showing pictures of the Ukrainian woman that got beat up by the black guy next to Charlie Kirk getting shot. And they're like, no more half measures. Right? So what this is going to unleash is a racist violence like we haven't seen in a long time. So that's one of the reasons that I'm dead set against this because

the people that are going to suffer the most are going to be our people, right? Black and brown people are going to suffer, right? Because he was a racist. And again, we have to like, when we're talking about America, if you're not talking about race, you're not really analyzing it right. We're not, right? Like race is embedded into everything. The reason Trump is president is because of race, right? Like if we're being honest, the majority of white people in this country do not want to have a multiracial democracy, the majority. And that's the truth. And this is about

me keeping mine, this is mine, no one else can have it. And Charlie Kirk fueled that. And that venom that he spit cost his life today, right? And so there's no tears for him, but there's tears for this country for that.

Octavio Blanco (07:45)
I wanna-

Yeah, no, yeah, I want to just push back a little bit because the majority, you think, do not want a multiracial society? Where do you get this majority? I want to...

Led Black (08:01)
Oh, the majority, let me, I'll give you, I'll give it to

you. I'll give it to you. A majority of white people have not voted for the Democratic Party since LBJ. The majority. The majority of white people didn't vote for Hillary, they didn't vote for, they do not vote that way.

So because the Republican Party has long kind of been the soft racism, this is about white people protecting white people. That's what the Republican Party has been forever, right? And so that's why they vote that way. So that's majority. So those are numbers, right? Those are numbers.

Octavio Blanco (08:32)
But how do you explain

Obama then? What was that? Was that not a majority of white people voting for a black person?

Led Black (08:41)
But that wasn't the majority of white people that voted for Obama either. They didn't, not the majority of white people. It was everyone else that voted for him. But the majority of overall white people have not voted Democrat since LBJ. So those numbers, you can look them up. So what I'm saying is like, if we don't even look at it, if we always, you wanna play a racist? Not racist involved. And we have to look at it again. That doesn't mean that you hate anybody. But I'm saying we have to be honest.

That's what this whole anti-DEI, anti-woke is just, we don't want to talk about what really happened in this country. We don't want to talk about history, hurt our feelings. So this is what happens when you play this game. And again, Charlie Kirk was not a good person. And I didn't realize how instrumental he was in, like you were saying, getting the college-age Republicans back. So he basically injected all this racism and venom, and anti-women too. He doesn't like women either. He's a horrible, horrible person.

Octavio Blanco (09:06)
yeah.

yeah.

Led Black (09:34)
And him and Trump are just two peas in a pod. So it's hard. Like, again, my thing is the cost of this political violence. Once this happens, they got more guns than we do. You know what mean? This is not going to end well for anyone. And I wouldn't be surprised to see these kind of huge, you know, just people losing it, just killing a bunch of people of color wherever they want because of a reaction to Charlie Kirk. This is a dark day in American history.

Octavio Blanco (09:59)
Absolutely, it's a dark day in American history. I pray that we're not gonna see the kind of violence that you're imagining. I guess it's absolutely within the realm of possibility. And let's not forget that we are primed for conflict.

in our big cities like Chicago where the president may deployed his troops, the National Guard, they are just hoping and waiting for somebody to be violent so that they can go crazy against those communities. So I really do hope that...

Led Black (10:34)
you

Octavio Blanco (10:35)
you know, ⁓ calm, cool heads prevail. I do hope that you're wrong, Led, I hope that you're wrong, that white people, black people, brown people, Asian people, everybody can...

come together and not go for the lowest hanging fruit, is easy, which is violence, which is hate, which is only helpful in the moment and is just destructive. We can look at Gaza and see what's happening over there. We can look at Ukraine. can see what's happening over there.

I'm sorry,

Led Black (11:07)
drones

Octavio Blanco (11:07)
So today we saw other big news in which Russian drones were shot down deep inside of Poland. And that's extremely scary because those are Russian drones shot down inside of a NATO country. It was clearly a test by the Russians to see what they could get away with. And it's clearly a show that the Russians don't believe that Trump or anybody else

else can do anything against them. the precipice of violence, whether it's interpersonal, inter-race, or inter-

country is, we're right there on the edge. And I really hope that we don't see that. And I hope that in our community, we can continue to, you know, do what we gotta do. It's spread love, but at the same time, we're not turning the other cheek either. We have to stand up for what's important. I don't think that like, you know how in sports, it's always the person who fights back that gets like ejected from the game or who gets the yellow card in soccer or the red card.

Led Black (11:50)
Yeah

Octavio Blanco (12:13)
It's never the person, it's never the actual aggressor. So I think we need to act very carefully as a people, as a community. I don't know what the answer is beyond the answer that we've arrived at here, which is that community is the answer.

Led Black (12:13)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Octavio Blanco (12:28)
That means get to know your neighbors, interact with your neighbors, no matter what their background is. You know, whether they're black or white or Latino, try to find a common, find some common ground because if we don't, then, you know, I also fear for what's coming.

Led Black (12:43)
Yeah, and I mean, listen, that was the whole point of the Uptown Collective when it was started, right? To be kind of Broadway, to bring together both sides, right? So this is not like a wanton attack on white people. I have my white friends that I love and are dear to me, right? But what I'm saying is that we live in a bubble here in New York, right? Like, you know, the white people that we hang out with are super progressive. Sometimes they're more radical than you and I, right? But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the majority of people in this country, right? They don't know who Trayvon Martin is, right? They were offended that

this man took a knee, but they're not offended that they're just killing black people in the street, right? And they care more about dogs than people, right? That's not everybody that we know, of course, but I'm saying in the wider United States, white people do not care for the most, like, do not care about the wellness of anybody but themselves, the majority of the people in this country. So for example, we talked about this, there's the...

What is the name of the movie on Hulu about Katrina? it's, I forgot the name of it, but Ryan Coogler was involved with it, right? And it's a five-part story about the story of Katrina, right? And that was brutal, right? That didn't have to happen. The storm wasn't the problem. It was racism, right? It was racism that caused all the, the storm blew over.

It's after the levees broke and they refused to get black people help. There was even visuals, it's called Hurricane Katrina, race against time. There was even visuals where you saw them fly over black people and go straight to white people, right? We need to stop pretending that racism and white supremacy are not real things and that they're kind of ethereal. That's the very fabric of this country. It's just woven into it, right? Race is America's elevator music.

It's always playing in the background, right? Sometimes it's low, like when barracas come, it's a little jazzy, and then sometimes it's blaring, and that's what we have. We're in a blaring moment of racism, this is what Trump signifies is it's a racial, you know, it's just a racial, like a racial white lash.

Octavio Blanco (14:23)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Led Black (14:44)
Right.

That's why he's in power. And we could talk, it's because they were poor. No, those people weren't poor. They voted for him because they wanted black people and brown people to be put in their place. And we need to realize that. Like we need to stop playing games. Like, ⁓ that's what it is. Right. That's what it is. And it's like the end again. That's to the white people that are on our side. Love you out of death. Rock on. Keep rocking with us. But there's a group of good. The majority of this country doesn't really care about nobody else but themselves. And that's why we this predicament now with Trump.

Octavio Blanco (15:13)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Being in North Carolina, it's interesting because we just went to the symphony, me and my mom and my dad this week. And so obviously symphony, generally speaking, you've got an older white audience, mostly. Although the actual symphony was composed of

Led Black (15:13)
and Charlie Kirk.

Octavio Blanco (15:35)
It was actually very diverse. The conductor was Asian. The highlighted pianist was African-American from New York City. I hate the fact that I forget his name, but he was amazing. But one thing that I noticed and that I got really sort of thrown off was that at the beginning of the concert, they started with the Star Spangled Banner. Like...

I can understand the Star Spangled Banner at the beginning of a baseball game or the beginning of a football game. That's expected. But at the beginning of a symphony orchestra, I had never heard that before, that they would ⁓ play the Star Spangled Banner and everybody had to stand up and put their hands over their hearts. there's this like...

Led Black (16:16)
Mmm.

Octavio Blanco (16:21)
an injection of sort of...

Led Black (16:26)
Yeah, yeah.

Octavio Blanco (16:26)
I want to say like

fake patriotism that's being forced on our communities just to be on the road. You know, I think it's because, you know, the symphony at the North Carolina State Symphony just doesn't want to be dealing with Tromper or some other right-wing person, you know, complaining about, they're not playing the Star Spangled Banner or something like that. But for me, just gave me a really bad taste.

God bless her. She's definitely an ally. My mother is a white woman. She's Jewish. My father is a Mexican man. so, you know, I'm a product of a biracial love story. And she stood up at...

for the Star Spangled Banner because her argument, I respect this argument from her, is that the right wing doesn't have ownership of the Star Spangled Banner. They don't own patriotism. They don't own the flag. And that's absolutely true. I think the left is just as much claim to the Star Spangled Banner and to the flag and all of that. And so I support her stance. I personally didn't stand up because personally I feel like we're not in a place where I

Led Black (17:24)
Right.

Octavio Blanco (17:42)
I want to be associated by what it might mean for standing up. Like I support these policies, which I don't. So that's sort of like the patriotic side of things. But I think you're right in that racism paints everything in America. And I think that everyone in America is racist, like everybody.

Led Black (18:07)
Well,

I don't think the word racist, because racism denotes power, and we all don't have power. So I think maybe everyone might be prejudiced or biased, but racist is power. It's a power connotation, I can take something away from you. I can hold things away from you. That's why racism is a power dynamic.

Octavio Blanco (18:08)
out, but

I agree, but I do think that we have power in certain aspects of our lives in which we might be racist against people who are not like us. And so I just think that everybody...

Led Black (18:39)
But that's not racist.

What I'm racism again, racism, and maybe in another context, in another country, you can say that. But in America, racism is a power dynamic.

Octavio Blanco (18:51)
Well, I mean, I don't know if you're a, let's, don't know if we want to get into this, but I guess we should.

Led Black (18:57)
What I'm

saying is I could be biased towards you, I could be prejudiced towards you, But if I have no power over you, then how can I be racist? Racism is about power and holding power, right? That's what racism is.

Octavio Blanco (19:09)
But we're talking about,

you're talking about like race riots and things like that. Like what if a perfectly law abiding happy ally white person is walking on the wrong block and a bunch of people on that block decide that they're gonna, that they identify that person as white and because of that and only that they go and do something horrible to that person, what would you call that? Wouldn't that be racism?

Led Black (19:33)
That's a hate crime. That's a hate crime. That's what that is. That's a hate crime. But hate and racism are two different things, right? Hate is hate, right? I can hate you, but I can't be racist to you if I don't have any power over you. You see what saying? That's what racism, racism denotes power. There's a supremacy at hand, right? There's a difference between hate, right? That's why they have different meanings, right? If I hate you, if I hurt that white person for no reason, that's a hate crime. I committed a hate crime.

Octavio Blanco (19:35)
Right, it's a... that's a hate crime.

Led Black (19:57)
I'm biased, I'm prejudiced, but I'm not racist because I don't have power in this society. If I did that in another society where there's a different context where I'm a person of power, then I definitely could be racist. But what I'm saying is like, even in the Star Spangled Banner, there's lyrics that got taken out because they were super controversial. So even in that, what I'm saying is that like, race is in everything. And if in our analysis, we take out race, then we're not doing a correct analysis.

And that's what I mean.

Octavio Blanco (20:25)
I've heard the argument that racism denotes power and that you can't be racist if you're a black person living in America because you are not the entity in America that holds the power. The white population has the power. And so a black person can never be racist.

I'm not sure if that's if that 100 % okay.

Led Black (20:47)
Within the context of America, within the context of America,

okay, we have a caste system in America, with white people at the very top.

Right? And then other people play roles, but the very top, it's a white, other people make money and get too close to the top. But there's a, there's a, there's a cast system that really, really does truly exist. And again, I mean, you know, these are semantics, right? At end of the day, you know, you can call it whatever you want. But what I'm saying is if you, you're not really looking at race in, in, in discourse, if you're not looking, like a lot of times we tend to, we tend to look at the world the way the people that taught us history looked at the world.

But the people that told us history, wrote the history, they were the victors, right? They didn't want us to win. This was about their story, right? And I think we do a mistake when we follow their story, right? this is not a meritocracy. It's not. It wasn't even a democracy until 1965 until you gave everyone the right to vote. All these founding fathers are, there's a myth. Ronald Reagan was a horrible person and so was Donald Trump, right? And again, that doesn't mean that this country is all horrible, right? The founding fathers,

Octavio Blanco (21:39)
you

Led Black (21:44)
were lot of them worse were people that were that had slaves, right? But they still created something that was worthy of it had value, but they were horrible people, right? Like Thomas Jefferson, he was like the colonial era R. Kelly, right? He was worse than R. Kelly, right? He had children. Look how crazy it is. He had children with Sally Hemings. Sally Hemings was his wife's half sister.

Right? So looked like his wife had a fat ass. Right? Right. So think about that. And he had children with this woman and didn't emancipate them, all of them when he died. Right? Horrible person. But he still was part of something that he created that was bigger than him. And what we're trying to to master that union, right? Make it better. Right. But right now, that union not looking good.

Octavio Blanco (22:14)
Hahaha

Yeah.

Yeah.

Led Black (22:36)
And it's white people choosing this. It's white people now, dumb Latinos, choosing it too. Right? But let's, right, but this is a choice.

Octavio Blanco (22:41)
white people and dumb Latinos who probably identify

as being white and not as anything else than that. You know, one of the things that I think is interesting, I do think that racism and race is at the crux of it all, but at the same time,

It's something that's used by the powerful, by the people who are in power to get the people who are not in power to follow them. think look at what's interesting is I've seen a lot of videos lately on social media from Arkansas with Arkansas farmers who are really suffering because here they voted for Donald Trump and Donald Trump...

Led Black (22:59)
Of of course.

Hold on, hold

on. They also voted for the suffering of others. Right? They voted for the suffering of others and now they're mad because it's happening to them. This is just want to say that. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Octavio Blanco (23:23)
And this... well...

Right, because

of the tariffs, the tariffs that were imposed, now China doesn't want to buy their soybeans, doesn't want to buy their corn, and is going other places where it's cheaper and they can't sell the amount of corn and soybeans. And now they want government assistance. it's, you know, I hope that this has taught people like that a lesson about, you know, where, who's actually in power and how racism

is manipulated to keep people who are without power under the thumb of the people with power. I saw... yeah.

Led Black (24:03)
Right.

That's exactly.

Yeah, you're 100

% right. And that's exactly what I'm trying to say. Maybe I'm not saying it's artfully, but what I'm trying to say is that the myth of whiteness is in a way what keeps us separated. I believe in humanity. I believe in all of us. I don't believe anyone is better than anybody else. And I believe that once, we come together, we say, fuck everything, instead of doing this, we did this, then we will be better. We fight the people above us, together, as all of us,

can't deny that race has been used to separate us. And you have to look at it that way, right? And then you're right. If we could get on this thing where we're all on one page, like real brotherhood, we'd change the world overnight. But we're far from that. We're getting further every day.

Octavio Blanco (24:52)
Right.

and racism is being manipulated and being imposed on us so that we are blinded to the reality. But not everybody. I do think what I've seen with protests challenging ICE in not just in Los Angeles and cities like New York, but there was one that I saw in Gothamist reporting in Westchester County where a whole community came out and they basically ran

out of their neighborhood and this is a predominantly white community and I do believe that like according to the Gothamist report the ICE vehicles their tires have been slashed and like it was not just like so so I'm all for that well it's Westchester and Westchester

Led Black (25:31)
Right, and listen, but that's here, that's local, that's local. What I'm saying is that's local. Yeah,

that's what I'm saying. We get lost in our New York bubble. And again, I'm not talking about the white people that we love, that's not what I'm talking about. The majority of white people don't feel the way that our brothers and sisters here do. And we have to be honest with that. Like, you just look how they talk about us.

Think like again, is that we're not talking about Westchester is right there. Of course they, because they're around black and brown people all the time. So they understand, hey, we're just human beings. I'm going to fight for that person. That's beautiful. But that's not the average white person in Idaho, right? That's not the white person that's believing Trump's shit. That's the person I'm talking about. And unfortunately, that's the majority in this country. Maybe not in New York, but in this country, that's the majority.

And until those people start looking at us as human too, we're not getting anywhere. Trump has a lockdown on these people.

Octavio Blanco (26:26)
Well, they do think that he is sent from God. that's a whole other conversation, which is the role that Christianity has in all of this. And it's really, really ugly and really, really disappointing to see what's going on with right-wing.

Led Black (26:31)
God.

Octavio Blanco (26:50)
Christianity, it's horrible the way that they're polluting their own.

Bible. So, so yeah, this it is a like, I don't disagree with you is today was a extremely dark day in history. I I'm not really shedding tears for Charlie Kirk, but I definitely am shedding tears for our country and for the people that are going to be impacted, like you say. Like you say, it's

Led Black (27:19)
Yeah,

exactly. know, Charlie Kirk, know, unfortunately, you know, was a victim of his own hate, hate, spews. Right. But but what I think is going to come in this wake is going to be really bad. I think they have a reason for repression now for even more repression. Right. So anyone for any any anything that you say that's that's deemed woke.

You know what mean? We're going to see more harshness coming down the pike. And I think ultimately we're going to lose. We're going to feel this more than everybody else. And again, I just, I, you, there's been so many times throughout this history, American history, right? Where, where, where white Americans have, have, you know, lost all common sense and committed atrocities, atrocities, right? And I think that's where we're headed. And again, if we don't want to call it white terror,

because we don't want to hurt people's feelings. Listen, I'm not talking to my white friends about my white friends, because my white friends know where I stand. They know how I feel about them, right? But I'm talking about white terror. We need to really be, there's a problem in this country. you have a race problem and you can't keep running away from it. You can't keep saying it doesn't exist. You can't erase history, you know? And this is what happens. This man dabbled in pure hatred and it came back.

Octavio Blanco (28:33)
And they're trying to.

Octavio Blanco (28:34)
Led, I think now it's time to take a short pause so that we can pay some of the bills,

Led Black (28:39)
you want to tell them a little about donations and how they can help the show?

Octavio Blanco (28:42)
Absolutely, we can't do this without contributions from our viewers. you're going to see a QR code which you can

you can make a contribution towards uptown voices. It's going to be helpful for us to elevate our production. have dreams and aspirations of doing live shows. We have dreams and aspirations of being

on location at our various cultural institutions. And we can't do that without contributions from viewers and listeners like you. And we also can't do that without our sponsors. And this season, we are lucky to have a great sponsor, 181 Cabrini. It's our neighborhood bistro. Both Led and I are just steps away from

181 Cabrini and and we love it 181 Cabrini is located right there on that corner of 181 and Cabrini just steps away just steps away from the bridge so yeah i love it led you you you and i were there the other night

Led Black (29:30)
Oney oney Cabrini.

Yeah, yeah. And we also met there for the first time, you and I, the first time we met, had we had like lunch there. And it's my local bar now, like since I live, you and I both live like right around this, my local bar. I spent a lot of times there. James Lee, the owner, is just an incredible restaurateur. Right. I think he he's a great guy. Super funny. But like the food is on point.

So please hit up 181 Cabrini. It is really one of my favorite spots

181 Cabrini, pull up. That's my spot. Show them love and tip well.

Octavio Blanco (30:06)
And order the nachos, those are on point.

Led Black (30:09)
The sangria is amazing. Everything in it. and ⁓ you have to try the coconut bread pudding. They got coconut. got.

chocolate and now they got banana but the coconut outstanding. So like I said, they really, the attention to detail for me is a great neighborhood joint. And thank you to James and 181 Cabrini for sponsoring this episode. And you if you want to sponsor holla' at my boy you know what I mean? Let's make it happen. You know what I mean? But yeah, without further ado though, let's get to it.

Octavio Blanco (30:20)
Yeah.

But before we do that, I just want to say one thing. We're going to have a code, a redemption code at the end of this episode, which you can bring to 181 Cabrini for a special treat.

Led Black (30:45)
Let's go.

Octavio Blanco (30:45)
The administration is trying to erase history and to reset history to some view of history as sanitized. 1950s, everything was great, which it wasn't in 1950. Talk to any African American GI coming back from the war trying to get a house in the suburbs. I don't think he's getting a house in the suburbs, right? And how that's impacted black...

black society, you know, with our homes being the biggest sort of transfer of wealth in our society and African Americans and Latinos having been excluded from having home ownership during the biggest boom in home ownership after World War II, you know, that's racism. That's the racism that you're talking about.

Led Black (31:33)
But that, but

what I'm saying is racism hurts us all, right? It hurts us all, right? Right, so there's a, yeah. So there's a book by Heather McGee called The Sum of Us, right? And she talks about how like, I think in the 50s, right, you had these public pools, right? All across this country, Olympic pools that the government paid for to give people something to do, right? And it was great, these beautiful pools, Olympic sized pools. Well, black people say, hey yo, we pay taxes, we can use the pools.

Octavio Blanco (31:37)
Yeah, and it hurts us all. Well, we're paying for it now.

Led Black (32:01)
So what did they do? They basically cemented all the pools away and no one got a pool. And everyone was cool with it because they didn't want black people in the pool. But everyone lost. Everyone lost because of racism. America's soft power is greater than its military power will ever be. But we don't fully unleash it because we stay stuck with race. There's no brotherhood here among us.

Octavio Blanco (32:10)
Yeah.

Led Black (32:22)
Right as a dominican, right? I could be any color any race any any anything, but we're dominicans We're brothers, right? We're in the same thing with mexicans, right? You could be high class low class You may have different issues with your brothers, right? You could be indigenous. You could be a european. You could be a president african descent

but you're a brother, They're brothers and sisters. That's not the case in this country. And Martin Luther King said that we will either live together as brothers or perish together as fools. And we're doing the latter. We're perishing as fools because we let race get in the way. But one of things is not just about letting race get in way, but let's be real about race. Let's face race head on. Let's stop pretending that these massacres didn't happen.

Octavio Blanco (33:02)
my gosh.

You are so right. mean, the fact that DEI has been

like it's a bad word now is ridiculous. It's awful. The fact that the Latino exhibit at the Smithsonian was taken down is erasure. You said it so beautifully. like, you were not able to see ourselves in our entirety in an important place. And the fact that that's happened is erasure. And the fact that what you can teach in our history

classes in high school is changing. And the fact that a lot of the things that our colleges are able to teach is being erased is awful. it's...

Led Black (33:43)
Yeah. I don't know if you saw, did you see

PragerU is gonna be now inside classrooms. PragerU is like this right wing, but it seems like it's really nice. And it's Christopher Columbus talking about how, you know, he's a great guy. And Frederick Douglass talking about slavery is good. Like this is where we're headed and that's bad for America, right? If America is not being cutting edge smart, then we lose. We all lose.

Octavio Blanco (33:48)
Ugh.

I didn't

I didn't see that. What

classrooms is PragerU gonna be?

Led Black (34:11)
So Prager, you was gonna be

like in elementary schools across the country.

Octavio Blanco (34:15)
Like, don't, I doubt, my God. In New York City too?

Led Black (34:17)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I don't know if it's all New York, but it's definitely gonna be a thing in classrooms across this country, which is crazy.

Octavio Blanco (34:26)
goodness, that is

scary. PragerU is truly, truly evil. you know, the beautiful thing about DEI was that it was forcing everybody to confront the reality of racism and to give voice to the true history of what this country has been founded on and to set a line where we can start to get

better where we can start to accept that, okay, this is our, this is our original sin racism. And this is how we're moving forward. But people, but, but apparently it was too much folks knee jerked and elected Donald Trump. who's now like outlawing DEI and,

and we are setting ourselves back generations. was refreshing. Yeah, yeah. So it was refreshing to see DEI making an impact and causing us to reflect on the truth of where we started as a society and where do we wanna go as a society. But now, you know, hopefully.

Led Black (35:18)
Decades, decades, yeah, decades.

Octavio Blanco (35:38)
It'll, you know, it's a pendulum in America. The political pendulum swings, continues to left to right to left to right. I would love it if the pendulum could.

you know, stop in the middle for a while and just let us like build. But for that to happen, we need to make sure that, like you say, we need to face our original sin as a country head on. We need to admit it and we need to move forward from it. We need to do something. We can't just ignore it or we're gonna be doomed, like you say, with that Martin Luther King quote.

Led Black (36:12)
Yeah, the thing is that you only talk about the pendulum.

Like if we're gonna go with that metaphor, the pendulum is only swinging on the right and it's only swinging just like, do, do, do, do, do. It's not going where it needs to go. It's not going here. It's not. And again, if it gets stuck here, we're stuck in this place. And again, I think the only thing that's gonna get us out of it is plain speaking. You know what mean? Like they used to tell Malcolm X, make it plain, minister. We need to make it plain, right? And again, if we avoid race, if we try to sugarcoat it, we're only gonna go further down this hole. ⁓

Octavio Blanco (36:28)
Mm-hmm.

Led Black (36:45)
So it's being used in certain states like Florida, Oklahoma, Montana as supplemental educational material. So think about that kid listening to PragerU when you were a little kid. That's what I mean, we're decades where we were, right? We're decades behind now.

Octavio Blanco (36:51)
Mm, mm, mm.

Mm.

Led Black (37:01)
Right? Roe versus Wade has been overturned. Like there was a great article, I think it was, I think it might've been the New Yorker, I don't remember the name of it. And it was about a person that kind of lived in, was a Venezuelan who was out of the country during, you know, everything, early on with Chavez, he was out of the country studying. And he talked about how the rich folks, you know, the well-to-do, the middle class talked about.

the situation and how, yeah, it's bad. Everyone had an opinion, but no one did anything. Right. Like everyone was like, okay, this is bad. It's getting worse. Okay. Okay. Until the point where like now people that were well to do could no longer eat the same. They're getting skinnier, right? They're impoverished. And you had this mass exodus of millions of Venezuelans, right? That's, that's the point that he was trying to make is like, we need to wake up in this country.

We need to really wake up. We need to like look at it, like open our eyes, stop lying to ourselves, stop pretending, you know, that these like Biden, Biden is at fault for Trump, right? If Biden had been a real, first of all, we shouldn't have never had Biden. He should never had a second term, right? He shouldn't have dropped out with 70 days left, right? He shouldn't, this is his genocide that he started.

I mean, Biden, we gotta really look at the situation. That's why we can't have a Cuomo. Just because he's a Democrat doesn't mean that we rock with him. We can't have the APOC Shakurs no more. We can't have the Chuck Schumer. I call him Chuck Tumor. We can't have those. Cory Hooker. We can't have those anymore.

And we need to be really like, we need to look at this like, the people that got us into this problem cannot be the ones leading us out of this problem. And we need new blood that represents this whole country, every single aspect, black, brown, everything.

everything, white everything. but we need to look at it dead in the face. Like stop pretending, right? Because what happens is when you don't tell the truth, when you pussyfoot around race, then you have, you let the snakes come in. You let the trumps come in. You let the Charlie come, Charlie Kirks come in. there's people that don't, we need to put everything back in their place. When white people are on top, when white men rule everything, we're going to be back. This is when it's good. And that's what they're openly saying now, right? That the reason that things are bad is because white men aren't in

Right? what I'm saying is like, don't take it from me. Yeah, don't take it from me. Take it from what they're telling you and stop saying, stop saying what you're seeing is not what you're seeing. It's not what you're hearing. It is worse than we think. And the moment we start realizing, yeah, word for word, word for word, the problem in this country is not enough white men in charge. Really? Okay. Didn't know that.

Octavio Blanco (39:22)
That's what they're saying. Yeah.

I mean, that's word for word.

Led Black (39:43)
Right? again, it's, it's, it's Bill Maher. I used to love Bill Maher, but now he's, he's become, that's another, he's, he's, he's as right wing as they come. Right? Bill Maher was supposed to be the next George Carlin. Instead, he's the next Dennis Miller. What a fucking dud. Right? And again, this is a guy that everyone loved.

Octavio Blanco (39:57)
Well, he's

made, at first he was an outsider and now he's like the ultimate insider. He's made millions of dollars and he doesn't wanna lose that. He doesn't wanna give up all that money. He doesn't wanna give up all that power.

Led Black (40:05)
He got all that money, he sold out.

Mm-hmm.

Octavio Blanco (40:13)
And so yeah, he's an apologist. He's an apologist and he's gone all the way to the right. yeah, I personally, I've never liked Bill Maher. I've always thought he was an idiot personally. just, I mean, he's not an idiot because he's actually a smart person. And that's the scary thing. Like my dad says, peor que hay es un pendejo con ganas. Un pendejo con ganas. An idiot who really has a lot ⁓ of like, you know,

Led Black (40:14)
facts.

Octavio Blanco (40:40)
let's get it done, you know? Initiative, an idiot with initiative or a jerk with initiative. That's the worst that you could get because that's, that's many of them, yeah.

Led Black (40:41)
Yeah

That's Charlie Kirk. That's Charlie Kirk right there too. That's Charlie Kirk in a lot of ways. And Stephen Miller, right? yeah,

like this is the kind of, like, again, like Charlie Kirk, Stephen Miller, right? They are just basically not incels because they have power, right? They wouldn't be able to have a regular relationship with a woman if they didn't have power, right? These are, are, these are, are the, no, I mean, like, at, have you seen these fucking people? Like, all they have is hate of other people.

Octavio Blanco (41:06)
you

⁓

Led Black (41:13)
You know what mean? And they're in charge. They're the one dictating terms. Like, it's crazy.

Octavio Blanco (41:17)
Yeah, well, they say for everyone, there's someone. As messed up as that is. You know, these folks find their other half. And it's not always... It's awful. Oh, man. Wow. Yeah. It's...

Yeah, I don't know what to say beyond all this. I just do think that we need to wake up and we need to...

look at our flaws as people and address those flaws. You know how an alcoholic has to accept that he or she is an alcoholic and decide that they want to change. You can't change an alcoholic who doesn't, first of all, who doesn't recognize themselves as an alcoholic, and second of all, if they don't want to change. So we are a country that has

Led Black (41:46)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, but...

Yeah!

Octavio Blanco (42:08)
to recognize that we are a racist country and we are a country that has to decide that we want to change. And until that happens, it's going to be up to people like you and me and others to try and wake folks up. And we need to be out there with our vote. I hate it when I hear people talk about how my vote doesn't count and da da da. It's like.

I don't care what you think, whether or not your vote counts, you just gotta get out and vote because that's the most, that's the least that you can do. You know, that's the easiest thing that you can do. If you also wanna go and advocate, do that, you know, write your congressman, call your congressman, attend meetings, know, like volunteer. People need to get involved in their communities and the least that you can do is get out there and

Led Black (42:30)
Mm-hmm.

Octavio Blanco (42:56)
And when I hear people say, well, you know, it's rigged and they don't want us to vote into it I don't want to vote, it doesn't do anything. That pisses me off like you won't believe. People died for that right.

Led Black (43:07)
Yeah,

yeah, I know I agree. think apathy is a real problem. You know what mean? But I also think that the Democratic Party has not done its job like they're supposed to. Right, the Democratic Party, ⁓ the leadership.

is willing to lose. They don't care about losing elections. They just want to be in there, you know, taking care of their, of themselves. And I think that, that a lot of the, the, the complaints that come from the right, you know, as much as I hate the right, when it talks about how feckless these Democrats have been, you really, you can't disagree with that. Right. And I think that's part of it right there. Like we need leadership that, that cares about this.

the people of this country that doesn't have outside influences, that doesn't want things for other interests, or someone paying them to feel a certain way. We need to get away from that. And we need to revitalize a democracy.

We need to make sure that you never have something like this again, because if we don't do that, we're going to lose this thing. And I think, to be honest, I think that we've already lost it. Right. But I mean, that doesn't mean we stop fighting, right? I'm going still stop, I'm going to fight for me and mine, right? And my community and my city and as much as I can and for this country as much as I can. I think that the forces arrayed against us are something else.

Octavio Blanco (44:21)
Yeah, no, absolutely. know, if we've lost it, we can fight and reclaim it. You know, just because we lose something doesn't mean we can't go and get it back. We can still do that. And you know what you were saying about the right? Some of the arguments outside of racist arguments.

But some of the arguments, there is a point there of when they were looking at the economy and they're talking about my dollar doesn't stretch as far as it needs to. And when they're looking at the fact that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

Led Black (44:37)
Right.

Octavio Blanco (44:52)
That was bizarre to me that they then also decided to vote for a billionaire to be their savior. And that's the farthest from what's been happening. Now they're suffering even more. Now they see their prices going higher. Their farmers are seeing that they can't sell their crops. The kids are getting no education. It's a...

And it's all because the racism that they've been indoctrinated with won over the real concerns that they actually have.

Led Black (45:23)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah,

I saw a thing on Instagram that said, I voted to be racist, not poor, right? Yeah, but you're get poor. That's what you're gonna get, right? You're gonna get poor. So you know you're talking about with the soybeans. China signed 20 year deals with Brazil. That money ain't coming back. That money ain't coming back. Your racism shot you in the foot and it's shooting us all in the foot.

Octavio Blanco (45:35)
Yeah

Yeah, that's what's gonna happen.

Yeah.

Led Black (45:52)
And that's what I mean about it. That's what I'm saying. Like, I really do believe in all of us as brothers, right? All of us, black, white, brown, all of us. But the majority of white people in this country don't. And that's unfortunate. And again, I don't always blame them, right? It's not completely their fault, right? Because Fox News is the biggest media organization in America, right? I remember reading this book about Roger Ailes, right? And it was saying that...

You know how the Fox has the chiron on the corner of screen, right? It moves now, it spins, right? You know why? It was getting burnt into people's TVs because they didn't change it. because the chiron didn't move, it was getting burnt into the TV. So the TV is off and you see the chiron. Like my wife works in a hospital, I work in a hospital right now, right? In Bergen County, right? And I see people dying.

Octavio Blanco (46:20)
Yeah.

⁓ my god.

Led Black (46:43)
with their 70 inch screen in the hospital looking at Fox News, right? All day and as they die, as they die, right? They're spending the last moments consuming hate, right? So in a sense, I don't blame those white people so much, right? In a sense, they're like, this is the die you've been given, but now you gotta break out of that die because this whole country is dying because of your myopia, right? You can't see the racist, the white supremacist that Trump is. Like another thing, like people say that,

Octavio Blanco (46:48)
all day and all night. Yeah, yeah.

Led Black (47:12)
that we suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. No, the right suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome, right? Because if you can look at that man with the fake ass hair, the fake tan, the obesity that he tells you he's 220 pounds, if you could look at that man and not be disgusted, if not be repulsed, then you have Trump Derangement Syndrome. You see what I'm saying? Like, we're in a very bad place because of race.

Octavio Blanco (47:31)
Yeah.

And to your point about older people dying watching Fox News, I used to feel not that concerned about that because to me it felt like, well, that's that generation. They're a racist generation and that's the end of that generation.

and now we have our generation. But what I'm really, really concerned about is things like what happened today with Charlie Kirk is creating like a new generation of young people who are 100 % behind that racist ideology. And so we're gonna have to deal with that for, and he's a martyr. He's a martyr, yeah.

Led Black (48:14)
Yeah. Yeah. He's a, he's a martyr now. Like Charlie Kirk is a martyr for the right wing, right? He's a re those, those

people, those, those Republicans, college Republicans that, that idolize this man, right? What do you think they're going to do now? Right? They have the guns, they have the intent and they have the ideology, right? He, this is going to make things so much worse for regular people because

Octavio Blanco (48:32)
Yeah.

Led Black (48:41)
We're in a, the Pandora's box has been loosened with the first Trump election, right? And then it almost got shut and then he opened it up again with second election. And now we are reaping the whirlwind.

Led Black (48:51)
But you know, like you were saying before, you know, I do feel that even in this turbulence, in this turmoil, the community is the answer. And no matter what happens out there, we still have to continue to look out for one another and put our best foot forward as human beings, right? So, you know, I want my white brother, sisters know that I'm not attacking y'all personally. I'm not talking about my white friends. They know how I feel, but I'm talking about general America.

I think we need to address the elephant in the room, which is white supremacy. And if we don't, this is what happens when we don't.

Octavio Blanco (49:26)
I completely agree with you. Like I was saying, I'm a product of an interracial love story. So, you know, I know that racism is not something that we have to endure, right? Racism can be overcome.

My mother is not a racist. My father is not a racist. And they found each other, right? ⁓ But racism is a reality in America. And I think that the way that you overcome it is by confronting it. And I agree. I know that there's millions of allies, white people who are out there.

Led Black (49:51)
Mm-hmm.

Octavio Blanco (50:07)
who are really fighting the good fight and are allied and want to see this horrible time end. But there's also a lot of people who are not able to see beyond the racism. And those are the folks that somehow we need to reach and we need to help them to understand that racism, that they're...

feeling, it's been imposed on them too. It's not a reality. The reality is that we are all equal and racism is what shoots ourselves in the foot. And hopefully, maybe some people, racism hurts us all. hurts us all. So this has been a great conversation with you, Led. ⁓ Really tough one, actually. I think it's tough to talk about these things and, you know,

Led Black (50:37)
Right. Right.

Racism hurts us all,

Likewise,

Octavio Blanco (50:55)
We're not the ultimate experts on everything, but at the same time, I do think that we have very good education about these issues and we need to continue to confront these issues and to help our brothers and sisters to understand these issues. So thank you. Thank you, Led

Led Black (51:08)
for

Yes sir, thank you brother. It was a great conversation.

Octavio Blanco (51:14)
Yeah, definitely.

Octavio Blanco (51:15)
Thanks for joining us in this episode of Uptown Voices brought to you by 181 Cabrini, your neighborhood bistro just steps away from the North Walk of the George Washington Bridge. Use the code Uptown Voices season one for your discount. And to stay up to date on the latest in Uptown, you can follow Uptown Collective on Instagram, Facebook, and X. If you're watching Uptown Voices on YouTube,

forget to smash the subscribe button and to give us a like.

Octavio Blanco (51:44)
And don't forget, we also need financial contributions from listeners like you to produce, improve, and expand our content. To contribute, please scan the QR code on the screen

Octavio Blanco (51:55)
Until next time,

this has been Uptown Voices.