Jacob:  I'm very grateful for this conversation. I felt it was really excellent. I had a great time doing it. My final thoughts on it would be in the military, one of the things that was always stressed for us was showing our respect and showing decorum. Another important aspect of the military is that it's very often correctly portrayed as one of America's best institutions, partly because it brings together black, white, Asian people, people of all races, all religions, all backgrounds. And it has us working together as a unit, accomplishing missions for our country. I've always thought so many Americans who are black, and of minorities, and who are white, have all died fighting for that flag. So one of the best things we can do is just come together as a nation when it's out, and render our honor together in a uniform fashion, and that it's not really a time for protest. But aside from that final point, I would like to say thank you very much, Maurice. I appreciate your stories and our discussion. It was a great time. Thank you, also, very much, Samia.

 

Samia:  Thanks, Jacob. Maurice?

 

Maurice:  I do want to say thank you to you as well, and humbly mentioning issues that people tend to disagree with, and I felt like you did a really good job of just acknowledging. And I really appreciate that. I think that's where it should start when it comes to specifically black people being upset with white people and not understanding our story. Going back to the NFL, as an athlete, I've always felt like there was a bigger purpose rather than just tossing the football, and tackling someone, and doing that for everyone's entertainment. Throughout our times, we haven't been respecting the athletes, especially the black athlete, and not giving them as much props as we should. Athletes put their bodies on the lines as well, for the sake of everyone's entertainment. And just because you're making millions of dollars doesn't mean that an athlete can ignore these situations that are happening right now. In fact, to these on the opposite spectrum of someone who is facing police brutality versus an NFL athlete who makes millions of dollars and stays in nice neighborhoods and whatnot - that spectrum allows athletes to see, especially people who look like them, problems a lot more. So if I have a stage or a platform in order to just get people to say, “Hey, we should probably talk about this,” because it's not really... I mean, yes, it's fun to get together, and watch the football game on Sundays, but to just sit up there and ignore and we turn on the TV and someone else has died for some unjust reason, it's like, where's our natural human instinct to just say that's a problem? And I feel like athletes, now, they finally have this strong push to voice their opinions no matter what. And I truly hope that the owners of these teams really respect the athletes and not just treat them as mere employees but rather as partners, and get together and make solutions, rather than just divide.

 

Samia:  Well, whatever your opinion on football players kneeling during the anthem is, these protests definitely have gotten people talking, and that is a good thing. Thank you both for coming to the table ready to listen, and respect each other, and be kind to each other in spite of your disagreements. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks so much for being on the show.

 

Jacob:  Thank you.

 

Maurice:  Thank you.

 

MUSIC 

 

Samia:  Maurice and Jacob both messaged me after their session saying it had given them a lot to think about, and led to some pretty cool self-discovery, and shifted perspectives. Maurice wrote, “Having the conversation today made me ask myself some great questions. So it's been a self-discovery for me, as well as a good opportunity to speak about something important.” And Jacob wrote, “The talk was incredibly useful for getting on the same page as someone from across the aisle. Especially after the show, I realized how much our differences can be irrelevant and how much we see eye to eye.”

 

The two got on so well that they ended up going to two different coffee shops after the session without me to keep talking. And at my request, they recorded parts of their conversation using a cellphone. After this episode ends, keep listening for those extra conversations. Think of it as a bonus treat.

 

In the first clip, our engineer Garan joined in on the conversation. In the second, it's just Maurice and Jacob. The sound quality of these conversation snippets is obviously not fantastic, but I was so heartened that they had taken it upon themselves to do this that I wanted to share.

 

If you're loving the show, and you haven't already left a 5-star review on iTunes or shared on social media, please do. New reviews and social media shares will get personal shout-outs on the show. Just make sure to tag Make America Relate Again on Facebook or @RelatePodcast on Twitter. These shares and reviews help so much with getting the message of depolarization into more people's ears. For a transcript of this episode and additional resources, go to MakeAmericaRelatePodcast.com. And for more information on Better Angels, so that you can start helping with the work of depolarizing America, go to Better-Angels.org.

 

Thanks to the Hive and Garan Fitzgerald for recording this conversation, YBM Recording Studio for recording my intro and outro segments, Dani Valdizan for creating the theme music, and Christopher Gilroy for mixing and editing this episode. This is Make America Relate Again. Stay tuned after the music for your bonus conversation snippets between Jacob and Maurice, and I’ll see you next week.

 

MUSIC

 

Maurice:  That conversation, it is my first time speaking in an organized fashion like that. It's really hard to get all the things that you want to say. For me, I feel like, with me, if I didn't address what I feel like every black person is saying, I feel like I would’ve somehow failed or something like that, but that there's also my own perception of how things are played out. I felt like I was trying to, first, mention how black people felt, and my perspective, which is having more new concepts and ideas about, first of all, race, in which I think it should be nonexistent. It totally divides us. It gives us perceptions of what we think we are, and those things are really false, because this conversation just proved that no matter title you put on yourself or what side you want to be on, that we all have these common goals. For me, what’s the point of saying, “I'm this or I’m that,” if we ultimately have these same goals.

 

Jacob:  A really interesting point I heard about that, one of my friends, he grew up in Korea. His father is a black US serviceman. His mother was Korean. So he’s always felt trapped between every kind of world that there is. He grew up in Korea and everything. And his big interest in all of his life was punk music, rock music, etc. And his philosophy on this, he goes, he thinks that a lot of companies, they like advertising to people in these clear groups. They like people consuming things in these clear groups. And so they like that race exists because they're like, “Oh, we make our money by selling this to white people or this to black people. This is for X, Y, Z, etc.” So as a result, people invest in their own images, and businesses invest in those images. And we all end up becoming stereotypes. We feel like if we're not being the stereotype that we're somehow being a traitor.

 

Maurice:  Right, right, because for me to come into this and totally agree, 100% agree with the things that you were saying about how just getting up on mankind and just accepting it for what it is, I felt like it contradicts so much of what black people always say or are trying to convey. That conundrum, that push and pull is really difficult. I felt that during that conversation.

 

Jacob:  Yeah. I guess one of the things that I think really makes a lot of white conservatives angry is the term white privilege. I think what angers them is because (A), there's a lot of truth to it; and (B), it's really accusatory. You know what I mean? It makes everyone feel really on edge.

 

Maurice: Yes.

 

Jacob: You feel like, in a way, because it questions whether or not you deserve some of the things you have, but you clearly feel like you've earned it. Then, also, it just feels like you're getting singled out for the first time and accused of the collective kind of failure. It's-

 

Maurice:  It's the first time that everyone has pointed a finger back at white people. Now, it's like how do we deal with this? I think, that's where we are, as minorities, that message is wrong to say like, “Why - you’re taking advantage?” No one is going to respond in a positive way if you tell someone, “Hey, you're fucking wrong.” Don't get me wrong. There is a time and a place for that. But if you keep just pointing a finger and not trying to find a higher way to go, then it's just going to be fucking chaos.

 

Jacob: Right, right.

 

Maurice: Everyone wants to be understood and accepted in very nice in huggable ways. Let's try to figure out how we can do that. Let's start wording things a little bit better.  It's one of the things I feel like Donald Trump, he should do better. It's not what he's saying. It's how he's saying it is really, I think, hurts him. With that, he focuses... I think he does that because he focuses on short goals that benefit him and the people that support him. But in the long run hurts the entire country as a whole. It goes back to him just... One of the reasons why I didn't vote for him was because his points of views are so singular and so pointing towards him. The people who support him don't actually see that.

 

Jacob:  Right. I think he's... I don't like saying that someone’s forced him into a position, but I feel like since the whole media seems to be against him, he's always trying to use Twitter as a way around the media. It ends up becoming a situation where he's only speaking to his base, and it becomes really divisive. Yeah, it's a very, very valid criticism, but it's hard for me to fully condemn him because it feels like it's the future of politics. It's not the future that we want, right?

 

Maurice:  Right.

 

Jacob:  It's the future we have.

 

Maurice:  I'm always careful especially around my black friends at saying that Trump is needed. They hate that. The reason why he's needed, in my opinion, is to get us talking, that's one; to cripple the idea of what we think is politics today because, like you said, it needs to go into a new direction. I think people just have a hard time of actually accepting who he is. People have known Trump for a long time. People who don't support him, why are they surprised? I think if we would... I don't know how to... If we responded in a... It's hard to say. It's hard to say. I can't come up with it right now.

 

Garan:  Something I've been saying a lot is that, yeah, like you said, we knew who Trump was before he got elected. Why are we surprised? Why is all the news coverage like, “Oh my gosh, he said something that wasn't right or wasn't true.” I'm like, “I mean, why don't we focus on what he should be saying rather?” Get to the point of what the conversation should be. If he's finding it wrong, find the correct because, okay, he's President, but nobody is surprised by who Trump is. Nobody should be, because he's been out there for decades in the public eye pushing himself out there. I mean, I don't like what he says, because he says everything pretty awfully. I don't agree with his policies, blah, blah, blah, but the constant surprise is exhausting. It's like, how are you surprised? How could you not have seen this coming? Okay, we get it, he's awful, blah, blah, blah. Let's get to what should be happening. Let's talk about alternatives to what he's suggesting.

 

Maurice:  And I - I hope that wasn't cutting you off - but that's our answer. That's when we start talking to each other rather than depending on leaders, per se, to make decisions for us. This goes for any politician, whether it be Clinton, Obama. Why be surprised to the way politicians behave? Unless you start focusing on what's actually going on, because solutions would happen a lot faster if we just talk instead of looking at them in order to provide us for things that we seek and desire.

 

Jacob:  Right. I think that Trump knows how to manipulate the media to get what he wants out of it, and that if the media changed its tone, he would have to change his tone. It would be a new kind of negotiation for him. In a really weird sense, you could say that when Trump is acting out in this way, and he's speaking to, largely, a white middle American voting base, and it's like if this gets established as, all right, they're willing to behave as a voting bloc, they're willing to engage in these kinds of tactics, and maybe none of us should engage in any of these tactics. It becomes one of scenarios where if everyone kind of realizes that identity politics gets us nowhere, then maybe identity politics would go away. At this point, it's a really complex topic. I think one of the reasons why Trump is so popular is because a lot of people felt picked on as white middle Americans, how they were to blame for systemic racism, and they're portrayed as always ignorant or always X, Y, and Z. They just wanted to vote for somebody who would punch back more than anything else.

 

Maurice:  I see. Yeah, I see. That goes to me saying that we are accusing... When you say white people, it makes you feel like, well, it's not everyone. It's not-

 

Jacob:  True.

 

Maurice:  Yeah. I would totally get that if someone was saying, like, you are the reason for my my oppression. I would be like, “Hey, you know, chill.” But I think, and this is the hard part is, collectively, white people just have to say, “You know what? All right. We get it. We notice it,” and that message has to be conveyed sincerely, instead of saying the way I'm saying it, which is like, “Oh, okay. We get it.” It has to be on a more public scale. It has to be… That's one of the only ways that we can move forward and stop pointing a finger and stop being so upset with each other for not understanding. Like the conversation we just had, one of the first things you were mentioning is, just acknowledging. Just acknowledging what's going on and what has happened. So I really appreciate that.

 

Jacob:  Oh. It was very excellent. Thank you very much again.

 

Maurice:  No. No problem, no problem.

 

Garan:  That was a handshake for you listening at home.

 

[laughter]

 

[transition]

 

Jacob:  But yeah, it's always felt like the big thing is, “Well, it's not my family.” A lot of… especially people from American North, they try to get out of the situation by saying, “Well, my family immigrated here after the Civil War. We've just lived in Wisconsin or Minnesota and minded our own business.” It's objectively true, but it's also… I feel like people shouldn't try to wiggle out of the history that way.

 

Maurice:  Right.

 

Jacob:  Just because your grandpa came here on a boat from Norway doesn't mean you, as a white American, had absolutely nothing to do with American history. Right?

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  It's not like these people are clamoring to be like, “Well, I'll take all the burdens of Norwegian history,” right?

 

Maurice:  Right.

 

Jacob:  They need to acknowledge that, yeah, America was a country that they came to where black people were segregated in the American South, and it wasn't exactly like the Norwegian and German immigrants were marching for their rights in the American North or anything.

 

Maurice:  Right.

 

Jacob:  I think we rightfully needed to have a little bit of guilt about this, but yeah, it's a very complex topic.

 

Maurice:  You know, you look throughout history, the groups of people who have oppressed others, for example, Germans. They, I think have done an exceptional job of saying, “Hey, we fucked up.” And that has allowed everyone to see Germans as, “All right. Okay, you guys are human. You're cool.”

 

Jacob:  Right.

 

Maurice:  Right?

 

Jacob:  Yeah.

 

Maurice:  Versus like Japanese, for example, too, right? When the comfort women situation that was going on. And also there was a lack of a very piss-poor effort on the Park Geunhye decision, just accepting the money and not really exposing what the actual situation was. But for a long time, still even now, I'm talking to Koreans like Japanese just be like, would just say, “That happened and… ” or either they have no idea, and if they just look at it and they completely sweep it under the rug and they just expect you to be like, “Well, hey, it happened. So let's just move on.”

 

Jacob:  Right. One of the things that I think we do too much is we say, “Well, this stuff had happened to everybody,” and it's like it's kind of true. At one point, Rome conquered the Germans and the Celts and stuff. But it's like those aspects of history have been entirely erased. It was probably pretty terrible to be the second class citizen, you know, Gaul, in modern day France, but French people, they just have no memory of that. So we can't actually just say, “Well, it happened to everyone. Suck it up,” because it doesn't… The only reason why we're not complaining about that now is because it really was like 500 or 1000 or 2000 years ago. When something's this recent, we really should be more understanding.

 

Maurice:  Right. I think it's the way that things are still happening now, and it's quite dormant. For example, the prison reform laws, it's just so obvious that it - and it's not obvious at the same time - in reality, it's modern day slavery.

 

Jacob:  The unpaid labor and everything?

 

Maurice:  Right, right. Of course, of course, and just pretty much picking slaves out of these poverty-stricken neighborhoods. It's so obvious, but I feel like in America, that cycle from, obviously, being open to racism and slavery and all these oppressive times, to now like, “Yeah, we still have these ways, but let's cover it up with commercial capitalism or the whole nationalism versus patriotism. Let's cover it up with that and make everything look good and pretty,” but it's actually still about using people and gaining and building off the backs of others.

 

Jacob:  Right. There’s actually been people who've argued that… Oh, jeez! What was I going to say? That what we have now, in some ways, is potentially worse than the slavery that existed before, in the sense that a slave was like an investment. If your slave broke his leg, you actually had to give a shit about this and make sure he got better, or you're going to have to go buy another one. But nowadays it's like a lot of labor is so immediately replaceable. Right?

 

Maurice:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

Jacob:  And no one has invested in each other.

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  A little bit broader into the capitalist idea of things, but yeah. And I had also heard something where the average, like the relative price of a slave in the 19th century would be the modern day equivalent to $40,000. But now there's actually… Like if you go to places where they actually are still selling… where slavery still exists, or if you go to places where this forced prostitution exists, it's much cheaper now. So it's kind of weird, capitalist society maybe even made labor cheaper. Right?

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  But I had a question for you. It might be a little bit personal. So one of my friends, he grew up without a father and he said that because of that, he had a lot of confidence issues, and he felt like, really big empty spaces in his life that affected him greatly. And he retreated into video games and he related worse to people. He said it's a lot of issues that come from that. I'd heard it said before that one of the reasons why gang violence can be a problem, etc, is people are like, are not actually taught how to be men, and they look for surrogate fathers, so to speak.

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  So, in a weird sense, I think a lot of it can be a cultural problem. That's like a conservative point usually, but I think there's some merit to that.

 

Maurice:  Right.

 

Jacob:  What do you think about that?

 

Maurice:  Yeah. I felt like I didn't convey that message enough or clearly when I wanted to bring up my family and how me not having a father ties in with the systematic oppression that's been going on. And to answer your question, and to make sure I understand your question, do you want to know how my life has been affected without having a father?

 

Jacob:  Yeah, and also do you think that it's a really big impact on your community?

 

Maurice:  Of course. Most definitely. Actually, not only me, but my entire generation. My cousins grew up without fathers, and when you include generations and setting your future generation up for success, not having a father and not having a complete household definitely diminish the future generations. So if you have this going on, or generation after generation after generation, and it's because of systematic ways of oppression, for example… Let me give some examples. Housing, and segregating black people into an area where there is no resources for you to, for example, have a grocery store and have-

 

Jacob:  Right.

 

Maurice:  …healthy choices to eat, or functional schools that have updated resources: a good library, technology available, facilities. So many other things, I'm trying to get from the top of my head right now, but if you have a lack of these things, and including not having a father, then there will always be this huge void and always this huge what if. Even with football, I felt like I had this big dream. I was gonna to play in the league and whatnot. A very ambitious high school kid. But because I didn't have a father really affected my chances and my opportunities, because to have a single parent in the home, right? It completely… It's nearly impossible for a parent sometimes to support their kid and fully allow them to pursue their goals.

 

Jacob:  Right. Oh yeah. The dual income thing is a really big advantage, because, for instance, my parents are together. They've been together for forever. They've saved up all these resources their whole life. I can be in Korea, and be like, “If something weird happens, I have financial backing around, someone's going to help me out,” right?

 

Maurice:  Right.

 

Jacob:  My friend grew up without a father. He's like, his mother is still on a single income and he sends money back to her, well, fine. So it feels like just having the financial stability of the dual income can be literally…mobilize you to move around the world without fear, and easily, versus not being able to do that. Right?

 

Maurice:  Well, that's one of the things that I think that has affected black people in a lot of ways. The financial aspect of it has definitely in the past crippled black people, and maybe your friend, he has some experience with not being able to pursue something that he truly loved and just have to conform to some type of lifestyle that really isn't beneficial for him, spiritually or passionately or whatever. And he gains resentment, he gains anger. There’s social issues that he has to overcome. And a lot of times, you know, you don't know how to be a man.

 

Jacob:  Right, right.

 

Maurice:  Your mom can't teach you how to be a man. I know my points are everywhere, but the main thing I want to get to is the whole village concept. You look at every nationality in America; Koreans, Chinese, people from the Middle East, Indians, they all have everything together. They keep it within the family, right? So if you have a broken family, it definitely cripples, again, the whole village and breaks down that power of being able to have some type of generational power and say-so, and the whole spectrum of things in the entire country.

 

Jacob:  Yeah. The whole thing about teaching you to be a man, it's sometimes really important to understand. I think how it involves… I felt really free as a kid, but I had these obvious stop signs, and those were actually good, because I'm like, “Oh, I can get away with drinking with my buddies,” dadadadada, “But I know that if I ever did this, my dad's going to kill me.” Right?

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  I could get away with putting on boxing gloves with my friends and punching each other, just sort of, whatever. But if I ever was like, “I'm going to go fist-fight somebody,” my dad would have me locked in my bedroom for a month. You know?

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  So it's like, because you've got two parents and you've also got this role model, like, “Hey, go have a beer with your friends,” or you've got like this clear idea of a limitation. And if you grow up without that, and you grow up with a mother who already has to invest so much of her time providing and doesn't have the good energy for that, you can lie to her easily. You'd just be out and you will live this life where you can get into a lot more trouble. You know what I mean?

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  I guess also you have resentment more, because it's such a weird situation.

 

Maurice:  You have a lot of black men who are seeking for comfort in the wrong places, and this maybe goes back to Chicago, for example, which is one of the cities that has a lot of gang violence. A lot of these, if you look at their homes, they're broken, and they're broken financially, spiritually, in so many ways. And so I understand people's concern about like, for example, why are black men killing each other, for example? Why are you pissed at when a policeman kills someone, when you are killing your own people? But it stems from, again, the whole village aspect, and America has systematically broken the black people's village, if you will.

 

Jacob:  Oh, yeah.

 

Maurice:  We've been through this rebuilding process for many years.

 

Jacob:  And it takes more even-

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  Because it's like a cycle, right?

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  And it's amazing, because I know middle class girls who grew up very well, but then their parents got divorced, and it's clear that they have behavioral, daddy issues. Right?

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  And so, if people get screwed up by this even when they're the majority ethnicity and they're living comfortably, and their dad is still kind of around them, people still are screwed up by that, obviously, people are going to feel… They're going to fall into another vicious cycle when they grow up in a much worse, like, if you're not wealthy and you are living hand-to-mouth and you are missing a parent, that can be just devastating. And how do you fix that easily? Because I guess a lot of the behaviors bleed into each other and you kind of learn from imitation, right?

 

Maurice:  Right.

 

Jacob:  And so you kind of like, “Well, I have to do these things because that's what my father did and his life is okay.” If you don't really have that in the community around you is… And another thing I wanted to say, you can see it even in like, every kid idolizes the gangster rapper, the Red Bull, etc, because it's a lot cooler to do that than to be the guy who's had the business. Right?

 

Maurice:  Yeah, and it's usually the only thing that they're seeing, too.

 

Jacob:  Yes, yes. So then if you're from a bad neighborhood, and you don't have a father in your life, and you don't have a lot of restraints, and the thing that immediately feels [inaudible], the obvious sex, money, power, and you just want the clearest path to it, and you don't have… No one at the age of 15 has the ability to be like, “This is not sustainable.” Right?

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  So if you get out the street, and then you don't have a good, positive influence, you really are just going to be running wild.

 

Maurice:  Right, right. And I think people think about it short-term too much, and not thinking about generation-wise, how that can affect a group of people. I don't want a part of that situation, and I look back on my life and the ways I’ve had to navigate to get to where I am now, I feel like there has been a lot of luck. I'm made a lot of fuckin' mistakes. Mistakes that probably would have been really detrimental to my passions and whatnot.

 

Jacob:  Oh, yeah?

 

Maurice:  But somehow, someway, I've been able to get out of these circumstances. One of the ways is not - I think we had the conversation back at the studio, or no, no, it was at Starbucks - was not abiding to the push and pull of what different people want from me. It's pretty much code-switching, right?

 

Jacob:  Yeah.

 

Maurice:  It is. Code-switching is you're pretty much acting differently around a certain group of people in order to be accepted.

 

Jacob:  Yeah. Okay, yeah.

 

Maurice:  So if I'm in high school, for example, and I'm with my black friends, my language changes, like the way I speak or the way… And then I hang out with, I don't know, my white friends or something like that, everything changes. So everyone is expecting something out of me, but I've learned to actually do the opposite and absorb it and use it as a means of survival. That has made me more aware of everyone in general. That's why I say my perspective comes from more personal rather than political, because I'm more interested in the human condition and the way they think, rather than these values and these rules and/or laws that are made to conform us into certain ways of thinking, which ultimately divides us.

 

Jacob:  Yeah, the code-switching observation is really great, because I think we all have that. But I think that, from my observation, the black community could become much more extreme, because I just have this really basic, suburban, white code switches I do, right?

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  These are my friends who like metal music, these are… It's all like slight changes here and there. But because there's this gap in the culture, it can be like a pretty big code switch, so to speak.

 

Maurice:  Right.

 

Jacob:  Right? Wow, this is pretty mind-blowing.

 

Maurice:  Did you grow up with majority, it was only white people?

 

Jacob:  Oh, yeah.

 

Maurice:  Yeah, right.

 

Jacob:  And part of North Dakota, when I… And it's still pretty much the same. It's like 95, 96% white, and the people who were white were largely Native American, or very new immigrants. I think in my high school, we had one African American person, but we had maybe 10 to 15 immigrants from like, Sudan and whatnot. So, in a really… I guess it's like we were very isolated from the experiences of African American people.

 

Maurice:  Right. I was going to say some people can look at it in a different way, and I think you've probably looked at it from a different perspective of not, for a better lack of words, having a true American experience of having every type of person and culture surrounding you. But do you think that living in Montana and just having one group of people mainly affected you negatively, or did it want you to really explore someone else's point of view?

 

Jacob:  I would say it totally made me want to explore things, and it's one of those reasons that I think I also have a lot of friends from back home who really wanted go to Asia, or go to university in California or wherever, right?

 

Maurice:  Right.

 

Jacob:  And in a sense, that's really good, but it does keep you rather sheltered than when you finally do see some of the reality. It can be probably more jarring than it is for other people, and you kind of… There's a weird ignorance in your late teens, early 20s, where one of the things that I think drives a lot of middle Americans crazy is when they get picked on for saying, “Well, where are you… Originally, where are you from?”

 

Maurice:  “What are you?”

 

Jacob:  Yeah, but sometimes they don't understand that it's really just some naive person from Iowa trying to be nice. You know what I mean?

 

Maurice:  Yeah, right.

 

Jacob:  And I think maybe I've learned that much more, because I live in Korea, I also now am like, “Yeah, let's not be mean to this people.” These people are really from nowhere, and you're the one non-Korean person they'll talk to this year. But it's also like, well, now that I've been the non-Korean person that they talk to, it sometimes feels too performative and you also feel like you are just their experience. You are their American experience.

 

Maurice:  Right.

 

Jacob:  And when you are there, I've felt it before, like, “Oh, shit. I now am speaking on behalf of white people.” Do you know what I mean?

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  And sometimes it's like, “This is not bad, because this is an intelligent person and I don't feel that bad about this.” Sometimes you’re like, this person does not really get what's going on, and I feel like shit because I don't want to be that performing, you know.

 

Maurice:  But for me, I'm not offended whatsoever. I have a good understanding of who I am, and I have a pretty good understanding of accepting the way people think. And I was thinking about this as I was coming to this area, like, “Do I have affection for people who truly hate me, and is that right?” And I'm not saying that you do-

 

Jacob:  Yeah, sure.

 

Maurice:  But when it comes to people having different opinions, sometimes whether they realize it or not, it comes from a very nasty place sometimes. And I think sometimes people have a way of saying something in a… Saying a bad thing in a very good way these days to-

 

Jacob:  Some people are liars.

 

Maurice:  Yeah, right.

 

Jacob:  They will act in a sense and they'll… But in reality, then you have a moment where you're like, “Wow! They're trying to get me to actually say these things so that I prove to them that I'm shitbag or something.”

 

Maurice:  Right.

 

Jacob:  It's weird as fuck. Once when I was back in the army, me and some guys went out and we were drinking a lot. We ended up getting into a fight. I had a black eye, and someone pointed out, “Oh, the reason that this Korean guy that is here isn't upset by this and isn't bothered by this, is it confirms the stereotypes about dumb drunk foreigners,” right?

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  So it's like this weird moment where you're like, “Oh, shit. The only reason this is kind of cool is because it beat something really negative into him.”

 

Maurice:  Yeah, and that is our problem: the negative energy that we so call hate, we feed off of it so much more than actually looking at the positive side of things. And although I do hear you when you say like, giving up on people and coming together, some of the words that you're saying makes me do believe that you still have some little inkling of faith for people. And I think that just comes from understanding. That's where I think it simply comes from.

 

Jacob:  Well, I do feel a bit more hopeful after our conversation.

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  Yeah. I feel more positive, but I do have to admit that I've gotten kind of stuck, and I guess part of it was I did grow up in a rather isolated community, and I realized how different my community is.

 

Maurice:  Yeah, right.

 

Jacob:  And maybe it doesn't have to be all bad. Sometimes different communities need different answers for their problems. So maybe to some degree the answer we're looking for is not shutting each other out, but being like, “Look, maybe we need some different laws and different standards here than there, and that's how we address those problems and address these problems.”

 

Maurice:  Yeah. Shit's definitely outdated.

 

Jacob:  Right, right. I knew some Native Americans who very… They were from a broken community where alcohol was not something they could handle very well and it destroyed them.

 

Maurice:  Prime example of the village.

 

Jacob:  Yes. And so when I heard that in Australia, I talked with an Australian who was very liberal. Like, “I heard that they have all these communities for Aboriginals where alcohol isn't allowed. What do you think about that?” Because my perspective as an American, it's like, “You can't take away people's basic freedom to buy a beer.”

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  But they were actually like, “No, no, no. It's really good, and it's going to have a positive effect.” And it still kind of irks me because I want to go buy a beer, but part of me has to understand the society's been really screwed up by alcohol. Maybe to some degree it’s what is needed.

 

Maurice:  Right. That reminds me of some… I get really upset when people in the military try to tell me how I should be representing my country, because I think all of us, although we give America a lot of shit, we deep down love the country. And that's why we criticize it so much, is like… And that's why we care, and that's why we're talking about it. But for anyone to tell me how I should be protesting or how I should be saying anything about my country, it's just absurd.

 

Jacob:  Yeah, I want to hear your point.

 

Maurice:  Right, right.

 

Jacob:  That's a good stopping point perhaps. Wow, it's been a good day for that stuff.