Chad O. Jackson on MLK, Agency, Church vs. Therapy, and the Limits of Politics

Episode 5 features independent historian and filmmaker Chad Jackson in a bold conversation on responsibility, mental health, faith, and rethinking history.

Chad shares his journey from blue collar beginnings to building a successful plumbing business and media platform, rooted in a commitment to obedience over approval. From there, we explore the tension between personal agency and a culture increasingly shaped by dependency, expert authority, and external validation.

This episode challenges the idea that systems, labels, or past circumstances should define your trajectory and instead calls you into ownership, critical thinking, and truth seeking even when it is uncomfortable.

What we cover:

 • Obedience, calling, and the cost of telling hard truths
 • Mental health through the lens of personal responsibility and spiritual grounding
 • The limits of therapy without ownership and faith
 • Statism, expert dependency, and the erosion of individual responsibility
 • Why freedom requires responsibility
 • Homeschooling and cultivating independent thinkers
 • Civic responsibility and keeping politics in its proper place
 • A different perspective on the Civil Rights era and federal expansion
 • The leadership of Dr. Joseph H. Jackson and Booker T. Washington
 • Moving beyond victim identity into personal ownership

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

What do you believe most people misunderstand about history?

SPEAKER_00 0:03

People believe that history is black and white. It's more complex than what they realize.

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Today I have Chad Jackson here with me. I see him as a truth teller. I'm excited to talk to him today. You critique public figures, civil right leaders, pastors, activists. Who are some people that you deeply respect?

SPEAKER_00 0:22

I deeply respect my dad. Is there somebody in your life who was influential in terms of helping you to become a better version of yourself?

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Welcome to Capacity Combos. I'm Raquel Hopkins and this is a space for thoughtful conversations about who we become when life asks more of us. Here we talk with people whose lives and work reflect real capacity, how they stayed engaged, made hard decisions, and grew without shrinking in the face of challenge. This is where we explore what life demanded, and the moment you realize I can hold more than I thought.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Hello everyone, welcome back to Capacity Combos. I'm just gonna jump straight into it. Today I have what I would refer to as a trailblazer. And when I say a trailblazer, I am not talking about someone that does what's popular. In fact, I am talking about a person that is not afraid to say hard things. I always tell my community to keep your mind open, keep your heart open. Whenever we're listening to people that have different perspectives. Today I have Chad Jackson here with me. And for some people, you may call him every name besides the child of God. And there are some people that will call him a truth teller. I see him as a truth teller. I'm excited to talk to him today. A lot of how he presents himself resonates with me because I do believe that when we talk about liberation and freedom, it's getting as close as possible to the truth. So if you're uncomfortable with, or if you're attached to what I would say are some historical narratives that support your identity or what you believe to be true about life, you may find this conversation uncomfortable. And I guess that's a trigger warning. They say the trigger warnings don't really help people, but I gave one. So what? Hi, Chad. Welcome.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

How are you? Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

I am really glad to have you here today.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Yeah, it's good to be here.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Um a few weeks ago I was nervous. Okay. Because I didn't want people to call me a coon like they call you. I'm just being I'm gonna be honest.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Thank you for being brave.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

Yeah, because you're brave.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Yeah, when when other people are brave, it's it's because other people are leading the way. So I want to I'll start first before we get into like your work. Tell us who you are, how people even know about you on social media.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Yeah, so I am Chad Jackson. I'm from here in Texas. I grew up in the Fort Worth area. And um my, I guess, intellectual journey didn't come through like the Ivory Tower or through a family or household that really pushed academia. Uh, I come from a very blue-collar family here in Texas. My dad's from Arkansas, my mom's from Oklahoma, and they really pushed a lot of discipline in our house, um, a lot of hard hard work ethic. My brothers and I weren't allowed to play video games or anything growing up. So growing up, I really resented my parents for that because all my friends got to do all kinds of other things and and play video games. And for for me, um, you know, growing up, having played sports and having to be outside working and and all the things, my and especially being a middle child, I don't know if there's any kind of uh like a lot of the stereotypes for the middle child, I think, are true. And so like rebellious, more rebellious, more kind of marching to the beat of your own drum. Um, a lot of that is true of me. And so I I really kind of went against the grain all of my life. Um, really went at my own pace. And I think that kind of bled into my the way I research things, the way that I take in information even as an adult. Um I didn't go to college nor graduate from college. Uh I do I I am an independent historian, um, independent researcher. And what I do is I take that information and I share it by way of documentaries. So to getting to getting to the point to where I am now, um the the reason I bring up the blue collar aspect of it is because you know I started a plumbing company when I was 25 years old and I still own that company and it's doing quite well. So between my plumbing company and my film company, um I'm able to basically uh be versatile, I guess, in the the kind of things that I'm that I'm doing.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

So um thank you for sharing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I appreciate that because oftentimes we will try and use education to dismiss someone. And one of the things that I appreciate is lived experience. And I think that if if I'm hearing what you're saying correctly, is while I didn't do all of those things, it didn't it never stopped me from pursuing education. Maybe it wasn't in a traditional sense, but I continue to pursue education for my for myself.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Yeah, I think a lot of people have this idea that there's only one route to getting to um to obtaining knowledge. When the reality of it is uh there's there's various routes. It's just a question of whether or not you are willing to learn, whether or not you're willing to open up a book or listen and have discernment. Um books are available to everybody. I mean, there's libraries everywhere. Um this notion that you have to sit under a professor in order to gain knowledge is I think is is absurd. That's not to say that you shouldn't go to college, that's not to say that you shouldn't pursue education, it's just to say that there's no excuse for um not gaining information for something that you seek to to know about.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

Especially not today.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yeah, especially not today. Everybody has a supercomputer in their pocket. So um but I I I'm simply saying that um I think when it comes to the documentaries that I that I make and the presentations that I do, the speaking speaking engagements that I do, um, what I bring to the table uh is something that is supported by my background insofar that it's not only speaking from the abstract, it's speaking in a practical sense. It's freak it's speaking in a way that um people can actually resonate with. Um because you're not just talking about ideas and theory, you're talking about kind of like real life experiences and you you're able to bring to it a degree of uh I don't want to say passion because I'm not a super passionate person, but you've gotta be passionate with the heat that you take on social media.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

I actually You're passionate about something. Like what's the thing that's driving you to continue to do the work that you do in your um media company?

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Really obedience.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

I that's passion.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Yeah, it's obedience. Um obedience to to God. I mean, I'm a I'm a Christian, I'm a Bible-believing Christian, and I'm a reader and uh researcher and a learner, and so you know, when you're looking into history and specifically black history, uh, when you look into the leaders who we're told were our great heroes of old, and you find that they were um more misleaders than they were. Wait, wait, because you're getting ready to jump into it. Well, I'm getting to that passion piece. I'm not gonna go, I'm not gonna go too far into it. But um when you find that out and then you read in the scriptures, don't participate in darkness, but expose it. What I'm doing with these documentaries and docuseries is being obedience to the exposing of that darkness that have misled so many of us. So so I guess there's a passion there. I guess I guess when I say passion, I'm speaking more or less the tone and the the um the uh way in which I break things down. Yeah. I don't really speak with a whole lot of like emotion, I guess I guess you can say.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

Yeah, I I resonate because with that because last year when I went viral, it was strictly because of obedience. Like that was it. And then people were like, Well, you where are your credentials? And where then I was like, Well, do I have to? But because I was being obedient, it was just like say what needs to be said because this mental health industry had we we've gotten off track in terms of developing people, building people up, like so many people are fragile.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

So I want to get what why why are people fragile?

SPEAKER_02 9:47

I think that we have created victims in a lot of ways. People are now over-identifying with their pain, they misunderstand what it means to have good andor optimal mental health, and because of that, a lot of people are avoiding discomfort and or the work that it takes to grow.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

From a societal perspective, is that identifying with the like just being fragile, is that encouraged or is that discouraged just societally?

SPEAKER_02 10:31

I don't think that society thinks that they're encouraging fragility. I think that while well intended, people wanted people to know that it was okay to seek support because we're all gonna struggle at some point. But I think that in the process, what we've did is we've robbed people of their sense of agency and autonomy. Like I am not like you can come and talk to me, and I think I'm really good at what I do, but you still need to depend on Chad and whatever it is that you're grounded in, you bel in and that you believe what you believe in. And I think that that part has gotten lost in a lot of conversations around mental health.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

I think because I mean it's interesting, yeah, you did see this influx probably five years ago or so, and maybe it's still going on. But um, people like Nick Cannon, uh Charlemagne from The Breakfast Club, even the late Kevin Samuels really pushing this whole thing of mental health.

SPEAKER_03 11:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Uh I don't know if they were just being paid by betterhelp.com or whatever the case may be. But you did see this kind of really leaning into mental health and you need to go to therapy, you need to get some help. And where where where did that come from?

SPEAKER_02 11:51

I think that COVID played uh a big role in it because I think five years ago there was I think COVID was about five years ago. Yeah, about five, six years ago. Yeah, I think that COVID, because every the entire world was struggling because it was new. People didn't know how to live within a global pandemic. I don't know where the push from it came from, but I know that as I was navigating some personal struggles of my own, I always tell people that when I can't figure out my life, Jad, I go back to school. I call it edge procrastination.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

I go back and get a second master's. And when I'm in this program, I had already worked at the executive level. I had been exposed. And when I get into this program, I start reading for myself. And I'm like, this doesn't align with what mainstream media is pushing out. And I was like, it's also not helping me with some of the things that I'm struggling with. I was like, my whole life has been centered around learning how to cope. I already know how to cope. This is just teaching me how to do coping better. And I felt like I needed more. And as I started to explore beyond what they were offering in the program, I started learning about psychological complexity, how our minds evolve over time, not adult development. And I just became obsessed with it. And I sat on it for about four years because I was also afraid because you're too new in the mental health space. You have an HR background, you shouldn't dare go out there challenging the work that people are doing. My identity would creep in sometimes. Like there are so many black people that are now seeking therapy that were not doing it before. So don't take that away from people. And then finally, that's what I feel like I heard God literally come down. It was December of 2024, and he was like, Stop watering down messaging.

SPEAKER_03 13:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

And I never wanted to use my faith to attract people, I wanted who I had become to express my education plus my lived experience and who I would who I had become. And it made the messaging so much easier because my walk with God was that much. I I felt closer to God.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Right, right. I remember when you had all these celebrities and podcasters really pushing and leaning into we need to get therapy, we need to get help. I remember thinking to myself, as somebody who has a who spends a great deal of time researching history, movements, cultures, so on and so forth, and thinking, you know, there was a time in this country where colored people were predominantly church going. And of course there were some issues and traumas and things of this nature. Yeah. Um, but at the time where colored people are uh going to church less and less, identifying with their faith less and less, there's this influx in we need to go to therapy, we need to get, you know, uh take care of our mental health. And so it seemed to me in the year 2020, 2021 that therapy is in a sense replacing the church. Now, I tend to believe that it doesn't have to be an either or, it can be a both and kind of thing. But just from a strict kind of down to the ground human level, it seems like that's what's going on.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

It seems it it I I would even go as as far to say that it it it is, and I don't know that you can have good mental health without a solid spiritual or religious backing. And I remember when I when I started working in the program, I never wanted to cater to just one certain person because I didn't know how I would become a competent professional in that way. And I started talking to different people, whether it was Hindu, Buddhism, and I wanted to explore more of their religions. But the thing that was holding me back was, you know, the way that I grew up, if you look outside of your religion like you're gonna lose your mind instantly. Like that was the thing in our house. But I was like, I want to be able to connect with other people, and I don't care who I was talking to, whether it was a Christian, a Muslim, you have to have that spiritual back, and so much so that when you find yourself in these sessions, it's like I remember saying to a guy one day, like, I can't help you any further than what I tried to help you. Like, I noticed that you don't fast anymore, you don't do any of the traditional things that you used to do from your home country because they had came from the the Middle East. And knowing where I begin and end, I feel like it's always important because as a licensed professional counselor, I can't save you. That's not my job. And I struggled with that too, even as a professional, because that's how people see you. Like people idolize professionals, they idolize people that they feel that offer them support. And I only want to idolize one thing and one person. So that it's difficult in in that sense, but I do believe that a lot of the historical values that we've held within our community, they've been lost. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

100%.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

Yeah, yeah, they've been lost.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Okay. Did you have another question for me? Because I like your, I like I we can go this way. I have questions here, but I can throw this out. I can throw this out. The first question that I have here for you, Chad, is what do you believe most people misunderstand about history?

SPEAKER_00 17:41

I think that's a that's actually a tough question. Um, what do they most understand?

SPEAKER_02 17:47

Does it repeat itself?

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Well, yes, it does. Uh we see that uh obviously we're we're told that in the Bible, but we see it in reality. Um I think that people believe that history is black and white. I think that's the most important or the biggest thing that people misunderstand about history uh is that it's more complex than what they realize. Of course, we grow up, we go to our schools, our public schools, uh, we're given a curriculum, we're trained under that curriculum. Uh the way in which those curriculums are even, you know, concocted is interesting. It's a political process. And the you know, what goes into the textbooks, it's all political. And there's uh there's an objective behind the curriculum, not to get too conspiratorial, uh, but the objective, in a sense, is to turn the average American student who will ultimately become voting age into a kind of statist. Where they and there's a lot kind of packed into being a statist. Um a statist is someone who believes um that the solution to every problem lies in what the state does.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Or outside of them.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

Outside of uh outside of their own agency, quite frankly. Um you talked about this kind of uh worship of the expert class earlier. That's part of being a statist. Um this this this default to not what the person in the mirror can do, but what someone else can do for me or is supposed to do for me. Um this notion that every social justice movement of the past has brought about liberation and freedom when in reality it's tightened the chains. Uh on and on I can go. That's the education that we're given. But again, it's far more complex than that. I think that people have a misunderstanding of what freedom really is. Freedom requires responsibility.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

Oh my gosh, say that again.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

You don't have if you don't have responsibility, you don't have freedom. And we are we are encouraged at every angle to be irresponsible. Um Vice is encouraged. Um the fragility that you spoke of is encouraged. It's it's pacified, it's pampered. Uh our consumerism is constantly being fed from every angle. This breeds irresponsibility. That irresponsibility creates chaos, that chaos creates unrest and uneasiness, so on and so forth. And in the midst of that chaos, here along comes the government promising to fix it with more security, with uh um with normalization and all the things, and in so doing, our liberation declines as their power increases. And so that's what our education does, and it's unfortunate. And this is the reason why my family, we decided to to home educate, to homeschool our children, um, so as to not make them say this, but to to encourage independent thinking, to encourage the use of mind and limb. Um, you know, God gave us dominion over the earth, and he told us to be fruitful, multiply, and he he also told us to be good stewards of the things that we have, and to love the Lord our God with all our whole or you know, our whole being, and to punt that responsibility to his estate by where the school system that miseducates as it pertains to history is a is a big problem. I know you didn't ask that question. You asked me what what valve most misunderstand, but yeah, I mean they they they believe that the history as it is told in our schools, in our entertainment industry, so on and so forth, is how it is. That's how it went down. It's the law of first truths. And because they're in in and because they have this idea of how the past went down, I always say he who controls the narrative narrative of the past. Controls the policies of the present and the conditions of the future. And so that's kind of the trajectory that we're heading down, quite frankly.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

So first thing as you were talking, I often make this joke and say I didn't become smart until I stopped dismissing how much my lived experiences really mattered. And then I learned to use the education in conjunction with that. I know a lot of people when I see a few comments, they're like, where does all this wisdom come from? And most people want to say it comes from a textbook. Number one, it comes from my obedience, and then it's come from how life has shaped and formed me in different ways. And now because I do have the education, I can tie it all back to together. So it's almost like when you say that responsibility comes with freedom, how do you steward the blessings or the opportunities that you've gotten in order to play this game of life very well so that your life becomes a reflection or the fruit of the spirit, right? Shines shines through you. And that's what I saw in you. One of the things in particular, like your self-control when you're having these debates. Like you are so like, are you steaming in the inside or are you really just like because I I haven't seen anybody that can really debate you, and it doesn't look like the people that have a lot of these conversations, it doesn't look like they're calling you either, but because maybe they don't want to debate you. But are you really that calm?

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Yes, I am.

SPEAKER_02 23:39

Well, the thing is, is like but I really wanted to know because I'm not at that level of growth yet, and I know that because I've been like, that's stupid. Yeah, yeah. But are you really that calm, Jay?

SPEAKER_00 23:55

Well, I I mean, yes, I am. I am. But the thing about it is I think you know this. Whenever you have studied a thing and you know it to be true in your heart, there really isn't any need to get super emotional, to get bent all out of shape, to feel like you need to yell and you know, resort to ad hominem attacks or things, you know, anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Uh you can just deliver the truth and or just not seeing anything because it maybe my calmness is just not seeing anything. Yeah, or that. Or that I just don't like I I don't even know if I could do a debate. How about that? I don't even think.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know that I can do a debate either.

SPEAKER_02 24:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

I don't know that I can and I actually mean that. I actually mean that. Uh really? No. I'm not I don't really care for debates because what I've noticed with most people, especially in the online age, is you know, we're we're spectators. We are we're fans and fanatics. We cheer for one team or the other. We're more interested in this side or that side winning than really gaining understanding. Um and I don't I don't like to I'm not a performer, right? Not an entertainer. I'm not here to to entertain you. So to to be in the middle of that, like I I I just I just don't really care for it.

SPEAKER_02 25:17

But that's why I saw something when I was watching you. You said you're not a Democrat and you're not a Republican.

unknown 25:24

No.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

You vote?

SPEAKER_00 25:25

I do vote. Yeah. I do vote. I mean, the the thing is, again, history. When you when you look into history and you see that both Republicans and Democrats are complicit into getting us where we are now politically, um there is the this notion that one party has just been great for the colored person, great for the minority, great for the woman, and the other party has been terrible is just it's just completely not not the case. Both both parties have been complicit. I tend to vote for conservatives, granted there are any um left, uh, because I feel like they do they don't do as as terrible of a job as liberals or democrats. But um it's it's just one of those things. Like I believe I have a civic duty, right? Jesus said render under Caesar what belongs to Caesar and God what belongs to God. I believe that I have a civic duty. I do live in a constitutional republic. It's I do have an objective in the flesh to make for the the peace, stability, the structure in my local community. Um, and so that means voting, that means being civically responsible. Uh what it doesn't mean is that um this is an end all to be all. I don't have um I I don't have as much skin in the game as I do in God's kingdom. Does that make sense? So like we read in the scriptures that we are strangers and aliens here, that we're kind of passers by. We have a we have a job, we have a duty, we have an objective to make Christ known, to make disciples. That that that's our objective, that's our duty. My what I've observed to be true within the political realm is that there's a lot of people who call themselves Christians and are political, very political. I got it. And when you observe what they're doing and what they're saying and how they're operating, what you find is that they are more interested in the building of a kind of GOP kingdom where the GOP dominates than they are in the building of the and when you say GOP, like what does that mean? Grand Old Party, the Republican Party, they're more interested in GOP than in G O D G O D. Uh they're they're more interested in, again, we want to make sure we dominate the House, the Senate, the courts, the executive branch, uh, and and they kind of grow this kind of this this uh resentment and this kind of that they disdain the other side, the liberals or whatever the case may be, and grow callous toward them. And I don't really think that that's the making of um well, I forgot where I was going with that actually. But but my point is that you can tell when you're looking at a person and how they operate within the political space what they're what they're interested in and what fancies them. And that used to be me. Uh, I used to believe that we can fix this, we can turn all these, you know, all these things around by getting the right people in office, by voting for the right policies.

SPEAKER_02 28:45

Me too. Me too.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

But what I come to realize as I'm as I'm growing in my faith As you're growing in your faith, and it sounds like being able to hold complexity.

SPEAKER_02 28:56

I I I was saying the other day, people think that it's a flex when they can say two things can be true. No, it's when those two things present itself. Can you actually hold it without collapsing?

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Right.

SPEAKER_02 29:07

And I think that that is what you're you're you're speaking to.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Yeah, yeah. Well, the thing is, God's kingdom is eternal. This one isn't. And we can win this election, we can win the next election, but the pendulum will always swing back to the other side, it will continue to do that, and it has done that over the course of not only this the history of this country, but the history of the world. Um, and so to the extent that we we we utilize all of our resources, all of our faculties into politics, we're fighting temporary battles. However, to the extent that you are preaching Christ and Him crucified and doing so in the culture, and you and it all draws back to him. So whether I'm talking about history, whether I'm talking about you know whatever's going on right now, uh here in the modern world or whatever the case may be, it all comes back to the cross. Um, and you don't have to contort yourself to get there. There's there's typically a direct line. And so for me, um I'm never gonna get tired of talking about Jesus. I'm never gonna get tired of talking about our need to repent. I'm never gonna get tired of talking about this fact that our hope is not in politics, our hope is not in who runs for office, our hope is not in policies. Um, those things are being weaponized against us in order to get us to kind of partake in this kind of building of a tower of Babel 2.0. But the reality of it is, I mean, you look at you look at what the cross represents and what it offers versus what the world represents and what politics represents and offers. Uh the politics weaponizes trauma, whether it's your individual trauma or cultural trauma, collective trauma, or whatever the case may be, politics divides and and sets one brother against the other. There's unity and the cross, you know. Um unity among the brethren. But the the the fact of the matter is the cross offers life. Politics doesn't offer life. It it offers temporary solutions to whatever problems we feel l us, but it it it's going to always swing back and forth. So I don't yeah, I think politics are useful to an extent, but it's not the end all be all. It's not the end all be all. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:31

I sleep well at night. I mean, I I would say that I'm not a Democrat or Republican, and in fact I have opted out of all of it all together.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Okay, so you don't even vote.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

I I didn't exercise my right. Okay. Um but after listening to you, yeah, I may reconsider. But I feel like I need to educate myself a little more because I don't want to just say that I'm Democrat or I'm just uh uh a Republican.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

So Yeah. I don't really know how much of a difference voting makes, though, one way or the other, to be honest with you. Especially as you go up higher.

SPEAKER_02 32:15

Why would you say that?

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Again, there's complexities to this. I mean, the fact is elections have been stolen, um, not just 2020, but over the course of American history. Uh, where you look at the way that uh that the electoral congress work or college works, and you look at um how you know you have to carry a county in order to carry, you know, so there's just the way that it breaks down, it's like how much does your one vote actually really matter? Um, but anyway, I don't I'll come back to that.

SPEAKER_02 32:55

I I will talk about that once we get off the camera. So you critique public figures, civil right leaders, pastors, activists. Who are some people that you deeply respect?

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Um, I deeply respect my dad. Um, and I think we need to normalize that. Even if I mean, it it doesn't have to be your dad. The thing is, is there somebody in your life who's not famous, whose name no one will ever know, uh, who isn't in the limelight, but was influential in terms of helping you to become a better version of yourself. That that's what that's what I would like to normalize. That's what I would like to see. And I want I want to be that for my sons. I want i i my dad again, I talked earlier about how he um you know growing up, he was a very strong disciplinarian. Uh he uh withheld certain things from us in terms of overindulgence, and in a way that's kind of shaped my brothers and I um in terms of self-control. Yeah. And in terms of you know, a whole bevy of different things. But of course, you know, my my my dad was the most influential, and and so too was my mom in many ways, um and me becoming the man I am today. Uh but if we're talking about public figures, um I I I like Dr. Joseph H. Jackson. Um, he was born in 1900, and he died in night or he died in 1990, the same year I was born. Um and he was the president of the National Baptist Convention. And in fact, Martin Luther King tried to get him unseated as the president of the National Baptist Convention in 1960. Uh, but when you look at the things that he was doing, he was really uh encouraging basically the same message that Booker T. Washington carried in at the turn of the 20th century, which is to cast down your bucket where you are, be a man of honor, be a woman of virtue, um, hone your skills, build your communities. It's on you to do it. No one's gonna do it for you.

SPEAKER_02 35:12

Nobody's coming to save you.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

No one's nobody's coming to save you. It's on you. It's up to you.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

People struggle with that that messaging, especially when you you know the whole pull up your bootstraps, and it's like, well, what if you don't have any books? Right. Well, it goes back to stewarding what view you have. If you learn Yeah, yeah, you got something. Right. You got something. Um I I always there was this period where I was trying to grow, I call it growing while black. And I came across this psychologist, his name was Dr. Joseph White, and he had these seven psychological strengths. Now, I didn't dig into a lot of his work, but that was enough for me to sort of remember like who I am. He one of the seven strengths uh of a blacks he he mentioned was uh find a way out of no way. And today we have turned that into trauma too. Like everybody works with what they have. Even if you have resources, you're working with what you have, you're finding a way with the resources that you have. He says, Um, he talks about uh a healthy suspicion of you know who. That's how he says it. And that within itself is so freeing. It says that I don't have to, I can engage, but that doesn't mean that I completely trust based off of history, but that doesn't mean that I stop myself from unifying with you because you know what I've learned about over the last year is there are so many people that are willing to support you. If you can just get out of your own way, you would be surprised at how God will use you and use other people to continue to pour into you. And those seven psychological strengths, they were so freeing for me. Like he talked about another one was gallows humor, uh, being able to laugh in the midst of pain. Today, if you say that to someone, like you know, laugh, it's like you can't, everything is so serious today. Like you have to be able to hold joy and pain. Those things can coexist all at the same time. So yeah, yeah, yeah. I oh my gosh, I got so many questions. So you you were saying Dr.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

Yeah, Joseph H. Jackson.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

Joseph H. Jackson. He has books because I need to he does.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

He does have books. Um, they're very expensive because they're out of print. But um he uh an example of the kind of things that Joseph H. Jackson did, and I talked about this on some of my socials, but um, there were some sharecroppers, some black sharecroppers who were um really just having a rough time. They were considering uh protesting the government to try to air out their grievances. And what Joseph H. Jackson did um as the president of the National Baptist Convention was they bought 400 acres of farmland in Tennessee, and they allowed for these Negro sharecroppers to work the farmland rent-free. And they were told that you can work the farmland rent-free so long as you're pocketing your money, saving your money, so you can go and buy your own farmland and move from sharecroppers to farmers. So these are the kind of practical things. These are the kind of practical things that that Jackson did, whereas King, he was very suspicious of King because King was Mr. Nonviolent, but he was going around and everywhere he went, there were riots, there was uh turmoil, there was um a lot of issues. And what Jackson understood him to be doing, King to be doing, was the same thing that was going on in the 1930s with the labor strikes, and as it turns out, there were communists behind a lot of these labor strikes that were going on. And Jackson found out that the same forces that were behind those strikes in the 30s and 40s were behind King. And so he withdrew his support from King because he originally supported King during the Montgomery bus boycott. So in 1960, they found that Jackson was too conservative for the trend and the direction that a lot of the Negro radicals were going. So they wanted to remove him from the leadership of the National Baptist Convention because they found that with the National Baptist Convention, which has a captive Negro audience, especially in the South, if we can push that to a more radical kind of leftward position, then we'll we'll be well on our way. And so King and uh his advisor, Stang Levison, they got together and they they decided to put up a reverend by the name of Gardner C. Taylor, who was a minister of the so-called social gospel. And the idea was that Taylor would replace Jackson and after after Taylor King would come in and he would be the president of the National Baptist Convention. So they put together this plan, and then in 1961, it was either 1960 or 1961.

SPEAKER_02 40:41

How do you remember all of it? I don't have good memory. That's why I tell people all the time, like I have to learn to like live it. Yeah, yeah. Because I can't I can't even recite scripture. Now I know it, like, because I it has to become a way of being. I how do you remember this stuff?

SPEAKER_00 40:59

I I guess you just read it two or three times.

SPEAKER_02 41:02

It doesn't work for me. Like, I can't remember. I'm sorry to have like go ahead. I did I did I mess up your training? No, no, you're good. Okay, keep going.

SPEAKER_00 41:09

So I think I can't I can't remember if it was 1960 or 1961, but they you know, Taylor ran against Jackson and lost by a landslide because people loved Jackson so much, the things that he was doing, so on and so forth. So the Taylor contingent, which consisted of King and others, the more radical proponents of the so-called social gospel, uh demanded a roll call, and they ended up rushing the stage. There was a kerfuffle on the stage. A reverend out of Michigan by the name of A. G. Wright in this uh brawl was pushed off the stage, cracked his head, and died a few days later. As a result of this, a committee within the National Baptist Convention kicked King and his friends out of the National Baptist Convention, and they would go on in 1961 to start what's called the Progressive National Baptist Convention. If you look at the Progressive National Baptist Convention, which is still around today, they are LGBT affirming they believe in abortion and um uh trans rights and all the things, that's what they are. They're a complete apostate organization. Um, and it was started by King and his and his contingent after uh failing to um to get into this radicalize a National Baptist Convention. So so yeah, when I look at people like Joseph H. Jackson, when I look at people like Booker T. Washington, when I look at people like my my own dad, um I see it's interesting because anytime that I post something on social media or I promote my docuseries or whatever the case may be, there's there's bound to be a colored person who gets in the comment section and say, You don't have anything nice to say about black people. You just always tearing black people down. And um, just not the case. I mean, I I get that people see it that way, but yeah, it's not the case.

SPEAKER_02 43:05

Yeah, I I what I've found with social media is people want to get to know the person behind the social media, and you don't owe that to anybody. So, I mean, but eChad does like black people. He gave us a few people, one just happens to be stabbed. There you go. Yeah. All right, so you you answered two of my questions already. I want to go ahead over to Martin Luther King Jr. When you talk about the civil rights movement, are you saying that the civil rights movement was fundamentally wrong or that it solved one problem but created another?

SPEAKER_00 43:45

Um, I don't think it solved any problems. The reality of it is that we were already trending in the right direction from the turn of the 20th century, well, into the middle part of the 20th century. Even With redlining and Jim Crow and all the things, in terms of entrepreneurship, we're moving in the right direction. In terms of literacy, we were moving in the right direction. In terms of marriage rates, family formation, we're moving in the right direction. Um and so across the board, the trend was upward. As it pertains to Jim Crow, as it pertains to some of these laws that were on the book, legal segregation, these were being repealed, these were being sunsetted, these were being uh thrown out for various reasons from the private level up into the local level, and in some cases the state level, from the turn of the 20th century to uh the middle part of the 20th century. And the reason that was happening was economic, it was moral, it was um political. There's a bevy of different reasons that giving credit where credit is due, the NAACP had something to do with some of these uh the repealing of these laws. And so this was happening well before King was even a teenager, um, let alone the civil rights leader that he would later become. Um when people think of the civil rights movement, they think of the civil rights movement under King in the 1960s, but of course it precedes King. It started during the Reconstruction days after the war between the states. And so the objective was to use these kind of race grievances to empower and then to enrich the government to expand federal authority. That's that's really what the purpose of it was. And it didn't start even in the in the middle of the or the late the late 1800s. It started not the civil rights movement, but this objective to expand federal authority started during our founding. There was a kind of debate that was going on and uh among our founders. You had the Federalists on one side, the anti-federalists on the other. The Anti-Federalists consisted of people like Luther Martin, Patrick Henry, uh Robert Yates, and others. Whereas the Federalists consisted of John Jay, uh Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. And what James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in particular envisioned was a large, overarching, centralized federal government. That's what they envisioned. Whereas Patrick Henry and others, they envisioned a small government, small federal government that's accountable to the people. They believe that the smaller the government, the more accountable it is. Thus, instead of having this large, because the colonies, they were so diverse in terms of religious denominations, in terms of of national origin, in terms of a whole bevy of different things, and you know, the Quakers in the North didn't get along, didn't get along with the Presbyterians, and you had all these different warring factions. And Patrick Henry thought to himself, there's no way that we can have a centralized federal government when we have so much division among us. We need state sovereignty, we need the county, this, the, you know, the authority of the church, we need the authority of the families. Those must not those things must not be infringed upon. And so it's thanks to the anti-federalists that you ended up getting a bill of rights, which was meant to restrict the limits of how far a federal government can go. So that was always kind of this lingering tension that will culminate by the time you got to the middle part of the 19th century through what was called the Civil War. So after the Civil War, you had Reconstruction, and the forces that would have sided more with the Federalists saw it as an opportunity. Okay, this is how we can come in and we can expand the role of the federal government. Now, there is an argument to be made. Well, yes, you had states' rights, but it's the right to own other people, and there's therein lies a kind of complexity. Um and, you know, there's a large part of me that would agree with that. Like, okay, yes, states' rights, but what if you're harming your fellow man? What then do you do? I think that's another conversation to be had. But what what you saw happening as you got into the 20th century is that the communists and our own federal government were in many cases, instances working hand in hand, where they were using the issue of uh civil rights to solve a problem that was already being solved at the ground level, where you had responsible Negro and white leaders coming together, starting what was called interracial commissions, and they were solving issues themselves, regardless of what the government was doing.

SPEAKER_02 48:45

What were trade-offs when they were solving or coming up with solutions?

SPEAKER_00 48:50

It depended, it was a case-by-case kind of situation. Um, they were it was the aftermath of Plussy versus Ferguson. They would come together and they would decide on such things as you know which side of the railroad tracks y'all will live on versus what side we will live on. They were uh looking into to complaints and issues and things of this nature, and they were putting uh limits and kind of uh an expiration date on various uh segreg or separation ordinances. So they were doing kind you know those kinds of things, and it was across the board, and not only that, I mean you saw even with the separated schools, the the segregated schools, uh segregated schools existed more in the more metropolitan areas of Alabama and Georgia and Louisiana. As you got more into the rural areas, um these these segregation laws weren't really being enforced, and so they were breaking down. And then two, there was a business interest. A lot of businesses found it unfeasible to enforce segregation. They they they saw that it was hurting their bottom line, and so the business community were coming together and they were lobbying in government to get rid of these uh these segregation laws. Now, I would argue that segregation is unconstitutional. Government for state force segregation is unconstitutional because it's the state government coming in and telling you how to run your business. That's completely unconstitutional. On the flip side of that, forced integration is also unconstitutional. It's the government coming in and telling you that you have to serve everybody, that you can't discriminate, so on and so forth. What then do you do with the freedom of association, which we all have? Again, it comes down to radical responsibility. Freedom requires responsibility. Not everybody's gonna like me, and that's okay. Um, in fact, I'd rather know who don't like me, so I would know not to patronize their business. When when when when when we are in a society or in a system where people's freedom of association is respected, I actually believe, and this is a hot take, I guess, for some, I actually believe it actually makes for higher standards in terms of quality, the good, the quality of goods and services. Because if I'm only going where I'm wanted and you're only serving who you wish to serve, you'll get better customer experience, you'll get better quality of goods, so on and so forth. Whereas if I'm going and you're serving me because you're compelled to do so.

SPEAKER_02 51:30

Um I mean, you take away, in essence, someone else's agency. Yeah. I I you know, I always go back, people that have not had power, they don't really understand it either. Uh one of the things that I've been afforded is the just the opportunity of exposure. So I had the typical, I don't know, typical stereo, typical story of, you know, growing up, lose your mom to an overdose, all those things. But by the time I got to college, I realized that I have an uncle who has done very well for himself. And because of that, he created a lane, he created opportunity for me to be exposed to things that I don't know that I would have been exposed to. And I would tell you that watching him run his business, choose to associate with the people that he wanted to associate and give opportunities to. Me being HR, I wasn't gonna tell him that we needed to bring in, like, let's do DEI. Like, he's like, who are you talking to? But I think that when you get to see it on the other side, you start to understand it a little bit more. And I don't know what's right or what's wrong, but I have seen it from that angle. If I get to the choose between the black CFO versus the white CFO, my uncle would probably choose the black CFO.

SPEAKER_00 53:03

Yeah. And we all do it.

SPEAKER_02 53:06

Here I am at HR. My education. And I'm like, well, if you look at, no. I understand it from that perspective.

SPEAKER_03 53:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:20

Now, and you you're one of the other things that I that I got an opportunity to do is travel the world. And you know, research says that when it comes to self-compassion, there are three components to it. It's like a three-legged stool. One portion of that is being able to see the common humanity that we all share. So you that means that you cannot think that your experiences are worse than what someone else's is. And as I got an opportunity to travel all over the world, I would meet what I referred to then as TCN. And I remember calling an employee uh a TCN. And for those that know, TCN is third country national. And this employee said to me, it was an employee from Uganda, and he said, ma'am, can you not call me a TCN? It's kind of like me calling you the N-word. And I'll be honest, it's back in my mind. I was like, who do you think he's talking to? TCN, right? But I I remember what my experiences are like in the US. Uh-huh. I was like, well, what would you prefer? And he says, just OCN. Can you refer to me as an OCN? And I remember there were these little moments that made me think that my experience here in America or being black was not special. I'm not saying that some of the experiences don't cause pain, but I realized that I wasn't special.

SPEAKER_03 54:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:50

Because I kept engaging with these people. Or if I would be in Jordan or Dubai, and you know, you have a female and she's like, I don't have my passport. I've not seen my family. I'm like, where's your passport? And you realize like the freedom that you have here in the US, I'm not going to speak about something that I haven't truly lived. I can understand it, but I can't speak about it. So and I think that's because I struggled working for my uncle. I struggled big time because I felt like most people will say trauma, but I think it was a part of my process. It was a part of my pruning. I was like, I didn't earn it. I I wanted to find my You thought it was nepotism? Mm-hmm. I had a real hard time with even though the people within the organization would let you what's the best way to? They didn't respect me because of nepotism. How about that?

SPEAKER_03 55:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:44

You didn't you didn't get respect because of nepotism. And what I learned through that process is I had to become my own woman. And in becoming my own woman, could you sit here as your uncle's VP of HR and listen to people talk crap about him? Because people talk about the bosses every single day. Right. So emotionally I had to grow because I would tell you in the beginning in the beginning, I would go to my uncle and I'd be like, they do not like you. Like, we need to let them go. We need to fire them. He'd be like, it's business. Business. Yeah, yeah. They need to go. I didn't quite understand. So when I think about like the person that I've become, as much as because I often tell people that you would think that losing my mother to an overdose, like seeing it, would have been the most traumatic thing for me. It wasn't. Working for my uncle was the most traumatic thing for me in terms of how I was processing it. But the way that I was processing it was I thought that good times meant good times.

SPEAKER_03 56:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:48

Like we're on, we're doing well. I didn't think that struggle was and adversity would exist, but I still had what I'm really grateful for is I didn't have terminology. I didn't know what microaggressions were, even though you would have, I mean, because we had a diverse organization, kind of. But when people would say, like, is that your hair? I didn't know that was a microaggression. So I was almost sheltered in a way. So I didn't. It was harder for me to turn myself into a victim. Yeah, yeah. And then there were times where I wasn't even a fan of my uncle.

SPEAKER_03 57:27

Right.

SPEAKER_02 57:28

Because again, you don't know what it takes to be in position of power. It's easy to say what you would do if you had position that position and you were in that power, but if you had that power, but you really don't know until it's granted to you. Right, right. And a lot of us have not had that level of power because when you can start to see yourself in other people, when you can start to really acknowledge your biases and your judgments about people, you realize that some stuff is not as black and white as you were saying in the beginning. And that's what I learned. And once I really once it really clicked, that's when I started to grow up.

SPEAKER_00 58:13

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that's uh you're 100% right. You wanna you're 100% right. I mean, like when you look at the uh the fact that we were trending in the right direction because of that kind of human-to-human interaction um over the course of the 20th century. And then the civil rights movement under King, like it would come in and it would basically hijack the success that was already being made. Those are the sp specifically the titles that are unconstitutional. And then you look at the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Negroes were already voting before the Voting Rights Act of 1965. There were um there were uh poll taxes, limits uh you know, tests that people had to take to show that they were competent in terms of understanding how the government works and and so on. And of course, the language and the narrative is that these were racial poll taxes that kept Negroes out. But the reality is that there were a lot of white people who weren't able to pass these tests. It wasn't just blacks. There were a lot of blacks who did pass them, but a lot of them didn't. Um, it was a way of kind of weeding out who is competent versus who isn't competent to vote because voting was was controlled at the local level in those days. What this what the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did is it more nationalized the voting process. It gave the government, the federal government, more of a kind of uh overseeing role in in elections. And you'll notice that since 1965, there's been other attempts to further expand. I mean, there I think there's a a voting bill currently uh being debated in Congress. Um, I think it's called the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. So they're they're ever trying to expand um and to to uh extend the so-called right to vote. They're trying to lower the voting age. And and this sounds good from the surface because we're enfranchising people, we're giving people their right to vote. Although the reality of it is that um understanding that we already have acts, you know, control of the schools, control of entertainment, control of the press, control of X, Y, and Z, where we're in, for all intents and purposes, shaping public opinion. To the extent that you shape public opinion and then tell people you now have the right to vote. Um you want them to go which gonna go. And so, and so that's that's kind of that's the whole trick of it. It's it's um it's mass enfranchisement for the sake of a a a proletariat revolution. And personal agenda. A personal agenda. Um and so and so, yes, I don't believe that the civil rights movement was a good thing. In fact, I think it was a detrimental thing because what it did was it replaced that human agency that the colored community once had when we didn't believe that there's somebody that's gonna come and save us. Where we you know, I say we, where they didn't believe that there was somebody where they they didn't believe that somebody's gonna come save them. They they didn't believe that it was a government's job to take care of them, um, where their their trauma and their experiences weren't being weaponized against them in the political space and by activists and demagogues. Uh you saw an upward mobility. It's not until you get your kings and your James Baldwin types and your um, you know, the these individuals, these figures who we praise today, ironically, who really kind of taught us how to complain, who really taught us how to to beg and plead and how to uh go to the government and to uh say you must do something about this.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:57

Yeah. This had an adverse and force only creates a force only creates a counterforce. Yeah. You you continue knocking just like this, and most people don't realize that. So whatever you end up creating from that place will not be sustained.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:11

Exactly. So it had an adverse detrimental impact. Um and and the so-called black community has in many ways been stagnant since the 60s, um, and not moving upward to the same degree and to the same extent prior to. And of course, we've we have creature comforts, we have modernity, we have a lot of things that we can look to um to say, oh, well, we're we've improved in those ways and those ways. Well, so too has everybody else. That's not a that's not a result of the civil rights movement, though.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:42

Okay, let me ask these other questions, and then we're gonna wrap it. Do you believe Christian leaders should avoid systemic activism altogether, or is there a faithful way to engage both?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:52

That's a really good question. I think that Christian leaders should operate with discernment when it comes to that question and be careful not to fall into something that they don't realize what they're falling into. I mean, we read in Isaiah, do not call conspiracy what these wicked people call conspiracy. Do not fear what they fear, but fear God. We read that in Isaiah. And so my concern when it comes to a lot of churches is that they blindly are participants and a Marxist agenda without realizing that they're participants in that Marxist agenda. So I can't go cold, I can't go, you know, cold turkey to the other extreme and say, oh, you're not supposed to be involved at all in anything that's quote unquote political. Uh that would be intellectually dishonest for me to do that. Uh but I am going to acknowledge, I mean, you saw in 2020 with the whole George Floyd situation and a lot of the churches that were coming out uh marching with Black Lives Matter, so on and so forth. These are people who are actively and blindly with good intentions participating in something that had a nefarious agenda. And so, and so for me, it's a case-by-case situation, individual by individual situation, that comes right down to discernment. That's the simplest answer I can give.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:08

Okay. And last question. At what point does highlighting inequality become disempowering rather than liberating?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:17

I think that I think that at what point it was a long time ago, to be honest with you. And it's interesting because, you know, I with the documentary, the docuseries that I'm making right now, the MLK Project. Um, one of the criticisms that I've gotten, it's been overwhelmingly positive feedback, but some of the criticism that I've gotten is you don't spend enough time talking about the racism and the this and the that. And my response is always, we've we've spent a hundred years talking about that. There, there's plenty of that to go around in terms of talking heads, but I'm not one of them. Because I don't want to like my concern is the kind of counterproductivity of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:02

The kind of uh you can acknowledge it, but how do we not get stuck?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:06

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:07

And so what tends to happen is there's this kind of there's this kind of canceling out that tends to happen with a lot of so-called black conservatives. Because on the one hand, they talk about we need to be more conservative, we need to be, you know, fiscal responsibility, this, that, and the third. And then they spend equal amount of time acknowledging all the trauma and the racism and how we were resilient and we overcame and so on. I understand what they what they think they're trying to do on an intellectual basis, but very rarely do they consider how people are hearing what they're saying.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:39

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:40

And what the mind, what the mind does with that information.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:42

The psychological impact. And it's how you create inferiority. This is how we end up struggling with our self-worth. 100% constantly evaluating ourselves, self esteem. It's always fleeting. We don't know how to be compassionate to ourselves. Okay, Chad, you look in your camp, you tell the people where to find you because.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:03

So I'm Chad Jackson. Uh, you can find my work at ChadOJackson.com. And you can also find me um across social media at Chad OJackson.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:13

What about your documentaries?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:14

Yes, my documentaries at are at chadOjackson.com as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:17

Okay. Okay. Thank you so much, Chad. Like I I forgot I was talking to a historian. So you can talk. And I can too, because I like to listen. I like to learn. So thank you so much. Until next time, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:29

This conversation calls you to pause or reflect on how you're showing up in your own life. That's intentional. Capacity is revealed in the moments we choose engagement over retreat. Thank you so much for spending time with us. I'm Raquel Hopkins and this is Capacity Combos. If you're looking to continue to engage with me, I would encourage you to follow me on Instagram. You can search me by Raquel the Capacity Expert. It's Raquel underscore the underscore capacity underscore expert. Until next time.