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Kinship & Glory: Inside Black Athletes’ World with Dr. Tracie Canada
18 Plays2 days ago
Race, college football, kinship, care, athlete exploitation—explore Dr. Tracie Canada’s groundbreaking insights on how big‑time NCAA football shapes Black athletes’ lives from game day to graduation. In this episode of Unsolicited Perspectives, host Bruce Anthony sits down with Dr. Canada (Duke University’s Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and member of HEARTS Lab) to unpack her new book Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big‑Time College Football. You’ll discover how Black athletes navigate injury, and unpaid labor, —while leaning on kinship and care to survive. Discover why Black mothers hold unseen power in the sport, how COVID exposed NCAA greed, and what reforms must happen to protect young athletes. A must-watch for fans, activists, and anyone questioning the true cost of college sports. 🎙️ #podcast #NCAA #CollegeFootball #BlackAthletes #socialjustice #unsolicitedperspectives
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#podcast #mentalhealth #relationships #currentevents #popculture #fyp #trending #SocialCommentary
Chapters:
00:00 Welcome to Unsolicited Perspectives 🎙️🔥💥
00:49 Scholar in the Spotlight: Meet Dr. Tracie Canada 🎓✨
02:16 Roots & Routes: Dr. Canada’s Greensboro-to-Duke Journey 🌳🛣️
04:23 Anthropology Unlocked: How Duke Changed Her Lens 🔍🏛️
06:50 Beyond the Field: Love, Family & Black Brotherhood ❤️
14:19 Inside HEARTS Lab: Where Race, Health & Sport Collide 🔬🏟️
19:43 Black Feminist in the Huddle: Claiming Space in Football ✊🏾👩🏾🎓
25:49 Mama’s Playbook: The Unsung Power of Football Moms 👩🏾👦🏈
27:28 Book Break: Diving into Tackling the Everyday 📚🏆
28:41 Student vs. Athlete: The Double Life of NCAA Stars 🎓🏋️♂️⚖️
32:00 COVID Chaos: Football’s $Billion Pandemic Secrets 🦠🏟️💰
33:34 Redefining the Win: What “Success” Means for Athletes 🏅🔄
38:25 Off‑Field Obstacles: The Hidden Struggles of Black Athletes 🎒⚠️
41:45 Rewriting the Rules: Reforming College Sports for Good ⚖️🏛️
45:28 Bruce’s Story: Hoops, Hustle & Campus Brotherhood 🏀📚🤝
51:44 Final Whistle: Key Takeaways & Farewell 🎙️🏁
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Transcript
Introduction to Race, Sports, and Power in College Football
00:00:00
Speaker
On this episode, we're exploring the intersection of race, sports, and power through the lens of big-time college football with Dr. Tracy Canada. We're going to get into it all.
00:00:11
Speaker
Let's get it
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome. First of all, welcome. This is Unsolicited Perspectives. I'm your host, Bruce Anthony, here to lead the conversation in important events and topics that are shaping today's society. Join the conversation and follow us wherever you get your audio podcasts.
00:00:37
Speaker
Subscribe to our YouTube channel for our video podcast and YouTube exclusive content. Rate, review, like, comment, share. Share with your friends, share with your family, hell, even share with your enemies.
Meet Dr. Tracey Canada: Cultural Anthropologist
00:00:49
Speaker
On today's episode, I'll be talking with Dr. Tracey Canada. She's a cultural anthropology professor at Duke University, founder of Hearts Labs and author of Tackling Every Day, Race and Nation in Big Time College Football. We're going be talking about her life and her work, but that's enough of the intro.
00:01:09
Speaker
Let's get to the show.
00:01:17
Speaker
Our guest today is Dr. Tracy Canada, a black feminist anthropologist whose work is reshaping how we think about race, kinship, and care in one of America's most popular and problematic pastimes, football.
00:01:29
Speaker
She's the Andrew W. Mullen Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University She leads Hearts Labs. If you were ever wondering what happens off the field beyond the Saturday night lights and the multimillion dollar contracts, her research offers profound insights.
00:01:46
Speaker
Dr. Canada's first book, Tackling the Everyday Race and Nation in Big Time College Football, takes us into the lives of black college athletes, peeling back the layers of power, profit and survival in a system that often leaves these young men carrying the weight of glory and exploitation.
00:02:02
Speaker
But before we get into her book, we're going to get to know the person behind this important
Dr. Canada's Path to Anthropology and Sports
00:02:06
Speaker
work. What shaped her perspective? How did she come to see football not just as a sport, but as a lens of understanding race and society?
00:02:13
Speaker
So without further ado, Dr. Tracy Canada. So like I said at the top, I'm here with Dr. Tracy Canada. She's a anthropologist at Duke University. We're not going to hold that against her because we're Tar Heel fans over here. Oh, come on. and Yeah, we're Tom Hill fans over here.
00:02:29
Speaker
But Dr. Tracy, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show today because I feel like this topic is extremely important, especially with the NFL draft coming relatively soon.
00:02:41
Speaker
ah Depending on when this airs, it either is coming up next weekend or it happened last weekend. But Before we get into your book and your work, I start every interview with a simple question. Let's go back to the beginning.
00:02:55
Speaker
So can you tell me a little bit about your journey? what was it like growing up in your hometown, your family, and were there early moments in your life that pointed you towards being an anthropologist?
00:03:07
Speaker
Oh, I love that question actually. um First of all, thank you so much for having me. I won't hold it against you that you're a Tar Heel fan because I went to Duke undergrad actually. So I don't just teach there, like I'm an alum. And so I have like a deeply rooted interest in um Duke. Also I'm from North Carolina. So that's actually where my story starts, right? like i know, look, you're making a face. don't have time for that right Well, the face I'm making is, I'm a Turk at heart. I graduated from the University of Maryland, but we still hate Duke. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're not too fond of Maryland either.
00:03:41
Speaker
um But that's okay. Because I already said we weren't going to hold it against you. um um So the fact that I'm from North Carolina actually plays a role in this whole story. Not so much about me being an anthropologist, but about what it is that I'm interested in. Because growing up in North Carolina, I definitely knew about basketball, right? College basketball.
00:03:58
Speaker
um i'm also from greensboro so the acc uh used to be there and so it the acc just in general plays like a really interesting role in like the memories that i have growing up especially in high school of like the big tv being rolled out um in school so we could watch the games um because it was that big of a deal um during the day especially when they were playing in greensboro but then like which march madness uh kicked off um But like I said, I went to Duke undergrad and that's actually where my interest in anthropology started.
00:04:29
Speaker
um And it's because I met a professor. His name is Lee Baker. He's still at Duke. So now we're colleagues. He used to be my professor. Then he was my mentor. He's still my mentor, but now we're colleague.
Race and Anthropology: Shaping Perspectives
00:04:39
Speaker
um And he was the one that introduced me anthropology. um He is a, he's also a black professor. And so he introduced me to the discipline in a way that um was quite different than what I kind of thought it was actually don't even know if I knew what anthropology was, but the way that he taught it was really interesting because he's actually a historian of the discipline.
00:04:59
Speaker
So to think about the ways that anthropology has played a role in the way that we like popular conceptions of race and, um, and of people who are Black or people of color and their experiences in the US, the way that anthropology has played a role and where we are in in the contemporary moment, right? Like that's a lot of what his work is.
00:05:19
Speaker
And so the way that he taught and talked about these things was really interesting to me because I grew up in Greensboro. Right. So because of the sit ins, because of HBCUs that are there, because of the deep seated history that is like the racialized history in Greensboro and hearing about that growing up, then it kind of all started to make sense. Once I was at Duke and I was learning from this professor um who was making it make sense to me through anthropology.
00:05:44
Speaker
And then I met another professor, his name is Oren Starn, who was writing a book about Tiger Woods at the time that I was an undergrad. And so I had these two guys who were one was talking about race, one was talking about sport.
00:05:55
Speaker
ah Like there's something interesting here, right? Like there's a way that we could maybe link these two ideas, these two themes. Um, And because I already had this interest in college sport generally, but specifically basketball, ended up at Duke.
00:06:07
Speaker
I was like, they are sleeping outside to go to games. That is not for me. don't want to do this. So I did not go to many basketball games while I was a student, but I had a lot of friends were on the football team. And so I became interested in football because I wanted to see my friends play.
00:06:19
Speaker
And so the stuff that was happening in the classroom, right? Well, I'm trying to like figure out what anthropology is. And then I'm like learning this new sport because I never really watched football before. I was basketball fan. Putting these two things together are really how I came to this.
00:06:32
Speaker
um But it was really the way that I was introduced to a discipline that um actually has like kind of deep seated colonial and in racist histories, imperialist histories. But the way that Lee Baker taught it um gave me a different view of it. And so it was exciting to
Kinship, Care, and Black Feminism in Sports
00:06:46
Speaker
me.
00:06:47
Speaker
Okay, that's interesting. So in your work, and we're going to get to your book where you specifically talk about this, but in your work, you mentioned kinship and care. It's kind of like the central themes of your work and your research.
00:07:01
Speaker
yeah Were there moments growing up or relationships in your life outside of the professors yeah that emphasize the importance of these concepts to you?
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah, so I am, i have developed into an anthropologist who uses sport to think about race, kinship, care, violence, injury, labor, right? Like, these are the big themes that I think about. But kinship and care are, like, really important analytics in the way that I think about my work.
00:07:29
Speaker
And don't know if it came so much from growing up, right? Like, I have, like, I've got a solid family. I love my family. My family is still around. I still am in communication with everybody, right? Like, we are a pretty big family.
00:07:41
Speaker
um And we're all, most of us are in North Carolina. So now that I get come back home, like I do feel like I'm home being back at Duke now. um But I don't think that I was like very aware of that growing up, right? Like it was just something that was the norm for me. I wasn't super critical of it. I wasn't super reflective of it the way that I was interacting with my family or the people around me.
00:08:01
Speaker
um The reasons that those actually became really helpful analytics for me um in the work that I do is because of actually specifically black feminists that are around me. um And this is a theoretical leaning. This does come from the academy, but it's the way of thinking about um the importance of black women, the importance of like one's own experiences, centering the experiences of black people in the way that we think about work.
00:08:24
Speaker
um What does it mean to use your own positionality? Right. So like to think about what it means for me to be doing the work that I'm doing. And then what happens when all those things come together? For me, it means that you get to think about kinship, which is an idea of family, right? Like you get to think about family and get to think about relationships. You get to think about behaviors.
00:08:43
Speaker
You get think about the ways that people care and love for one another. um And I just happen to do that through football, which is a sport that has these like stereotypically like hyper masculine men and like all these ideas about what that means to be like a young man at this point in time. Right. But i because villains that I'm coming in with um and because of the people that are in like my my circle of people right on the way that we care for one another, the way that we look out for one another.
00:09:12
Speaker
I was already getting that from the people that I'm around. And I was noticing that they are the the players are doing it too, even if they are men, right? Like that doesn't stop them from loving on each other, for from caring for each other, from having these like really deep, intimate relationships with each other um and caring for each other in ways that are sometimes unexpected, right? Like, but I was attuned to that because of how I'm surrounded by that in my life now.
00:09:37
Speaker
Wow. So let's let's take a Marvel Cinematic Universe alternate universe and say that you didn't have a big family or you weren't as close to your family ah as you are.
00:09:49
Speaker
Because it seems like you're saying there absolute parallels with your life and the way that you have relationships to football players, not exactly the same, but there are parallels in the closeness, in the kinship.
00:10:03
Speaker
Now say that you didn't have that. yeah to Do you how would that have changed your perspective? Because we're going to be talking to people out here that aren't close with their family, don't understand kinship, don't understand that connection.
00:10:17
Speaker
So how do you think I know this is hypothetical. You have to think outside the box here. Yeah. Obviously, you didn't grow up not being close to your family. But if you hadn't. Yeah.
00:10:27
Speaker
How could you interpret a lot of your research and a lot of your work? yeah I think it would still be the same, right? Like it's not that I was attuned to it because it was something that was familiar to me in a particular way. So I can i think the way that I think about is that like I could pick up on it and be like, oh, like that looks familiar, right? But given the the knowledge that I have from reading books, from reading literature, from thinking about theories about this, right? Like which is totally separate from then spending immersive time with people. That's what I do as an anthropologist and as an ethnographer. It means that I spend lots of time with the people that I work with.
00:11:00
Speaker
Right. For this work, I've been working on it for 10 years. I've been talking to black plate ah black college football players for at least 10 years. Right. um And part of that, too, has been ah immersive time spent. Right. Like spending an entire year um with a football team, with members of several football teams, going to games, going to practice, eating meals, going to classes. Right.
00:11:19
Speaker
and Even if I was attuned to that stuff because of my own lived experiences. I still think it would have come out. Right. Like I still would have noticed it because when you spend that amount of time with people, certain patterns are going to become clear.
00:11:31
Speaker
Right. um I was interested in experiences of blackness. Right. Like, what does it mean to be a young black man living in the world at this time? And the immersive time was spent 2017, 18. Right. So we also have to think contextually about what was going on then. This is during.
00:11:45
Speaker
um This is like ah during like right after Kaepernick's protests in the NFL. Right. There was um a lot of conversation around. There was starting to be conversation around concussions and injuries in football, um primarily because Will Smith's concussion had just come out. um This was right after.
00:12:02
Speaker
Mizzou's football team was protesting against their president and they were successful with that. right like There was a lot of really interesting conversation, and not just in popular culture, but specifically in football that was linking these experiences of race right like and thinking really critically about what it meant to be um a black man and a ah a man of color at that time, but specifically one who was involved in the football space. Right.
00:12:26
Speaker
So that's what I was interested in going in. um But they showed me, right, like the ways that they were navigating these systems that I was interested in. Right. Like, what does it mean to be a part of a team? What does it mean to be um at a university right now? What does it mean to not be paid for the things that you're doing on a field, but you know that your coach is making millions of dollars? Right. Like, how do you how do you um navigate like this pretty busy day that you have Literally every day, right? Because you have to be a student and you have to be an athlete. Like how how do you even do that? Those were the things that I was interested in.
00:12:58
Speaker
But what it showed to me, what they showed me was that like they re rely on each other a lot, right? Like they're they're not doing it alone. They're not doing it by themselves. They're not doing it alone on the team and they're not doing it with alone within their families either, right? So I'm noticing how other...
00:13:12
Speaker
Other black players on the team become important, where they are, how they keep popping up, their names keep popping up, they're always around each other, they're always talking to, it they're always joking around. We're like, that's one part. And then I'm constantly seeing too, how their moms keep coming into this, right? Like they're always on the phone with their moms, their moms are always popping up at school, even though they're not in the same state sometimes, their moms are at every game, even if they're not playing, right?
00:13:33
Speaker
So they were showing to me, and I think for me, that's how I think about what it means to do the work that I do, right um I could read all I want. I could think all I want. But what is happening in front of me is what I need to pay attention to because I need to trust what people are telling me about their own lives.
00:13:51
Speaker
Right. Like I am not a football player. I was never a football player. I will never be a football player. And so no matter how much I read, that's not an experience that I'm going to know. Right. And so it's learning from the people that I'm working with. And so what are they telling me? They were showing me, telling me sometimes explicitly, sometimes not so much.
00:14:08
Speaker
But they were telling me how important these relationships were to them in making sure that they were able to get through their everyday lives, given all of these like big systems that they were a part of.
H.E.R.T.S. Labs and Student Engagement
00:14:18
Speaker
Wow.
00:14:19
Speaker
So you do a lot of work. You're also the founder of Hearts Lab. Can you explain to my audience what exactly that is? Yeah, I would love to.
00:14:30
Speaker
How does everything that you do come together to form this cultural analyst that you've been doing? Yeah, so the H.E.R.T.S. Labs, it stands for Health, Ethnography, and Race Through Sports.
00:14:45
Speaker
And it's a social science, I'm a social scientist, right? So it's a social science lab and that's currently situated at Duke. um And it really, the way that I think about it is that it's an umbrella for all of the things that I'm already doing.
00:14:56
Speaker
um But now I get to bring in undergrads in like a very particular way. So, right, like being a professor, that means that I um i teach, right? Like there are certain classes that I teach every year. um That means that I am a member of several professional communities, right? Like not just memberships, but like I'm part of groups of anthropologists. I'm part of groups of sports scholars. I'm part of groups of social scientists. I'm part of groups of black feminists, right? Like, so I'm part of all of these groups.
00:15:21
Speaker
um And I do service for these groups. um I clearly have research that's going on because that's another really big part of what it means to be a professor. Right. So I've got these projects that are going. I'm thinking about all these. I'm writing this over here.
00:15:32
Speaker
I'm talking to people like you or like I'm doing all this stuff that all surrounds or that's all um based on my research. And. I'm mentoring to write like I've got students that I'm working with.
00:15:44
Speaker
i'm I'm trying to help them with networking. I'm trying to do my own networking, my own networking, right, to be in the communities that I need to be in. And so I have all of these like big ideas. And so I needed to figure out I would like to figure out a way to like put them all together and make it cohesive. Right.
00:15:59
Speaker
For me, the lab was that because there are models on college campuses everywhere of these labs. Right. Like we usually think of um of labs in the natural sciences. um But the the way that I'm thinking about labs is that like, how can I bridge all of these things that I'm doing and incorporate undergraduates specifically in the research that I'm doing too, right?
00:16:16
Speaker
So it's not just me by myself thinking about all of these things. Like, no, how can you, who's not an anthropology major, um How can you, coming from a different discipline, come in and look at the work that I'm doing and say, like, why don't you ask that question instead?
00:16:30
Speaker
and Like, what what about this part? Because that's what I'm learning in my classes. That's what my own research is is about. So how about you do that? Or having undergraduates um do interviews with me, right? Like on some of the projects that I'm working on.
00:16:41
Speaker
I'm taking them to conferences so that they can meet other scholars that are around their... their age in the academy, but also people that might be more senior so they can meet other people if they've got plans to go to grad school, if they want to go to professional school, depending on what the job is that they want to do, they can meet people that way. Right. um So incorporating undergrads in the work that I'm doing, but to make sure that like we kind of even everything out. Right. Like it's not that I'm the professor and y'all are the undergrads and that we have some grad students. It's like, no, we are in a community here. We're all learning from each other.
00:17:10
Speaker
What can we all individually bring to this space so that we all in the same way that my work is, right? Like we all feel cared for, we're all good here, um we're all productive, we all feel successful, right?
00:17:21
Speaker
um How can we link up with people on other campuses that are doing similar work so that we're parts of these but like much larger communities, right? And you'll hear me say certain words over and over again because the way that I like to think about is that like my research reflects also the way that I try to like model for students how I'm navigating through the academy, right?
00:17:40
Speaker
umm I'm not doing this alone. I can't do this by myself at all, right? So like we all need to like look out for each other. We all need to care for each other. We all need to be in community. We all need to strategize together. And so how can I do that in my own research?
00:17:53
Speaker
And then how can I model that for people that are coming up behind me who might be wanting to do this too, right? How can I see um other more senior people doing it and how they've mentored me to do it the same way, right?
00:18:04
Speaker
um Because we're all trying to be out here making it, right? Like we all want to make it. um And so how can we do that in a way that's like, productive for everybody, but also like hopefully not super stressful, um hopefully not violent, like and I use that word very seriously, right, of like to make sure that everybody is taken care of.
00:18:24
Speaker
um And so that's how for me, that's what the lab is doing, right, of like bringing these undergrads in, bringing grad students in, thinking about research, thinking about events that we can have with community partners, thinking about how to bridge this gap between the academy and the public, right. So Research that I do, I don't think should stay in the academy. I don't think only people with PhDs should read what it is that I'm writing or what I'm thinking about.
00:18:45
Speaker
So how can we think about different ways to write, right? How can we think about different ways to talk to different audiences? How can we bring people into the space? Because what we're doing, i think that this is true for most people in the academy, right? Like what we're doing is important and it um is kind of lost on us if it only stays within the walls of university. So how can we make sure that we bridge these gaps?
00:19:05
Speaker
And that's like really the serious work that the lab is trying to do. I love that because what you're essentially saying is you're bringing in diverse voices to ask questions that maybe you wouldn't even think of or wouldn't even consider to think of asking that gives you a better overall view.
00:19:20
Speaker
You get that, ladies and gentlemen? When you bring in diverse voices, you can you can get a lot of accomplished stuff done.
00:19:37
Speaker
You brought up black feminists and you obviously are a black
Navigating Male-Dominated Sports as a Black Feminist
00:19:40
Speaker
feminist. And you said you come from a family of black feminists, black feminists. How, ah how have you, how has, how have you, if I can get it out, how have you as a black feminist been able to navigate in this dominated male space?
00:19:55
Speaker
the So I don't know if actually people in my family would claim to be black feminists. That might be a flag that I, ah like a mark that I give them, but I don't know if they would claim to be that. I know that the people that are in my like professional spaces, like my friend, the people that I communicate with mostly in my research, like we are black feminists, right? And we mean that very seriously in the ways that I just noted, right? Of like what it means to be a black woman in this space doing the work that we're doing, or like what it means to think of black women in the work that we're doing as well, right? Like not just us as the researchers, but the people that we're working with.
00:20:24
Speaker
um What does it mean to take seriously these ideas of care, right? And love um and being genuine? um What does it mean to think of the ways that that might impact men too, right? Like how, but like I said, right? Like the men that I'm working with, how are they caring for each other? Because they are, right? Like, and so how how is that even happening?
00:20:44
Speaker
um I think that um not so much my, I wouldn't say that it's necessarily my Black feminist, like, orientation to this, but it is the fact that I'm a woman in these spaces, right? um And as you mentioned, like these are these are spaces that are mostly they're mostly men that are around. Right.
00:21:00
Speaker
And so um what is my positionality as a young black woman mean when I'm in these spaces? Right. Like, how am I able to navigate these spaces or how am I not? um And a lot of that comes from people that i'm working with too, right? Like when you have coaches that are saying, no, you can't be in the locker room when it's populated, right?
00:21:17
Speaker
That makes sense. But that does mean that this is a ah sexed experience, right? Like this is sport, especially football is something that um is predominantly men, which means that it is limited to women in particular ways, right? So I can't be in certain spaces at certain times. There are certain things that they don't want me to hear.
00:21:36
Speaker
um I've written in other occasions about, um, As an example, right, like you're in the weight room and certain music is playing and then I walk in and then they'll change the music because they don't want me to hear it. Right.
00:21:47
Speaker
um I didn't ask for that. And I actually didn't tell you to do it. I would prefer that you keep it going because that's I'm not trying to interrupt the space. But when you change the music just because a woman has walked in like that actually says a lot. Right. Like, what does that mean?
00:22:00
Speaker
What does it mean where y'all can see me now? Like, what does it mean when I wear my hair out? If I'm on a football field, that signals like that marks something particular because women that are in that space usually have their hair back because they're working. Right. So if I walk in with my hair out, what does that mean? How is how am I being marked in that space?
00:22:15
Speaker
Or how am i like messing with that space? Right. Like, how am I transgressing it by showing up clearly not in um not as like an equipment manager? not as an athletic trainer, not as part of the medical staff. Like, what does it mean when I show up in jeans at a football game and I'm clearly not there to work, right?
00:22:33
Speaker
um How am I disrupting the space? and then how do people respond to me? That stuff is what I'm actually really interested in because it tells me a lot about the space. And that, again, is like what I what i do as an ethnographer, right? It's like think about the ways that people are interacting with their own social world.
00:22:47
Speaker
And some of it is um I very clearly disrupt that social world being who I But then that gives me a lot ah to think about.
00:22:59
Speaker
it gives me a lot to write about. It gives me a lot to talk about with them. I'm like, well, why did you change that music? Like, I didn't ask you to. So like, what, what, why did you do that? Right. And so to me, all of that is data that then I can do something with and think about, um given these ideas that I have, um that I'm trying, or given these ideas that I'm trying to think through, um that all relate back to football in some way.
00:23:19
Speaker
What challenges have you faced specifically trying to tell stories about black athletes and mothers? Has there been any pushback? Yeah. um and No, there hasn't been much pushback. I think the only thing that I usually get is like you have a chapter about mothers in the book, right? Because I did write a book about all of this. That's the whole point.
00:23:39
Speaker
and There's one specific chapter that's about mothers. And so people ask, well, what about a chapter about fathers? Like, why isn't there one of them there? And I'm like, well, plenty of people write about football fathers all the time. um And part of the point that I'm trying to make is that black football mothers are completely invisible in this process, even though they're very central to the entire thing.
00:23:57
Speaker
Right. Like they and this is another part of the black feminist orientation. Right. Like there's a lot of labor that they put into this to make sure that it works. But also the argument that I'm trying to make is that if black mothers are not on board.
00:24:08
Speaker
Football doesn't exist because they're usually the ones that sign off on their sons being able to play. Right. And I am not making invisible black fathers by not having a chapter about them because I also recognize and talk about how usually the only reason that players are playing is because of their dads or their uncles or like other men in their family. Right. Like that's how they get into the sport.
00:24:28
Speaker
There's that particular lineage because as we've already discussed, this is a sport that's played by men, right? So it's usually passed down in a particular way you have friends and they're the ones that show you like, hey, come play with me, right?
00:24:41
Speaker
um So it's not that men are at all men, fathers, uncles, grandpas, right? Like it's not that they're all invisible in this and they're always around, right? Like, and they were always around for the players that I was working with too.
00:24:53
Speaker
But what does it mean when we are consistently hearing about fathers, but we get like the spot on yeah ESPN for Mother's Day to talk about moms? I'm like, that's it, right? I want to know what it means to have somebody, like I said before, to have somebody that shows up to every game you've ever played in, even if you've only played in 20% of them.
00:25:13
Speaker
What does it mean to have somebody that like shows up for you in that way, right? What does it mean to have somebody who's going to come to your dorm and do your laundry and cook for you and ask you about everything else.
00:25:25
Speaker
And maybe at the very end, to ask you about football, because that's not the most important thing to her. Right. What does it mean when you've got somebody who you're working with a researcher like me and she's like pumping me for questions about your, about the player, right. Of like, why did he get this tattoo? And do you know about this person? What's going on?
00:25:41
Speaker
Right. Cause she was wanting to make sure that you're okay, but you don't really talk to her like that sometimes. Right. What does mean when you have a player who does walk across campus and talk to his mom every day at the same time? Right? Like I have a scheduled meet, like meeting with my mother. Um,
00:25:56
Speaker
And I look forward to calling her during my day when I'm walking to class and she looks forward to me calling, right? Like, what does that mean? Like, and these women are around, like they're super important.
00:26:06
Speaker
um They become really important in recruiting and then they become very important like while a player is in school. But I think that there's just a, there's so much more that can be said about their experiences And how they are navigating this space and how they think about their sons and injury and violence and the sport itself and like what it means to like and to be a good man. Right. Like, what does it mean to be like a well-rounded young man at this time? Right. Do they do these moms even think that football is part of that?
00:26:35
Speaker
um And sometimes they don't. Right. And so what does that mean? And who does? Who's asking them those questions? Who's writing about them? um And so I think that's what I'm trying to do, right? And so it's not that I get pushback about writing them into the story, because I think once you hear the argument, it makes total sense. um And also they're the ones that birth these sons, right? So like we, they don't exist without them either.
00:26:56
Speaker
So the the argument makes sense of why they're there. I think the only thing sometimes that people will ask where the fathers are, and I'm like, well, you can read somebody else's work for that. There's plenty of work that's already been done on that, but how many other instances did you get to talk about Black moms um in the football space in this way?
00:27:11
Speaker
You don't. the Most of the time when you hear about Black mothers and football players, it's the football player saying, I'm going to buy my mama house. like You don't hear yeah about everything that you're explaining is a part of the Black college football player's experience. You don't hear that.
00:27:29
Speaker
Um, but, but let's get to your book. Okay.
Inspiration Behind the Book on Race and College Football
00:27:32
Speaker
yeah Tackling the everyday race nation in the big time college football. What started it? Cause you're doing all this research, you're gathering all this data. you You have mentors who are professors, you have friends while you're an undergrad that are on the football teams. The reason why you're in football, what was the moment as you're, as you're getting your doctorate, you know, and still at Duke university, as you get your doctorate,
00:27:57
Speaker
And you're saying, you know what? This is a story that needs to be told. Was there a moment or was it just all all of all of everything from undergrad to master's to your doctorate was just leading to this moment?
00:28:11
Speaker
Yeah, so while I was an undergrad and I was at Duke at that time, right, like I mentioned, um this was one of the years that the basketball team won a national championship. So my first year at Duke, the basketball team won a national championship, and this was before Duke football had, like, really taken off the way that it is now, right?
00:28:26
Speaker
um Because I will say that we have taken off, but we weren't doing so hot before. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're listening to the audio, I just roll my eyes. have to throw that in there because, you know, like we're we're we're doing we're doing pretty good right now.
00:28:40
Speaker
um But when I was a student, we weren't. um And so actually what was really interesting to me when i was an undergrad was the way that people on campus treated basketball and football players differently, even though that is where I'm.
00:28:52
Speaker
both of those teams were predominantly black men, right? And so there was something about people on campus being able to tell what sport they played or to know what sport they played just because of how much they were on TV and to then be able to interact with them differently. And so I was just like, as ah as an undergrad, just as someone walking around campus, I was fascinated by like what I was seeing. And maybe it wasn't exactly true because I didn't talk to people about it, but I was just seeing how people interacted with these two um these two groups of athletes differently.
00:29:21
Speaker
um which then eventually sparked an interest in some of these ideas that I'm talking about. So then I meet these professors. um I'm giving tours on campus, like through admissions. And so I'm meeting people that way. Like I'm talking to all of these people and I'm like, there might be something here, right? Like in this, like, what is this experience?
00:29:38
Speaker
At that point, it was like, what is this experience of being a college, um a college athlete, right? Like a black man on a college campus and a college athlete all these people know you right like you're on tv all the time this was still like social media hadn't taken off in the way that it is now but like it was still a thing and so it's like people feel like they can talk to you all the time and they have access to you um like i could go to the student store and like buy your jersey but you're not making any money off of that like that seems kind of weird you know um
00:30:11
Speaker
Like, because, and just because of the nature of like being a college student, where Like you see people around at certain times of like, y'all are remarkably absent at certain times of the year. And then you just like pop up just because of how the playing season works, right?
00:30:23
Speaker
um You're in classes with people. And so you see them sometimes come in on crutches or you see them like come in all like battered and bruised. Like what happened to you over the week? Or like you just, like, it was a really interesting experience for me to to just be around and to like start paying attention to those ideas, right?
00:30:39
Speaker
And so then when I went to grad school at the University of Virginia, that's what I went to school with was a project thinking about um ah like all of these ideas through college football, but specifically college football, because the college, um the college sports system is unique to the US, right? Like there's no other country in the world that unites higher education and amateur athletics, quote unquote, amateur athletics, right?
00:31:00
Speaker
Yeah. There's no other system in the in the world that does that. And so college sports in the U.S. s are actually like quite a unique space to think about some of these ideas, right, because of the ways that they are tied to education.
00:31:11
Speaker
um And again, because they are amateurs, quote unquote, they're not paid, right? Like, so there has to be a way to distinguish them between professional sports and amateur like college sports. And so I was just really interested in how all of these dynamics came about.
00:31:24
Speaker
That was the project that I applied to grad school with. That's what I wrote my dissertation about after doing this immersive fieldwork, right, of like spending all of this time with people. And that's um that's where you ah you kind of bust your ethnographic chops, right? Like you spend all this time with people and you learn from them and you're you're trying to figure out like how they're theorizing their own worlds. Right. It's not me coming in as somebody who's like an expert. And i'm like, this is what's going on. Right. Like, that's not the point for you to learn from the people about what they are thinking about what's going on with them.
00:31:53
Speaker
And so then that dissertation eventually became the book. Right. And so. the facts that I've been working on this for such a significant period of time. Right. And then also, if we have to think about I was doing research in 17, 18, but then the pandemic hits and then we had that season, primarily that first season of of college football play where football players were sometimes the only player or the only students on college campuses.
00:32:17
Speaker
um But they had to cut had to, quote unquote, come back. um to play for their teams, right If we're thinking power five and power four, depending on how we think about it now. um All of these dynamics I was thinking about were like, to me, very obviously on display during that season.
00:32:32
Speaker
When you have empty stadiums, you've got cardboard cutouts in the stadiums, you've got fan noise being pumped in, you've got teams being tested for COVID like every other day somehow, like they have, somehow they have access to all of these tests to test like 150 people every other day, right?
00:32:47
Speaker
um They are being, ah they they are living in dorms or in residential spaces that are, they're attempting to seclude them in particular ways, right? Like to to help against, if there is a COVID outbreak to like help to protect some of the people. There are these waivers that are being signed by athletes to say that they won't come back and get upset with their universities if they get sick, right? Like there are all these dynamics that are going on in 2020 that it's like,
00:33:11
Speaker
Oh, this stuff that I was seeing about labor and exploitation and payment and who's like where the money is split. All of that was like very obviously on display during during the pandemic as well. And so all these dynamics came together to me and in ways that really made sense for these ideas that i was thinking about.
00:33:26
Speaker
And then that's what all eventually developed into the book.
Is College Football Exploitative?
00:33:38
Speaker
So many people see college football as a path to success, right? But your research uncovers it's an exploitive proposition more so than an absolute path to success.
00:33:52
Speaker
What do you wish more people would understand about the experience specifically for Black college athletes in this regard? Yeah, i think I think the first thing that I'm thinking of is like, what does it mean to be successful? right like Maybe we just need to have different ideas of what success means.
00:34:07
Speaker
Because if success means um you go pro, that mean like that's not success for most of them. 98%, the NCAA used to say that 98% of our athletes will go pro in something other than their sport, which means that the majority of the people that are playing the sport are not going to go pro.
00:34:24
Speaker
So that can't be the way that we think about success. Some people think of success in this space is like um if you were playing in college, then that means that whether you could have gotten there on your own or not. Right.
00:34:35
Speaker
You do go to college. Right. and And so it's an opportunity for you to go to college um and you get to play this sport that I would hope that you at least have some interest in. Right. Like maybe you don't love it still, but like at least you're still interested in the sport and you get to go to college at the same time.
00:34:51
Speaker
um And that's where i try to challenge sometimes what people are thinking about, like what it means to be an athlete um in college at this moment, because there's such a different experience for athletes on these campuses than for students who do not play a sport. Right.
00:35:06
Speaker
And so what does it mean? Again, like these are all hypotheticals, but like very real. Right. Like, what does it mean when during your playing season? It's okay because the NCAA, your team, the university has said that you can miss classes on certain days because you're traveling.
00:35:19
Speaker
Right. So then what does that mean when you need to be in class, but now you need to meet with your professor and figure out a way to make up the work. You're not in class to be around your classmates who are like doing the work while they're there. You instead have tutors or study hall that's filling in for it. Right. Which is usually not with your professor.
00:35:35
Speaker
um So that's one experience. Right. Like, what does it mean when now, you very rarely get a break during the year, right? Like if your team is playing well and you play in a bowl game, then that means that you're on campus, sometimes well into winter break when everyone else is already at home.
00:35:48
Speaker
So sometimes depending what holidays you celebrate, you might miss those holidays with your family. And then also it might be, two, three weeks later that you get to finally go home because you've been playing into January. Right.
00:36:01
Speaker
But that also one, not only does that limit your time away from campus just during that time, but it also means it limits your time with your family. Right. um But let's say Duke players don't have to worry about that.
00:36:11
Speaker
Well, this I think that that is not true because we have definitely gone to bowl games in recent years. And so you just need to check your stats on that because that is a very real thing for a Duke football players.
00:36:23
Speaker
i But then even for other players, just in general, right? Like um camp happens during the summer. You are taking classes during the summer. So summers are not like just this like month long period of a break, right? and They're still on campus. They're still in classes. They're still working out. They're still doing football stuff.
00:36:42
Speaker
Which also not only limits like the amount of rest that your body gets from such a strenuous, violent, dangerous activity, but also that's usually when internships happen. That's usually when networking with companies happens, right? Like because you need a job once you graduate or most people would like a job once they graduate, right?
00:36:57
Speaker
And so how is that developed in college? Usually in those experiences. And so you're limited in those experiences. Let's say that there's a major that you want to that you want to um participate in. But the times that those classes meet interfere with football.
00:37:09
Speaker
Football is going to come first, which usually just means that you can't major you in that thing. So if you came into college wanting to be, as an example, an engineer, just because I know that that schedule is um those those schedules ah interfere usually with football times. Right.
00:37:22
Speaker
It's very hard to be an engineer, to be a football player because of when labs meet, when the classes meet, the amount of outside of class experience that you need. Which then means that that you you can't major in that, right? Because football has to take priority.
00:37:33
Speaker
So all of these things added together do make for a completely different experience for a football player who goes to college than just a student
Challenges Faced by Black College Athletes
00:37:40
Speaker
who's there, right? Like I didn't play a sport in college. So I had, i can say for a fact, I had a completely different experience than the football players that graduated with me.
00:37:47
Speaker
Right. Just because of the fact that they played football and what their experiences were in a classroom compared to mine. Right. And so that is where I start to challenge, like, what does it mean to be successful? They get a degree, but is it the same type of degree as other students on campuses get? Do they have the same opportunities?
00:38:01
Speaker
Are they partaking in the same type of activities? Are they exposed to the same things? And usually that answer is no, which then does challenge this idea of like, well, you got a degree, right? Like you got a degree and you got play football. It's like, actually, I got a different type of degree and I didn't get paid for paying but playing football, even though somebody else did.
00:38:18
Speaker
And now my body's kind of run down, right? So all of these dynamics together make for a particular experience that they're having that isn't usually mirrored in other students on campus. How does that reality, right, of the idea of that high school student going to play big time college football you know and then getting on campus, how does that dream versus reality affect their day to day lives and their daily routines?
00:38:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think like what the one of the major ways is that they're like highly scheduled people, right? Like they are on like a very, like you have to be at a certain place at a certain time and you have to know where you're going. And it's like very organized because there's so much that has to happen in a day, especially if we're thinking about the season, right?
00:39:03
Speaker
You've got practices, you've got study halls, you've got meals that you have to go to, you've got tape that you have to watch or film that you have to watch. You have physical therapy that you have to go to.
00:39:14
Speaker
And then every weekend, usually every weekend, you got a game that you got it to go Sometimes you have to travel to it. Sometimes you don't. but there's usually like designated time that is required for the game itself. right um So that means that they're highly scheduled. right There's a very particular way that they have to navigate just their every day in order to pack in all the things that they have to do to make sure that everything is kind of accounted for, which also just means like they're tired and like their bodies hurt. right And especially as this as the season goes on, right like if you talk to people as the season goes on,
00:39:48
Speaker
If they're winning or not, that does impact the way that they're thinking about the score and like their mental health in that space as well. Right. Of like it's it's not fun to not win, but especially not to win if you're on TV, if people are talking about you, right, like the way that commentators sometimes come into this again, the way that social media comes into this.
00:40:05
Speaker
There's a person at the center of that. And it's not just a person, it's a young person, right? If we think about how old college students are, they're like 17-ish to like 22-ish, right? These are young people that are at the center of like all these like really big ideas. of a way that I like to think about it too is sometimes like you've just moved out of your family house, right? Like you got to college yesterday and now your face is all over campus. You are all over ESPN. Everybody's talking about all your business all the time.
00:40:34
Speaker
People are DMing you on social media because you made a bad play. And now you've got to go to class. You've got to eat something. Make sure that you're eating enough to keep this going. You've got to remain hydrated. You've got to take care of your body.
00:40:45
Speaker
You've got to call your mom. You've got to call your friends. You've got to do your homework. right like All of these things are really, it's a lot that's going on. and you just moved out in your house yesterday, right? So like, what does that mean to that person that's at the center of it? The thing that I really want people who read the book or engage with my work or think critically about these spaces, I always try to bring it back to who is this person that you were talking about, right?
00:41:09
Speaker
Who is at the center of this? And it's a young person who is just trying to make it right, which is the same for every college student. It just so happens that this college student is usually on TV every Saturday during the fall.
00:41:22
Speaker
Right. And so what does that mean for him specifically, i think, is where we really need to make sure that we um where we land, because then that's how we center this on their experience, not on like these ideas that we have about what's going on.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think oftentimes with these college athletes that are playing for these big time programs, people forget they're human beings, not commodities. They're human beings and they are and they're young, young men.
00:41:48
Speaker
yeah Based on your findings, what needs to change in kind of college athletics to better protect and support Black athletes? I think that these um like like something that has happened since I did research. Right. Is like NIL became a thing in 2021. NIL was not a thing when I was doing research. So that's definitely a step in the right direction.
00:42:08
Speaker
Right. But the way that I like to think about NIL, which is name image likeness, those rights that were given back to college athletes over the summer in 2021 is to say that they are getting back rights that everybody on a college campus has already had.
00:42:20
Speaker
Right. So we are just like getting them where everybody else already was. So it's not the end all be all. It's just a good step in the right direction. Right. um So NIL, good. These conversations um around labor unions, I think good, um especially because one of the conversations that i like that often comes out of that is um explicitly athletes are talking about the need for insurance once they graduate because You might take care of my body while I'm in, like, while I'm a student here because you need my body to perform to be successful, for the team to be successful.
00:42:50
Speaker
But the second I graduate, like, I have to figure out how to care for myself, like, physically care for my body on my own, right? So... Maybe there needs to be some conversation about insurance, keep but but prolonged insurance. Right.
00:43:03
Speaker
There needs to be, I think, conversations around um this this challenge of like what it means to be ah an athlete and a student um of making sure that they get the degree that they're promised.
00:43:16
Speaker
Right. So um something that has come up recently for for me in another interview is like maybe actually they get to stay in school for longer. Right. Like you play for however long it is. And if you don't go to the league, which most of them will not, then you just stay in school for longer. And they guarantee that you actually get that degree that they recruited you on and promised you when you were when you signed up for this. Right. So then you do have similar opportunities to everybody else on campus to have those internships, to network with other students, to meet with others, just to be in community, to partake in some other activity that's football. Right.
00:43:46
Speaker
So then have a different type of potential career trajectory. um I think these lawsuits and the settlements that are happening with the NCAA right now are also really interesting steps because it's about revenue sharing, right, which now is about paying athletes, right?
00:44:01
Speaker
You are making billions of dollars as a whole. They're making billions of dollars for these universities. So some of that needs to be redirected. but And so like these are all conversations in the right direction to say there are particular people who are harmed by this and it is the football players that are at the center of it.
00:44:16
Speaker
And so how do we better care for them? How do we better protect them? How do we better set them up for a future once they graduate? These are all solid steps. And then there's plenty of other things, too. But these are solid steps to get us there.
00:44:27
Speaker
I love that. Ladies and gentlemen, that is Dr. Tracy Canada. All of her information will be in the description section. hmm.
00:44:38
Speaker
Go check out our book. All of her information will be on the website. Dr. Tracy, thank you so much for coming on the show and and opening not just my eyes, but I know my audience eyes is something that they didn't even know didn't even know existed, didn't know yeah anything about, and how important it is for young people that are going through this.
00:45:00
Speaker
Yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity talk. really appreciate it. It was my pleasure. It was absolutely my pleasure. Once again, I want to thank Dr. Tracy Canada for coming on and talking to us about i something I feel like is very, very important. gonna get into detail of why I think it's very, very important. But once again, her book,
00:45:18
Speaker
Go get it. It's on Amazon. Go click the links. It's tackling the everyday race and nation in big time college football. It's a must read because this is very, very interesting.
00:45:29
Speaker
And I'm going to tell you why I believe this is interesting. So when I was in college at the University of Maryland, a great school, better than Duke, Dr. Tracy, when I was at the University of Maryland,
00:45:40
Speaker
The very first day um in the cafeteria dining hall and I see two guys sitting down, I say, hey guys, you mind if id sit down and join you? They're like, yeah, sure. Cause I, you know, new to school, I don't know anybody.
00:45:54
Speaker
They look like they're young like me. and And I'm fairly tall, um but fairly tall I'm tall. I'm 6'4", so it's nothing to me to see guys that are 6'2", 6'3", 6'4". So we're just talking and just getting to know each other and come to find out there are two new freshmen on the basketball team. The basketball team that would eventually, four years later, win a national championship, go to two Final Fours and win a national championship. Their their names were Steve Blake and Drew Nicholas.
00:46:22
Speaker
um I'm going to name drop them. Yes. And we were friendly, not friends. We were friendly throughout our entire time at College Park. And even after College Park, I would run into Steve Blake because he played for the Wizards.
00:46:35
Speaker
um And I would run into him in the streets, just catch up for a little bit. But I remember going to them um during the times where I would see them either on campus or the rare times that I would see them out partying.
00:46:50
Speaker
Like, man, don't hardly ever see you guys. And they were like, yeah, man, because we got stuck. All our classes are early in the morning. and we got stuff that we got to do. We got our schedule is tight.
00:47:01
Speaker
I was like, y'all don't really have no fun. And this was the primary reason why I decided not to try and play college basketball is that I didn't love basketball as much as they did. Not willing to give up my freedom. And I also think that it is extremely, extremely difficult. College is not easy.
00:47:19
Speaker
and Okay. College isn't easy. Like the actual work is not easy. Some people find it easy, I guess, because you got an easy major, but It's a lot of work. There's stress involved with it.
00:47:30
Speaker
and And when you're in it, you think that there's nothing more stressful until you become an adult and you realize real life is more stressful. But being in college is real-ish life, okay? And so...
00:47:43
Speaker
Going to college is not easy. Going to college and not having a job is not easy. Going to college and having a job, even if it's a part-time job, is not easy. Going to college and having a full-time job is not easy. And that's what college athletics is. It's a full-time job.
00:47:59
Speaker
Now, The reason why I felt that it was important to have this conversation is because what often doesn't get talked about when Black people go to major universities, and what we're talking about big-time college football, we're talking about major universities, that the Black populations tend to be in the single digits percentile of the student population.
00:48:21
Speaker
right I think when I went to the University of Maryland, it was like 5% 6%. Black, like we knew each other. We all knew each other. No matter what year, you were one degree away from knowing a person. that Most people knew each other by name if you hung out in the Black community or in a Black student union. Like everybody knew each other. It was a small, tight-knit community.
00:48:42
Speaker
It is important in life to find people that are not like you, to talk to them. to befriend them, to get to know them, because it's important in life to understand other people's path that you can't identify with because your path isn't the same.
00:49:02
Speaker
That's the reason why I have a very diverse friend group, because I want to know what it's like to be you. I can't be you. I'm not going to be you. We don't wear the same shoes. We didn't walk the same path.
00:49:13
Speaker
I don't know what it's like to be you. I want you to tell me what your life is like. I want you to tell me what your struggle is like. because your struggle is not the same as my struggle because we're different people. We're from different backgrounds.
00:49:24
Speaker
And so what doesn't often get talked about is how much Black people live in white spaces and having to maneuver and adapt
The Predominance of White Institutions
00:49:35
Speaker
to that. That's the reason why specifically ah had Dr. Tracy Canada come on and talk about her book because we're talking about Black athletes in big time college football.
00:49:46
Speaker
Not only are they coming, with their names already plastered all over the place because they were most of the time highly recruited, okay? But they're coming in to white spaces when, I'm not saying all of them, but a lot of them are not coming from white spaces, they're coming from black spaces.
00:50:04
Speaker
So the only way that I can make you understand this is if you're a female, if you're a female out there listening and watching this and you enter in a male-dominated space you feel a little uneasy if you're a particular race and you enter in a space where you're the minority in that race and it's happened to everybody there's been white people out there that that go to restaurants and there's a black restaurant you like i didn't know all these black people's gonna be here and maybe you feel a little uneasy because you're it's a different
00:50:36
Speaker
surrounding is a different arena that you've ever been in before. There's a little discomfort, not saying that there's anything wrong with that, but there's discomfort in non-comfort. Do you understand what i mean? There's discomfort in not knowing and and being ignorant to certain situations.
00:50:55
Speaker
So when we bring it up, not only are we talking about college football athletes and how important it is to recognize that they're not cattle. They're not commodities.
00:51:06
Speaker
These are people. They're barely adults. They're barely adult and they're being talked about and being exploited. And yeah, they're getting a little bit of money now, some with these NIL deals, but there's still more. i hadnt Until Dr. Tracy brought it up, I did not even think about health insurance after the fact.
00:51:26
Speaker
These injuries that they have doesn't stop as soon as they graduate. Sometimes these are lifetime injuries. And yeah, they should be taken care of. Why? Because the business of college football is making billions of dollars on the backs of young men and on the backs of a lot of black men.
Reflecting on Diverse Perspectives
00:51:48
Speaker
Reason why we had these conversations, the reason why we have these type of shows, the reason why we discuss these type of topic topics is to bring you into a world that you either didn't know about or were unfamiliar with, ignorant to.
00:52:01
Speaker
And there's nothing wrong with being ignorant to something. That doesn't mean that there's that's necessarily a bad thing. But when we bring it to your attention, if you remain ignorant, if you want to be willfully ignorant, I can't, you know, as I say it all the time, I can't do nothing for you if you don't want to learn.
00:52:17
Speaker
But wow, you know i can't wait I can't wait to finish this book because just with Dr. Tracy bringing up some things that I would not have ever thought about, and I thought before this interview that I had covered everything as far as my research, and even still,
00:52:41
Speaker
Dr. Tracy's bringing up stuff that I just never thought about. And you can't possibly think about things that you don't know until it's brought to your attention. So I thank her for that.
00:52:54
Speaker
And you should too, because the more you know, the more real well-rounded of a person you can become. And isn't that always the goal for all of us?
00:53:07
Speaker
It should be. So thank you, Dr. Tracy. him over Check out our book. stay to Check out our work, because it's important. I want to thank you for listening. I want to thank you for watching.
00:53:18
Speaker
And until next time, as always, I'll holler.
00:53:26
Speaker
was a hell of a show. Thank you for rocking with us here on Unsolicited Perspectives with Bruce Anthony. Now, before you go, don't forget to follow, subscribe, like, comment, and share our podcast wherever you're listening or watching it to it.
00:53:40
Speaker
Pass it along to your friends. If you enjoy it, that means the people that you rock will will enjoy it also. So share the wealth, share the knowledge, share the noise. And for all those people that say, well, I don't have a YouTube. If you have a Gmail account, you have a YouTube.
00:53:54
Speaker
Subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can actually watch our video podcast and YouTube exclusive content. for fa But the real party is on our Patreon page. After Hours Uncensored and Talkin' Straight-ish. After Hours Uncensored is another show with my sister.
00:54:08
Speaker
And once again, the key word there is uncensored. Those are exclusively on our Patreon page. Jump onto our website unsolicitedperspective.com. dot com for all things us that's where you can get all of our audio video our blogs and even buy our merch and if you really feel generous and want to help us out you can donate on our donations page donations go strictly to improving our software and hardware so we can keep giving you guys good content that you can clearly listen to and that you can clearly see so any donation would be appreciative most importantly i want to say thank you thank you thank you for listening and watching and supporting us and i'll catch you next time outie 5000 peace