“When you try to take action to try to enforce change against the system, that is having their knee on your neck, you understand that that could literally mean costing your life.” -- Mark Phi

ROB
Welcome to Disruption Now. I’m your host and moderator, Rob Richardson. With me on the show is Mark Phi who is a serial entrepreneur and artist and I’m honored to have him on. He’s been on before so if you go back to the old episode, “Charles Phi Smart,” I think we called the episode, you’ll see that we have an in-depth interview with him.

But now, we want to talk about his new art piece and some of the things he’s doing now to discuss what a lot of people are discussing now -- the George Floyd death, the protests and the sparks that happened after.

I was really moved by his piece. You can check them out at Mark Phi Creations. We’ll put this all in the notes so everybody can see it afterwards. -- Mark, good to have you on.

MARK PHI
Hey, thanks a bunch, Rob. I really appreciate it. It’s always good talking to you.

ROB
Yeah, always good, man. I want to actually just get to some of your piece, and I’m going to share with the audience here in just a couple of minutes. You call it the “Conflicted Coward.” I want to talk to you about why you called it that. But let’s listen to a little bit of it and see a little bit of it and then we’ll talk about it on the other side.

MARK PHI
Okay. When I think about what needs to be done for that change, it makes me feel afraid because I feel like, “Man, if I start saying something or try to be a force that’s going to make a difference, how is that going to impact my life,” right?

Then I think about my daughter and I think to myself, “30 years ago, Rodney King beaten in LA.” And there were riots all over the country. Everybody was up and evil about it because they saw it for the first time, right? It was videotaped. It was live. And everybody thought, “We need to do something.”

And I wanted to make sure that if my daughter saw me 30 years from now and she says to me, “Daddy, what did you do in 2020 when they had the riots, when they had the protests, when they were in the streets trying to affect change? Did you do anything,” I want to be able to say I did something. And I also don’t want her to be in the streets 30 years from now protesting for the same things that we’re talking about today.

That led me into a conversation with myself, that I have to do something even if it’s just my voice. I used the word “Coward” -- being a coward -- to a couple of my friends and what they said to me was, “Well, do what you can. Use what you have.”

I have art and I use my art to help organizations all over the world to raise money for their causes and I figured this is the way for me to speak to the world. And also, not just speak to it in a way that is artistic but to actually put voice to it and to talk about it in a way where I’m putting myself out there and I’m no longer necessarily the coward because I know that there’s probably so much more that I need to do in order to affect the change that I really, really want to see. Let me not sit on my hands and do nothing. That took me to creating this piece that is behind me.

When I watched the video and I listened to a grown man cry for his mom who is dead, you see the life literally leave in him; how the police officer is so nonchalant about it. Even though there were people there recording, even though there were people there begging and pleading to save his life while he’s pleading for his life, if you’re not moved by it to see that happen, something is wrong.

So I want to take a moment to talk about the piece that I created to kind of share what it is that I want to express as well as share some of my viewpoints and my belief system around what I think we need to do collectively, not just for black people but as human beings because we’re all humans. We all came from black. This is the way for me to express that.

ROB
That was the first part of your five-part docu-series. You have two episodes out right now detailing your piece.

MARK PHI
Correct.

ROB
You call it the “Conflicted Coward.” Walk us through why you called it that.

MARK PHI
Well when I watched that piece, I had a lot of thoughts that went through my head and thinking about what I could do, and I talked about that in the first episode. I felt like I needed to do something but I also felt like if I do something, it could affect me. And I have things to think about, people to think about and I know the implications of wanting to take action.

So that was the very conflicted side of me in trying to figure out, “Okay, I want to do something but how do I do something that’s not going to affect me?” And that’s the cowardly part where I think we go through that emotional roller coaster of, “Okay, let me put myself out there and see what happens.” And as you know, I only started to be public last year about my art and everything else.
ROB
Right.

MARK PHI
So this is definitely a very, very far departure from how I normally operate.

ROB
Yes. And it’s the struggle that every Black American, person of color, has to go through, how much rage they can show. James Baldwin said it famously, that to be black in America is to always be enraged. But being enraged is not a good strategy for growth. It’s not a good strategy for business partnerships. It’s not a good strategy for life because, obviously, it’s hard to go forward and continuously be enraged. However, when you see things like George Floyd, it makes one enraged. The truth is, it happens a lot.

So you were conflicted. We had different conversations. If you remember the conversations we had in our original podcast, we talked about the fact that Black Americans sometimes, because they experience so much racism, end up internalizing some of that. And with so much focus, it ends up hurting them, sometimes. However, sometimes, things are unavoidable.

Talk about your ancestral connection. You’ve been directly from Africa -- all of us from Africa, I guess, in some ways. Black Americans closer, too. But how did that experience inform your perspective on art and really, your perspective on how you may have seen race and if that changed any, given what happened with George Floyd in the protest, at this moment? Do my questions make sense?

MARK PHI
Yeah. I don’t know if it’s necessarily a change or a departure. I grew up Jamaica -- do you know -- and came here.

ROB
Yes.

MARK PHI
But my father is from Sierra Leone. Between 2009 and… better part of the last 10 years, I've spent more time in Sierra Leone than I probably have spent here. So reconnecting with that really has changed my perspective in a lot of ways even before coming from Jamaica to America.

But in Jamaica, we don’t have the same issues around race. It’s more around class. When you come here, it’s put front and center. Especially as a black person, it’s put front and center. You have a different perspective about it because you have a very different feeling about it because it’s a learned behavior or learned… I learned it after I had lived 16 years somewhere else. So it wasn’t like, “Okay, this is just the way things are.” So that adjustment, it shifted my mind.

Of course, going to Africa also impacted how I looked at blacks and our place in the world and just the natural pride that I think comes with knowing that the next guy I have to deal with is not going to deal with me on the merit of necessarily the color of skin but whether I’m able to do something. And of course, there are also financial constructs but it’s very different in the way that you feel about your identity as a person. It’s not necessarily in question as much.

ROB
Yeah, because you’re around an environment where that’s not the underlying issue as you said.

MARK PHI
Correct.

ROB
And here, we combine “race” and “class” as one thing. I mean no one’s better like you said because they have more money. But the fact is you have more opportunities if you have more resources. But the two are always tied in that this is how we assume black people are and it leads to disconnections and consequences. So the more the delta is from the reality of who you actually are and how you actually see yourself from how others actually see you leads to tragedies, leads to things like George Floyd’s death. -- I’m simplifying it. -- I think some of that is the case.

Talk about what you felt though at that moment. You talked about why you called it the “Conflicted coward” -- because if you take a stance, even if you take the right stance, there’s always a risk to you personally.

MARK PHI
Right.

ROB
Talk about how you felt listening, watching at that moment. Take yourself back to that moment about how you felt when you first saw the tape.

MARK PHI
It was disbelief. A lot of it was disbelief. It was disbelief. It was anger. It’s just sad. It was a very sad piece because we watched that guy die and the other officers that were there that just stood around allowed it to happen. And the fact that you had people there that were taping and saying and pleading for the man’s life, it really just showed how much power they didn’t have, right, because they couldn’t do anything. If they try to do something, they probably would have been George Floyd #2, right?

ROB
Correct.

MARK PHI
So that’s where the conflicted side comes in, I think, sometimes and not wanting to take action. When you try to take action to try to enforce change against the system, that is having their knee on your neck, you understand that that could literally mean costing your life. If you’re going to really have to try to do the things that push to get the kind of change that you want, you may have to take a step that may potentially put you at risk, right?

ROB
Yes, which is why the conflicted coward, another reason why… It’s like people are always conflicted. “I want to help but do I want to risk?”

MARK PHI
Yes. Right. I have had conversations with my friends and we talked about what would we have done had we been there watching that happen. Some people say, “Oh I’ll just step in and done something” or “Got a gun.” But in the moment when there is… because I look at the police officers not as individuals as much as I look at the system that empower them to be able to behave in the way that they are.

ROB
Correct. As you so correctly said, the fact they felt so comfortable being taped while a man pleads for his life…

MARK PHI
His life, right.

ROB
…everybody acting around like there's… They look like they were just having drinks or something. And the fact that they're so comfortable tells me that A] they do shit like this a lot and B] they feel like they have enough power that if he dies, it doesn't matter.

MARK PHI
“It doesn’t matter,” exactly. Right. And that power being exercised in that manner with people who want to have… or those people that were shouting and pleading is an example of, I think, what we do all the time -- Plead, right?

ROB
Yeah.

MARK PHI
We have to take an action, I think, that is more… It might be more abrasive. And abrasive is not necessarily violent, right?

ROB
It's more direct. You're not asking for permission.
MARK PHI
Right. I’m not asking for permission at that point. If I was in that situation, I am thinking, “How could I have helped to save that guy's life?” It doesn't matter who he was, what I knew and what he did. It doesn't matter if he did something.

The fact that the system feels like they can have their knee on your neck and be blatant about it for everyone to see, for them to know that you're going to protest about it and still, even when you're protesting, not change anything and then the effects of what they are doing caused you to die, right, that’s what really drove me to create the painting and wanted to really get to the heart of that. And the thing that really moved me… because I watched it twice. I could only watch the piece twice because I remember how it felt the first time.

ROB
It's hard, man.

MARK PHI
Right. It’s hard, right?

ROB
It’s really hard. The two people that have personified my feelings at the moment are you and Dave Chappelle. You both used your art in different ways. Have you seen 8:46?

MARK PHI
Yeah, 8:46. I did, yeah.

ROB
What he did is he told a story about the moment he thought he was going to lose his life. It was three seconds. This man, for eight minutes and 46 seconds. He said like, “What the hell? Clearly, you're trying to signify that our lives don't matter, that you have the ability to do this,” and it doesn't matter what you do or what you say.

MARK PHI
Correct.

ROB
And to your point, we have to decide. We are conflicted -- all of us. Everybody can say what they were going to do.

MARK PHI
Right.

ROB
This is about black and white people. I love when black people tell me, “During slavery, there is no way I would have been a slave. I would have not done any of that. I would have stood up. I would have fought.” Maybe you would have but let me tell you this, if your ancestor did that, you wouldn't be standing here. They're out the gene pool. So like, you can say what you want but the instincts for survival sometimes take over no matter what you say.

MARK PHI
Correct.

ROB
On the other side -- and I’ll talk about white people and I think this applies to what we're talking about now -- white people, at any point, in order to make a difference, they have to decide. There is a risk in giving up your privilege because you are then… If you're willing to challenge the system that is in support of you then your inner circles are not going to be happy with you which means you're going to lose something. They're going to see you as a traitor or whatever and they're not going to like you. And you may lose economic status, social status. That applies now. It certainly applied during slavery.

MARK PHI
Right.

ROB
So people can talk about what they would have done. My answer to people is, “What you would have done during slavery is what you're doing now.” That’s the answer.

MARK PHI
Correct, and I agree with that 100%. You know, when I look at the protest in the streets, I think of them as “pleas.” The name of the painting is “46 Pleas.” They're right behind me. That's the painting behind me. And when you read his words, it's basically him just begging… constantly begging for his life.

ROB
Right.

MARK PHI
When I look at the protest, I kind of feel the same way about them. I think everyone already knows. We already know what that is, right?

But I think another side of it is also, as you talked about privilege and white people needing to give up that privilege, I don't think that's a realistic expectation. All right? It’s a power dynamic. Privilege, if you will, is a power dynamic. It’s like the privilege that the president has to clear the streets when he's driving down a highway. He's not going to give it up. It's his privilege, right? He can do it so he will.

So I think that power dynamic has to be taken because people don't willingly give. “Oh go have power over my life. I know I had power over yours for all this time. I know it's been really bad for you so I feel bad now so I’m going to go ahead and let you have power over mine.” It doesn't happen like that. You have to take it and it's by force. I talked about in the other episode and I touched on the dynamics of the world and how our lines have been drawn in our planet, right?

ROB
Right.

MARK PHI
When you look at the world from space, you don't see any lines. But every single line that you see on the maps that we've created were drawn with somebody else taking force to get those lines drawn. They're all drawing blood for the most part. All those lines were drawn in blood. It's an unfortunate reality that we live in.

And if we think that we want to create a country within somebody else's country and they're going to allow us to do it and say, “Oh here's your country,” it doesn't work like that. There's a power dynamic that comes into that that we, I think, as black people have to understand and that action is required.

And that action is just like when George Floyd is on the ground and knowing that you might have to take force against that police officer in some kind of way -- influential kind of way -- in order for him not to do what he's doing. And it can’t be an “after the fact” thing where you do it after he's done what he wants to do. It has to be while it's happening doing it and not waiting for them to say, “Okay, we're not going to do that to you anymore.” That's not how the world should work, right?

ROB
I agree. I think instinctively, people thought that taping it would do that and stop that. Like, “We have you on tape.” Clearly, that hasn't worked. We got to say that that's not working so there has to be like… We've seen tapings of executions--

MARK PHI
It's numbing as well. It's literally numbing. The more you see something, it's like, “Oh another one,” right?

ROB
Yeah. And then the justification short goals in the mind if you want to believe it is, “He did something to provoke that. Something had to happen.”

MARK PHI
Correct, and you question it.

ROB
Yeah. This was so devastating from what… I can say for the first time, at least in my lifetime, I’ve had conversations with people outside of my race where they're like, “I just had no idea it's this bad.” And I will say, “Well we've been saying it for a while.” And people just thought like we were making this shit up. None of it is made up. All of it is real.

And I do agree with your point about power. Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. Never has. Never will. Those who think so are fooling themselves. They want crops without the rain and the thunder.” I’m paraphrasing but that's essentially what he said.

MARK PHI
Exactly.

ROB
So yeah, I look at it as it does have to come by force. That doesn't mean violence but that does mean direct action and that does mean consistency because what they're hoping… And I say the “Power.” When I say the “Power” is that this is a spark in a moment. You can have all the protests you want but without any policy, it doesn't mean anything. Without any persistence, the policies don't stay. And without any power, which is collective organizing -- economically, politically and otherwise -- nothing's happening.

MARK PHI
Right.

ROB
Yeah, I think that's important.

MARK PHI
Yeah. In the other episode, I also touched on something. And the next episode actually talks about… look at America like a house, a piece of land, and the dynamics of when you have a piece of land that's yours, you build a house on it, right? And because you own the land… or let's just say you don't own the land but you come and take the land from whoever has the land so now it's yours -- ownership. And then once you own that land, you need to build on it.

And in building on it, you have a vision of what you want. But you don't have all the human resources that you need so you go take other human resources and you build a house. The human resources that you go take to build a house on that land that's yours, is it their house? I don't think so. I don't think it's their house. I think it's the house of the person who was willing to take the land. The house belongs to the person who was willing to be resourceful enough to go build it, however they did it. Unfortunately, slavery was one of the ways that America was built.

But then when that's done and the house was built and you're a leftover consequence of that desire or greed or whatever you want to call it to have their house, you are kind of a leftover, right, if you're on that land still. And as a leftover… -- And I don't want to be taken out of context and for people to say I’m looking at black people as leftover because that's not what I’m saying.

What I am saying though in that dynamic, the house was built. They don't need you as much anymore. They may want you around to kind of maintain and keep things in order but they're never going to give you the ownership. They might even allow you to live in a room in the house but living in a room in that house may not necessarily give you the same privileges. You may not have the same accommodations within it because it's theirs. And because it belongs to them, they also created the systems.

When they got the land, they decided how things were going to operate when the house was created, right? You're a worker. You just have to kind of do what they say. And so from that dynamic, I think, is where blacks are.

ROB
Well I agree with that. But I will say, if you look at being the worker… But organized workers are… that's how you take on organized capital. Harder to do because the people that own the facilities know how to take a few to divide against the many.

MARK PHI
Correct.

ROB
This is how communities are organized. But if you can organize yourself, that's how you get the power because at the end of the day, more people equals more power as long as the people are organized.

MARK PHI
I think “Power” is a strong word. I think what we get is “Influence.”

ROB
Yeah. “Influence” is power.

MARK PHI
Influence is, I think, a dynamic within the whole power construct, right?

ROB
I agree. But as far as the influence, that's most of the ball game, right, because if you're able to influence people with your art, with whatever you do--

With influence comes money if you know how to use it, right? With money comes power. And then the ability to articulate your message, it becomes a powerful idea. I mean the most powerful thing America has is this… You know, we hold these truths to be self-evident that it's a beacon of light. At the same time, it's that contrast with that.
So if you can use the influence to say, “America is not doing this,” that will cost Americans money. And perhaps they want you to keep that house to keep themselves from looking bad for the rest of the neighborhood.

So I do think art has that power. People have that power if they use it. But they usually don't because I think some people, they don't use their own power consistently or they give away their own power.

Let me move to another question that I had about this art and how this moment inspired you [to]... “Change” might not be the right word but “further inform.” I know your daughter means a lot to you and you've had more intentional time with her during the Covid-19 pandemic.

MARK PHI
Right.

ROB
Talk about how this piece reflected your family's legacy in your daughter.

MARK PHI
So I’ll tell you a quick story about legacy. My father is a Sierra Leonean as I said as is by my mom in Jamaica and I connected with him maybe once or twice in my childhood. It was in my adult years that I connected with him. And I never really understood legacy until I went to Africa and what it really meant.

Before he passed away, I took a trip to Sierra Leone in 2005 to visit him. And on that trip, he really gave me a rundown of who I was. I had some idea but not to that extent. My great-great grandfather was one of the 50 greatest men of Sierra Leone. He's like one of the national heroes in Sierra Leone. And so our history goes back… If you go to Google right now and type in “Gumbu Smart,” you'll see excerpts from history books that talk about what he did.

ROB
That’s awesome.

MARK PHI
So my lineage comes from that -- like a direct line through my father. And so understanding that and seeing what he did… What my great-great-grandfather did was he basically was able to trick the English to get his own slaves to start a rebellion, to create a town that they couldn't control them anymore.

ROB
Wow.

MARK PHI
So that history, when you understand that part of where you came from is one thing. And then even though I didn't have a relationship with my father -- I was very close -- going back to Sierra Leone and connecting and seeing what he had done had a pretty big impact on me. He was a politician.

In 2009, I had an opportunity to go there and start a business and that is when I think it really hit home because… I heard it before and understood it like theoretically from the stories that he told me and the things that he shared with me but then going and starting a business there and then moving around and realizing the access that I had all the way up to the highest office because of all the things that he had done and the fact that I could literally walk into an office… And I’ve done it so many times where I say who I am and the person standing there basically start telling me a one-hour story about how my dad helped them and saved their kids and did a whole bunch of things for them and how they admire him.

ROB
Wow.

MARK PHI
And so that changed my perspective about legacy and changed my perspective just about what you leave behind. And even though my father wasn't necessarily the father that I probably wanted or needed in my life but at that time, what he left behind is still something that I was able to go and pick up on because he laid a foundation and left a legacy behind that me, his son, could go back to. So understanding that legacy--

And now, of course, having the last 10 years plus doing business there and wanting to really connect people back to Africa because understanding how my ancestral background changed me and just changed my identity altogether, just knowing that within my blood, it's like saying that George Washington is my great-great grandfather. It's like that's a direct lineage. And for that to be in your blood, you kind of have--

And then you see your dad do the same things by his experience, leave something that makes me feel I need to do something as well. It may not necessarily be the same thing but I definitely need to do something.

So having my daughter, when I watched the video and contemplating it… You know, we've been doing this in America for a long time. My focus now is to go back to Africa. I believe that that is where black people should go back to. That's our home. We need to go back and make our home and build our own house as I was saying to you earlier.

ROB
So that's the key. That's what I was going to ask you about what you meant by building a house and how do you see the solution and you're answering that. Go ahead.

MARK PHI
Yeah. So having my daughter and seeing her, I think about so many things in my life now just evolve. They say when you have a child, it changes you and I really understand that because I think about so many things now from the perspective of how it will impact her, not just how it's going to impact my life.

ROB
Yes. And I remember you saying that you wanted that if she asked where you were, what you were doing at this moment, you wanted to be able to answer her in a way that made her proud.

MARK PHI
Correct, that I did something. Not only from that perspective but… Just like my dad didn't know what he left behind necessarily and how I would be able to go and leverage that, my daughter is going to be in a world after I’m gone -- hopefully, it'll be a very, very long time from now -- and I want to be able to do something that can make this world better for her. And not just her world in this small way but in a way that's material that really can contribute to that change.

So the painting, all those emotions and those thoughts and the experience that I have and understanding where I came from and wanting to do something all got into this piece here and wanting to also communicate… How can I put it? I also wanted to communicate what my vision or thought that I believe would help us to get to where we need to be.

ROB
Yeah, makes sense.

MARK PHI
My daughter is basically a big part of the inspiration of why I did this piece. I don't want her to live in a world, 30 years from now, where we're talking about this stuff. And if we are, we're talking about it in a different way.

ROB
Yeah. Let's hope because the conversation certainly hasn't changed much in my lifetime. I even think, in some ways, we've regressed since the… Of course we're much better than we were in the ‘50s or ‘60s. I make some arguments about the ‘80s though. I think we've kind of regressed in terms of some things and we need to… Yeah, I don't want to have the same exact conversation. I don't want our kids to be saying and having a podcast dealing with the same exact issue 30 years from now.

MARK PHI
Exactly. Exactly.

ROB
Let us pray. Or at a minimum, there are more of us that are able to do more at that time.

MARK PHI
Right.

ROB
Talk to me about some of the contrasts in your piece. I know you have one side that's white with black writing and I see one side that is black background with a white writing. What's the thought process behind that if there was any? I’m sure it was intentional.

MARK PHI
Yeah. That's really the polarity, right? It kind of talks to the dynamics of what we're talking about right now. It's black and white in America, right? It's black and white what we're talking about from this general perspective. And then it's also black and white because it's black people and white people.

ROB
Yeah.

MARK PHI
Black and white are two opposite ends of the spectrum, right? If you look at the spectrum, there's everything that comes in between that. The background is really something that was used to kind of talk… not “kind of” but was used to talk to everyone to communicate it.

And the background, also, there's something that's written on it. And it's black on black and white on white. So on the black side, it says, “We are all humans.” In the white side, it says, “Black lives matter.” That was done to basically kind of talk to the different people.

ROB
So on the white side, it says, “Black lives matter.”

MARK PHI
“Matter,” right.

ROB
That’s on the white side because the black side understands black lives are supposed to matter. You're making a statement on the white side that this is why we say this and we just wanted to be treated as humans.

MARK PHI
Correct, and who we're talking to. So that white side, we're not talking to black people. I don't need to say… you know.

ROB
Yeah, which is interesting. I never understood the confusion with “Black lives matter.” We're not saying that that's the only lives that matter. We want you to understand that our lives matter. That's it. It's not a complicated statement.

MARK PHI
Right. So that's a part of the whole conflicted part with me as well. When I hear “Black lives matter” -- and I talked about this. I think it's the second episode -- it makes me feel powerless.

ROB
Hmm, tell me more. Tell me more. Why does saying “Black lives matter” make you feel powerless?

MARK PHI
Because I’m not talking to black people.

ROB
Hmm, you're right. Interesting.

MARK PHI
I’m not telling a black person that black lives matter.

ROB
Like you're saying, “Please acknowledge that our lives matter. Please acknowledge. Please accept us.”

MARK PHI
Right. If I’m asking someone else to acknowledge me, I’m asking--

ROB
Which is fascinating because… You're right. I never thought about it from that perspective but I understand it. I can see it. And the interesting part is that many white people have the exact opposite. They think that you're trying to tell them that you hate white lives or something.

MARK PHI
Right. How do you get it, right.

ROB
[Laughter] I’m serious. Right?

MARK PHI
Exactly. So it’s very different. The reason I put “Black lives matter” on the white side is because we're telling white people that black lives matter. It's talking to them. The message, the movement is talking to them.

But I put it on a white, and I didn't want to be prominent, because inside of me, I know that's the movement and I know there's more to the movement than just the words. There's like all the action that comes behind it. But it's what everyone is behind at the moment. But inside of me, it makes me feel like I am asking somebody else to acknowledge me. It makes me feel like I’m asking someone else to matter, right?

If I have power, I don't need to tell you I have power. I can just show you, right? I don't need to go say, “Black lives matter.” I need you to come and try to show me that my life doesn't matter and I’ll show you that, “Hey, my life does matter.”

ROB
That's a hell of a way of looking at it.

MARK PHI
Right? I don't need your permission to provide… Right? And if I feel you're doing something that makes me feel like my life is in jeopardy, I can do something and will do something about it because I don't want to feel that way. I don't need you to be the one to give me what I need to make me feel like my life matters.

ROB
Yeah. I mean that's an interesting point of view looking at it that way. Why are we waiting for somebody to acknowledge that our lives matter? We know that it does. We got to make sure that they understand that through whatever means -- through policies, through action. I think that's a good way to look at it.

MARK PHI
Yeah. And that's a power dynamic. That is the power dynamic. And that's why I say that I feel, to a large degree, that is another plea. It’s just one more plea.

ROB
Yeah. And I see on the other side that you have a heart. That's your optimistic side. You got your cynical side. You used all kinds of contrasts here. That's your optimistic side?

MARK PHI
Yeah. It's a conflict. -- It is a conflict. -- It is that battle between two polarizing ideas.

ROB
Yeah. I have one final question as we get ready to wrap up. The connection to Africa and your connection, obviously, being, let's say, all Black Americans are from Africa, one way or another… And you make a really good argument. Everybody is from Africa, one way or another.

MARK PHI
Not because you are but that’s exactly what the other side says, right? So the painting is made to read on one side, “Black lives matter” and on the other side, “We are all humans.” But I also made the painting so you can read it all the way across -- so from the black going into the white.

So if you read the top line, it says, “We are black.” -- “We are black,” right? -- And then in the middle, it says, “All lives” and the bottom, it says, “Humans matter.”

At the end of the day, we are all black. We all came from the cradle of humanity which is Africa. I don't care whether you're black, white, Chinese or anything else, you came from Africa.

ROB
I can't remember if it's Toni Morrison who said this, “Whiteness is understood in context to blackness.” That's why that term was literally created. Both the terms were created. That’s why they were created, yeah.

MARK PHI
Right, yeah. Everything comes out of black even the very universe. Creation of the whole universe came out of nothing. It came out of blackness, right? Higher consciousness is what that other side is really about, right -- wanting to project love. And love is not necessarily that fuzzy love where it's feel good but it's love for self, it's love for humanity and elevated consciousness where we are no longer looking at each other and seeing just the color of our skin anymore which is, I believe, the place that we need to be working towards.

ROB
Well that's exactly what Dr. Martin Luther King was. Lots of people -- conservatives and corporate folks -- like to quote only the stuff that aligns with what they believe. But when he talked about love, he said, basically, “Peace isn't the absence of tension. It's the presence of justice.”

MARK PHI
Right.

ROB
I’m not talking about loving people -- to love and just be all lovey-dovey. And he also mentioned, which is to your point, and I might get the quote wrong, he said, “Power without love is reckless and abusive but love without power is just sentimental and anemic.” You can do nothing with it so you need both. You need love and you need power together. That’s one.

MARK PHI
Yeah, correct. And it's demonstration. You have to demonstrate love. I think that there's action that's required. Love is a verb so you have--

ROB
Because once you acknowledged something, if you acknowledged black lives are supposed to matter and they're not, what are you willing to do? What are you willing to give up? What are you willing to sacrifice? How are you willing to put yourself out to change your position -- otherwise, you're not showing love. I get it.

MARK PHI
Exactly. It's action, yeah. 100%, yeah.

ROB
It’s action. It’s action work.

MARK PHI
Mm-hmm.

ROB
So last part I want to talk about is really Africa a little bit more. We mentioned the fact that many Black Americans like to separate Africans who come here as if there’s… You know, “We got to separate Black Americans. We got to hold on to the black part of our experience, the culture, and make that completely separate from the African.” You believe that's a mistake? I believe. You tell me why. That's my first question.

MARK PHI
Okay.

ROB
My second question I would challenge you on is that I do think the reverse is truth… These are all obviously complete generalizations but I think they have some basis, in fact, that many Africans who come here want to disassociate from being black because they see it as powerless and they don't want to be associated with that. You can agree or disagree with either one of those statements but take those.

MARK PHI
I’ll touch on both of them.

ROB
You’ll touch on both.

MARK PHI
Yeah.

ROB
It’s disruption now, baby. We got to keep things going.

MARK PHI
I get it. So a lot of the conversations I have with Black Americans is… I think because of colonialism and slavery and what's been indoctrinated within blacks in America, their identities have been taken away, right? So they took your tongue. They took your language when you got here. They took your name when you got here and they gave you their own. And they took your culture and they gave you a culture that they were comfortable with you associating yourself with, right?

So whatever you have now in this society that is black is not necessarily a result of what you may have chosen. It's what you've been allowed to have, right -- to be this group of people.
So they took your names and took your dance and they took all these different dynamics of your identity. And even took your pride, right, in the way they broke you down. They gave you their religion and took yours away.

So you're not left with anything that's really truly yours anymore. It's all the things that have been given to you and given to you in a way where it's not to completely empower you but it’s to keep you in a subservient manner.

So psychologically, that is what it means when you talk about being “Black American.” And if you just associate yourself with being an American and a black person in America without realizing that you came from something else where you had an identity -- You had a name that was truly yours. You had a culture that was truly yours. You had a self-awareness and consciousness that was truly yours, not one that was created for you -- you have a very different perspective. And I say that if you start off as a Black American then you start off as a slave and your history starts off as a slave and you basically are cutting yourself off from your--

ROB
And our history is so much richer than that.

MARK PHI
Exactly. Our history is so much richer.

ROB
Yeah, because it’s not going to end with slavery.

MARK PHI
Correct.

ROB
We were enslaved people. We weren't slaves. That's not our total history.

MARK PHI
Right, correct. Right, exactly. So from that perspective, when I think about Black Americans… And I talk to them a lot. And this is not a generalization for everyone. But I do think that there is a pretty large group of Black Americans that don't connect with Africa and don't realize that they are African. And they look at Africa from the perspective of how it's been painted to them, right -- as primitive and people living in huts.
ROB
So what would surprise them about the Africa you know versus the Africa that… Obviously, Africa is a continent, not a country, so I’ll say that.

MARK PHI
Right.

ROB
But in terms of the countries you've been in in Africa, what do you think would surprise people based upon your experience?

MARK PHI
I think one of the things is the confidence, and you see this across the board -- the confidence in self. There's no insecurity in who you are as a black person in Africa, just generally speaking, because one of the things is you're not conscious about your skin when you don't have other people around you that are different.

ROB
Right.

MARK PHI
Right? You talk to the average black person that grew up predominantly black African countries, you’ll find that they don't necessarily look at themselves and think, “Oh I’m a black person.” It’s not until they come here, which goes to your question earlier, that they realize that… They know that there's a difference because now… They may not even necessarily look at white people in a negative way until they come and they associate how they're being treated.

ROB
You had something with your friend who came here who forgot where he's from. He's from Jamaica or some--

MARK PHI
From Sierra Leone.

ROB
Sierra Leone.

MARK PHI
He’s from Sierra Leone as well.

ROB
From Sierra Leone. He had that same attitude you discussed with not really differentiating black and white, didn’t really care as well, and then he comes here and he had a very different perspective, right?
MARK PHI
Right. I think you hear about it and when you hear about something and you experience it, two different things, right?

ROB
Right.

MARK PHI
You might have read about it and heard about what it's like here but… For him, it's been a wake up--

I remember a lucky guy wins a visa lottery to come here. A friend asked me can I help him to get on his feet here. So when he comes, we sit down and we start having some conversations. And I remember I’ve never had to have this conversation with someone before and I had to talk to him about what it's like interacting with the police in America. And I remember having that conversation the first week. And I think to myself, “Oh--”

And it dawned on me as I was having a conversation with him… because I’ve never had to have it with someone else before. But I had to educate him about how to operate yourself when you're pulled over, when you're dealing with the police, what to do, what not to do, what's acceptable. Put your hands on the wheel. Make sure that you don't [indiscernible - 46:57]. You know, “These are your rights.”

I knew that where he came from, the police officer that's pulling you over and doing whatever he wants to do is black and he's definitely not looking to kill you.

ROB
Right.

MARK PHI
Right? So it's a whole another power dynamic. Months later, when the whole George Floyd situation happened, he felt that fear building up inside him because before, he wasn't conscious about driving on the street. And if somebody pulled him over, he’s like, “Ah…” If he’s going to get pulled over, no big deal. But now he's thinking, “Oh my god, being pulled over could literally mean me being dead.”

ROB
Yes, you can. Yes, you can.

MARK PHI
Right? So when you're there, you connect with your culture in a different way. And you feel very differently about yourself because you're around black people all the time. You're not thinking about the whole racial thing. You're thinking about, “How much money I can get.”

ROB
Right.

MARK PHI
“What can I do to get ahead” -- that's what you're thinking. You’re dealing with more like survival on more primal level than it is on the psychological differences that we create like race to divide ourselves.

ROB
Back to the African question on the other side of it, and I guess you kind of did answer that, the fact that they come here and just have a different view and quickly have to accommodate the view, I guess. I think the lesson in this is that we're all African Black -- whatever you want to call it. We have a common experience together.

MARK PHI
Correct, mm-hmm.

ROB
And we need to focus on how we can have collective impact, use our power to change the dynamic, to change the construct and not ask permission but to simply start doing it and moving forward with it.

MARK PHI
Yeah. Here's a disruptive for you, Rob… and I talked about this in the docu-series. You know you have MAGA, right?

ROB
Yes.

MARK PHI
“Make America Great Again.” So I saw this hat… and I’ve basically stolen their phrase and I’m basically just going to be saying as much as I can to everyone. We need to make Africa home again.

ROB
Mm, that's good.

MARK PHI
Okay? I believe that we need to go back to our roots, go back and really find ourselves again. I think a lot of the destructive components of our community is as a result of the identity that we were forced to take on because of slavery which has been passed down to us from our ancestors. Not good, not bad, it's just what it is, right? Our communities are very destructive towards each other, I think.

ROB
Yeah.

MARK PHI
I believe that elevated consciousness that I talk about is a part of what we need. And I think when you get to that, you realize that, “I am not the identity that was given to me, collectively, as black people by these people that came and colonized and enslaved us.”

We are these blacks that we need to go find ourselves again. Go figure out who we are again, collectively, as a people and to leave this place that we were brought to create somebody else's house that was their vision of what they wanted with their systems.

And we need to go back and use just like the people that came over on the Mayflower to leave their oppressed Europe to come here and leave all the comforts and the advances and technology and all the things that they left. But they came with the knowledge and the resources and the know-how to build a new world, right, absent of the things that they didn't want in the world that they left.

And I think, right now, we are charged enough and we are able to communicate with each other enough and organize enough and come together enough to be able to start planting seeds that put us back in our home and connect us in a place where we are building our own house.

We are setting the rules. We are laying the foundation. We're the ones that are defining how it goes because we're in a house right now where if we want to change the colors of the walls, we got to go ask somebody else. And if that person is not okay with us changing the colors of the walls, we got to just live with it. We need to be able to build a house and lay the foundation. And it's hard.

America, I think, is probably the most amazing experiment ever taken on by humanity -- for some people to come with an idea of creating something that was completely different from anything else that ever existed in the world and for us to be here today as the most powerful nation in the world. Isn’t this an amazing feat regardless of all the things that they did to do it?

But I think that when they started, they may not have known exactly how it was going to turn out but they had a vision and they were willing to take the risk. They were willing to step out and leave the comforts of Europe and go build something that was truly theirs. And in building something that's truly yours, you're able to self-determine.

And I think all of these protests and all things that we're trying to fight for and plea for constantly are not… It's to basically try to change the color of the wall, right, where what we should be doing is building our own house. And it doesn't happen overnight, right?

ROB
Yeah.

MARK PHI
But I think if we never start, we never get there.

ROB
Yeah. -- Mark Phi. Mark Phi Creations. I appreciate you, brother. We're going to have you on again, I’m sure, at some other point. And I’m sure you'll be at the Disruption Now Summit. Definitely want you there. It’s a great talk as always.

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