Black Lives Matter: Our Thoughts On The Riots, Protests, & Looting | My First Million Podcast

Shaan Puri

You know I one great quote I saw was

Sam Parr

is it are you seeing unrest and protesting and looting where you live

Shaan Puri

I'm seeing it because I'm just glued to twitter

Sam Parr

and me too

Shaan Puri

You know, I'm just scrolling and I can't believe my eyes. It is so sad. There are so many different things going on at the same time. The shitty part about that, to me, is that everybody pulls a different meaning away from it. If your bias going in is, you know, if you're a racist in one way, you're gonna look at this and say, "Oh man, they're rioting and looting, and this is awful! What do those small business owners do? Why are they getting their stores smashed?" Then, if you're somebody else looking at this, you're like, "Dude, people are sick of it! They've hit their breaking point." This has been going on for so long—this police brutality—and I totally understand what's going on. Other people are looking at it and they're sort of like, "Hey, what's up with these other malicious groups kind of hijacking the movement and just inciting violence?" You know, Antifa or some people believe it's Russia, China, whoever it is, who's dropping these pallets of bricks off trying to bait people into violence. Some people are just trying to make the world burn. There are all these things mixed together, and I think whoever you are, you're gonna select the evidence that supports your feeling. You're just gonna see more evidence towards your view, and it's gonna make people more divided.

Sam Parr

My friend shared something, and it was like four circles. It was about being **pissed off** about various issues: 1. **Racism in our country** and the Black Lives Matter movement. 2. **Businesses getting ruined**—this is not the right way to do it. 3. **The police**—I think most of them are good, but a few bad cops ruin it for everyone. Then I forget the fourth one. At the center, all the circles had a little bit of everything, and it was like, "You can be here." I was like, "That's how I feel. I'm angry and sad." So, what was the fourth one? I don't know what the fourth one was. Let's see... it was really great though. Did you happen to see this go around?

Shaan Puri

Didn't see that, but no, that explains exactly how I feel, you know, and how many people feel. I think it's really crazy. There are a whole bunch of things that you hear or learn from these experiences where you're like, "Oh, that is a sort of a nugget of wisdom," and a bit of empathy that I didn't have before. When you see people that are... you know, one great quote I saw was, "When you have 1,000 good cops and 10 bad cops, but the good cops don't police the bad cops, then you have 1,010 bad cops." I believe that. That sort of applies to my life too. Anytime I stand by and do nothing while injustice is happening, that makes me sort of complicit in my own way, right? I think about little minor examples of that in my own life, and then... you know.

Sam Parr

It was George Floyd's death that was murder, and the police should be held responsible. I think most cops are good, but police departments are corrupt, and there are some bad cops. Looting businesses and destroying property is immoral; it hurts the cause. I empathize with and agree with Black Lives Matter protesters and believe in their right to be heard. And then, right in the middle, I was like, "I am here, and this is sad."

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah, it's really crazy. I know people don't listen to this podcast to hear talks about socioeconomic issues and racism and whatnot, but I think this affects everybody. It is very different than anything that's happened in my lifetime, where you have riots breaking out across the nation all simultaneously. Things really do feel like they've hit a breaking point. For many reasons, I think also the fact that people were pent up at home for the last three months doesn't help necessarily. That's sort of a bunch of water boiling over at a certain point as well.

Sam Parr

I agree. I don't even love discussing this stuff because I don't think about it a lot. I also tend to try to talk about the positive. But let me bring something up that I don't think I have brought up, and I want to hear your opinion. So, this doesn't matter, and it doesn't change anything. I don't think it should validate or invalidate anything I say. My wife's black, my family's black, and I'll have black children—half black or partially black children. This was the first time that I was at my house with Sarah, my wife, and she broke down. She said, "I don't know where I fit in on this." She's a successful black woman, and she said, "I haven't had a lot of racist stuff happen to me, or if any." It was just a total mind... you know, it was a total mind... it was just a total mind... it was incredibly exhausting. I was like, "What am I supposed to do? I don't know what to feel." Do you, you're Indian, do you consider yourself white or not white, or what?

Shaan Puri

definitely don't consider myself white and nor nor does anyone who sees me thinks I'm white but well

Sam Parr

I don't know like how no

Shaan Puri

But I get what you mean in the sense of, like, in some ways, do you feel that you're privileged or prejudiced against? I think that's a different way of looking at it. You know, my sister... so I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is, you know, not the most open-minded and racially friendly place. My sister, when she was in kindergarten, students would draw a picture of a pig and then write her name on it and cover the...

Sam Parr

pig in

Shaan Puri

Mud in brown... They would give it to the teacher, and the teacher laughed. My sister always remembers this; she was, I don't know, 6 years old, and she vividly remembers the teacher sort of looking at this and laughing, saying, "No, no, no, put it away," but like being, you know, involved in it. And I never...

Sam Parr

assumed I don't understand that what what's the pick have to do is that because just like

Shaan Puri

Brown, brown, dirty in the mud, you know, that sort of thing. I remember when she went to my mom, it was like, "Why can't we be white?" It was like asking questions as a kid, just trying to understand, "Why am I different? What does that mean? Why do other people think we're worse than them?" I personally never experienced that because I luckily moved out of Oklahoma when I was really young and went to different places where it was less so, or I just got lucky in terms of my experiences around who I was around. But I guess I would say, like, you know, when 9/11 happened, it’s not fun to be a brown guy in America, right?

Sam Parr

are you are you any religion are you muslim

Shaan Puri

No, I'm not religious, but I would be Hindu. Yeah, I would be Hindu, but you know, that's typically what most Indian people are. But yeah, I’m not religious, but I do grow a beard pretty quickly. So, like, you know, when I go to the airport, I think about how I look today. I don't want to get hassled for no reason. Let me shave before I get on this flight. I had friends who are Muslim and had their house keys taken away from them at TSA because they were considered potentially dangerous. They were like, "This is my apartment key, what are you talking about?"

Sam Parr

How does that make you feel? So, the fact that you have to shave, are you angry? Where do you... what's that make you feel like?

Shaan Puri

I'm not angry about it, you know? I sort of have this opinion that, if you're going to boil it down to any one thing, the only thing you have control over is your attitude towards the present moment. So, that's empowering and disempowering, right? It's disempowering because it's like, "Shit, I can't control anything that's going on. I can't control how other people feel, how they're going to act, or the results I'm going to get in my life." But it's also empowering. The one thing I can control is my attitude towards the moment. That sort of becomes a superpower because then, no matter what the situation is, no matter what the moment is, I can decide what my attitude about it is going to be. For example, when something negative happens to me—someone says something hurtful, or I get that extra sort of, "Hey, come into this room while I go through TSA clearance"—the meaning I put on that is of my choosing. If I interpret it as, "I'm less than," or "I'm being wronged," that doesn't help me; it makes me feel like shit. So, I just decide not to feel that way. But I know that, in the grand scheme of things, I get off pretty light. It's very different than never feeling safe, you know, going for a jog in your neighborhood or something like that. I think there are levels to it, and I haven't experienced those levels where it would be very, very challenging to put a positive meaning on what's going on.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's just a confusing time because you feel so many different emotions, and some of them are opposite. I had to talk to the whole company today, which is small—let's say 20 or 30 people. I was like, "I don't know what to say other than if you guys ever feel out of place somewhere, like in our company, we're going to make you feel safe. We'll hire all types of people." I wasn't sure if that felt weak or like, "Oh, that's barely anything to be done." But I was like, "I don't know how to handle this other than to say you're safe here."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you know, I think that's the right approach. It's not about having the answer, or the wisdom, or the most heartfelt thing, or the best speech. But I think it is important, if you're the leader, to show up as a decent human being in that moment and just say, "Look, I understand. I'm also feeling this crazy mix of emotions. I just want to do my best with this." We're going to try to do our best with this. I think it goes a long way to just be a decent person and try to be present and visible there, versus kind of shying away from it, which is what a lot of people do.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's crazy. I have a feeling that once I have children, my perspective is going to change a lot. Not just my opinion, but I think I'll learn a lot. Having Black kids or part-Black kids, I think I'll maybe see something that I didn't previously see.

Shaan Puri

And one more thing, which you know we can cut all this out if people tell us later, "Hey, you shouldn't have talked about this on the pod." But did you watch the Trevor Noah thing that he posted on YouTube or whatever?

Sam Parr

I did not. I'm typically not a fan of his. I think that a lot of the times the stuff he says is the wrong take, so I tend to avoid him. But I would watch it if you suggest it.

Shaan Puri

I I avoid him because he I don't think he's that funny but I did watch this thing and you know he he brings up like what's going on he's like yeah a lot of people are looking at what's going on and saying well this isn't right either right of course police should not murder citizens that's wrong but also rioting and looting and destroying things is also not right and what his. Was which I think made me better understand what was going on his. Was like you gotta think about this what is society you know society is essentially a contract it is an agreement amongst a group of people of here's what's right and wrong of how we're gonna act here's the behaviors that are tolerated here's the behaviors that are not tolerated he goes so what you're saying is that one side of contract you know if we're if we're if we go into a contract together and you're just breaching your side of the contract regularly and without recourse and I just see wow this guy just keeps breaching his side of the contract then I also have no no desire or incentive to uphold my side of the contract he goes you'll see somebody that's homeless and you know they don't go and just murder necessarily because because they're in a bad position they say look these are the rules of the game I'm losing in the current game or I have not been able to sort of get to an advantage position in this game but like I still respect that we're in a game together and there are rules of this game he goes what you're seeing now is that a group of people you know black people in america feel like the contract has just been breached over and over and over again where there you know unnecessary and unjust violence against us and so now we're gonna breach the contract too and we're gonna sort of make it very known what it feels like when the contract is being breached for apparently no reason and it doesn't seem like a positive thing and so that made me look at you know when somebody is either protesting whether it's peacefully or not peacefully when somebody's rioting and they're creating a sort of unsafe environment for all it sort of I don't know it sort of explained to me why somebody would behave that way because if you feel like the other parties just internally breached the contract and then there's no recourse then it's like I'm gonna internally breach the contract and and and we'll see we'll see how it feels and now both sides feel what it's like when the societal contract gets totally breached unless

Sam Parr

You have your attention. I feel it. It definitely feels like the end of the world a little bit. It's like a small... it's like, in the same way having a new puppy is just a small taste of having a baby. That's how I feel right now. If everything that I believed in is going to come to an end, it's going to be like... a little like this, right?

Shaan Puri

Know, for every sad story, there's also an inspiring story. People are, you know, waking up the next day and going out to clean up the city. There are people standing together, and I think there's a lot of really positive things going on too. I think that's the, you know, the silver lining or that's the other side of the coin here. Where is progress being made?