05/06/2019
Roderick Bradley
“Hello, hi. I’m Roderick Bradley. I work in Marin City, I live here. I’ve been here for about nine years. I work for a landscaping company. I’ve been with my job five years next month. It’s a great community - really nice people. The five years I’ve been doing this job I’ve met a lot of nice residents here - older people that have been here for generations. They kind of enjoy talking to me - it’s the impression I get, which is fine. It’s a beautiful area.
As a little boy born in 1964, you know I found out about slavery; I found out about Martin Luther King being killed. And it bothered me. And I always wondered why do white people hate us so much? What did we do to them? And as a little boy growing up I was searching for answers and the same answers came back to me - nothing. What did we do to the white man? Slavery was nothing but greed and evil - period - to serve another race, you know.
I’ve always hated… well I don’t hate the world. I’m going to say I don’t hate the world like I did when I was a little boy. I’m older now and I realize what the deal is. And you know, it is what it is. You know, I’ve been watching these presidential candidates running for president. This one white woman said… talking about reparations. I don’t see it ever happening, after hundreds of years to serve another race. You know… and you have all these hate groups out here now - Neo N***s, K*K, right wing groups. You have all these hate groups that are behind Trump, President Trump and it would tear this world apart. You know, white people would say, “why should we pay them?”. You already got the answer, but it will never happen. It is what it is, part of our history unfortunately; and it is what it is.
You know, if you’re not a professional athlete - basketball player, football player or a black guy that can run fast or jump high… You know, they’re a lot of… I really don’t want to bring a lot of race into this but the way I am trying to tell this story is if you’re not famous, rich athlete that can run fast, jump high most white people don’t give a darn about you. You know, they look at you like just another “N”, that’s it - nothing special about you. The percentage of black people, young black people that are going to make it to a professional level, or even college maybe is very low. So, you know, you have this other race that looks at black folks, colored folks that have achieved that… they’re cheering and stuff, but if they see you in Safeway, a grocery store, or anywhere they might not even say hello to you. So that’s my reality - just the way this world is. Like I said as a little boy I hated this world; it wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair. So I guess that’s about it.
My hope is to get Trump up out of there. That’s my hope. Because his whole candidacy running for President was really based on hate. And everybody know it! He claims he’s not a racist but even before he became President there were so many indicators of the opposite. Get him up out of there because it’s like he’s trying to turn back the hands of time, almost literally putting black people back in chains and beat the crap out of us to serve them… like he’s trying to turn back the hands of time. I don’t think it will go back that far, but the division he has created since he’s been in office - you know, insulting women, handicap people, I can’t even remember the other things he did. We’ve never had a president like this, it’s horrible. You know it frightens a lot of people, especially people of color, immigrants. You know I’m watching the news this morning, today is Sunday… talking about how thousands of people, immigrants are coming to the border. He wants to close the border now. I mean Honduras and some other places, I can’t remember which ones - one of them was Honduras, stopped giving them funds… Honduras is a very poor country. And I can’t think of the other ones mentioned on there. I don’t know, I guess that’s about it.”
