Charlamagne Critiques NLP and the Cost of Thinking While Black

Oct 23, 2025

Charlamagne Tha God, renowned radio host of The Breakfast Club, joins the discussion to critique previous takes on anti-intellectualism within the Black community. He emphasizes that true intellectualism is defined by curiosity and knowledge for empowerment. The conversation dives into the feasibility of labor strikes, ongoing threats to voting rights, and why it's crucial for Black voices to occupy mainstream platforms. The dialogue stirs reflections on cultural engagement and the responsibility of media creators to address audience needs.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Trump's Restitution Bid Is A Novel Grift

Donald Trump seeks $230M from DOJ claiming restitution after cases were dismissed via presidential immunity.
Hosts and guests view this as a novel, ethically fraught legal maneuver with likely political payoff.

INSIGHT

Section 2's Weakening Threatens Representation

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act now places burden on voters to prove discrimination after preclearance ended.
Redistricting in the South has reduced Black access seats and threatens Congressional Black Caucus representation.

ADVICE

Treat A General Strike As Labor Sacrifice

Consider the historical role of general strikes, like during emancipation, when evaluating modern labor withholding.
Discuss practicalities: strikes mean withholding paychecks and require collective sacrifice and planning.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

On episode 102 of Native Land Pod, hosts Tiffany Cross, Angela Rye, Andrew Gillum, and Bakari Sellers are joined by Charlamagne Tha God, host of The Breakfast Club, to talk about the controversy NLP stirred up with our “anti-intellectualism” episode last week. Our hosts also cover Trump’s grifting, a call for a general strike, and an update on threats to the Voting Rights Act.

Trump is seeking $230M in damages from his own Justice Department for investigations into him, the 2016 Russia-election-interference investigation and the investigation into his handling of classified documents. Is it likely that he’ll actually get this money?

The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, has called for a general strike to push back against the actions of the Trump administration. He is the highest ranking public official to do so. We’ll hear his call to action and ask: what does it realistically look like for us to withhold our labor en masse? Are we ready for that??

Charlamagne Tha God has some criticism for our NLP hosts regarding the segment we did on Marc Lamont Hill, Queenzflip, and the Joe Budden Podcast last week. Charlamagne’s criticism mirrors many of the comments we’ve received. Our hosts respond to the critiques!

A quick explainer on the threats to the Voting Rights Act, please check out the special episode we did last week…

If you’d like to submit a question, check out our tutorial video: http://www.instagram.com/reel/C5j_oBXLIg0/ and send to @nativelandpod.

We are 376 days away from the midterm elections. Welcome home y’all!

—---------

We want to hear from you! Send us a video @nativelandpod and we may feature you on the podcast.

Instagram

X/Twitter

Facebook

NativeLandPod.com

Watch full episodes of Native Land Pod here on YouTube.

Native Land Pod is brought to you by Reasoned Choice Media.

Thank you to the Native Land Pod team:

Angela Rye as host, executive producer and cofounder of Reasoned Choice Media; Tiffany Cross as host and producer, Andrew Gillum as host and producer, and Lauren Hansen as executive producer; LoLo Mychael is our research producer, and Nikolas Harter is our editor and producer. Special thanks to Chris Morrow and Lenard McKelvey, co-founders of Reasoned Choice Media.

Theme music created by Daniel Laurent.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.