Jibrial “19Keys” Muhammad was the special guest for the live debut and preview of music artist Chaka Bars’ new show, “Chaka Bars Culture x High LVL Conversation,” at REVOLT WORLD. During their conversation, they discussed some things that set Black Americans back and ways the community can move forward to change their position in society.

One thing 19Keys stressed was how valuable strong relationships are. He spoke of people of color not only connecting with the nation of Africa, but the Black community aligning, as well as the spirit of unifying.

“The tip of the spear can’t be from our ability to pull the trigger. It has to be from our ability to think. It has to be from our ability to love each other because that love produces a duty that we have to each other. And when we become duty bound, and I see you as my brother and my sister instead of a n**ga and b**ch, that’s a different game. N**gas and b**ches don’t protect each other, brother and sisters do,” the entrepreneur told the audience. “So if we want to put out the information in a promotion and a propaganda of you a b**ch, you a n**ga, aight then, [well] y’all gonna treat each other like that? You gonna be treated like that and you gonna stay unprotected.”

19Keys went on to list some of the common situations of the African-American family unit that have paralyzed them. He believes education plays a major role in helping people disrupt and shift to get to the core of the layered problems that exist.

“It always goes back to the family nucleus. It always goes back to the education. It goes back to the rights of passage. How many of us have rites of passage to where you don’t need to protect your child from the world to prepare them for the world, so you don’t have to protect them from the world,” he said to the live studio audience. “We are under fathered and over mothered, so you’re not getting that balance to go out there and be the man and be the woman. You’re the boy and the girl. You want to be the princess and the prince instead of the king and the queen, right? So when we talk about nation building, we have to always go to the root of the problem, not the fruit, right? The fruit stems from the branch, but when we actually go down and we dig in and we say, ‘Okay, what the hell going on down here?’”

To further push his point about knowledge being a fundamental key to success, the public speaker explained that because the Black community doesn’t soak up all the information needed, especially when it comes to financial literacy, they’re not taken seriously.

“We got technology s**t, we got AI. What’s the problem, right? They got blockchain, they got cryptocurrencies, you got the internet, social media, but how are we using it? We don’t have a lack of money, right? It’s the way we actually invest our money and what we [are] going to use it for, so everybody else laughs at us,” he said.

“They give you all the power and the greatest tools in the world ’cause they know that you don’t want any power with the tools. So we have to go back to actually having goals. And you start that with who’s going to control the future. Most time people think about the future, they’re afraid ’cause they don’t have their own plans, right? When you have your own plan [you say], ‘I’m going to influence the future.’ I think about, ‘Alright, this new technology [is] coming, well this is how I’m gonna use it right now,’” he added.

He continued this point by expressing how essential it is for us to navigate our evolution by going back to the drawing board to create tactical plans because that’s what other races do.

“Why [are] you scared of somebody else’s plans? ‘Cause you don’t have your own. So we have to get back to strategies where we take a step back and we look at what is working, what can we make work better, right? And what can we double down [on] that we [are] already doing that’s working?” 19Keys went on.

The speaker ended with a word of advice on how to gain respect and partnership from people outside of the Black community — and it starts with changing the viewpoint.

“We gonna protect y’all. We gonna hold the fort down. N**gas gonna stop being suckers. Women gonna stop being b**ches and we gonna hold it down here in America where we get respect and dignity from across the world. Then, they want to do business with us, but not from a begging and, ‘Oh, they oppressing us in America’ attitude. Ain’t nobody oppressing you but your mindset,” he said.