Good morning, good afternoon and good evening everybody.
It's your girl, Sonia McQueen with your mind,
your body, your choice.
All right, so I have this guest today.
This is my friend, my brother from another mother,
my ex manager who I'm begging to be my manager again,
Mr. Glendale Whitney.
Hello, Glenn.
Hey, love, how you doing?
I'm good and you guys just, I wanna let you know
he's in the mountains some day I'm where
with terrible service.
So if we lose Glenn, I'm sorry.
We'll just try again.
All right, Glenn, you know, you're one of my top seven.
So I had to have this time with you and you know,
we're tight today.
So are you ready?
I'm ready.
Okay, I'll tell you guys at the end if there's time
how I met Glenn.
And if not, I'll type it.
So Glenn, I know during all your years on this earth
you had time in the military.
Tell me about what took you to the military
and what branch you served
and how your stint was in the military.
Ah, well, coming from a small town in Missouri,
I had to get out of there.
And so one of the major catalysts besides the racism
was my father.
He was a very loving man, but he was a man of very few words.
And when I was 14 years old, he was walking past my room
and he said, you know, son, I love you, but you got to go.
And like I said, he was a man of faith.
Like I said, he was a man of few words.
So I was making sure that I had some place to go
by the time I graduated.
One also another factor, how I ended up in the military
was being back in Missouri, you know,
I went to an all white school
and the few blacks that were there,
we were the top athletes.
And we would also, one of the problems was that
as an athlete, when it came to scholarships
and promoting kids, they did not want to promote us
with the colleges because we were taking away positions
from other white kids.
Oh, wow.
Yes.
So I was making sure that nobody had control over my life
and that's how I ended up in the United States Navy.
In the Navy.
I won't hold the Navy against you seeing I'm an army girl.
So one of the main reasons I did want to interview you
just to change subjects from the things I normally speak of
is the racism part because, you know,
I ex-military as well and my father was ex-military
and I have never in my 53 years
been subject to any kind of racism, not outwardly.
You know, maybe people said things behind my back,
but I grew up with friends of all races.
I had German friends, I had Asian friends,
I had Caucasian friends, I had black friends.
I just had friends.
And it was no big deal for me to go stay the night
at my white friend's house or my Asian friend
or my German friend to stay the night at my,
it was no big deal.
And in my family, on my mom's side,
if you came to one of our family reunions,
you'd never know what race it is.
There's so many Caucasians, there's Dutch people,
there's German people, there's Mexican people,
there's black people, there's mixed people.
And it just looks like a smorgasbord of race.
But I know you didn't have it like that.
So besides the military and you,
well, your school, you facing some racism, just tell me
about, give me a couple of circumstances or situations
where you had to deal with racism.
Well, gosh, racism started,
my first experience, not as it's gonna sound crazy,
but I had never met, until I was four years old,
I'd never seen a white person.
Oh my gosh.
So then we moved to Kansas City
and my uncle, over staying with my uncle,
and he had a white neighbor.
And his kid was waving at me and summoning me over.
So I went over the fence to see this white kid.
And you know, I'm four years old, next thing I know,
I'm touching the fence and this kid starts
smacking my hands with a stick.
What?
Yes.
And I was shocked, but at the same time,
I wouldn't let go of the fence.
And my mother comes running over, screaming
and all the rest of it to try to solve it.
But that was my first experience.
How old was the kid about?
Oh, he was probably about eight years old.
He was considerably larger, yes.
And also when we moved from the inner city
after Dr. Martin Luther King got killed,
we moved to the suburbs.
My sister and I are playing in the snow
and a group of white boys are crashing sleds
into each other and they decided they wanna crash
into me and my sister.
So we get to the bottom of the hill, you know,
it's getting ready to be on and I just told my sister
to run and get help.
Oh, wow.
And because back in the day,
that's what they were used to doing.
You know what I'm saying?
And they were doing it with impunity
and this is what people were teaching their kids.
So I, I mean, I, this, this hate
that I could never understand,
I've had to accept that it exists.
And I've had, it's changed my life
and how I deal with people because, you know,
you go from being loving and accepting,
though I am at heart, but at the same time,
I've had to turn into this, this, this beast
that, you know, will choke you out, you know,
at the drop of a hat.
He is a beast, you guys.
I do wanna throw that in there.
He is, Glenn is not a small guy by any means.
He's, he's big and I don't mean fat.
I mean, he's, he's cocked, dieseled out, you know,
all muscular and he's tall on top of that.
And, and he is serious about life.
So I feel sorry for anybody who just wants to take that.
That's something him and my oldest brother have in common.
Just big for no reason.
And, and they, they're serious about their lives
and the lives of people who are around them.
So Glenn, I know even with that as a kid,
it didn't end there for you because then you grew up,
you went into military and then you became,
was your next move being a police officer?
Yes.
And then you faced racism there, right?
Yes.
Oh my gosh.
You know, and it's funny, the, the, the military is a,
you know, being, being on a submarine,
everybody's lives are in each other's hands.
And so whatever pettiness, you know,
or idiosyncrasies you have,
you have to sit that aside in order to survive.
That's right.
But it's not like that out here in ComSyfPAC
is what we used to call it, being a civilian.
So I get to the police department
on the all white police department,
except for the seven of us that were black,
there were 11 Hispanic males.
There was one Asian.
That's right.
And there were 23 female whites and over a hundred male whites.
Oh my gosh.
And we had to deal with the issues of us black officers.
They would put us all separated on shifts
where no two blacks could work together.
And if we ever saw each other in court,
they would all stop and look at us until we disbanded.
So here's, here's, here's something I want to touch on
just real quick.
I've never had a problem with the police officer at all,
but I do notice, you know, when I watch the news,
it's always when white officers kill a black man mostly,
but there have been some black women as well.
There's always the question,
why are black officers standing around watching?
Why aren't they doing anything?
Why aren't they speaking up?
Is there really like a band of brothers,
even though you guys are also being racially discriminated against?
Is there a band of brothers where you still have to protect
this cop doing wrong?
Well, I'll say it like this.
For every race of people or every gender of people
that have been subjugated or abused,
there's always been members of their communities
who have collaborated with their oppressors.
And as far as law enforcement is concerned,
there are some black cops that try to play
like everybody else, we're just blue.
But at the end of the day,
they're just another nigger with a gun when they get off duty.
And what a lot of people don't realize was back in the 80s,
the number one killer of law enforcement officers
and black law enforcement in Los Angeles
was white law enforcement officers.
Because when you get off duty,
you're just another nigger with a gun.
Just another nigger with a gun.
That's the reality.
And the term that they used to use was,
for us was second class badge.
So at this, the city that I worked for at that time
was the city of Santa Monica.
And a lot of people think that Santa Monica, California
is a very liberal city.
It is not.
And like I said, we would have running nigger targets
on our lockers.
I had a gentleman, I had a, that I arrested,
well, what happened was that
an assault victim and a white officer
was screaming for a code nine.
We go, we set up a perimeter.
I see the gentleman up under a vehicle.
It's a male black, I see him, he sees me.
I called in everyone, we were just gonna go in.
I thought to arrest him.
And next thing I know, I see the guy
that I'd been riding with all night,
screaming at him, freeze, you MF,
you know, I'm gonna kill you.
Well, all night in the car,
he had, he'd been talking about shooting somebody
because he just got a new gun
and he wanted to see how it worked.
Shooting somebody because he got a new gun?
Yes, because he got a new gun, yes.
So when he started screaming at this guy,
I'm like, oh my God, he's getting ready to kill him.
And the guy looks at me and I'm looking at him
and the brother just takes off running.
And I just stayed down behind the car
because I didn't wanna see him get shot.
Well, after a few seconds and no shots are ringing,
I come from behind the vehicle.
I take off running.
We ran probably about a quarter of a mile.
We outran the perimeter.
I end up catching him, handcuffing him.
And we started laughing because we're two brothers.
I mean, it was a track meet.
So finally, the supervisor and the other officers
show up at the scene.
We're both sitting on the ground.
He's got his hands handcuffed behind his back
and they turn the canine looks.
So now I've got a German shepherd
running at two brothers on the ground
and I'm not trying to get fit.
So I rolled out of the way.
And next thing I know, this dog jumps into this guy's stomach
and he's on the ground screaming and he's kicking
and trying to get away from the dog.
And I'm like, what in the hell are y'all doing?
And then they run up on me patting me on the back way.
If they make you chase them, you gotta kick them.
And they were started stomping this guy.
Oh my gosh.
My supervisor is sitting there watching this like this is,
you know, this is part for the course.
Well, once they found out that I was not down for that,
I started having problems at the police department.
And I end up leaving there
and going to an all black police department
and I myself, a brother named Don Jackson
and Henry McCray end up starting this organization
called Law Enforcement Officers for Justice.
And we were investigating officer involved shootings.
We were teaching people in the community
how to file complaints against officers.
And, you know, if you look up Don Jackson,
you'll see a video where Long Beach PD
puts his head through a play glass window.
That's us, you know, that's the organization.
And we ended up getting rid of four police chiefs
from different cities because of the stuff
that they were allowing these white officers
to do to black citizens.
I'm so dumbfounded right now.
I forgot we're interviewing.
You know, coming from first person,
I see this stuff on the news, you know,
it is foreign to me.
It's foreign to me.
I'm really kumbaya.
Everybody loves everybody, you know,
and I see the racism on TV and I'm like, wow, this is,
you know, it's sad.
A lot of these things have made me reduce me to tears,
but I keep thinking people really can't be that bad.
There can't be that many bad people out there.
And I even think sometimes, well, you know,
how many other races get killed by police, you know,
how many, there was something on the news
maybe four or five months ago saying
that they don't sensationalize white people getting killed
by white cops, but white people get killed by white cops
at a higher rate in percentage than black people.
And I was going to look into that and never did,
never looked into it, but.
That's true, but you have to take that into context.
That's why you always hear people talk about
black on black crime, right?
Right.
Well, you gotta realize you only have access
to what you're exposed to.
White people kill white people at a higher rate
because they have access to white people.
You understand what I'm saying?
Blacks kill blacks because we have access to blacks.
But what you don't have is the extradition,
extradition killing of people,
of white people by white officers.
But that's what you have with white on black.
That's the difference.
Very well put.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
Man, anything else you wanna share about any of this
before I move to the next subject?
No, it hurts my heart.
Yeah, that was something else for me
and that's something I didn't know.
I know a lot about you, but I didn't know any of that.
So I was just sitting here with my mouth open
and catching flies.
So, man.
Don't catch no flies, Mary.
Okay, I wanted to move on to your experience working
in television because you were not working in television
when I met you.
However, you were able to get me as my manager
on television quite often.
As a matter of fact, before I moved,
you, Dr. Phil's show had reached out to me.
Even Steve Harvey, I just found this email the other day.
Steve Harvey's show had reached out to me.
I didn't wanna do either one of those shows.
Now I kick myself.
Oprah's show Lost and Found reached out to me,
which I was going to do,
but then they went off the air the season
before I was supposed to be on the show.
And of course I was on, you know, Fox, ABC, CBS,
ABC, all that stuff.
You took care of all that.
So minus me, tell me about your career working
with television and I hope something went well.
Well, all while I was working in law enforcement,
I was writing and producing shows for public access.
You know, this was kind of my stress release.
And after I retired from the Compton Police Department,
I ended up going to Inside Edition American Journal.
Work there, met a lot of great people,
worked with the Geraldo's brother, Craig Rivera,
Chip White, who's Vanna White's brother.
It was a great crew.
It was a fantastic crew.
And while I was there, I was told I had to,
look at this way, the Lord told me I had to go
and start a production company back in Missouri.
So eventually I capitulate, I come back to Missouri
and I was working for a couple,
what was that?
I worked for a Christian radio television station
and then I ended up working for Fox News.
So here I am, Kansas City of Fox News.
And everybody, people don't understand
that everybody gets the same information
that comes over the Associated Press.
But then we were having people who wanted
to put their own slant on it.
And at that time, I was always getting into fights
in the newsroom about the crap that they were trying
to peddle.
So I would read the scripts and I would tell them,
you guys can't say this on air.
And everybody wanted to fight, I said, fine,
let me go find the $200,000 mouthpieces
gonna have to read this.
Fortunately at that time, it was a black person.
And she said, oh, hell no, I'm not reading this.
And that was the battle that I had working at Fox.
That was only at Fox though, not inside edition or?
No, not, no, no, this was only at Fox.
And then people were like,
I can finally tell people that this country
and the mindset that the people have, they don't understand,
it's been run by a billionaire, Ozzy,
who was all he cares about is money.
And we see now how it's all played out with Donald Duck
and the Dominion lawsuit and Rupert Murdoch,
hey, he's gonna lose big on this one,
but that's a whole nother subject.
But no, I ended up leaving there
because I got hired by a church in Leewood, Kansas
to start a production company,
which was the reason that God told me to go back
to Missouri in the first place.
And so started a production company, everything went great.
And then my father-in-law came down with ALS
and I had started my own production company also on the side.
I left the church, I had to go to Colorado
to take care of my father-in-law
with this bout of a Lou Gehrig's disease until he died.
And basically when you and I ended up hooking up,
I was no longer doing film and television production.
That's what I was doing security then
because it's funny how, well, you know how I look.
Yeah.
One of the problems that I have with people
is if I asked you to describe me,
if the first things you said were big and black,
you don't see me.
You understand what I'm saying?
And so I've always,
when you've always had people viewing you like that,
people will pay me crazy amounts of money
to hurt people, to train people.
I'm talking about private security and things like that.
I've worked for countless people.
I don't even wanna tell you who I've worked for.
But, you know, but for me to be able to go to a place
and say, you know what, I just wanna write,
I just wanna edit, I wanna produce stuff.
You know, but they want you to fit in their bubble,
in the parameters that they see you.
And unfortunately, that's where I was when we met.
Okay, well, it was my blessing
because now I can tell you guys,
because I see I have a few minutes here.
When I met Glenn, a friend had talked me into going out.
And I like going out to dance sometimes, you know,
but I was one of those people that I'm only going to dance
and I'm only dancing on the fast songs
and don't ask me to slow dance.
I don't know you like that.
So I was watching her dance
and I was sitting on like the top tier at this club.
Guys asked me to dance.
It was slow music.
So I was saying, no, thank you, no, thank you.
And I happened to notice Glenn.
And I'd noticed women walking up to Glenn to talk to him
and he would always like push him at a hands,
you know, arms length away from him.
And he would put his hands behind his back
and put his head down so he could hear them
because he's tall.
How tall are you, Glenn, about?
Six two.
Six two, okay.
So he would put his head down, you know,
his ear towards their mouth so he could hear them,
but never let them, you know, close enough to be under him.
Which was weird because the club I was in,
all the other bouncers were on the dance floor
and they were drinking.
So finally I got up, you know, I needed entertainment.
So I went over there to talk to him and I told him,
I was watching you.
And I noticed that every time a female came over here
to talk to you, you know, you would put your arm out
to keep him aware.
I was like, what are you doing?
And he laughed at me and he was like, you know,
I'm here to work, you know,
I'm not here to pick up anybody, I'm here to work.
I was like, yeah, but all the other guys are on the floor
and I think he called him idiots,
but he was just like, that's what they do.
That's what they do.
They drink, they have a good time,
but if something breaks out, you know,
somebody's gotta be responsible.
And I was impressed by that.
And so I don't know, somewhere in the conversation,
I did let him know I was an author and I must have found out
that he used to be on TV or something.
I was like, you know, I'm looking for a manager
and he laughed at me, I'll never forget that.
And I was like, well, I'm gonna get you my book.
And the next day I sent him my book,
or did I give you a copy?
You gave me a copy, yes.
Okay, I must have gave you a copy that night,
maybe I had him in my car.
Yes, yes, you had a copy in your car, yes.
He actually read it and called me within 24 hours
and said, okay, I'm gonna manage you and manage me, he did.
Oh my gosh, I've been on over 30 radio shows, including,
who was that lady who got mad and hung up on me at the end?
Mother Love.
Was that Mother Jones?
That was Mother Love, Mother Love.
Mother Love, yeah, Mother Love.
Yeah, I was like two minutes late
because I couldn't find a landline
and it had to be a landline.
And I went to the church to call her
and none of the landlines were working in the pastor,
couldn't get him to work to call outside of the area.
And when we finally got one that worked,
I was two minutes late and she was heated.
So at the very end, when she dismissed the call,
she hung up on me.
But I've been, you know, on the radio in England,
I've been on TV, like I said, I think the most,
even though it didn't happen,
the thing that made me feel better than anything else
was when you finally got John Singleton to be interested
in talking to you about a movie for my book.
And then he had to mess up and pass away on us.
Hey.
Like happy.
Yeah, we lost Mr. Singleton and I was like, wow,
but that just let me know, you know,
there was a lot of promise.
And then we went our separate ways
and you weren't my manager anymore,
but you know how you said earlier, God told you to go
and do the production company and,
or what he was telling you to do?
Yes.
I need you to go talk to him,
cause I'm almost positive he's telling you
to manage me again.
I'm almost positive.
He came up the other night, told me what's happening.
Oh girl, you know, I do anything for you, my girl.
You're my girl.
Yeah.
I promise you guys, if you look at Glenn,
he's a very nice looking guy.
He's got his head on his shoulders.
He's extremely intelligent.
But I'd never seen Glenn as nothing more
than my brother and my friend.
You know, even that night in the club,
I was more intrigued like, what in the world's going on?
You know, he's the only person here actually working.
So that intrigued me, but he is the gentleman
he portrayed himself to be, became friends
with my husband instantly.
My husband fell in love with him instantly,
which who wouldn't?
But Glenn, this was probably the most interesting podcast
I've done.
For me.
I am flattered.
I don't know why it's just my life.
Well, I know a lot about your life
and there were so many things I do want to tell the listeners.
I told Glenn, we could talk about anything
he wanted to talk about because he's got so many
interesting things in his life.
And there were some subjects I wanted to stay away from
and there were some he wanted to stay away from,
but for the most part, I could probably do
a five hour podcast with Glenn and he could probably go
from one thing to another to another
and it would all be intriguing.
Just a very interesting life.
Even if the some of the people he didn't mention before,
if he mentioned a couple of those names
just to talk about the work he's had to do.
And yeah, he's had a very,
I'm telling you, you should write a few books
about your life.
I'm still writing, I am still writing.
Yeah, those would be bestsellers.
In fact, the one that I'm working on,
I call it letters to my children
and it's just basically about life, my life
because kids really don't understand their parents.
They see them as mom and dad and it takes a long time
for people to see their parents as human beings.
And so that's why I'm writing this book to my kids.
And he has three phenomenal kids.
He really does one fallen in his footsteps,
but he's got three amazing juniors.
They all look like them.
And one just happens to be a beautiful girl,
but she still looks just like her daddy to me.
So.
Do I meant you left one out?
I've got four, I've got three sons and one daughter.
Wait, who am I missing?
You got Glenn, you got Grant, you have Garrison.
And then there's Garrison.
Garrison, Garrison, Garrison.
He's got three Gs, that's right.
He's getting ready to graduate with his master's degree
in education here in next month.
So.
Well, so does Keaton with his second masters in May,
but we'll talk about that later.
Yeah.
Well, my friend, do you have any final words
for the listeners?
We got two minutes left.
We did well.
Two minutes left?
Well, I will say this.
All the things that have happened in my life,
I would say a good 80% of the things that transpired
were for the benefit of other people.
And so one thing that I've come to realize
that our lives are not our own.
And if we really pay attention, think about us in society,
black people trying to get ahead.
If it wasn't for us, a lot of times reaching out,
you understand what I'm saying?
I mean, think about it.
How regular society works is based on nepotism,
is based on who you know.
Absolutely.
For those of us without access,
it is incumbent upon us to do and to strive
and to get to the place where we're in those positions
where we can reach out and take care of one another.
When I rise, you rise.
And that is just something that I want,
especially black people to understand.
I do the best for myself, but it's not just for myself.
That'll have to probably be another podcast, Glenn,
in a couple of weeks, because I just wanna say
really, really quickly what I noticed was
when my books came out and everything,
especially when you started getting me on those shows
that a lot of my brothers and sisters
became real phony with me, but my friends of other races,
they lifted me like crazy.
And it just seems that there seems to be a whole bunch
of jealousy within our own race or envy or something.
Now, not everybody,
because I've got some really good friends, but.
Yes, I have.
Yeah, it's just different with us.
Yes, we still suffer from the divide and conquer of slavery.
We still really do.
And me personally, I am the third generation
out of slavery in my family.
So if you understand that,
you understand that this issue is very recent.
And that's what.