In this episode we speak to Ebony Roberts, founder of the United We Heal Film Festival, about the meaning of progress in the Black community and the role of art in that journey.

Listen to “The White Meat Podcast” on Spreaker.

Here’s the transcript:

David Dylan Thomas: Welcome everybody to the White Meat Podcast. I’m your host David Dylan Thomas, writer and director of White Meat, a movie with the following premise: underneath Washington Square Park in Philadelphia are buried the bodies of hundreds of enslaved people. This is true. What if one night they all come back from the dead as zombies, but they only eat white people?

So we have made a short film called White Meat Appetizer, and we’ve been on a bit of a run lately. Last episode I told you we won Best Experimental Short at Chain Film Festival. We just got back from a couple other festivals and we won awards there as well. So we went out to LA for Film Invasion LA, where we won Filmmakers Award for Outstanding Short Film Horror, and Filmmakers Award for Outstanding Writing Horror which is really gratifying ’cause I wrote it.

And so I’m really happy to see both of those. And then we came back home to Philadelphia, and we won Best Local Short at the Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival, where we also won Best Feature Screenplay for the feature screenplay for White Meat, which I actually wrote before making the short. And the short actually is a means to an end to get the feature made.

But it’s great to see that even before we make it, people are appreciating the screenplay and the short. So we’re having a great time. We’re having a great run. The Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival also gave me a tiara, which I wear proudly. You can find it on our Instagram, some nice shots of that for our efforts.

It’s a really fun festival, too. Very like as the name implies, kind of underground kind of punk vibe to that festival. Very Philly.

We are still going out to fests. In fact, this Saturday, we’re gonna be at the Long Beach Comic Con. And then so we’re returning to LA, and then at the end of September, we’re gonna be at the Horror Fest Film Fest in Wilmington.

I actually ran into the creators of that fest at Philadelphia Unnamed, so it’s a wonderful community of horror fans that we are we are building out here. So all of that, looking really forward to it. I’m gonna put all the dates and stuff and links on our website at whitemeatmovie.com. You can check that out.

In the meantime, speaking of film festivals and awards we have Ebony Roberts this week the founder of the United We Heal Film Festival, which to be honest, is one of the best festivals I’ve ever been to, and that’s not just because we won Audience Award at that festival which we are very gratified for.

But it’s a wonderful mostly Black community not that different from going to a Pan African Film Festival, and we talk a bit about that, what that vibe is like to be surrounded by artists of color at one of these things. It’s a great conversation and so we’ll get right to it our conversation with Ebony Roberts

[Musical Interlude]

David Dylan Thomas: Welcome to the White Meat Podcast. I’m your host, David Dylan Thomas, and our special guest today is Ebony Roberts. Ebony, tell the good folks here what it is you get up to.

Ebony Roberts: I get up to a lot, it’s just moving and grooving. But the way that I know David is through my film festival, the United We Heal Film Festival.

David Dylan Thomas: So I had a great time at the film festival. Tell folks here what is the origin of that festival.

Ebony Roberts: So the origin of the festival is that I created or directed and produced a film with the title “United We Heal,” which was my dedication to the Black community during the 2020 when the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, et cetera, et cetera, incidents happened.

And there was just a lot of turmoil happening during that time and where community was going through, an intense amount of trauma. But the film that I created was more of a love letter to us to say that we have to band together in these times to become stronger and to heal each other from within to make us, to give us that strength

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. And so I was in the festival, and full disclosure, won the audience award.

Ebony Roberts: Yeah. Spoiler alert.

David Dylan Thomas: That was very, that was a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun. And it was the fifth year of the festival and I gotta say this is one of those festivals, sometimes you gotta play nice and be like, “Oh, those are great movies,” and this is one of those festivals where every single movie blew me away.

Like legit. I was, and it was interesting because the films were all very different, but they did have a common theme, which was healing obviously. But I felt like there were some other threads, too. Tell me about curating this festival where you’re not necessarily looking for something as straightforward as horror or romance or genre or whatever. Like, how are you defining healing? How are you thinking about healing when you curate a festival like this?

Ebony Roberts: I feel like it has to touch, number one, it has to touch my heart, right? And it has to touch something in me. And then the rest of the panel of, or committee for the decision-making process, we kinda have the same mindset.

We’re of like minds when looking at a film or, I wouldn’t say necessarily critiquing because number one, I have respect for everyone who makes a film, regardless of the content or whatever like that. But just looking through it, looking at it through the lens of what does United We Heal stand for?

Again, number one, it has to touch something in me where we’re moving our community forward in a way or touching on a topic, and it could be the same issues that we’ve heard about or seen a million times, but it just brings it up in a different way. And it speaks to us in a different voice, something that we haven’t heard, a point of view that we haven’t seen maybe.

And then also I like to see things that are, that maybe have solution-oriented themes in them. Not just something that’s going to call out what the issues are, but something that is moving us into and in a, a direction of healing it through solutions.

David Dylan Thomas: And this is, I feel like this is something you might have a unique take on, but something I ask a lot in the Black community or think a lot about in terms of the Black community is what does progress look like?

Like, how do we even define it as individuals, as a people? I feel like some of these films are playing with that idea. And it’s something I, as an artist, think about a lot. I’m curious your take on this. What does that evoke for you when asking that question?

Ebony Roberts: It changes day to day. It’s so ambiguily, can’t say the word now. Ambiguous because there’s never an absolute of anything, right? So I think that progress is us digging deeper into what it means to be Black throughout the diaspora as a group, as a whole. And then I think a lot of the commonalities now are that we’re having what’s quote unquote diaspora wars, which is another tangent I could go down.

But I want us to be able to see the beauty in us. And I feel a lot of times we’re told there, that doesn’t exist. But I think that through love and seeing that we are truly beautiful people that theme or that being able to adapt that mindset pushes our progress. I think that the more that we’re reiterating those types of themes and those types of imagery, that type of imagery, that type of language, I think that that will transcend a lot of our mindsets and we’ll start to, push progress forward in a way that we haven’t ever seen before.

And I think that just by being in proximity to one another is healing. You tell me, right? Just being in the environment of United We Heal, it felt like progress. It feels like progress every time that I’m in that environment.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ebony Roberts: Just being in or around that environment is progress to me.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, and I gotta say that being in the room, so the this year it sold out. We were in this club, bar. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but the room was just.

Ebony Roberts: Underground Arts. Underground Arts.

David Dylan Thomas: That’s what it is. Underground Arts. Yeah. It was a great venue. It was full up.

Ebony Roberts: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: Mostly Black folk, right? It was like church. It was like and then we had a green room full of Black creators. And it reminds me a little bit of the Pan African Film Festival, which we had an event early on with just all the filmmakers and just all these Black creators, and it’s just like this, just this totally different vibe that as a Black filmmaker, you’re not necessarily used to, right? Just a sea of Black faces when you go to a film festival. And it was, yeah, it felt like coming home.

Ebony Roberts: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: And I like what you said about seeing ourselves as beautiful, ’cause I did think that was, now that you mention it, that was a commonality I saw in a lot of those movies, like Simone’s work.

Even the documentary about kids trying to navigate the justice system. Like they were beautiful, right? They were like, there, there’s a beauty to them. And even, “White Meat,” one of the things I talked to Fre, our makeup artist about, was this idea that even the zombies should be beautiful in their own scary way. Like that and we strove to make that happen. So I do think I like that notion that beauty and progress, like it is progress for people in general to see Black as beautiful, but even and maybe especially ourselves to see Black as beautiful.

Ebony Roberts: 100%, yeah. And then again, like I said, the more that we are able to see to do that through love because that’s only gonna happen through love, right? I think that love pushes that progress forward, seeing ourselves as beautiful because of the fact, again, like every other like the, the oppressive force tells us different. The supremacy tells us different, but if we’re able to believe that about ourselves, it doesn’t matter what that, what the, the greater says, because we are going to determine who we are, and that is progress to me.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. No, I absolutely agree. Tell me a little bit about your work outside the festival. Are you still making films? Are you still tackling some of these concerns in your art?

Ebony Roberts: I am. I am. I have a couple of films that are not related to “United We Heal” subject matter that are in the works.

And then I do have some other projects that I’m working on that are I would say more horror-focused.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh? Do tell.

Ebony Roberts: The concept I got it from it’s like a I would say it’s more Jordan Peele type of horror than gore. But I got it from a TikTok where this Black, younger Black man, he’s a truck driver, and he just happened to stop in a diner to have I guess it was a meal or whatever.

And then when he got done his meal and I don’t know how true this story is, he could’ve just been completely making this up. But he said one of the white, an older white man, probably in his 70s or whatever, stopped him, and he asked him to sit down with him at his table, and he was, like, very intentional and looked at him in his face and said, “I want to apologize to you and your…”

I don’t know if he said ancestors or your whoever, your family, past family. “But I was a firefighter when I was a younger man in the ’60s, and the terror and horror that we inflicted on those people was, is unforgivable. I would like to apologize and see if that, if you would accept that from me.”

Which made me think about it, and I’m like, wow, like that. So we only think, we see the fire hoses and things like that being that, that type of footage, but we don’t, I never I always think about police brutality. But that it, the system works in every facet of like service industry. You know what I’m saying?

So I’m, I have a, like a half a script where there it is based on that story where it, we’re based in the ’60s, and the, the firefighters are doing their, being bad people. But the protagonist is going back in time. It’s kinda if you’ve ever seen the Keke Palmer film I can’t think of the name of it right now. But she goes back in time basically and saves slaves.

But like the, this person is leaping between timelines to present day to back in that day. And they cause chaos basically. So it’s a bit of sci-fi, a bit of horror. And it’s coming together, so I’m in the pre, just still script writing phase, and hopefully getting into pre-production by January.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, well congratulations.

Ebony Roberts: Yeah. This is actually the first time I’ve ever said that.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh you heard it here first, folks. TMZ, eat your heart out. No, that’s awesome. Have you dabbled in sci-fi and horror before? Is that a, a genre favorite of yours?

Ebony Roberts: It’s the first time.

David Dylan Thomas: Okay cool.

Ebony Roberts: I actually am not a horror fan at all. I find it horrific to live in as a Black woman in America.

David Dylan Thomas: Sure, yeah, it’s a hat on a hat. I already know this, yeah.

Ebony Roberts: But yeah, Because of that is why I wanted to go after it.

David Dylan Thomas: No, that’s great. So what are some of your favorite genres? What inspires you?

Ebony Roberts: Oh man, that’s like, so I like I don’t know. I think I’m more of a, I’m more of a mainstream girly, to be honest with you. I like, like just the Avengers and stuff like that.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. Rock on. I’m a big MCU guy.

Ebony Roberts: I get my fix of the indie world just by doing the festival, and I’ve become so impressed with indie artists and us as indie artists. And, in every aspect of industry, we’re probably, the least catered to. We’re, the most underserved, if you wanna say that. Especially in the film industry.

And just seeing the magic that we bring to the screen as independent artists with very little resources is so amazing to me. It’s just the quality and the storytelling is absolutely amazing, and I love that United We Heal gets to give me that gift. Otherwise, I would be stuck watching Michael Bay movies for the rest of my life. But yeah, I’m such a disgrace.

David Dylan Thomas: No, I think that’s great. I’m the same way. Like I have my favorites, right? Obviously I love horror, love action, but I love like just being all over the place, right? Like just the other day I watched “Hoppers” and it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen all year.

Ebony Roberts: Oh, okay. I gotta watch that. I gotta see it.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. Pixar, every now and then Pixar can still knock it out of the park, yo. But I just saw “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” freaking loved it.

Ebony Roberts: Oh, okay. Okay.

David Dylan Thomas: So like I’ll do that and then I’ll go back and watch like “Haxan” or something, it’s like, my food habits are terrible. My movie habits I eat, I have the full color plate.

Ebony Roberts: Okay. Okay.

David Dylan Thomas: I have all 50 colors on my plate when I eat. So no, so I’m totally down with that. You don’t have to like the indie cred of “Oh, I do this indie film festival. I only watch Godard and African cinema.”

Ebony Roberts: I like the classics. I like me some Antoine Fuqua, like Spike. I like Ava is like one of like you know, can’t say enough about Ava.

David Dylan Thomas: Yo, do you know, have you seen the preview for her next movie?

Ebony Roberts: Which is that? Which one?

David Dylan Thomas: 14th.

Ebony Roberts: Yes, 14th. I have seen, I’ve seen it.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, shit.

Ebony Roberts: It looks crazy. It looks crazy. It looks crazy.

David Dylan Thomas: Can I just tell you I vent on this thing. I am so pissed with how Origin was handled. Like, that movie should have been-

Ebony Roberts: It should’ve been the Oscars.

David Dylan Thomas: It shouldn’t have just been in the conversation, it should have been the conversation.

Ebony Roberts: Should have been the conversation.

David Dylan Thomas: It should have been the movie to beat.

Ebony Roberts: Exactly. The way that she even made it and it came to fruition is not even, it’s almost unprecedented in a way. That’s, and that’s her stuff how she went about it.

David Dylan Thomas: Can you believe she shot that shit on 16?

Ebony Roberts: Exactly. And we’re, like, panting, yeah. I don’t know, man. That makes me upset.

David Dylan Thomas: And it’s like I gotta give her flowers on this. So the thing got a 17-minute standing ovation at Venice. That should’ve been a home run for Neon. And, God bless them for backing Anatomy of a Fall, it was a good movie, but come on. It’s Oscar bait handed on a silver platter. You gotta push that shit.

And nobody knew. Nobody knew it was, everybody, it was one of those everybody who saw it blew their minds. Changed their life.

Ebony Roberts: Blew, blew them away. Absolutely.

David Dylan Thomas: But nobody saw it ’cause nobody knew it was out.

Ebony Roberts: Nobody knew it was out. But listen, funny enough I organized a movie outing to go see that movie for my job. That’s how impressed I was with that film.

David Dylan Thomas: Wait, what was your job that let you do that?

Ebony Roberts: I work at QVC, so the television. We are production. So we’re production, and I was, like, that movie struck me to the core. I’m like, I, everybody has to see this. And I organized at one of the movie taverns that are around us. I organized a film outing and blew everybody’s mind that came out to see it. It’s an amazing film.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. And again, it’s like Ava pushes it.

Ebony Roberts: Yep.

David Dylan Thomas: That stuff with Trayvon in that movie that’s like I don’t even have words for just how-

Ebony Roberts: It gives me chills right now.

David Dylan Thomas: On the one hand, it’s like it’s not exploitative. But it is heartbreaking, and she makes her point. I don’t know, like I, and I’m still too, I’m still too afraid to watch “When They See Us.”

Ebony Roberts: Oh my gosh, you too?

David Dylan Thomas: I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t do it I know it’s g- I just can’t. I just- I’m like let white people watch that shit. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. It’s just-

Ebony Roberts: That’s exactly, I can’t do it. Some stuff is just for them.

David Dylan Thomas: Just, ’cause I know it’s gonna be so good. That’s why I can’t watch it. ‘Cause I know it’s not gonna be something I can just distance myself from. I can’t. ‘Cause I can’t distance myself from her stuff ’cause it’s so good.

Ebony Roberts: It’s so good.

David Dylan Thomas: What I recommend, and this is not just for you, but for everybody, so there’s that that MasterClass channel, right?

So I- it’s, there’s a lot of cool stuff there, but she has a documentary on there, like a two-hour documentary about the making of “Origin.” And it’s and it’s very much how to, how she directs. It is so good cause you see her directing style, and it’s like everything you want it to be.

Super collaborative, super smart, super sensitive, super multicultural, and like drawing from all these different inspirations. But totally, even if you wanna just sign up for MasterClass, watch it and get out, like totally worth it.

Ebony Roberts: I have MasterClass, so I’m gonna put that on my list.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, yeah. So look up Ava DuVernay, and her thing’ll come up, and it’s so good. I want Jordan to do one.

Ebony Roberts: Ah, yo, that would be fire.

David Dylan Thomas: I wanna see Jordan’s MasterClass. I’m watching the Scorsese one right now. It is dope.

Ebony Roberts: Yeah? It’s cool?

David Dylan Thomas: He, yeah, he is so entertaining and so fucking smart.

Ebony Roberts: Okay. Nice.

David Dylan Thomas: Something I wanna circle back to you said, and like I don’t even know if I wanna know. But you said something about diaspora wars, and I’m like, “Oh, shit what’s this about?”

Ebony Roberts: So I don’t know if you go on TikTok a lot.

David Dylan Thomas: Not enough, clearly. Or maybe just enough. I don’t know.

Ebony Roberts: But recently, I think there was a podcast in, so just in general there have been a lot of back and forth with Black Americans and the rest of the diaspora. That’s generally, so there’s this notion, I don’t buy into this at all, let me just disclaimer, that there’s the rest of the diaspora, meaning like Africans from Africa, look down on us as Black Americans. And we’re constantly defending ourselves and X, Y, and Z or whatever. And I see these things come up on social media, so I don’t know if it’s meant to drive the traffic and the clicks and the comments and the likes and all of those things.

I’ve never had any of these types of interactions with my African brothers and sisters, but it does come up a lot where people are talking crazy a little bit about Black Americans. And I’ll get back to the podcast that was in June, I believe. So it’s I believe it’s Godfrey’s podcast, and the man that played Martin Luther King was on it.

David Dylan Thomas: David Oyelowo. Oyelowo

Ebony Roberts: Correct. That one.

David Dylan Thomas: Oyelowo.

Ebony Roberts: Yeah. Yes. So they was talking sideways about Black Americans.

David Dylan Thomas: Ooh.

Ebony Roberts: Yes. Go check it out. So usually Godfrey is like totally rocking with us and 100% on board with the whole movement. He understands we had to overcome a lot and we’ve pushed the needle forward in terms of Black people in general.

So that’s usually Godfrey’s stance. In this podcast episode, he was 100% on board with what David was saying, which it was it, it was shady. So he basically said that this was one of the most inflammatory things. Like he said he takes the his Nigerian accent and slows it down and puts, I believe slavery and oppression was the quote in it, and that’s how he makes a Southern accent.

David Dylan Thomas: That’s just weird man. That is just a weird thing to say.

Ebony Roberts: That is so weird.

David Dylan Thomas: What the hell?

Ebony Roberts: Weird, right?

David Dylan Thomas: So what is the criticism like? Is it that Black Americans are… What is the criticism?

Ebony Roberts: That we have no culture, basically. We have no culture, we have no home.

David Dylan Thomas: What?

Ebony Roberts: Correct. Correct. What is that?

David Dylan Thomas: Even if that were true, wouldn’t there be a pretty clear reason why?

Ebony Roberts: You and me understand.

David Dylan Thomas: What the hell?  Okay. All right.

Ebony Roberts: Yes.

David Dylan Thomas: I don’t know. What I keep coming back to, ’cause I was talking to a friend of mine who’s Nigerian, and he was he was on board with us, but he’d heard that kinda shit talk. Not that specifically, but that there is this separation, right?

Ebony Roberts: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: And this distrust. And I was like, “My brother, you get pulled over -“

Ebony Roberts: You gonna be in the same boat. They not.

David Dylan Thomas: They’re not gonna be like, “Is you Nigerian? Oh, okay. Cool. You’re cool.”

Ebony Roberts: “You’re good. You’re good.”

David Dylan Thomas: “I’m only after those, those Black, those American Blacks.”

Ebony Roberts: Absolutely not.

David Dylan Thomas: “I’m down with the African Black.” No. They don’t give a shit.

Ebony Roberts: They don’t care.

David Dylan Thomas: Diaspora wars, motherfucker? You go in any of these countries, motherfucker, they see a Black skin, I don’t care what diaspora faction you’re in, you-

Ebony Roberts: You’re Black

David Dylan Thomas: You gonna be on a T-shirt.

Ebony Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: It’s like, how can you afford to, let’s sort this shit out first and then we can be like, “No, my jollof rice is better.” We can have that argument later. We got a revolution-

Ebony Roberts: Yeah, exactly.

David Dylan Thomas: To deal with. They wasn’t up in the slave revolts being like, “Wait, you’re from Ghana? No, I don’t roll with you.”

Ebony Roberts: No, I don’t do that. I don’t do that.

David Dylan Thomas: No. Oh my God.

Ebony Roberts: Exactly.

David Dylan Thomas: People are, oh my God, people are so, people are so.

Ebony Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

David Dylan Thomas: See, this is why I didn’t wanna ask. I was like, I knew I shouldn’t ask. I knew it was gonna, I knew it was gonna be some stupid shit.

Ebony Roberts: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: I knew it was gonna be some trifling shit. And I was right, and I was right.

Ebony Roberts: You were very a, 100%.

David Dylan Thomas: I’ll tell you what, my zombies don’t argue. My zombies are down for the cause. They do what they do-

Ebony Roberts: I was about to say they know better. Exactly. We gonna keep it together later, man. Let’s just do what we need. Let’s collectively do this, okay?

David Dylan Thomas: Oh my God, people got too much time.

Ebony Roberts: Man. Way too much. It’s crazy. I’m just like, why are we focusing in on these things? These are insignificant things that we do not need to worry about right now. Exactly what you’re saying. And it’s very frustrating and it’s come on, guys, let’s cut out the noise. Let’s redirect this energy to who we need to direct it to.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, and I gotta say what’s frustrating to me is that my dad’s from Ethiopia.

Ebony Roberts: Okay.

David Dylan Thomas: And Ethiopia, I’ve never been and I really wanna go, and right now I can’t because Ethiopia is tearing itself apart.

Ebony Roberts: Yeah. Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: And it breaks my heart.

Ebony Roberts: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: But it’s, and it’s also really disappointing ’cause Ethiopia is basically the closest thing we got to Wakanda. Like they never were really, truly colonized. But they got fucked with by every European power.

Ebony Roberts: I was gonna say.

David Dylan Thomas: So they still got shit to sort out.

Ebony Roberts: Exactly. Exactly. Just that.

David Dylan Thomas: So even without being colonized, the West can fuck up, an African country. But it’s just like, but it’s the same thing. It’s this ethnic federalism, which is basically their version of a diaspora war. And it’s like we’re just factioning against each other for no good reason.

Ebony Roberts: For no reason.

David Dylan Thomas: And we’re causing mass casualties. Like you think the shit going on in the Middle East body count-wise?

That is, it’s horrible. But it pales in comparison to the shit that’s been going on in Africa the past 20 years.

All of which to say it’s heartbreaking. It’s silly, but it’s also heartbreaking ’cause, like the actual impact of this shit when you take it to its extreme is horrible. It’s just a horrible outcome, and again, it doesn’t come from nowhere. West be fucking around, especially Britain. West be fucking around-

Ebony Roberts: Every time with all of these countries. You can always trace it back to the West.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh my God. But what’s heartbreaking is knowing what it could be like.

Ebony Roberts: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: Knowing the glory we once had. I was watching this video about how the Greeks, right? When we look to the Greeks for, oh, they invented democracy and they’re so wise, and like Socrates, all this stuff. They believed Africans were close to God.

They felt that if to have a true education, you needed to go to what was what’s now Egypt and what’s now Ethiopia and Sudan. They wouldn’t take you seriously as an intellectual if you hadn’t been there.

Ebony Roberts: I have a theory.

David Dylan Thomas: ‘Cause they believed that this is the wisdom. Yeah.

Ebony Roberts: I have a theory that I cannot prove. I don’t have any… It’s just something that I think. I don’t have any supporting documentation or anything. I think that Black people invented everything. And that we just didn’t have the marketing. We just didn’t have the marketing and the PR to say, “This is our invention.” And we were, it’s been something where we’re just naturally advanced or naturally talented in a way that-

David Dylan Thomas: And it’s just math, right? If everybody comes from Ethiopia effectively or that area, kinda yeah. Like we have that head start. We have the head start.

I will say this and this is evidence Benin had metalwork for their buildings way before anyone did. Africa did vaccines before anybody did. Coffee obviously, Ethiopia. Building buildings, taking a fricking rock and building a church out of it. Like there was shit. And then if you look at America, like every day I feel like I find out another thing that was like invented by Black people.

Oh, porches. Porches? That was some African shit.

Ebony Roberts: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: And it’s like wait, porches? Just like the porch. The porch. That wasn’t some, that wasn’t some white guy who made that? Because you needed a place when it’s hot out to fucking be outside.

And it’s like they invented that shit. Are you fucking kidding me? And the, even the way that they would literally shop Africa for Africans with specific skill sets, like it was fucking QVC, right? Like they’d be like “Oh, I need rice growers.” “Oh, you wanna go over here.”

“Oh, I need people who can ride horses.” “Oh, you need to go over here.” We, this was skilled labor, motherfuckers. This isn’t like-

Ebony Roberts: It wasn’t just no, yeah. We weren’t, you weren’t just picking up somebody that could lift things and take them from one side of the field to the next.

David Dylan Thomas: Or that you had to educate when you got there.

Ebony Roberts: No, you never had, no. No.

David Dylan Thomas: You wouldn’t have picked them up if they weren’t educated.

Ebony Roberts: Absolutely not. Absolutely not, because we know that our white people are not, they’re not slow, okay? So they know what they need, and they do it in an intentional way. So that’s never what the case is.

Now they flip it around and attempt to, because, to, in order to oppress somebody, you have to make them feel like they’re the lowest, you know, of the low. So that is, that’s a form of control. But they know what they’re doing.

David Dylan Thomas: No, and I, and to bring it back around, I think that I wanna reiterate what you were saying before about like beauty and progress. I really do think that, so I’ll give you an example. Mansa Musa, I always get his name wrong, but Mansa Musa, arguably the richest human ever.

Ebony Roberts: Oh, yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: African guy who’s so rich that when he goes on Hajj and is like spreading the wealth to each of these countries as he’s going through them, is distributing so much gold, he’s wrecking economies ’cause that’s how much he could part with and not notice.

Ebony Roberts: And not even care. Like that’s insane.

David Dylan Thomas: So I found out about him, I don’t know about you I only learned about him in like my 40s.

Ebony Roberts: Okay. I knew about him when I was younger

David Dylan Thomas: Okay. Just out of curiosity, how young?

Ebony Roberts: Like my mom was a very Afrocentric, like, type. Like she raised us in a very Afrocentric household. So I knew about Mansa Musa probably when I was, like, I know it was before middle school, so elementary school.

David Dylan Thomas: Okay. Yeah. So that was things, my son found out about it in middle school.

Ebony Roberts: Okay.

David Dylan Thomas: And I’m like, “They weren’t talking about that shit when I was in middle school at all.” Like they weren’t talking about Black people.

Ebony Roberts: That’s the, the only thing.

David Dylan Thomas: The only reason I knew Black people existed is ’cause of the mirror.

Ebony Roberts: No. The only period of time that we learned about in middle school, probably not even high school, was slavery. Like that’s the only thing.

Or, during Black History Month, they’re teaching us about Ida B. Wells or like Martin Luther King, like things like that. Like we weren’t really diving deep into our history at all. So absolutely.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. And it’s, so it’s like that access to the complete or more of a complete picture. Even just take Martin Luther King as an example. Growing up, all I had access to especially in the popular culture, was Martin Luther King as sort of the pacifist and Malcolm X as the dangerous person.

And what I didn’t get access to until much later was, look, Martin Luther King straight up wanted to do universal basic income, wanted labor to have, wanted to end the Vietnam War, wanted labor, like the shit that would be considered, “Oh my God, you’re a socialist.”

Ebony Roberts: Oh, that’s blasphemous. I’m about to say, yeah,

David Dylan Thomas: Like people would be like, “Oh my God, you’re like further left than AOC.” “Who are you?” And it’s like, no, Martin Luther King was like, like-

Ebony Roberts: Oh, he was a G

David Dylan Thomas: Basically he would be, I’m just gonna say this. Today, he would absolutely be getting funded and probably would be a Democratic socialist.

Ebony Roberts: Yeah. 100%. He’s Mamdani.

David Dylan Thomas: Absolutely. He is. He totally is. He would’ve been down with that free bus shit. Are you kidding me?

Ebony Roberts: Absolutely.

David Dylan Thomas: And you know who else would be? The Black Panthers, right? Like all of this stuff. And again, growing up, Black Panthers, oh, they’re so scary. Growing up, it’s like, they just wanted to do school lunch. What the fuck?

Ebony Roberts: Like literally. That’s literally what they wanted to do. They wanted to protect their community and give them access to resources.

That was it.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. Oh my God, it’s crazy. So we have gone way off track in a way that I love, frankly. I think this has been a great conversation.

Ebony Roberts: Absolutely.

David Dylan Thomas: But Ebony, great to talk to you. Where can folks keep up with you, keep up with the festival? What goes on?

Ebony Roberts: Yeah, so we are United We Heal Film Festival across all platforms. Our website is unitedwehealfilmfestival.com. Give us a follow and keep up. We, subscribe to our mailing list, and you’ll get all the good deets on what’s coming up next. I believe we’re doing a collaboration with Philadelphia Film Society coming up in October. So stay tuned for that. And then another closeout event for the year. Details to come on that as well.

David Dylan Thomas: Excellent. I can’t wait. And folks if and when you find yourself in Philadelphia around the time of the, I’m believing and manifesting there’s gonna be a six, your sixth.

Ebony Roberts: There will be a sixth, yes.

David Dylan Thomas: Submit to it and go to it. It is, I I go to a lot of festivals, and I’m not lying when I say it was absolutely one of my favorite festivals that I’ve ever been to. Even if I hadn’t won, I had a great time.

Ebony Roberts: I’m glad, man. I’m so glad. And then your film was obviously one of the favorites, it was, it, everybody needs to see your film, “White Meat,” and support the feature as well. Donate to the feature. ‘Cause that needs to be made. We need that in our lives. So yes.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, we literally got a tip jar over at whitemeatmovie.com, so go check that out.

Thank you. Ebony, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Ebony Roberts: Thank you and for having me. I appreciate you.

David Dylan Thomas: All right. And for the “White Meat” podcast, I’m your host, David Dylan Thomas, and we will see you next time.