Kickin' It with Karlton Hoskins

In this episode of Our True Colors, we welcome Karlton Hoskins, #1 International Best Selling Author, Business Owner, Real Estate Investor, and Strategist. In this episode we talk about business and go all the way back to roots. Do NOT miss this fascinating conversation that takes us around the world and back in time.

Resources related to the convo:

• What Became of the Taíno?
• From Acadian to Cajun
• The Creole Community in The United States of America, a story
• What's the difference between Cajun and Creole—or is there one?

Want to be a guest or know someone who should join us? Click this link to complete the guest interest form.

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Transcript

Transcript by Otter.ai

Intro  00:06
Welcome to our True Colors hosted by Sean again. Join her as she explores the challenges of being a racial riddle, and ethnic enigma and the cultural conundrum. Let's dive in.

Shawna  00:20
What's up? Yolandie? How you doing?

Yolandie  00:23
I'm doing pretty good. Ben in the self care thing, trying to take it easy scaling back. I'm headed into chill mode. Kids are out of school. I forget what day it is. Maybe I'm too chill.

Shawna  00:38
Well, sounds good. I'm sure you you are appreciating getting into chill mode. Yes,

Yolandie  00:44
it's about to get real until so.

Shawna  00:46
Wow. Got it. Yeah, I'm down two days almost.

Yolandie  00:50
Counting down many days too many things.

Shawna  00:54
Because you, you know, you aren't busy. I always say,

Yolandie  00:57
no, not doing a thing.

Shawna  00:58
Okay, question for you. What are your thoughts on tick tock? Because that's, that's what I do to chill. Like, I have to just say it is a vise. I stayed up way too late last night, getting hooked on these tic tock things and my kids, my oldest will like send me the random videos and and we can't stop. So anyway, I'm gonna sit up tall, stretch a little bit. Forget my tic tock sleepiness and get ready to introduce our guest. Because once we get started on this conversation, no doubt everybody will be paying attention to nobody need tick tock to stay interested in this.

Yolandie  01:35
Are you ready? Ready. Amen to that?

Shawna  01:37
Yes. I'm so excited to welcome our guest, Carlton. Hey, how are you?

Karlton  01:43
How are you? I'm doing well. How are you?

Shawna  01:45
I'm so good. I'm so glad to have you. I have been waiting for this conversation ever since we had sort of our get to know your meeting. I was like, oh my god, we're not gonna have enough time to get all the things that need to be said said in this short amount of time, because we just kept on. I think I was at one point. Yolandie. Like, I hope he has extra time because this Oh, that's right. Because I had like 15 minutes. I was like, how am I gonna do this in 15 minutes. I don't know if I can. But I did my very best. And so glad to have Carlton on as a guest this week on our tricolor. So welcome.

Karlton  02:16
Thank you. I'm honored to be here and a pleasure to meet both of you.

Shawna  02:20
Thank you, you are doing some really, really great stuff in the business world, which is really cool to me. Having True Colors consulting, love that you support, folks, just tell us a little bit about what you do.

Karlton  02:33
Awesome. Well, thanks. Well, for the last six and a half years, we've been focused on developing a software that is a GPS for businesses, it is the step by step play by play instruction manual that you get in a kid when you buy furniture. Now you get it when you buy your business. Business owners don't know what they don't know, we think we know what we know. And then what we don't know, we kind of chase the trend, or we chase the shiny object, whatever you think makes the most sense to generate revenue. And we pour a lot of energy, pour a lot of time, pour a lot of money and realize it didn't work. And so rather than guessing at how to build a sustainable business, now this is actually an extraction manual to actually guide you through the process.

Shawna  03:17
Very cool. Now, do you need a mediator like some people do when they're trying to put together Ikea furniture? Or is it pretty good to get?

Karlton  03:27
Well, there are components of it that do require a little bit more experience and or guidance, because many times, knowing what to do solves many of our problems. For example, if I said to either one of you, ladies, go register a limited liability company, it will take you less than an hour to really figure out how to do that by paperwork if you just had to do it yourself. But if I told you to go do a market research, well, that might take you a little bit longer, you might have a who is my Market, and where's my goal? And so there are certain things we want to lean on people when we need them and things that we don't want to lean on. And if we don't know what we're leaning on, then we tend to fall over. So just do what you need. But yes, by all means have help.

Shawna  04:09
Yeah, no, I appreciate that as minority owned business, you know, being black owned. One of the things that I talk about in my work. And my research is that earlier you said you don't know what you don't know what when you're lacking, let's say you come from a background where you don't have that generational knowledge. You don't have somebody that's come before you to be able to sort of show you the ropes and and the way so you try to, you know, make connections where you can maybe it's a little tough. There's not a lot of social capital there not to mention capital capital, right? financial capital, right. So having something like that is really awesome, especially when so many of us are out here kind of on our own trying to make our way without having all this generational knowledge or somebody who's come before to blaze that path for us. So that's really cool.

Karlton  04:59
Yeah, and I love the way you said that. That for your audience, I grew up in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and if anyone knows anything about Bloomfield, New Jersey is it's predominantly Italian. And so here is this Jamaican, half Jamaican, half Scottish British kid growing up. Amongst all of these people in my parents had many businesses. But if my parents were to write the instruction manuals or the GPS to developing a business, they would teach you how to have how to Jamaica, say multiple jobs, multiple business, always on the hustle always on the grind, make as much so you next generation don't have to work as hard as you worked. Well, I mean, I had a job when I was nine years old, growing up with my parents at 11 years old, I was proud to say I was a kid who can wire a house completely with cable TV. Oh, at 11 years old, I didn't need anybody just give me a ladder, a drill and a cable bill. I'm okay. You know. But those were the those were the requirements. My parents instilled in me for work, you didn't just get to lay around on the weekend and kick your shoes up and watch Tom and Jerry. Now you were in a van or you were working and you know, you may not eat lunch, too. You eat McDonald's, and then it's like, you want me to splurge and buy your hamburger, I was about to say, wait a second hold on you guys, you know, oh, wow, get one you don't get together unless you go by Uncle Tony's and you get a beef patty with some bullet and some, you know, coconut soda, then you can move on down the road. But other than that, so it was really interesting dynamic growing up there. So it wasn't my legacy, or the history of my parents that actually created the concept. But it was what they went through when I was young, losing their businesses, the rifts in the family. I mean, you can imagine, right? Coming to this country, you're a foreigner, everyone that you know who's going to be very close knit on Sunday dinner, everybody's their mama, papa, your uncle, your aunt, your sister, your brother, everybody, the whole family is on one house, right? The block shuts down on Sunday dinner. So if there's a problem in business, you're going to know because people aren't going to show up on Sunday, you know, church is going to be a little bit different, because now we ain't sitting next to Uncle so and so up front, we sit in three rows back. So those issues and those those disturbances in businesses just kind of remained a seed of of doubt, in my mind. And as I got older, and I got involved in business in my own, starting a fashion company production cut, I did a lot of things at businesses that failed. Failures not required, but I'd failed. But around 15 or 16, when my parents lost all of their businesses and I moved to Texas, I had to take a different direction, a different look at business. And then in 2014 2015, when I watched this financial company that I was working with, provide funding to small businesses, and then watch those businesses borrow three quarters of a million dollars a million dollars and then fail. Nine months later, it was like What in God's green earth is going on? How do you fail with all that money. And then I realized it wasn't the money. There was no step by step instruction, there was no Akia manual. And so my partner Tehran and Glover and I decided, shut everything down. This is all we're going to focus on. And we spent the next five years doing that. Wow.

Shawna  08:19
So like my big entrepreneurial experience when I was around 11 was selling friendship bracelets in the lunch room, I thought I was the best you I had. I'm about to embarrass myself, but I'm gonna tell this story anyway. Made my mama buy me a briefcase. And so I would carry this case into the lunchroom and like, open it up, business was open, had little samples, let people pick their colors and their, their how many strings and all this stuff. And I was working, working, working making these friendship bracelets, not wiring houses for cable, I didn't have that skill. I'm pretty sure that I didn't have as you know, as lucrative businesses. But I guess, you know, there's always something in us at some point, whether it's a lemonade stand or your kid building some amazing technology that someone hasn't thought of yet, you know, these truly innovative minds, when you kind of have that spirit to go out there and do it on your own. And I played the game. I played the game for years. I wasn't a classroom teacher for a long time. When you are an educator, unless you're in higher ed, there's really not like a growth path, right? You don't there's no tenure path to tenure as a classroom educator and public school system. You do that forever. And I remember one day sitting in we had some some staff meeting I don't know but they basically celebrated one of my colleagues who was 36 years in the classroom and about to retire and I clapped for her and while I was clapping was thinking, no, no, ma'am. No There's got to be something more for me, I this is not it. So that's how I branched out started working with my district was thinking about kind of taking things on a higher level at one point I could help kids wanted, you know, one class at a time one year at a time where I could start impacting policy. And that's when a friend said, Hey, have you considered organizational leadership? And I was like, no. So I was going back decided I was going to get my doctorate. And in my very first class with organizational leadership, I discovered people called IO. Psychologists had never heard of them before. Industrial Organizational psychologists, and made the switch to business psychology haven't turned back.

Yolandie  10:41
So I'm just hearing him describe bits of his childhood with, you know, learning to run cable through the house. And well, my experience was not running cable. My dad's specialty was cars. So it was fixing the carburetor. And Saturday morning, I was out there, you know, hand me the wrench, hand me the socket, I need the three eighths, you know, add the drive, and I need an extension. And I knew all that stuff. By the time I was like, 15, what was under the hood, what the tools were metric versus standard. And it was just like you said with you, but not with cables. It was with cars and engines and tools, you know, like it was a very, if you don't know what it is that you need, you go find it. And then you make it work. And if you can't find what you need, you still make it work. And so like the whole, you know, maybe you'll get fries with that cheeseburger. I was like, done there. Been there. But also honestly felt just a little called out on the whole, like, go register your LLC real quick. Okay, well, now, what's your market research? Like I literally just completed revamping my market research and updating all of that. So that was very close to home for me. As soon as he said that I was like, oh my god, yeah, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know where to start. I didn't even know who I was talking to. And now here we are, like two months later, we've got it all sorted out. I got a specialist involved, because like you said, you don't know what you don't know. And some of it Yeah, you can just Google it, you can just find the answers. And then sometimes you can Google it. But the answers are a little less clear. And a little more like crystal ball, you know, your interpretation as to what's manifesting in these shadows that are distorted by the crystal. So yeah, that's kind of where my head is at at this point.

Shawna  12:40
Don't be messing around with crystal balls when you take out a $750,000 loan. Oh my gosh. Well, Carl didn't say you'd mentioned kind of some little tidbits about yourself your identity as you talked about this sort of family background and business. How did all of that play a part into who you are now, would you say Italian neighborhood New Jersey and moved to Texas, like, break it down for us a little bit. Tell us more about who you are and how your identity has impacted the work you do.

Karlton  13:16
Wow. So interesting. Thank you for that. Well, I immediately go back to being a kid in kindergarten. You know, growing up in Bloomfield, New Jersey, going into school. Everyone in the school look like my dad that like my cousin Laureen looks like you know, my cousin Donna from England. I mean, so to me, that's just there's just people there's no you know, I walked through my house my sister is the darkest of us. All right, she is true through through dark blood rich, Jamaican it's in our blood, right. And then you have my dad who you know, he sunburns. You know sometimes he walks outside it turns red. And it looks darker later, but you know, when he walks out and his curly hair if I show you a picture you go oh my god, that's your dad. You look just like him. How does he look that way white look like that white. So you want to see a white version yesterday picture my dad. So I grew up with that. And for me, everyone loved my parents. Everyone loved my dad, you know, they we had a store with not too far from where we went to school and people would go to the store and they knew it was my dad. And it was weird because I didn't experience what most people were saying. You know, racial bias or or any of those negative, but you know, the kids are so honest, it's the funniest thing. Kids are so honest. They'll tell you the truth. And so somewhere around fourth and fifth grade, that's where you started hearing. Oh, you're a chocolate buyer. Oh, you're a Twix or you know, oh your cookies and cream ice cream or you know your family's a zebra and but here would be the thing when I would hear are that the other 100 of my friends with jump on whoever the person was that said that? It was kind of like, you don't get to say that about them. You don't get to say that about him. And I'll tell you a really interesting experience for me. Okay, so I'm going to kind of date myself. So back in the days, you know, people we used to get on the strip, and drive the cars up and down the strip.

15:23
Window. Right TLC plan, I know.

Karlton  15:30
There was always the group, you know, like, it's hard to drive in a park and everybody's kind of hanging out next to the coffee shop really close, right? And we're all hanging out there and on the border of Bloomfield is East Orange. Okay, now East Orange is predominantly black, right? And I don't use black, I have this thing about the term black black according science means that black is not the true name of who we are. There's no nation called Black. We're actually Asiatics we actually own it. There's a lot of history behind

Shawna  16:00
Oh, man, I'm like, Look, Yolandie sees me like, Oh, I got it, it's on the shelf, it's on the shelf.

Karlton  16:10
So we are Asiatic, right? So anyway, so anyway, we're standing out here and these group of Asiatics come over from the stars, and they start stuff, you know, trying to bully people, you know, all their Europeans, what most people call white, other Europeans, they don't know, anything, you know, so they start all this name throwing, and all this other stuff, and a fight breaks out. And next thing, you know, there's all of these Italians versus all of these Asiatics. And here, my brother and I are in the middle of it. Because there's only three Asiatics standing on the Italian side, myself, my brother and a friend of ours named Bobby Ferguson. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's the total sum of that group. Anyway, once the fight is over, there's this terminology that's now being used to reference those on the other side of the track the Asiatics. And you know what that is, that's the N word. Those ends came over here started nice stuff, those ends. But if I'm standing there on my brother standing there, all of our friends would correct them. But I'm not talking to you. I'm not talking about you. Just, it doesn't refer to you. You're not like them, you're different. And I it bothered me for a long time to try to understand what makes me so different. Well, I realize what made me different. The only thing that made me different was they knew me, they grew up with me, so they knew me. So they knew I wasn't whatever picture they had been painted in their mind about Asiatics. But they didn't know them either. And those other people that they were fighting with, just like me. So them saying you're different really wasn't a true statement. It was, I know you, I like you, I respect you. This doesn't apply to you. It's to people that I don't know, and I don't know when I don't respect. And as I continued through high school, I started challenging that more. I started taking that to my friends and having these conversations and trying to figure out how they really felt about my car, my kind. Well, you know, it's kind of impossible to get truth out of that. But all I can tell you is that they all love me. They still love me, and I still love them. But I don't know if there was a truth that ever came out of that how they would really see the world. If I wasn't standing in it, how do they view it when I'm not around? And so that was kind of a really interesting perspective for me growing up as a kid.

Yolandie  18:40
So I have to share this story also around the N word. And this one came directly from my dad and so much like Carlton here my heritage is Jamaican and European. And my mom is the Polish when she's Polish heritage but she was born here in the United States. And my dad is full full like big Jamaican dude, you know, the accent everything like everything that you would picture about the quote, stereotypical Jamaican man is my dad, and he took us fishing down on Belle Isle in the heart of Detroit. And we're unpacking the car. We're, you know, pulling out the lures and the the boxes and everything and he turns and looks at this food truck. That's probably about, I don't know, 3040 feet away. It wasn't far not far enough that they may or may not hear what you say. And before any of us know what's happened. He's like, look at those insert and word here, all swarming around the food truck. All they got to do is eat and I was like, I'm sorry, what was like Dad, you can't say that. And he was like, what they are looking at him and I was like, okay, so how are we allowed to say that about other people? And it it turned into this rabbit hole of a Exploring the hole, you know, like you said, you know that we're not black culture. And the more I delved into it and read about it, it seemed like a very Jamaican cultural thing to deny Black Heritage or like, we're not black. Were insert other term here. So I would love your perspective on that. But it just really kind of made me question like everything I knew up to that point about race, and I was maybe 13 at that point. But yeah, the fact that he was like, Oh, well, that's not us. Like, we're not black. We're not the N word. I was like, Huh. And it just, it just gave me a lot of food for thought,

Shawna  20:43
well, you know, I got like, 18 questions, but I'm gonna ask if before we dive into that, can you can we go back on and take that thing off the shelf? Can you please crawl to and talk about your use of Asiatics? Tell me about that.

Karlton  21:00
Absolutely. In 1994, I began a very deep dive into my cultural, to my heritage. And to finding out more about who I was, I became more concerned about the stories of my dad being Cuban. You know, there was this this myth that ran through my family that oh, your dad's Cuban, right? I guess because of the way he looked. And as I dug deeper into it, I found out No, he wasn't Cuban. You know, his mom is from England. His dad is from Scotland. And so, you know, just started chasing this truth before the whole DNA, determinate the term into your history is I was already on that, that journey. And so it always bothered me growing up as a kid to hear people say, you're black. And I would say my mom is Jamaican, and they go, Oh, then you're not black, you're Jamaican. And it bothered me like, wait a minute, hold on. What, what? There's a history here that's missing. There's a history missing. And our history Asiatics Our history has been buried, denied, thrown into the ocean, if you will, we don't know. It was all dismantled and thrown away before we got to this country. But three, but what I've learned is Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, all of them. A large percentage of those in Brazil, all of your Caribbean islands, Ghana, all that, right, Haiti. All of these people came from Africa. All of these people came from the same western shores of Africa. So who were they? Who were these group of people that came from the western shore of Africa, some dropped off in Cuba, some dropped off in Jamaica, so I made it here to the mainland. Who are these people because they're all the same. And so I went down that rabbit hole. And then I learned that these were all a part of, I mean, we're gonna go back into ancient history. Now we're about to go into the Bible's history. Right? The Moabites these were all the Moabites that had traveled south when the Canaanites anyway long story right. But these now they were all what some in Chicago was say Moors, right? These are those of the more sidestepped pretty familiar

Shawna  23:32
with Moorish, that Moorish history having lived in Europe, because this is still very prevalent, and it's kind of like, where is the divide between the Middle East and African cultures? And how they sort of mesh that's like Morocco, Turkey, like, there's this strange sort of mesh. So yeah, the Moors. That's right.

Karlton  23:54
That's right. And so this Moorish Empire is what ruled and conquered what we call Asia, right? We and this is the stuff in history that you really hear where they conquered and ruled Italy for so many years, they conquered and ruled Spain for so many years, which is what is the capital of Spain today? Fez? There's a reason for that. So there is this recognition of who we are in Europe. But that same recognition doesn't apply here in the Americas. So that separation allowed me to realize that we are of the continent in which we are from, right. So we're not even if you say you are American today. Well, are you North American? Are you Central American, are you South American? What American Are you? Right? And then you go, Oh, I'm from the United States of America. Okay, so you're from a corporation different structure. That is not that is not a country, if you will. It's not an island. It's not a land. It's not a landmass You're part of the North American continent, which means Canada and US our brothers and sisters. True. So why is there a line in a dividing border? Okay, a whole nother story. But if we look at it that way, then we understand that Asiatic is those who are on what they call the Asia Minor, which was the largest part of Asia, which was all of the African continent, which is why we refer them back to Asia. Asiatic, though that's who they are. So we are from the Asiatic culture, no matter if we got dropped off in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic ad don't matter where we went, are all of the Asiatic culture. And for Willie Lynch moto to stick to people in believe that they are black, because of someone deemed you a color. Okay, on the slave ships, when they brought them over here, they had mores on the actual titles of the slaves when they brought them here, when Spain's were traded wins the Spanish were trading them to the Portugal's and to the French here in the US, they had wars on the slave title. What they did was they changed it and they wrote black a more on the front, they put black a more to start changing the culture of those individuals. So more eventually came off, and black became the who you were, and then you had black, and then you became negros, and you became colored, then you became Afro American, then you became we, who are we? Everyone else knows who they are? Were Italian American, were German American were black. What your who, what, what, where does that connect. And so if they tell you are Asiatic American, then you know, you can go back to Morocco, because there was a treaty back in 1713. But hold on the story. They can go back to Morocco, and be underneath that treaty that protects them from servitude or being enslaved, which is where the slaves were going when they were coming out of servitude in the South. They were getting on boats. And they were going back to Morocco, because of the Moroccan treaty, one of the first treaty slots signed in recognition of the Asiatic sentence country, and so that history is buried, like it doesn't get spoken about. And so we have no flag, we have no country. And we just say, No, we're American. And if you told me to leave here, where would I go, I have nowhere else to go. Well, that's not true, we have a whole continent of people who are waiting for us to come back. Because we've been, you know, subjected to a capitalistic structure that they don't understand. So if we brought that knowledge to them, it would quickly translate into economic growth in places like on in Africa, in Kenya, and all of these other places where I get calls from all the time saying, you should come over here with what you have in your head, because Oh, my gosh, we would pull this country up, we not blow it. I know. We would grow.

Shawna  28:00
Scale, we would scale. Wow. Well, what an interesting perspective, one of these days, I'm going to do a special episode on just on terminology. And why because there are so many different ways that we see things and explain things. And it comes down to the lexicon, which words we're using, and even the etymology of those words, if you want to get really nerdy, which I like to do. But you know, I actually am one of those folks who I like to refer to myself as black, not as African American. Because while I have ancestry from Africa, and my my ancestors, were enslaved people, I don't relate to African culture. So I just say I'm black. So it's really interesting to hear these different perspectives, because I very much avoiding African American unless I'm speaking about someone who, you know, immigrated, and now is here in America for the first time or in the US, whether it's Canada or wherever they are. So I just wanted to ask you about that. I appreciate you breaking that down. And I'm sure people all kinds of folks who are part of the African diaspora around this world, have their different perspectives on where they've come from and what it means to have someplace else to go. It's gonna definitely give me something more to think about. I do appreciate you breaking that down.

Karlton  29:23
I love it. And thanks for letting me break that down in just really quick. I love how you acclimate to the word black and I get it. I definitely understand it. I don't I'm not mad at it. I understand it clearly. Thanks. Don't be back in here's why. Because there's a lot of people that came from France, from Portugal, from Ireland, from Poland, from Spain, from all these countries, and now they're their ancestors or their lineage. Now today their descendants don't say their Spanish they don't say they're from Spain. They don't say they're Irish you know all this are they like oh yeah, my my my great grand Mother's Irish, but I'm American. That's the difference. That's that's the only one difference. They don't say I'm white. They say I'm an American. And to me, that's the delineation. When a person doesn't say I'm American, they say, I'm black. Because there's another separation inside of the America that now separates you from the culture that in which we embrace, right? I'm ex military. So I'm American. People say, Carl, what are you I say, I'm Moorish American, if I want to get technical, or Jamaican American through the way, the Moroccan Empire if I want to get really technical, but I don't do that I just have an American. And they go, are you black? Say I'm American? You know, what is black? You say black.

Shawna  30:44
Now see, that's so interesting, because again, I think it's perspective. I don't know if in your service, in the time that you were in service, if you served in other countries, but having lived in so many different other countries, you're just with context, the first part of my identity, that's the most salient when I'm somewhere else is being an American, or being a US citizen. If I'm in the US, there's no immediate reason to contextualize my identity in that way. So that's when it's a black woman. That's kind of the change there. And I feel like a person can be a black person that's part of the African diaspora, depending on how you define that, by the way, because some folks say the African diaspora is anybody who has voluntarily or involuntarily left Africa to settle somewhere else. And some people define it to be specific to folks who were unfortunately victims of slave trade. So however you define that, but that's why I don't say African American, because I feel like there's black folks in France, there's black folks here, there's black, I met black folks in Italy, you know. So I think that's the thing. And there are definitely some instances where we have similar maybe experiences on how we're treated. But then like, Yolandie story talking about her father making a very real distinction between how he saw himself versus other black folk, if you will. So it's, it's really interesting, something that we could go on and on about and continue to explore. But it's going to come down to positionality. And perspective, I guess. Wow.

32:21
Okay, I got deep

Shawna  32:23
for a second. Sorry. I'm like, I wouldn't know I got to know about this easier.

Yolandie  32:29
Like that was probably the most amazing history lesson that was the most relevant to my personal culture I've ever had in my entire life. So first and foremost, thank you for enlightening on my own history, that there were things in there that even I didn't know, that I have done. And I've done like the research. I think an interesting part for me, that I found was the intermingling of the native folks who are already on the islands, because a big part of my personal genetic story is the Iraq tribe, which is which you guys can't see us. He's nodding. But for anybody who doesn't know, and you've never heard of the arrow x, it's a native tribe that is from Puerto Rico, Jamaica, like the whole Caribbean and a little over into, like the Yucatan, and Mexico. And so that's a big part of my heritage as well. And I think that further muddies the whole, you know, well, I'm not black and Islander, because they they did truly, like, make a home in this new place with these people and the divisions, it feels like I mean, I wasn't there at the time, I don't know. It feels like the divisions kind of disappeared, and they just sort of created their own, you know, new tribe and this whole new culture. And so I was just curious, did you come across anything about that on your studies? And what have you got to know because like, I want to hear it all.

Karlton  34:04
Oh, my gosh, I want to explode. This conversation will take three hours. I'm down. I love it. Let's go. So the Arawak tribe are actually Moors. Their descendants are the ones who actually got it the ships from Spain to the US during the time of Christopher Columbus, and America, Vespucci and all of those individuals. These were the stargazers. These were the ocean travelers. These were the ones who had been back and forth between Africa and the Americas. For hundreds of years they have been sailing the seven seas for hundreds of years. In fact, Christopher Columbus wrote in his diary across the Mayflower or something like that, but he mentioned in his diary landing in the Americas, which he thought it was the the Indies, which is why he called the West Indies right. And he said that he couldn't communicate with the natives, but the crew that was on his boat got off and immediately started communicating with them as if they had been friends for years. See, Christopher Columbus had never been across. So how would anyone know that over the seas were milk, honey molasses, gold? Who knew that? How did you know that? Portugal didn't know that Scotland didn't know that England didn't know that Germany didn't know that the Russians didn't know that Putin and that only the Moors who had been traveling across the seas knew that. So while they were in prison, because of their prisoners of wars, because of their rule over Spain for 463 years, I think it was how long they ruled Spain, the Moors. So while some of these Moors were still there, and Christopher Columbus was also in jail, he was able to have that conversation with them, and say, hey, yeah, there's a better there's a land you can take him to. So Christopher Columbus talking to Queen Isabella Isabella said, Okay, let's get some ships. Let's see how true this is. They crossed over the seas, they went over their shore and below. Here they are having this conversation. So they were conversating with themselves, what you call the Iraqi tribe. So yeah, this tribe was already there embedded in rooted in the land. They've been there forever, just like there's some in the US that they were calling Indians. There were net No, no, no, no, there's a there's a cartoon depiction of a painter who drew these Indians as black. Just so you know, if you never knew that, they painted the pictures of the Indians as black. The only time they ever referenced Indians having the sandy colored skin, or the lay down here was when they referenced those from Mexico. So when they went into the southern part of the Americas desperately found that, but the northern part of Americas was already dominated by what we call black today.

Yolandie  36:57
That is so interesting. I have never come across that in my research. So now I have a whole lot more to research. Thank you.

Shawna  37:07
And it goes on and on and on. Right, like, I know where Cajun comes from Acadia, Acadia, and Canada. Yeah. And so these folks, basically with all of the colonialization happening with South, right, so you have the whole Louisiana territory, all of that. And these folks are actually from what is Canada now. And so those are the Cajuns, and the word Cajun was a Kadian. And then you know, is Cajun. So it goes from there. And then my folks, so a lot of people confuse Cajun and Creole Creole isn't in itself, an ethnicity, or there is a culture but it really was the way of capturing who was now born into the new place. So you could be French Creole, a person who is from France, but then if they you know, had kids, then those kids would be Creole. Because they were the be the first to be born in that new colony or whatever. And then there was the creels of color. So my family are creels of color. And there's this will happen but my father's side. And so there's that other dichotomy where it's like, some people were free creels of color, some were not. And people often sort of conflate all these different cultures, whether it's indigenous folks, you know, Creole, Cajun, all these different people who really were like the product of migration, or movement, whether voluntary or involuntary and these different situations. So, yeah, then you get folks like me where I have mixed heritage, but it's not as clear of a mixed heritage as the two of you can clearly discuss, you know, you know, having one parent from a place in Europe and another that is not so How interesting. Wow. So then you took all of this of who you are, and ended up in Texas.

Karlton  39:05
Isn't that interesting? Well, first of all, it wasn't a choice. When I was 15 and 16. Because family business imploded. parents said, Well, we have real estate in Texas. We're going to Texas, so we went to Texas. I stayed here for a year left, went back to Jersey, went back to Texas, went to Canada, came back to Texas, went in the military, went to Missouri, went to Texas, went to Florida and then I ended up moving back to Texas in 2011 2012. Here's what I realized about Texas. Okay, Texas is that place that when you go is kind of hard to just shake it off with you. Every one is so kind. It's so it's weird. You would think that it was you know, rebel flags and racists and gun totin I HATE YOU You know, get out of my country. It's not like that at all. I haven't. Very few have I experienced it, I experienced it more from my own people in places like Florida, in New Jersey in New York than I do from complete strangers. Here in Texas. It's the weirdest thing. Plus, there's a lot of space, there's a lot of land. I grew up in the city, you know, there's a million people living on top of each other, you know, here, it's all spread out, you know. So, Texas has just been that beautiful place. It's warm. It's, it's not too cold. I like coal, but it's just a really nice place. And once you kind of route down into Texas, it's, it's kind of hard to leave. And when you view the world from Texas, it's like, there's no better place in the world. I'd rather be a lab. Well, there's no place in the US that I'd rather be. Let me say that. Okay, because there's places outside of the US I would, oh, yeah, I would sure, stick a flag real quick and never leave. But here in the US this is, and I still frequent Florida, I frequent Georgia, I don't frequent Jersey like I used to, I would be okay, if I never go back to hostilities to the mannerisms of people. I'm not on that, you know, when I was young, it was cool to walk around with a chip on my shoulder and have an attitude, everything was wrong. Everything was a problem. It's random. Oh, that's a problem. I'm mad at. You know, you walk into grocery stores in New Jersey, they don't even say hello. You know, when you get your stuff, they're gonna say thank you for shopping come back. It's like good, get out of here, you know, slowing me down. And the hospital that southern hospitality I'm addicted to it. That's let me just say that. I'm addicted to that. How interesting.

Shawna  41:46
Part of the reason I do this show is because I say you can fit anywhere, but you don't really belong anywhere. And for a moment, you kind of mentioned that you experienced some of that. I don't want to say resistance or lack of belonging from how you described your own people. And that's, that's always been this weird loophole that people who are racially or culturally or ethnically ambiguous kind of fall it never quite enough of this to belong, never quite enough of this to belong. So I think it's awesome that you found your place, and clearly aren't looking back. Yeah.

Karlton  42:22
Well, it's interesting. You say it that way, because it's so true. I can be around. You know, people say your own people, right.

Shawna  42:29
But yeah, nobody y'all didn't see me it was like an aircraft.

Karlton  42:33
So I'm around, you know, say Georgia, you know, predominantly Asiatic Fort Lauderdale, Florida, predominantly, Asiatic. You know, Bloomfield, New Jersey is not established New Jersey it is. I could find my way around that. But our cultural differences because of the way my mom and my dad raised me, I, it's hard for me to view a person by the tone of the melanin of their skin, and judge make a judgment call on that person, like, oh, they don't know or they're not this or they're not that or they're this or they're that because of that. So I'm not really one for drama. I'm one of those guys who don't do the drama right? Conversation kicks up about drama, I'm out the moment somebody says, He said, or she said, deuces, I'm out, I got better things to do. I don't got time for that. So that type of indulgence of communication threatens my, my stability, if you will, in my ability to think clearly once I hear it, it I'm rattled. And now I'm going down the psychological hole of trying to understand where this person is coming from. So I could try to fix it. And I can, that's the reality. I can't I can't fix people, people. People aren't broken. People are who they are true and true. They may choose to change in their life, but they must choose to do so. And I can't make them change. So I have to distance myself from that conversation. I can't walk into a store and hear 313 year olds walk into the store and say, Hey, man, what you doing and nothing and yet and over there over and I would go bonkers, I would be like I would immediately stop them and start talking to them and their payments would probably be like Who you talking to my baby? You don't need that? No, right? Talk my baby. And now we got a problem on our hands. Right? So it's hard for me to be in there. On the other side of that I can't be on the other side of the pendulum either where if I walk in, I have your opinion saying the very same thing. You know, who is this and what you do in in my neck of the woods. You don't belong around here, boy, you're about to have a problem with me and it's not going to be a conversation. So I have to kind of find the middle ground where people are not looking at skin tone. Melon dialogue, dialect call torture, gender, like, they're not looking at any of that. They're saying, that's a person standing in front of me. I'm gonna treat that person, like a person. Wherever that's happening, that's where I want to be, where that's not happening. That's not where I want to be. And that's where you are right now. That's where I am right now. I want to avoid the chaos and spend the rest of my life doing what my genius is. And that's being creative, embracing my innovation, my skills to create situations, solutions for situations that others can't find a way out of.

Shawna  45:30
I dig it. So where can folks find you and all of this greatness that you're bringing the business GPS,

Karlton  45:37
oh, they could definitely find me on LinkedIn and Facebook, I spend most of my time on LinkedIn. at Carlton Hoskins. Just look me up, Carlton with a que I connect with almost everyone who sends me a friend request. It's ridiculous. But there's always something to share. There's always a solution to be had. And if a person is, you know, they have an idea, but they don't think it's Next Generation Next Level creativity. Hit me up. That's what I love to do. I will take your thought process your business, to a whole nother level of creativity. You know, kind of like, we watch these organizations do they started one thing and they become something else. That's my genius. That's what I

Shawna  46:24
love it. This was a freakin fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for sharing it with us sharing your story, your perspectives, so appreciate it.

Karlton  46:35
Thank you, thank you for having me. Like, I never get an opportunity to have this type of dialogue. So when he told me when I had this call, because I am in, I talk only about money in real estate every day in and out. So to have this type of conversation is is it's a breath of fresh air.

46:53
Anytime, anytime. Yolandie Anything before we close?

Yolandie  46:58
I have a whole new perspective on my own personal history after today's conversation, and as you think that I already found you on LinkedIn. So you won't be hearing the last of me from this conversation. And thank you for everything. You are absolutely amazing. Definitely go look him up people.

Shawna  47:21
For sure. All right. Well, thank

47:24
you both.

Shawna  47:26
I hope that you enjoy the rest of your day, Carlton. So appreciate this was great. Thank you so much. Take care, everybody. Hey, friends, thanks for hanging out for this episode of our true colors. never a shortage of interesting things happening here. As a matter of fact, I've put some links in the show notes for you to go explore a little bit more on your own. So don't forget to check that out and go find Carlton. He's pretty dope. Don't forget our True Colors is sponsored by True Colors consulting. So if you want to learn more about diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace, you can find out more at True Colors. dei.com In the meantime, be safe out there y'all there's a lot going on. Hey, share smile with somebody. And when you can find a way to make someone feel welcome. Love y'all. Talk to you soon.

Outro  48:20
You've been listening to our true colors.