The Michael Knowles Show - July 04, 2026


Michael REACTS To Tom MacDonald's ＂Remember Who You Are＂


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

163.98

Word count

1,434

Sentence count

78

Harmful content

Toxicity

29

sentences flagged

Hate speech

43

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Tom McDonald's new song Remember Who You Are has 1.6 million views on YouTube in 3 days, and it s actually pretty innocuous. It s about the flag, but it s also about whiteness and whiteness in general.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:55.320 Today's song is called Remember Who You Are. It's by Tom McDonald. We haven't done a Tom
00:01:02.200 McDonald song in a minute, huh? It's got 1.6 million views in three days. All right, take it
00:01:07.120 away.
00:01:37.120 Standing for the anthem with their hand on their chest
00:01:40.880 Rattlesnakes on some yellow flags hanging from the window panes, buddy
00:01:44.220 You should watch where you step step step step get to stepping y'all get get get gone get gone
00:01:51.600 We just want to work go to church have a good time till we in the dirt 1.00
00:01:56.120 Remember who you are white boys start a fire with some gas and a match 1.00
00:02:00.560 Hanging out the window of a truck with a flag 1.00
00:02:02.880 This is for the guys who gon' fight to be free till the cops come around
00:02:23.300 Who never let the flag that they wave touch the ground
00:02:26.340 Metal sign on a fence post, no trespassing allowed 0.99
00:02:30.600 And this is for the ones who don't run reading Bibles loading guns
00:02:34.360 They know what they got to do and they know how to get it done all the ones who learning lessons to the day
00:02:39.420 They get to heavy if you ain't one of us and get the step in step
00:02:44.280 Step step step get to stepping y'all get get get gone get gone
00:02:49.800 We just want to work go to church have a good time to be in the dirt 1.00
00:02:54.300 Remember who you are white boys start a fire with some gas and a match 1.00
00:02:58.200 Hanging out the window of a truck with a flag 1.00
00:03:01.380 Kissing off the world is trying to tell you it's bad to be like you 1.00
00:03:05.500 Just remember who you are, white boy 1.00
00:03:07.880 Racing hell just like your old man 1.00
00:03:10.060 Little slice of heaven somewhere out on a ranch 0.93
00:03:13.040 Kissing off the world is trying to tell you it's bad to be like you 0.99
00:03:17.180 Remember who you were, white boy 0.81
00:03:19.640 Before they tried to race in your past 1.00
00:03:21.920 Told you it's bad 0.96
00:03:23.240 Remember who you were, white boy 1.00
00:03:25.460 Before they put your kids in a mask 0.98
00:03:27.700 to sit in the class remember who you were white boy for the only lives that mattered were black 0.98
00:03:33.140 you got attacked remember who you were white boy i'm telling you you gotta go back more like that 1.00
00:03:40.620 remember who you are white boy start a fire with some gas and a match hanging out the window of a 0.99
00:03:46.880 truck with a flag isn't off the world that's trying to tell you it's bad to be like you 0.99
00:03:52.020 Just remember who you are, white boy. 1.00
00:03:54.560 Raising hell just like your old man. 1.00
00:03:57.080 Little slice of heaven somewhere out on ranch. 0.55
00:04:00.040 Facing off the world is trying to tell you it's bad to be like you.
00:04:04.580 He released it on Juneteenth. 0.93
00:04:07.800 You know what's so charming about this song is he says, you know, remember who you are, white boy. 0.98
00:04:14.880 Raising hell just like your old man. 0.96
00:04:16.960 But then what are the examples that he gives?
00:04:19.320 They're actually pretty wholesome.
00:04:20.820 So, you know, there's this metaphor of you're pouring out gasoline and lighting a fire.
00:04:37.920 That's like Billy Joel.
00:04:39.020 We didn't start the fire.
00:04:40.100 You know, it's not a destructive fire.
00:04:41.400 It's a vibrant fire.
00:04:43.840 You know, it's this kind of fire of life.
00:04:45.200 Yes!
00:04:46.940 Look what I have created!
00:04:48.440 I have made fire.
00:04:51.520 But then one of the discreet examples he gives is you don't let the flag touch the ground. 0.94
00:04:56.380 You realize, you know, raise in hell like your old man. 0.64
00:04:59.200 One of the kind of funny things about like white boy culture is it's relatively innocent. 0.97
00:05:04.180 It's actually pretty innocuous.
00:05:06.660 White boy culture is not known for being particularly destructive at all. 0.95
00:05:11.040 It's really quite the opposite.
00:05:12.740 And it's very provocative to say that there is a white boy culture.
00:05:15.700 because what we had been told basically for my entire life of my education is that there is no
00:05:21.720 white culture. But then the very people who are making that argument and say there is no white
00:05:26.360 boy culture, they would come out and contradict themselves and say, we need to abolish white boy
00:05:32.240 culture. We need to abolish whiteness. What does it mean to abolish whiteness? Assuming they're not 0.95
00:05:36.060 talking about actual genocide, which maybe they are, it means you have to abolish a culture. 0.77
00:05:41.580 And it's not even whiteness generally. 0.93
00:05:44.560 It's specifically white men. 0.88
00:05:46.640 It's white boys. 0.65
00:05:47.960 So, okay, now we acknowledge there is a white boy culture. 0.94
00:05:50.960 And the left, I think if you pinned them on that contradiction, they would say, yeah, okay, well, yes, there is a white boy culture, and it's very bad, and it's racist and misogynistic and violent and oppressive and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 0.71
00:06:02.620 You say, okay, all right, there are all these terrible aspects of the white boy culture. 0.77
00:06:06.100 Is there anything good about it? 0.86
00:06:07.680 Quick question. Let's just say for argument's sake, the white culture, white boy culture is really, really bad in all these different ways. Is there anything, is there even one single thing that's good about white boy culture? 0.94
00:06:22.260 And the left would blanch, pun intended. 0.87
00:06:25.240 The left would not have an answer to that
00:06:27.920 because they can't allow themselves to say yes,
00:06:31.660 that there is, like, I don't know,
00:06:32.940 listening to rock music,
00:06:35.020 making sure the American flag doesn't touch the ground, 0.88
00:06:36.980 whatever, you know, whatever white boy stuff is, 0.89
00:06:38.740 playing Fender Stratocasters and shotgunning beers, 0.60
00:06:41.800 whatever, you know, whatever white boy culture is. 0.77
00:06:44.100 They can't acknowledge that any of it's good.
00:06:47.700 And if you really get down into demographic breakdowns
00:06:51.120 good things like volunteering, like, I don't know, giving to charity, diligence, whatever,
00:06:56.500 you know, they can't acknowledge that. You remember the Smithsonian put out that guide
00:07:01.020 to whiteness, what whiteness is? And the Smithsonian, unwittingly, ironically,
00:07:06.340 made it really, really racist against black people because they said, you know, things like
00:07:10.580 showing up on time and going to work, like those are aspects of white culture that we cannot expect
00:07:16.200 of other people. He's like, wait, what? I mean, being like smart and diligent is just white 0.94
00:07:20.620 culture. That was the Smithsonian said that. And so there's this very confused conversation
00:07:25.740 around what it is that constitutes white culture or specifically even white boy culture. There is
00:07:31.040 no culture, but there is a culture and it's bad and we have to get rid of it. Is there anything
00:07:34.580 good about it? And you realize there's this preposterous double standing where when we're
00:07:39.000 talking about any other kind of culture in the overlapping identities of intersectionality,
00:07:45.440 If you talk about any other culture, you're only allowed to focus on the good things, and you have to ignore or deny all the bad things. 0.58
00:07:54.580 Except for white boy culture, where you have to ignore or deny all the good things, and you can only focus on the bad things, real or imagined. 0.79
00:08:01.380 That is the context in which Tom's song is coming out, which is a healthy, I don't know, antidote to some of that. 0.88
00:08:10.700 and it was, it's the inevitable product of the, that fact of racial identity, that every other
00:08:17.440 race in America has a higher than 50% racial identity. For, for black people, it's over 70%.
00:08:23.320 For white people, it's 15%. And that, that's just unsustainable. If, if racial politics is going to 0.94
00:08:28.920 come to the fore. No surprise that it got a million and a half views in three days. Frankly,
00:08:32.720 I'm surprised it hasn't gotten even more. I suspect it will. Okay. That's our show. I'm
00:08:35.960 Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you tomorrow.
00:08:40.700 It was always burning since the world can turn