Valuetainment - June 12, 2026


＂He Was Like SUPERMAN＂ – How a Navy Vet Grandfather Built Andre Williams' Mind


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

186.05

Word count

1,061

Sentence count

68

Harmful content

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, I sit down with my brother to talk about how he grew up in Detroit, Michigan and how he became the man he is today. We talk about his upbringing, his early influences, and what shaped him into the man we know today.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 How did you get this mindset?
00:00:01.260 Who shaped your mind?
00:00:01.960 You speak about your grandfather a lot.
00:00:03.560 I do.
00:00:04.100 So what are some ways he shaped your mindset?
00:00:08.120 We would talk every day.
00:00:09.760 My father was killed a few months before I was born.
00:00:12.880 Engaged to my mother and everything.
00:00:15.200 Grandfather loved him.
00:00:16.340 In Detroit?
00:00:17.000 In Detroit, yeah.
00:00:17.940 Right down the street.
00:00:19.380 Right down the street in the same neighborhood.
00:00:21.220 It's life.
00:00:22.040 Such is life.
00:00:23.120 But I'm here.
00:00:23.600 Was he causing trouble or he was a bystander?
00:00:27.600 Good man. 0.68
00:00:28.700 Was killed, murdered.
00:00:30.000 And a very unfortunate situation.
00:00:32.980 I'm here because of the excellence of my parents,
00:00:35.720 but this unfortunate beginning, as I said, did not define me,
00:00:40.360 didn't push me in the direction of being involved in crime
00:00:46.560 or being involved in this instability.
00:00:47.880 I had great parents, something unfortunate to happen.
00:00:51.500 But we didn't sit back and cry about it.
00:00:52.920 We did something and pushed beyond this circumstance, this situation.
00:00:57.520 So that happened.
00:00:58.980 father's gone my mother she lives right next door took care of my grandmother she passed away in 2005
00:01:05.380 um they were like best friends they loved each other uh grandfather he was always my mother's
00:01:13.140 daddy's girl grandfather served 44 years in the navy joined 1960 went into navy medicine
00:01:19.300 a phd anatomy and physiology great man like superman so much of the worldview politics
00:01:26.880 philosophy came from him he was a big Schopenhauer fan he was a big Jean-Jacques Rousseau fan Nietzsche
00:01:33.940 we would talk about these things all the time and we were known as the black republicans in
00:01:38.940 the neighborhood because we had a very conservative outlook on things and I would say I'm more far
00:01:43.840 right I'm more aggressive in my perspective on politics compared to where they of course stood
00:01:50.440 they being your grandfather grandfather and mother I think I went a little bit aggressive
00:01:54.500 So as I got older, we would argue a little bit like, you know,
00:01:57.140 hey, I think we should go a little bit further with this.
00:01:58.920 He's like, oh, you need to calm down.
00:02:00.520 Pace yourself.
00:02:01.900 I hear what you're saying.
00:02:03.540 But pace yourself.
00:02:05.020 I get where you're coming from.
00:02:06.560 But slow down a little bit.
00:02:08.280 But, yeah, much of my worldview.
00:02:09.700 Who influenced him?
00:02:11.140 Who influenced him?
00:02:11.920 I would say that's an honest question.
00:02:14.460 Who influenced him?
00:02:15.460 I would say he influenced himself.
00:02:16.980 He came from a very poor condition.
00:02:19.360 Grew up in Culpeper, Virginia.
00:02:21.400 a predicament of mother and father not in the best relationship.
00:02:24.880 And married, and I think he was one son out of, what, six sisters?
00:02:29.880 So a lot of kids, big family.
00:02:32.460 And he left home, joined the Navy, and made for his own self,
00:02:36.000 moved to Detroit in 1972, married my grandmother, I think, what, 73, 74.
00:02:40.880 And we've been in Detroit ever since, on our own home.
00:02:44.360 Same area?
00:02:44.980 Same area.
00:02:45.500 You haven't moved?
00:02:46.200 Have not moved.
00:02:46.880 I've moved, but family hasn't moved, no.
00:02:48.800 So the area that they grew up in, how far are you from where they were at?
00:02:53.380 I'm downtown.
00:02:54.440 Okay, got it.
00:02:55.960 So who would he talk to you about?
00:02:57.920 You gave some of the names earlier that he would talk about.
00:03:00.400 Who else would he talk about?
00:03:01.440 Thomas Sowell, was Thomas Sowell an influence?
00:03:03.620 Big Thomas Sowell.
00:03:04.800 He loved Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas.
00:03:07.780 But it was more of, he was always something very interesting with him,
00:03:11.040 which got me into a more far right-leaning perspective.
00:03:14.560 but I would say we would watch Westerns, Gunsmoke, Half Gun Will Travel, Bonanza.
00:03:19.740 We loved it.
00:03:21.220 And he would say sometimes, you know, the most interesting story isn't always the good guy.
00:03:25.600 It's the bad guy.
00:03:27.300 And I'm a big history fan, so I'm like, well, what do you mean by that?
00:03:30.600 And then we start talking about, well, look through history.
00:03:32.640 Look at all the people that they say are bad guys, that are bad people.
00:03:36.140 What do you think of them?
00:03:37.740 So I start going down the list.
00:03:39.800 I'm like, okay, I can mention, you know, Napoleon.
00:03:42.040 I can mention, you know, Stalin to a degree, Mao to a degree, Hitler, Mussolini, Francisco Franco.
00:03:50.460 I can mention a lot of these people.
00:03:51.680 I'm like, you know, these guys are considered the bad guys.
00:03:53.460 We get told in school these guys are the bad people.
00:03:56.280 But when you examine history, it's like, well, are they?
00:04:00.080 History is written by the victor.
00:04:02.020 This is something that I think is always going to exist regardless of if these people are right or wrong.
00:04:07.360 but history is written by those who are in possession of it and can control it when we
00:04:14.960 would have a conversation about world war ii we would talk about the politics of the government
00:04:18.160 i was fascinated with the tanks the battles the planes i grew up playing call of duty so that was
00:04:23.060 a big thing for me like oh you know this is great this is cool what's the politics of you know how
00:04:29.180 why is it that the this war went in this way the direction in the course of history went in this
00:04:35.560 direction so i started examining each individual left and right and i came to the conclusion that
00:04:41.560 you know we're bad things done of course but the message and what they represented for their
00:04:48.900 respective people i think well i'm a nationalist because i examined world war ii from a nationalistic
00:04:53.500 lens i take a very far right view of the world but doesn't mean i'm you know aggressive or
00:05:00.040 not compassionate in other people's perspectives.
00:05:04.880 Am I very liberal? No, not very liberal.
00:05:06.980 Am I empathetic?
00:05:09.040 To a degree.
00:05:10.700 I'm looking at things from a lens of reality, not emotion.
00:05:14.540 I'm looking at the lens of how things are more so than how I feel about it.
00:05:19.660 And that was like the biggest red pill for me,
00:05:23.700 that he pushed me in that direction. 0.92
00:05:25.560 Hi, I'm Andre Williams, constantly critical of black culture, 1.00
00:05:28.700 black fatigue, calling out the problems 1.00
00:05:30.880 within our community across this country.
00:05:33.120 If you want to reach out to me, you can reach me
00:05:34.780 on Menecht.
00:05:36.420 If you enjoyed this video, you want to watch more videos like this,
00:05:39.000 click here, and if you want to watch the entire
00:05:40.640 podcast, click here.