Why Black People Choose Mental Slavery: April Chapman & Vince Ellison Explain | Jason Whitlock Harmony

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Jason Whitlock (0:30)

We're going to have a great harmony today. I got two powerhouse guests that have combined to produce a documentary, Slavery Is a Choice, Vince Everett Ellison, obviously a friend of the show. You guys know Vince, he's everywhere. Of course, you know April Chapman, sometimes called Angel Chapman on this show, friend of the show, April Chapman. These two guys have combined on a documentary, Slavery Is a Choice. It's provocative, it's powerful, it's available for you to watch. Go to slavery is a choice, film.com right now.

Let's watch a trailer before I bring these guys on.

April Chapman (1:21)

We're here today to talk about something that for us, it wasn't always a source of agreement.

Vince Everett Ellison (1:36)

Slavery was a choice then, it's a choice now.

April Chapman (1:40)

Yeah, we got to fight. How do you defend saying slavery is a choice?

Vince Everett Ellison (1:46)

They always want to tell you that you have no choice, that's how they keep you under control. Because if you ever understand and believe that you have a choice, they're done.

SPEAKER_4 (1:53)

The life of the Negro is still badly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination 100 years later.

Jason Whitlock (2:20)

So it's been out for a week. It's going to be awesome to have April and Vince here to unpack it. April, Vince, welcome to Harmony. Thank you guys for making the time. Vince, I'm going to have to give him the title, and he's taking it from me. The most provocative, outspoken man on race and culture in America. And it really pains me to say that, but I do think Vince has earned the title. And there's a couple other candidates out there, but Chad O. Jackson is tremendous. That is great. But Chad takes a different tact.

Vince is kind of George Foreman. You know, he's just boom, boom, boom. Where Chad is more Muhammad Ali. He's going to float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. And, you know, I don't know, I guess I'm Iron Mike Tyson, but I got it. I got it.

April, you start us out. How did you and Vince come together to work on this?

April Chapman (3:33)

Well, about two years ago, Vince and I started working together on other projects. And one day in the course of a conversation, he made the statement, Slavery Was a Choice. And I had heard the statement from Kanye West before, but I just assumed that Kanye was crazy.

And so in a conversation when Vince and I were talking about it, I thought he was joking. And he was like, no, I'm absolutely dead serious. I was like, so you believe this as a deeply held presupposition? And he said, absolutely. I said, well, how are you going to defend that? So it really started off as a source of contention between us. And it was a conversation.

And literally, point by point, I could not break the argument. So I took it on as a challenge. And so when he talks about slavery was imposed, but submission was never universal, I struggled with that. And so it started out as a course of a conversation. We started filming aspects of it about two years ago without really knowing the full depth and breadth myself of the argument. And then I said, well, I want executive produce it and produce it. So we kind of collaborated together between VEE Productions and my production house, Standard House Media, and we created Magic.

Jason Whitlock (4:53)

So Vince, get us wrote, Slavery Is a Choice. Defend that. What are you saying?

Vince Everett Ellison (5:01)

You know, Jason, it's interesting. A lot of this film has talked about the life of my father and my family, choosing to be free and how successful we've been because we make that choice. Coming from a small town, Brownsville, Tennessee, my family has seen tremendous success in the United States of America. And it's because we didn't listen to the rhetoric of all of these naysayers. My father passed away the day before this film came out. And I just got back from this funeral. April was very nice enough to attend it also. And before he died, two weeks, two months before he died, they gave him an honorary doctorate because of all the work he had done in the area, promoting the gospel of Jesus Christ. He has accommodations from the President of the United States of America, the Senate and the Congress.