“Built That Way” Social Inequality & The Gap Between Luxury & Hardship

In this episode I dive into the harsh contrast between luxury and struggle in the city, where wealth shines bright on one block while survival is fought for on the next. 

Through raw conversation and an urban lens, this episode explores how social inequality isn’t accidental… it’s built into the system, the streets, and everyday life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:16

Money doesn't just buy you a better life, better food, better cars, better pussy. It also makes you a better person.

SPEAKER_05 0:23

How much money you make?

SPEAKER_07 0:27

70,000 last month. 70,000 technically.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

I am the hood politic. As always, I say your girl goes by the name Desiree to my family and friends. And if you are listening to this now, watching this now, either or if you're tuning into my voice, please know that from this moment on, you are family. So, family, I opened the show with a mashup of uh scenes from a very popular 2013 film. I'm pretty sure uh you've heard of it. It's called The Wolf of Wall Street. So the clip is essentially a mashup of scenes with the main character, Jordan, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. And it pretty much displays his lavish lifestyle as a stockbroker. So Jordan and his friends, as you'll see in the clip, or as you've heard if you listen to the audio recording of this, they are living their best lives, right? Now, it's some trouble along the way, of course, but you know, nothing that money can't really fix or resolve, right? Now, I wanted to open with this scene because it displays an unequivocal truth. Like a truth that is far often too ignored here in our country. That truth that I'm referring to is social inequality. Now, social inequality in America is not a myth. Let's just start there. It's not a myth. Um, the gap between luxury and hardship has never existed more plainly than it does in our present day, in our reality. Now, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that most people dream of experiencing that level of wealth that you just saw in the clip. The level of wealth that allows you to go to any dealership and purchase whatever dream car is your preference, to go into some of the finest neighborhoods with these crazy mansions. Or even if you're not a mansion person, if you're just someone who wants the ability to hop on a private jet and arrive at a private airship and pretty much fly yourself anywhere where you will want to go over the world, you know, things that you just witnessed and you saw in that clip. Like I said, it's not too much of a stretch to say that a lot of us, you know, we we dream of experiencing that wealth, of touching that amount of money in this lifetime. But I I the most uh dangerous thing about this, I guess you can say, when you just kind of can consider this in in in broad aspects, is when you are led to believe that this same wealth is obtainable for everyone here, regardless of who you are, that that right there is when we get to talking about the dangerous aspect of it and the cruel aspect of it. The harsh truth is is this family. If you are a minority in this country, or even if you're not a minority, if you are someone who are who's of a lower social standing or lower class standing, there are established systemic barriers in place that are there to intentionally prevent you from obtaining that type of wealth. I'm not talking conspiracy theory, family. That's not what I'm talking. Like I said, just giving you truth, fact. Growing up, uh I could remember seeing all these Disney Channel movies like Richie Rich and Blank Chick. Like, and I would go to sleep praying and hoping as a young kid that I could wake up in that reality, you know, or just as one of those kids where you just don't have a clue in the world and everything that you want is literally at your fingertips. I would say, Yeshua, if I can't be adopted by rich people, okay, you can you can just at least give me the blank check and I'll figure the rest out. You see what I'm saying? Now, as usual, you know, my little colonized prayers, they fail me. But I was blessed and fortunate enough to have matriarchs surrounding me that provided me with clarity and a clear understanding. And that was it was designed to be hard for me. If I was to achieve anything in this soul's experience, it was going to be because of my connection to the all-knowing, the divine, and it would be through my hard work. You know, I would have to truly know what it meant to be self-made. Like, I want to insert a fact here, family, because you know, here at the hood politics, as I say, we're all about the facts, all about the facts. As of early 2026, the wealth distribution in the United States has reached its most concentrated level in over three decades. Like we talking, the most concentrated has been since 30 years ago, family. Like, hell, I was barely even thought about almost 30 years ago. You know, probably a lot of you as well. But according to the Federal Reserve, this is data taken from the end of 2025. The top 1% of households in the United States, they hold approximately 31.7% of all US wealth. 31.7%. So in this current distribution model, the wealthy see rapid growth driven by like financial assets, while the bottom half of the population, we see stagnation and decline. You know that saying where they say the rich get richer? Yeah, that exactly. To put it plainly, family, we the people, we live in an entirely different reality than the 1%. Now, of course, in the eyes of the wealthy, they would say they share the same experiences as the rest of us. But honestly, you have to be delusional to believe that. The top 1% they they can't tell you how much a gallon of milk costs. Most of them can't even tell you the price of a gallon of gas right now. They can't. They could probably give you metrics because they're probably owners of that source, but they don't live in the same reality that we live in. That's just a fact. Now, understand that it takes work to be successful at any level. Any level, it takes hard work to be successful. But it's a lot easier when you've been given a head start. You know what I'm saying? If you're not careful, you will find yourself comparing apples to oranges, as my late grandmother Mary would say. But every now and then we need a reminder. So I want you to check out this clip right here from an interview with Errol Musk, the father of Elon Musk. Here he is right here. Check it out.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

You see, uh, Elon and Kimball and Oscar, they grew up with me um from a very early age, as I said, uh spoke to you earlier about. They only knew that they lived in a very fine home in Watercloof. Where all by the time they were eight or nine years, seven, eight, nine years old, I had given up Mercedes-Benz cars. I had moved on to Rolls-Royce cars. So they only rode in Rolls-Royce cars. If you if you understand. They they knew that if you wanted to go somewhere, you got into a twin-engined aeroplane that belonged to you. And you flew there. And then you landed on your airstrip and you went to your lodge. If you if you understand. It weren't like other kids. And um, you know, they'd been to, as I said, every they they learned to ski in Europe when they were st still ten or under ten years of age. You know. So they lived what I would call uh a life that's not the life I led as a child. I I I never had a I never even had a bed un until I up to the age of ten. Never mind a bedroom. I never had a bed. I slept on a on a couch until I was ten years old. My parents were too poor. We lived in two rooms in a boarding house in the immigrant section. I I mean, you know, uh we went poor poor people were rich compared to us. So um No, um I never had anything like that. So when you start like I did, you do get money and you start to think, well, I should keep this and spin it as slowly as possible. But when you grow up like Elon and Kimball, particularly Elon, with also with these sort of sort of you mentioned like Asperger's or whatever it is. Um, you know, with a sort of different outlook on life, you know, what the hell? You could you make it, you can make it again, you know. You're never ever gonna go down. You know, you're entitled, man. You you're one of those who just gets it, you know, no matter what. And um, you know, we we you know there's another term for it chit flips, you know, something like that. Sorry. Gross coin. But anyway, so uh yeah, so so they were not used to anything like that. They to them uh you know uh hardship was uh when uh the Hilton ran out of full at steak or something, you know.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

Family, no lie. Well when I first heard that clip, I had to replay it. Twin engine airplane, private airstrip, you say, dropped off to school in a Rolls Royce? Okay. Growing up, the closest I ever came to a Rolls Royce was a Cadillac EXT. I I'm just gonna cut it to you plainly. Like, ladies, if you're listening to this, Elon's his father, Errol, he's still alive. Now, he's probably accepting applications for sugar babies. So don't trip each other up trying to get over there. But seriously, family, you you get the point. These people, they just they they live in a different reality. Now, men like Elon are born into generational wealth. Born into generational wealth. You heard the clip. He said by the time Elon was, you know, pretty much on up into his adolescent years, he had upgraded from Mercedes-Benz to Rolls Royal. He was born into generational wealth. Most of us, we spend our entire lives working to obtain a fraction of that. Over the past three decades, the rich have gotten richer, as the saying goes. In the meantime, the years haven't been kind to a lot of other people. The glamorous lifestyle of a wealthy person can be extremely fascinating, you know. Owning these big-time luxury items, it can even be intoxicating, you know. But all it takes is a quick look around, and you are suddenly thrust back into reality, right? Now, I want to prompt engagement here, family. Let me know down below in the comments or you know, through social media. What does reality look like in your world, family? What does reality look like? I'm sure it's more similar for a lot of us than we like to imagine. It's especially more similar with a lot of us than it is with the 1%. Now, I want to pause right here and I'm gonna show you this last clip right here. Because this is really gonna really gonna send it home. So check this out.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

I mean, let's be real. 2025 has been heavy financially for a lot of people. Groceries going up, gas, rent, mortgage, everything almost seems impossible to pay these days. Families are making real life hard choices every day, whether to pay the light bill, the gas bill. Sometimes the bill has to go without being paid because they have to buy food. Parents are stressed, so the kids don't feel the weight of everything, but we all know behind closed doors. Let me take this off. I mean the mental toll that it takes on parents like it's a lot, y'all. Most people are battling with anxiety, staying up late at night trying to make sure they have enough to survive to make it to the next payday. The truth is, life is tough for a lot of people right now. We just haven't caught up with the cost of living at all. But if anything, y'all, struggling in 2025 does not mean that you are failing. It means that you are human having a hard moment. And this too shall pass. Never be ashamed of what you're going through, who you are. Keep going. Do what you can do and never feel bad for what you can't. Alright? Keep pushing.

SPEAKER_03 15:44

Y'all, y'all know what's so crazy. It's so crazy how, like a couple years ago, I could get on the app, you know, doing DoorDash Uber Eats Instacart, and I could have orders instantly. No problem, no issue. I try to get on the app now in 2025, and let me tell you something, it be no orders. $5 order, $2 order, and everybody is Instacart, and everybody's Instacarting, everybody's DoorDash and everybody's Uber Eats. Everybody is struggling. It's so fucking hard out here, it don't make no damn sense. Like, come on, man.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Man, it's important to understand family. This gap, it didn't just happen. And it most definitely didn't just happen overnight. It was designed to be this way. And what you have to understand is somebody benefits from it staying this way. Inequality isn't accidental, it's engineered. Like, I want to talk about two important barriers that set the stage for the current gap we see now between luxury and hardship. So we're gonna start somewhere very simple, family. We're gonna start somewhere very simple. We're gonna just start in our neighborhoods, okay? Now, the history of land use in America, it has been complex since its conception, right? It is filled with systemic exclusion, urban planning and development, gentrification, and economic ambition. Zoning laws, and something I'm pretty sure you've heard of, if you haven't, hey, you have now, redlining, they led to policies that built the geography of modern inequality. So the origins of zoning can be traced back to the early 1900s. Uh in fact, New York City implemented the first comprehensive zoning ordinance in 1916, approximately. So in 1926, the United States Supreme Court they legalized a practice that became known as or referred to as Euclidean zoning. So this practice divided towns into specific districts, such as a residential district, a commercial district, and an industrial district, right? So the Supreme Court stated that the goal of this was the health of the general public. You believe that, right? But this practice in itself was exclusionary. So early ordin early ordinances, excuse me, family, I'm having a hard time talking today for some reason. They included racial zoning. And racial zoning explicitly forbade black and brown families from buying homes in white neighborhoods. Now, racial zoning would eventually be struck down by another Supreme Court ruling in 1917. But by this time, all cities did was, you know, all they did was simply pivot to single family zoning. And the single family zoning, it effectively priced out lower-income residents. And this also included whites of a lower social standing, like we talked about earlier. But it didn't stop there. In 1930, the federal government joined the party. And the federal government joined the party by turning local bias into a national economic policy. So once the U.S. entered the Great Depression, additional measures were taken to widen that gap. So the homeowners is loaned corporation created something called residential security maps. And they created these residential security maps for over 200 cities within the nation. And these maps were color-coded neighborhoods. And the whole idea of this was to color code the neighborhoods so it would kind of be based on a perceiving of risk, the risk that you were taking purchasing land within certain areas or certain neighborhoods and districts. So this was basically given to mortgage lending companies. Now the code divided neighborhoods into four basic codes. So green code, which was type A, it was considered new and a fluent. You know, code for that, rich white people. Okay. The blue, type B, which was still desirable, right? Coded again. White people, maybe not wealthy, maybe not rich, but you know, up and middle class white family, you know, they do well enough, right? Yellow or type C was declining. And then of course red type D, which was hazardous. Now, I don't have to tell you what yellow type C declining and red type D hazardous is. Okay, but if you must know, yellow and the red represented immigrants and households of black families. But areas marked in red that were predominantly black, and areas marked in, you know, yellow type C declining that were predominantly immigrant or lower income neighborhoods, they were denied federally insured. Mortgages. So this made it nearly impossible for residents there to build home equity. And in case you didn't know, family, home equity is the primary driver of generational wealth in our country. So these policies, they weren't just temporary fixes, you know, they enforced the geography of modern inequality. Now, to break it down in a way that's just easy to understand, you know, zoning and redlining policies. They are responsible for Stanley, a middle-aged financial employee who would be considered upper middle class, living next to Craig and his family, the Joneses, in the movie Friday. Now, Stanley woke up every single day. He could not believe that that was his current reality. Like Stanley was tweaking. Every day Stanley woke up, he had to yell to tell someone to stay off his freaking grass. Now, real talk the family. These policies, they brought long-term consequences. So someone who's making the money of Stanley, how is it that you still live in what would be considered, you know, projects when you're upper middle class, middle class, zoning and redlining. That's how. But the first consequence being the wealth gap that this created for black families and for brown families, minorities in this country. Because black families, especially, they were excluded from the post-World War II housing boom. So this ensured that a lot of black and brown families missed out on decades of property appreciation. So environmental disparity, you double down with it, it led to many formerly red line neighborhoods remaining significantly hotter because they have fewer trees and more industrial concrete, which then does what? It drives up the cost of utilities, which what again does nothing but further and widen that gap of social inequality and hardship. Now, in 1968, the Fair Housing Act finally, you know, it finally prohibited discrimination in housing. But the Fair Housing, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, it couldn't reverse like decades of mistreatment and disinvestment in black and brown communities. I'll just end it on this note, family. Comparison is the thief of joy. Okay. The wealthy wake up to a life filled with monetary value beyond a lot of our wildest dreams. But we value the things that money can't buy. You know, the things like the smile on your children's face when you pick them up from school, or the laughs you share with your loved ones as you are sitting around the table. The strength that lies inside us is greater than any of us could ever know. So I speak to you today and I say, activate it. Family, I want to do something different before closing. I want to kind of do a little bit of a call to action. And my call to action today is just wake up. Wake up and pay attention. In case a lot of you listening are unaware, the Supreme Court made a decision this week that pretty much, let's just put it short and simple, it gutted section two of the Voting Rights Act. And again, guys, I always say it, you've heard me say it so many times here on the show and on the platform. You're gonna continually hear me say it. Your vote matters. Your vote is important. Regardless of the BS, you may hear spewed and what they say, your vote is important. It matters, you matter. If you did not, they would not go through all of the leaps and bounds that they do to prevent you from having your chance to be heard. So my call to action today, family, is just wake up. Pay attention. Now, yes, I understand we all have life, and there are things that are outside of our control, and sometimes it just gets a little hard to, you know, to keep up with everything. But we have to think about if we don't pay attention, what kind of world are we going to be leaving to our children? What kind of world will we be leaving to our nieces and nephews? And as a disabled veteran that gave this country some hard-earned years that I just cannot get back, understand me when I say looking at the landscape, I'm worried. I'm more than worried. Because I don't see enough people paying attention. So that's my call to action, family. Wake up, pay attention. Wise woman once said, Sister Act 2. If you want to be somebody, if you want to go somewhere, you better wake up and pay attention. And that's literally where we are right now, collective. That's where we are. So that's me included. Let's just do a better job of paying attention and not getting distracted by things that don't really matter. Okay. But as always, I want to say to you guys that I appreciate each and every one of you for taking the time out to listen to me here. Um I want you to know that it's not just you guys. It's not just you. I live in the same world as you. I live in a lot of the same reality as a lot of you. And it's not just difficult for you. You're not the only one hurting, you're not the only one stressed, you're not the only one overwhelmed. But what what I do and what I tell myself is every day I wake up, I put one foot in front of the other, and I keep moving forward. So if you're in that place right now, just know every day is not gonna be like this. Wake up, put one foot in front of the other, and let's keep moving forward. So, you know, as always, guys, I gotta shout out the content that I used in the episode. So the content using this episode is courtesy of at Superwomanhood, all one word, unscripted, all one word, superwomanhood unscripted on TikTok. It's at the T T A Y Nicole N-I-C-O-L-E on TikTok as well. It's at Elon. Shouldn't even have to tell you how to spell that, but I will. E-L-O-N blunt B-L-U-N-T on TikTok all one word. And then it's at Flame, just how to spell F L A M E X. Just the letter X films on TikTok, all one words. At Flame X Films. So as always, shout out to you guys for the content. Really, really appreciate it. Great content. Now, family, please, please, please remember to follow the podcast on all social media. Follow us on Substack, follow us on YouTube, we're on Instagram, we're on Threads. Um, like I said, please, please follow us, guys. And also most importantly, like, share, subscribe, and please, please, please rate us. Rate us on the Apple Podcasts, rate us on Spotify, rate us anywhere you guys you know you stream the podcast, anywhere you listen to the podcast. But just know, guys, like I always say, as I always, always, always say, I wish divine peace upon you all. I want you to remember to stay safe, stay informed, and remember, culture moves people. But politics, politics decide the outcome. Peace.