Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to woke f Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody back in the Brooklyn Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: what a fuck show of a week it has been, right,
Speaker 1: Am I? Right? I mean I tell you this every week,
Speaker 1: but by the time I get to Friday, I am
Speaker 1: so just outdone. I'm outdone with Republicans fuckery. I just
Speaker 1: I think about, well, what are the things that I
Speaker 1: want to remember and cover for the week, And I
Speaker 1: feel absolutely crazy, Like I feel like my head is
Speaker 1: on some type of swivel because I can't remember from
Speaker 1: what happened on Monday, because so much crap happens during
Speaker 1: the week. It's like one big avalanche. But I'm going
Speaker 1: to try and summarize just some of the things that
Speaker 1: have happened. But I tell you that the guests that
Speaker 1: I have for today's show is perfect because the title
Speaker 1: of doctor Treva Lindsay's book is exactly how I feel
Speaker 1: on any given fucking day, which is America, Goddamn violence,
Speaker 1: Black women and the Struggle for Justice. And you know,
Speaker 1: we will talk about the reasoning behind her title, which
Speaker 1: is if you're familiar with Nina Simone, Nina Simone's song
Speaker 1: Mississippi Goddamn was about the violence that black people the
Speaker 1: black community were facing in Mississippi, and doctor Lindsay will
Speaker 1: go into detail about the history behind that song and
Speaker 1: why she wanted to attribute a part of her title
Speaker 1: to Nina Simone. But Folks, when I take a look
Speaker 1: at this week, when I think about more leaks of
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy showing momentarily that he actually recognized how grave
Speaker 1: of a moment in American history the insurrection was, but
Speaker 1: only to make an about face, get on a plane,
Speaker 1: fly down so that he can perfectly position his lips
Speaker 1: on Donald Trump's ass. It's so disheartening. But what I
Speaker 1: think that I'm finding about these moments and why I
Speaker 1: get stuck sometime in this downward spiral of despair that
Speaker 1: then I have to force myself to climb out of,
Speaker 1: is because I believe that this current iteration of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party, imagine if you actually had a fearless and
Speaker 1: fierce Democratic party, So imagine them to be an entirely
Speaker 1: different party altogether, one that wasn't afraid, one that was
Speaker 1: filled with warriors that were about this battle. Republicans and
Speaker 1: the fucking cartoons that they put out as their representatives
Speaker 1: are literal gifts on a silver platter, But it's only
Speaker 1: a gift to people that are willing to go toe
Speaker 1: to toe with their bullshit and fuckery, like State Senator
Speaker 1: McMorrow did in Michigan when she's like, no, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to cower from the Republicans attacks and the audacity
Speaker 1: and the despicable nature of them referring to her as
Speaker 1: a groomer and as a pedophile, which is their new
Speaker 1: fucking insult of choice, right to paint us all as
Speaker 1: these pedophiles. Meanwhile, we can go through a list of
Speaker 1: their sexual abusers and deviance and terribleness that they embrace. Right,
Speaker 1: But what Senator McMorrow did in her fierce fucking pushback
Speaker 1: was that she didn't run scared. She met toe to toe,
Speaker 1: showed integrity, showed grace, but above all else, showed passion,
Speaker 1: showed anger. Right, because I asked myself every single day,
Speaker 1: where the fuck is the fire? Where is the energy
Speaker 1: from Democrats? At the audacity of Republicans to try and
Speaker 1: destroy not even try, they are actively destroying our democracy
Speaker 1: without any real fucking opposition. Michael Harriet, writer for The
Speaker 1: Grio and a former guest on Woke app tweeted and said,
Speaker 1: you have Republicans literally offering the most terrible policies right
Speaker 1: and trying to rewrite school curriculum, trying to erase gay people,
Speaker 1: black people, women right from curriculum, and Democrats want to
Speaker 1: run on quote unquote kitchen table issues. If there's no
Speaker 1: more of a kitchen table issue than your child's education,
Speaker 1: I don't know what is, but as sure as fuck
Speaker 1: know that backing off from culture wars does not serve
Speaker 1: Democrats at all. Just look at Virginia and Governor Glen Youngan, right,
Speaker 1: there was no pushback to his parental control right, which
Speaker 1: in my piece for The Daily Beast that I wrote
Speaker 1: this week on the case that is in Washington State
Speaker 1: with regard to prayer in schools, there was no pushback too, yunkin,
Speaker 1: That's how he won. Democrats were like, well, crt isn't
Speaker 1: being taught, It's something that we only teach in blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah blah. As opposed to going
Speaker 1: toe to toe with the junkins of the world and saying,
Speaker 1: what scares you about Tony Morrison, Why don't you believe
Speaker 1: that our children should learn and be able to contextualize
Speaker 1: inside of a classroom the layered experience and history of America.
Speaker 1: What is so scary about that if marginalized communities were
Speaker 1: forced to face white domestic terrorism on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: your ancestors, no less, Why can't children learn about that
Speaker 1: and learn from the mistakes that we've made in the
Speaker 1: past and be able to contextualize the progress that we've
Speaker 1: had and still that there is more room to grow.
Speaker 1: Of course, unless you don't believe that the progress that
Speaker 1: has been made is good, and so then then you
Speaker 1: are put on the defense to talk about why you
Speaker 1: think that LGBTQ folks should be a push back into
Speaker 1: the closet, to talk about why you believe that women
Speaker 1: have no business in the workplace, to talk about why
Speaker 1: black people shouldn't be able to vote, Because then, right
Speaker 1: you would find democrats creating the parameters for the game
Speaker 1: instead of running after fucking Lucy with the football, And
Speaker 1: then you would see the media then respond and actually
Speaker 1: ask the kind of fucking questions that they should be asking.
Speaker 1: But instead we have a Republican white supremacist cult that
Speaker 1: is rewriting all of the rules. I mean, I said
Speaker 1: this this week on Democracy Ish, my other podcast with
Speaker 1: my friend Jaha Ali, where we had on the author
Speaker 1: of Jesus and John Wayne talking about white Evangelical Christians
Speaker 1: and how they have remade Jesus into their warrior Christ,
Speaker 1: their muscle bound, tanned warrior Christ and why this party
Speaker 1: that was supposed to be about family values fell for
Speaker 1: a deity that has been three times married and grabs
Speaker 1: about brags about grabbing women by the pussy. Right. So
Speaker 1: the Republican Party in its current incarnation is a fucking gift.
Speaker 1: But it is only a gift if you have a
Speaker 1: backbone in a spine, which we know the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: doesn't have. My whole thing is that, folks, we got
Speaker 1: three hundred federal judges that Trump appointed right in four
Speaker 1: fucking years. Why is that? Because Democrats have no spine
Speaker 1: and they didn't fight against Mitch McConnell. They didn't take
Speaker 1: him on because they thought that, oh, well, maybe if
Speaker 1: we don't fight him, he'll be our friend. Right. You
Speaker 1: still got fucking Joe Biden on a regular basis referring
Speaker 1: to these obstruction as motherfucker says his friends, right, because
Speaker 1: they have not or they refuse to identify who the
Speaker 1: villains are. Republicans have no fucking problem doing that. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, at the end of each week I find
Speaker 1: myself in a place of utter despair where I want
Speaker 1: to say, on a regular basis, America got damned, like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck is wrong with you? And So coming
Speaker 1: up next, friends, my conversation with a Triva Lindsay, feminist
Speaker 1: historian and author of America Goddamn Violence, Black Women and
Speaker 1: the Struggle for Justice. I hope that you enjoy the conversation.
Speaker 1: Please do let me know in the comments section what
Speaker 1: you think, folks. I am super excited to welcome to
Speaker 1: the show for the very first time doctor Treva Lindsay,
Speaker 1: who is an feminist historian and author of the book America,
Speaker 1: Goddamn Violence, Black Women and the Struggle for Justice. First
Speaker 1: of all, Bravo, because the title is does not love
Speaker 1: that Nina Simone song that just still till this day penetrate.
Speaker 1: So I want to start out with that question first,
Speaker 1: Doctor Lindsay, which is why that title? Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and and what what was what was the spirit behind
Speaker 1: that that selection? Well, first and foremost, thank you for
Speaker 1: having me here. I'm so excited to be in conversation
Speaker 1: with you and to be in conversation with your audience,
Speaker 1: especially about this book. So I love Nina Simone, right,
Speaker 1: So that's first and foremost. I just love me and Simone.
Speaker 1: Whatever I can incorporate her in some way into a title,
Speaker 1: a concept, I'm there for it. But this had such
Speaker 1: a particular meaning, so one I wanted to ground this
Speaker 1: in me because this book is both a history and
Speaker 1: also a collection of personal accounts of my experiences with
Speaker 1: violence that really help the reader the audience to understand
Speaker 1: the stakes of addressing the pervasiveness of violence against black
Speaker 1: women and girls and my families from North Carolina. So
Speaker 1: there's that Nina Simone connection that comes in there. But
Speaker 1: Missus Sippi Got Damn is a song that Nina writes
Speaker 1: in response to the assassination of Mega Evers and the
Speaker 1: bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: three that killed four little girls. It's how they're often
Speaker 1: remembered by history. But their names were Addie, Carol, Cynthia,
Speaker 1: and Denise. And I was really interested in the idea
Speaker 1: that we don't actually say their names, we refer to
Speaker 1: them as the four little girls, and we don't know
Speaker 1: a lot about them before that moment of the spectacular
Speaker 1: encounter of white domestic terrorism. We don't know who they are.
Speaker 1: We don't know that they were brownies, and they love
Speaker 1: to play the clarinet and music. And that was Na
Speaker 1: Simone's first protest song. And I know, we tend to
Speaker 1: think about Nina Simone, who has always being politically active
Speaker 1: with her music and engaged in that way, but she
Speaker 1: was always against kind of anthem music up until that
Speaker 1: point because she was like, how do you fit all
Speaker 1: that black people endure into three and a half minutes?
Speaker 1: How would one begin to do that? But these two
Speaker 1: incidents propelled her to figure out a way to do that,
Speaker 1: and so she writes this song that is both indicting
Speaker 1: of the ongoing struggles of African Americans and people of
Speaker 1: African descent in the United States by pointing out different
Speaker 1: states and homes in or Mississippi, but she's talking about
Speaker 1: everywhere that it is everywhere. And so my riff on
Speaker 1: this was saying in twenty twenty two, we're still saying America,
Speaker 1: God damn, the levels of violence, the level of harm,
Speaker 1: the level of dispossession, exploitation and marginalization that you're still
Speaker 1: conscripting Black men, women and girls to endure is unfathomable,
Speaker 1: and so I wanted to return to a song that
Speaker 1: conveyed that urgency. Who was also written with that same
Speaker 1: spirit of telling the truth about America and also telling
Speaker 1: the truth about the resistance that black people were mounting
Speaker 1: against it. You know, doctor Linda, you make so many
Speaker 1: good points, and a couple of that I want to
Speaker 1: circle back to, so first being the reality that just
Speaker 1: hit me one. I didn't know of the four little
Speaker 1: black girls names, not off of the top of my head.
Speaker 1: And what kind of erasure does that signify? Because you know,
Speaker 1: when I think about the people's names and why the
Speaker 1: hashtags with regard to the Black Lives Matter movement are
Speaker 1: so important, and why the say her Name movement has
Speaker 1: been so important, it has been because of this erasure
Speaker 1: of black people and violent, the violence that has consistently
Speaker 1: and has been unrelenting we visited upon our community since
Speaker 1: the beginning of time. And so when you say those
Speaker 1: names and we think about that, as you said, spectacular
Speaker 1: moment of white domestic violence, of white terrorism, what is
Speaker 1: it you think that we could have done, even if
Speaker 1: even you know, with our hindsight being twenty twenty, but
Speaker 1: even contextualizing that spectacular moment with let's say the shooting
Speaker 1: at Mother Emmanuel in South Carolina, but you know a
Speaker 1: handful of years ago, and the idea that we talk
Speaker 1: about the nine parishioners that were murdered, but we don't
Speaker 1: say their names, right. I mean, I'm I'm certain their
Speaker 1: community says their names. I'm saying that their church still
Speaker 1: lifts up their names. We know the name of the
Speaker 1: shooter right, right, right, and so's so that so I'm like,
Speaker 1: what is it about us in our society that allows
Speaker 1: us to elevate those that do us harm and then
Speaker 1: at the same time forget or erase those that have
Speaker 1: been harmed? Yes, and it's it's it's a couple of
Speaker 1: things that I think are happening there. So my insistence
Speaker 1: on saying their names and getting their names right is
Speaker 1: also about accessing these stories from a life affirming point
Speaker 1: of view. What happened to them was death dealing. What
Speaker 1: happened to them is how we come to know them.
Speaker 1: But that's not how their communities knew them. Their communities
Speaker 1: knew them as people. These girls who were moving through
Speaker 1: the neighborhood and part of this community that we're there
Speaker 1: on an early Sunday morning. There's the fifth girl who
Speaker 1: survives the bombing, who we're still living right, Sarah, who's
Speaker 1: the sister of Addie. All of that is why I
Speaker 1: want to say their names, because then that compels me,
Speaker 1: and I'm hoping folks who care and compelling folks to
Speaker 1: care to actually learn about their lives prior to that moment,
Speaker 1: what life was snuffed out in terms of doing that,
Speaker 1: But even when we get to moments where we are
Speaker 1: saying names, but not necessarily the names of those victimized, terrorrized, assailed,
Speaker 1: or harm oftentimes we're trying to name, and I understand
Speaker 1: we're trying to name the horror. We're trying to make
Speaker 1: sure that there is a record and a documentation of
Speaker 1: the ways that white supremacy operates, of the ways that
Speaker 1: patriarchy operates. I understand that impulse. I also want to
Speaker 1: ensure while we're holding that, while we're naming, that, while
Speaker 1: we're rendering that ever legible, that we don't then participate
Speaker 1: in the erasure of the life that these individuals live.
Speaker 1: What happens before the injury, what happens before the killing
Speaker 1: who or worse, what happens is we do name certain people,
Speaker 1: but then we use it implicitly that criminalizes. So we
Speaker 1: often say the Rodney King trial. Rodney King wasn't on trial.
Speaker 1: And if we ask people who the four officers were,
Speaker 1: we don't know, don't know, right, we say the Trayvon
Speaker 1: Martin Kays will say the Mike Brown case, And implicitly
Speaker 1: it does a recriminalization of individuals who are being who
Speaker 1: have been victimized, who have been killed and or harmed,
Speaker 1: And we don't offer to do that in trials. Usually
Speaker 1: a trial is named after, right, the person who is
Speaker 1: accused of having done harror. But when it comes to
Speaker 1: black people, so often because I think our attempts to navigate,
Speaker 1: to name, to categorize, and to identify this relentless harm,
Speaker 1: that oftentimes we still imbibe the same logics, and we
Speaker 1: imbibe the same rhetoric and then spewed that back out
Speaker 1: as we attempt to remember, as we attempt to recollect,
Speaker 1: as we attempt to mobilize. Oh my goodness, you know,
Speaker 1: when I think about how many black women, right, and
Speaker 1: this is the point of your of your personal stories.
Speaker 1: But when I think about how many Black women whose
Speaker 1: lives have been stolen from them, right and by and
Speaker 1: I don't just mean via murder, I mean via rape,
Speaker 1: via emotional abuse. I mean just the violence that is
Speaker 1: that is put upon Black women. And then yet to
Speaker 1: your books point and to your point, and yet we
Speaker 1: still find ourselves as the ones that are on the
Speaker 1: front lines for justice, experiencing experiencing the abuse not only
Speaker 1: from you know, outward white society, right, but then also
Speaker 1: the erasure that we have experienced throughout history of being
Speaker 1: on the front lines of civil rights movements and yet
Speaker 1: told to be in the back right, being the one
Speaker 1: that is the front in the pew and literally making
Speaker 1: the church run. But you're not the pastor at the front, right,
Speaker 1: And so what is it about you think the spirit
Speaker 1: that is that is a part of that is innate
Speaker 1: in Black women. And I hate this trope, but that
Speaker 1: does give us the strength to both be able to
Speaker 1: experience violence in all of its forms, but then still
Speaker 1: find ourselves in these leadership positions to quote unquote do
Speaker 1: the work. Oh. I mean that's a heavy one, Danielle, right,
Speaker 1: and as a heavy one because I think we again internalize,
Speaker 1: and imbibe in specializing in the holy impossible right. It's
Speaker 1: the moniker from Nanny Helen Burroughs of what black women do.
Speaker 1: Because there's a way that we know that the stakes
Speaker 1: are so high. We know that the systems that we're
Speaker 1: warring against, our systems that kill, rape, harm, demean and
Speaker 1: devalue us. So we have a stake in continuing to
Speaker 1: be on the front line. This is why you'll never
Speaker 1: hear me say no one cares about black girls and women.
Speaker 1: We care about black girls and women, and we are
Speaker 1: certainly not no one. Come on, and because we have
Speaker 1: that care practice, because we love with abundance, because we
Speaker 1: know that our love, because our love sits at the
Speaker 1: foot of all of these warring systems of oppression. It
Speaker 1: sits at the foot of how white supremacy operates, how
Speaker 1: patriarchy operates for many of us, how transphobia and queer
Speaker 1: phobia operate, how ableism operates, how imperialism and colonialism operate.
Speaker 1: That it demands for us to survive and thrive and
Speaker 1: love on each other in accountable and just ways, to
Speaker 1: be on the front line because we know we are
Speaker 1: the front line being attacked, and we're being attacked from
Speaker 1: all directions, and so that demands that we be vulnerable
Speaker 1: with one another. We talk about our stories, even when
Speaker 1: we're demonized for doing so. We can see that currently happening,
Speaker 1: and it happens quite often when Black women do come
Speaker 1: forward about particular forms of violence at their current especially
Speaker 1: if it's intercommunal and interpersonal. And so I recognize that
Speaker 1: as a strength. But the strength for me comes from
Speaker 1: the willingness to have a full recognition, a particular kind
Speaker 1: of multiple consciousness about how we want to imagine, we
Speaker 1: want to be in the world, how we imagine ourselves
Speaker 1: in the world. We are practicing a particular kind of
Speaker 1: freedom as we move through this world. That it's telling
Speaker 1: us that we are not worthy, we are not valuable,
Speaker 1: that our communities aren't valuable to people we love are valuable,
Speaker 1: that we're disposable, and our living, breathing existence is a
Speaker 1: refutation of that politic of disposability. And I think that
Speaker 1: propels us to keep showing up in spite of so
Speaker 1: many factors warning against us, including those sometimes we're fighting alongside.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that I notice, and
Speaker 1: I want to ask if you notice this too, You know,
Speaker 1: we've been living inside of this global health pandemic now
Speaker 1: going on two years plus. And I have noticed that
Speaker 1: through this time, at least in my in the feeds
Speaker 1: of social media that I follow, that black women in
Speaker 1: particular have and black women and let me say this,
Speaker 1: black women that have the privilege and the ability to,
Speaker 1: let's say, having worked from home, you know, having been remote,
Speaker 1: but reassess their lives in a certain way where our
Speaker 1: health and wellness and our own self care seems to
Speaker 1: have seems to have reached a new stage where we
Speaker 1: are really putting that that as a part of our
Speaker 1: liberation right now, you know, by virtue of your work,
Speaker 1: Audrew Lord and others way before us had talked about
Speaker 1: self care as a revolutionary had talked about you know
Speaker 1: that that that that our liberation is not just about
Speaker 1: how much we produce right and our production, but it
Speaker 1: is about our ability to sees our ease back right
Speaker 1: that has was stolen from our ancestors. And so have
Speaker 1: you not, like, in what ways do you have you
Speaker 1: seen black women in this modern time as we are
Speaker 1: moving through so many varied heavy moments, our shift, our
Speaker 1: shift in self and I know I'm making an overgeneralization.
Speaker 1: But I'm talking about what I have seen by virtue
Speaker 1: of people that I'm following. But it's been like the
Speaker 1: poets and the artists and all these things, and it's
Speaker 1: been deeply about self care. Have you noticed this similar, Yes,
Speaker 1: I have, and I noticed it one and this is
Speaker 1: what this book has allowed me to see. It's interesting
Speaker 1: when your book, in the work that you're doing, teaches
Speaker 1: you and put you in conversation with other people you're
Speaker 1: continuing to learn from. Is that I made a different
Speaker 1: intentional commitment to rest and care. I had you to
Speaker 1: write a book like this, right to sit with these stories,
Speaker 1: to sit death, to sit with rape, to sit with
Speaker 1: my own experiences with violence, to sit with stories from
Speaker 1: my community, and the care became as important as any
Speaker 1: other practice that allows you to write a book. So
Speaker 1: there was a care practice, and ethics practice, and editing
Speaker 1: practice or writing practice, but the only one that had
Speaker 1: to be intacted every step was the care and what
Speaker 1: I was doing. And I noticed during a pandemic, which
Speaker 1: in many ways became a great magnifier of all of
Speaker 1: the disparities that we see. So who's going to be
Speaker 1: disparately impacted by COVID, Who's going to be disparately impacted
Speaker 1: by what is the impending housing crisis, Who's going to
Speaker 1: be deeply impacted by food, insecurity, water, all of the issues.
Speaker 1: And we knew from the beginning. The very first article
Speaker 1: I wrote during the pandemic was about the disparate effect
Speaker 1: COVID was about to have on Black women and girls.
Speaker 1: And this was April of twenty twenty. That was so foreseeable.
Speaker 1: And so to see Black women and tweens and teens
Speaker 1: via TikTok and other mechanisms prioritize care, care networks, care
Speaker 1: of self, thinking about places like the NAP Ministry. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about outlets of things, of thinking about the Black
Speaker 1: health and wellness in the work of someone like a
Speaker 1: Stephanie Evans who kind of collects this longer history. Think
Speaker 1: about black women practicing yoga, These amazing images of Rosa
Speaker 1: Parks practicing yoga amidst organizing and being this radical force
Speaker 1: that she was. And I see so many people seeing
Speaker 1: the death, the grief and not having our typical ways
Speaker 1: of and being able to engage one another, that the
Speaker 1: ability to create care practices was a tool of survival.
Speaker 1: It's a tool of resistance against an additional death dealing
Speaker 1: force that is now disparately impacting us. And so I've
Speaker 1: been very heartened to see a number of Black women
Speaker 1: prioritizing that and cutting across kind of class that is
Speaker 1: lined to articulate what it means to rest, to care,
Speaker 1: to create moments of breath for one another. And that
Speaker 1: to me, as I think about the things if we
Speaker 1: move to endemic from pandemic, that I hope we're bringing
Speaker 1: with us into that stage, that this is not simply
Speaker 1: reactionary to this global phenomenon that is COVID nineteen that
Speaker 1: has been so ravenous to our communities, but that we
Speaker 1: take that tool as it has manifested in this moment
Speaker 1: and recognize it as an ancestral inheritance and move it
Speaker 1: into our features. You know. One of the things too,
Speaker 1: And in thinking about how you wrote America, Goddamn, it's like,
Speaker 1: how do you how how did you go about doctor
Speaker 1: Lindsay being able to tell stories about violence while recognizing
Speaker 1: that that is really the lens that White America sees
Speaker 1: us through right like they It is trauma porn for
Speaker 1: Black mothers that have lost daughters and sons to police violence. Right,
Speaker 1: it is normal for them to see our tears and
Speaker 1: and you know, and not even and have I guess
Speaker 1: momentary fits of empathy that but are that are very fleeting.
Speaker 1: So what does it mean for you to write a
Speaker 1: book that contextualizes through you know, personal accounts violence and
Speaker 1: and and and the struggle for justice but understanding that like,
Speaker 1: we are so layered and have experienced so and have
Speaker 1: experienced so much and are so much. But then at
Speaker 1: the same time, society kind of just I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of the word that I'm looking
Speaker 1: for distills us into these one dimensional beings of trauma.
Speaker 1: So it's like, how do you both like tell the
Speaker 1: story of that but then also know that that's all
Speaker 1: we've ever been distilled into, Right? And I write through
Speaker 1: a little bit of that tension for me, particularly in
Speaker 1: the chapter where I speak about intro communal violence, about
Speaker 1: my concern that what I'm writing here could be weaponized
Speaker 1: in particular ways or contribute to the illogical but ever
Speaker 1: present criminalizing and pathologizing of black people, which is never
Speaker 1: my intention, And that where do you use I think
Speaker 1: it is so accurate of trauma porn. Let's just keep
Speaker 1: talking about the death feeling without talking about the systems.
Speaker 1: And so for me, the stories in the way that
Speaker 1: I attempted to write this are brought to life through
Speaker 1: the structures and systems that I'm identify. That the systems
Speaker 1: and the structures are what are so disgusting and deplorable.
Speaker 1: That is the inhumanity. Right. I don't ever concede that
Speaker 1: white supremacy dehumanizes Black people and that we are rehumanizing ourselves.
Speaker 1: It is whiteness that has to prove itself as person
Speaker 1: or human because the track record of inhumanity that has
Speaker 1: been constructed over hundreds of years, of colonial violence, of
Speaker 1: white supremacist violence, of patriarchal violence, of capitalists exploitative violence,
Speaker 1: of current imperial violence, tells a very real story about
Speaker 1: who needs to reckon with what the human even means.
Speaker 1: And so those systems and structures, for me, are what
Speaker 1: is at the core of the book. That's the goddamn
Speaker 1: when I bring in the stories, which is why I
Speaker 1: use first names to identify the people who are a sale,
Speaker 1: who are killed, who are raped, who are sexually assaulted,
Speaker 1: to create a sense of intimacy, right, run short on
Speaker 1: the building of empathy, because I don't believe that whiteness
Speaker 1: actually is constructed around or grounded in empathy, And there's
Speaker 1: so many examples of that. The most recent study is
Speaker 1: that when folks found out that COVID was disparately impacting
Speaker 1: communities of color, largely black and indigenous, open it back
Speaker 1: up right, and that we saw empathy around COVID significantly
Speaker 1: decreased once studies came out, once there was more publicity
Speaker 1: around the fact that black and Indigenous in particular communities
Speaker 1: were being disparately impacted. So empathy isn't the thing I
Speaker 1: was working for in the book, right I'm writing for
Speaker 1: I'm writing from and with an among black women and
Speaker 1: girls and gender expansive people. I am hoping they see
Speaker 1: themselves in this, and I'm hoping that a broader audience
Speaker 1: who was engaging this is thinking about how terrorizing, how awful,
Speaker 1: how just gut wrenching, soul crushing, life evacuating these systems
Speaker 1: are and feel indicted, and feel uncomfortable, and feel even
Speaker 1: a little bit of the goddamn that black people have
Speaker 1: been feeling for hundreds of years, and that as a
Speaker 1: condition of the inhumanity of whiteness, as construct right as
Speaker 1: whiteness as it exists, as it shores itself up through
Speaker 1: being able to pathologize and criminalize. And so the structures
Speaker 1: and systems are on trial here, not the people. Do
Speaker 1: you think then that movement movement politics is getting our
Speaker 1: focus wrong? Then, because the point, at least what I
Speaker 1: have perceived to be the point of Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 1: have been to actually do just that right, identify to
Speaker 1: the world that black lives matter. Do you think that, then?
Speaker 1: May be we we are which But what I just
Speaker 1: took away from you is you're saying we're already human.
Speaker 1: I don't have to prove my humanness. I'm not rehumanizing myself,
Speaker 1: and that we need to show how inhumane the systems
Speaker 1: and the structures have been putting, putting whiteness as a
Speaker 1: construct then on the defense to defend itself. It's cruelty,
Speaker 1: it's in humanity, it's violence, as opposed to us trying
Speaker 1: to prove our innocence. Because I even I'm listening to
Speaker 1: you and my synapses are going because I'm like, so,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we have respectability. Respectability politics was born
Speaker 1: out of our desire to show up as best as
Speaker 1: we could because if they see us right as clean, articulate,
Speaker 1: you know, dignified in all these things, that maybe they
Speaker 1: won't hang us from the neighboring tree, right and so
Speaker 1: have is there is this an opportunity, this, this calamity,
Speaker 1: this time that we're living in, does to present an
Speaker 1: opportunity for us to reimagine the presentation of how we
Speaker 1: get to justice. That it isn't about elevating our humanity,
Speaker 1: as if we're the ones that should be doing that work,
Speaker 1: but instead to show the inhumanity of the systems at play. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I think it's interesting because we have you know,
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matters hashtag, a global network, you have racial
Speaker 1: justice movements, movement, all of which have my deep and
Speaker 1: profound respect right for what it brought to the fore.
Speaker 1: And that notion of mattering, I understand on the most
Speaker 1: gut level why that is like the impulsive reaction, we matter,
Speaker 1: we matter, we matter, and we have to say that
Speaker 1: to ourselves sometimes because it's very easy to imbibe and
Speaker 1: internalize the same white supremacist logics, patriarchal logics, transphobic logics
Speaker 1: that circulate. We're growing up in that society too. So
Speaker 1: the divesting from that is part of the work that
Speaker 1: we're doing. So that mattering in that declaration and that
Speaker 1: assertion is one part in one's strategy. I am interested
Speaker 1: as your noting here and moving us and thinking about
Speaker 1: the long legacy of people who have moved us, to
Speaker 1: think about these structures, to think about these systems, to
Speaker 1: call that out. It's why we're having discussions about abolition
Speaker 1: in the ways that we are right now. That would
Speaker 1: not have even happened ten years ago. Five years ago,
Speaker 1: we weren't having public debates. And I'm just saying debate,
Speaker 1: not that we've all become abolitionists, but to say that
Speaker 1: people are studying, reading, debating, and when we get to
Speaker 1: the debate what you just mentioned here envisioning something else
Speaker 1: that is part of what abolition calls you to do.
Speaker 1: That is the tradition of black Fami's abolition, imagining worlds
Speaker 1: in which white in humanity is indicted. Not that we're
Speaker 1: constantly proving to people who are doing the cruelty, to
Speaker 1: the systems that are doing the cruelty, that we deserve
Speaker 1: not to be treated truly right, it's e eradication of
Speaker 1: cruelty that's at the core of the kind of work
Speaker 1: that we're doing and on the ground, that is what
Speaker 1: so many dynamic organizers are doing. That's what I see
Speaker 1: in Dream Defenders, That's what I saw on a scot
Speaker 1: As Daughters and Black Youth Project and the Black Translives
Speaker 1: Matter kind of all of these movements, the Marsha P.
Speaker 1: Johnson Institute. There's so many ways that I'm seeing that
Speaker 1: work manifested before we've named it, because the work comes first,
Speaker 1: and then it's like, it's this right, It's like a
Speaker 1: person is shot and killed, and in response to seeing
Speaker 1: that person's life stuff, now we want to affirm that
Speaker 1: they mattered, They matter to their community, they matter to
Speaker 1: their loved ones, they matter because now we won't get
Speaker 1: whatever gifts they were bringing into the world that we
Speaker 1: may have needed, that we all may have needed at
Speaker 1: some point right to move forward into the world that
Speaker 1: we're seeking to create. That's where that mattering comes in.
Speaker 1: And when I think about Black Lives Matter, I am
Speaker 1: relating that as a concept of identifying something life affirming
Speaker 1: about this spectacular moment. So I only know Ayanna Stanley
Speaker 1: Jones or Brianna Taylor, or Deborah Danner or Tunisia Anderson
Speaker 1: because they were killed, but the people who live with
Speaker 1: that every day, those individuals mattered to them in substantive
Speaker 1: and real ways. And so when we say that as
Speaker 1: a collective, I think part of that impulse is also
Speaker 1: about affirming those connections and those intimacies and never letting
Speaker 1: us forget that they matter to someone, and that mattering
Speaker 1: is why we must continue to fight. So I see
Speaker 1: it rallying, and then we move in ways that are
Speaker 1: indicting of white supremacy. Let me tell you something, doctor
Speaker 1: Trevia lindsay you are welcome back on wikashone any goddamn time.
Speaker 1: I would like to, because I have to tell you
Speaker 1: that this is one of the most i opening conversations
Speaker 1: I've had in quite some time, just in the way
Speaker 1: of thinking, just in the way of thinking about how
Speaker 1: we are presenting the fight for justice. And I I
Speaker 1: had a Naha moment with you just now where I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: it is it isn't just about presenting the fact that
Speaker 1: our lives and our communities matter. It is about, like
Speaker 1: just your final point, the indictment of white supremacy. It
Speaker 1: is that it is. It is about that, and that
Speaker 1: to me is that the next iteration the shift that
Speaker 1: I want to see on a on a national level,
Speaker 1: on a on a mainstream media level, um type of space. So, friends,
Speaker 1: the book is America, Goddamn Black Women and the Struggle
Speaker 1: for Justice, Doctor Tree, the lindsay, please do come back
Speaker 1: to Woke a f and drop some gems again. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me friends. Like I
Speaker 1: say at the end of each week, as we head
Speaker 1: into the weekend, please do something each and every day
Speaker 1: that is bringing you joy. I don't care what it is,
Speaker 1: so long as it doesn't cause you harm or people
Speaker 1: around you harm. But grab some joy, some sunshine, some air.
Speaker 1: Take those quality deep deep breaths. We will continue to
Speaker 1: fight and get through this together, and we can only
Speaker 1: do it if we are strong and well. Remember that
Speaker 1: disease comes from dis ease, so we need to embrace
Speaker 1: our ease in the midst of this tempest. That is
Speaker 1: it for me today, dear friends, on Woke f as always,
Speaker 1: Power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.