WEBVTT - The Promised Land vs. White Supremacy 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:05.120 Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and 0:00:05.160 --> 0:00:08.479 social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:14.720 Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course, The Promised Land versus White Supremacy. 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:19.439 We white Christians no longer represent the majority of Americans, 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:22.799 writes Robert P. Jones, a white Christian. We are no 0:00:22.840 --> 0:00:25.919 longer capable of setting the nation's course by sheer cultural 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:29.360 and political dominance, but there are more than enough of 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:33.400 us to decisively derail the future of democracy in America. 0:00:34.240 --> 0:00:37.480 That's from Robbie's new book, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy, 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:41.320 an exploration of the historical foundations of white supremacy in 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:45.239 the United States. The book is wide ranging, incisive, and 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:49.040 ultimately a call to action from someone steeped in the 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:53.040 same culture and moras he examines, I'll read you another excerpt. 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:56.880 At its heart, this book sets out to expose the deep, 0:00:57.040 --> 0:01:01.320 hidden roots of America's current identity crisis. He writes, this 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:04.679 moment of reckoning with our fraught and contested heritage is 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:08.600 spawning new practices of remembering. It is also generating a 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:14.200 visceral and sometimes violent resistance. The fault Line's Robbie examines 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:19.160 affect every facet of American life, individuals, families, communities, politics, 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:24.440 the economy, and institutions ranging from courts to corporations. Robbie 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:27.440 brings skills to this endeavor. He has a widely published 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:31.080 and award winning writer, a well regarded polster, and president 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:34.880 and founder of the Public Religious Research Institute. He has 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:38.160 written two other books and is lavishly trained in religious 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:41.320 studies and ministries. Welcome to Crash Course. 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:42.920 Robbie, Hi, thanks for having me. 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:46.319 We have got a lot to discuss, and since the 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:49.120 theme of this one is white supremacy, let's just set 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:51.960 the table right there. You know, it's a term that 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:56.640 doesn't come easily to many people's lips. Joe Biden gave 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:01.160 a speech honoring and remembering the Tall massacre of nineteen 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:03.960 twenty one last year. It was the one hundredth anniversary, 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:06.360 and I think he was the first US president to 0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:10.640 utter the term white supremacist or white supremacy. Why do 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:13.680 you think that term is still so hard for some 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:14.400 people to say. 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:18.680 Well, you know, I think what happens, particularly with people 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:22.040 who are white, is they think of perhaps the image 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:24.000 that comes to mind is some black and white image 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:27.840 of people in robes and hoods burning across in the 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:30.520 eighteen hundreds or maybe as late as nineteen twenty. But 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:33.640 it's still a century back there in our minds, and 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:36.040 so we tend to, I think, associate it with something 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:39.000 quite extreme and quite long ago that pictures faded. It's 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:41.560 black and white. But what I mean by it is 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:44.239 actually something a little more familiar to us. And I'll 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:47.520 borrow this actually from colleague of mine, Eddie Cloud, who's 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:50.560 a professor at Princeton. But you know, he talks about 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:53.200 what he calls white supremacy without all the bluster, and 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:55.280 it really just means a way of thinking about it 0:02:55.320 --> 0:02:58.080 and much more everyday terms. It's one of those terms 0:02:58.080 --> 0:02:59.760 of art. But if you just take the words and 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:02.760 flow them around and we talk about the idea of 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:06.359 a commitment to the supremacy of whites instead of white supremacy, 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:08.480 it gets closer to the meaning that I mean. And 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:11.720 so that's very near to us, you know, in our history. 0:03:12.120 --> 0:03:14.400 You know, during my lifetime, for example, I grew up 0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:17.320 in Mississippi and went to Jackson Public schools in the 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:21.400 state's capital, and the schools didn't get desegregated until I 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:23.480 was in third grade. Right, I was born in nineteen 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:26.120 sixty eight, right, so this is nineteen seventy six before 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:29.560 this happens, and that's you know, two decades beyond Brown v. 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:32.360 Board of Education. And it was because you know, the 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:36.560 simple idea that the best schools, libraries, parks, the best 0:03:36.600 --> 0:03:39.080 parts of town with redlining, all of these things, right, 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:42.320 were very much driven with this idea that really white 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:44.440 lives were worth more than others and the best things 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:46.920 in our communities were to be reserved for their use only. 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:49.920 For the best people, the best that's right for the 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:50.440 best people. 0:03:51.040 --> 0:03:52.720 Yeah, And it wasn't just a you know, I think 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:55.520 the thing that is clear, you know, I'm a religious 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:59.240 studies scholar by training, but that these things were not 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:03.600 just assertive in philosophical argument, but they were grounded in theology, right, 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:06.520 They were really grounded in kind of teachings. And so 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:08.800 there's not much of a stronger claim you can make 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:12.080 than to say that white people were designed by God 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:14.119 to be at the top of the social and political 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:16.400 pyramid and everyone else is designated below. 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:20.720 That it's the word of God. In that elocution you've 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:24.479 written that previous book, White Too Long, about the intersection 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:30.040 of race, racism, identity, and Christianity. What led you to 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:31.200 this particular book. 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:34.160 Well, thanks, You know, it's been a bit of a journey. 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:36.200 You know, I grew up very much in the Southern 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:39.920 Baptist Evangelical world in the South, so it's been partially 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:42.480 a kind of chronicle of my own thinking and wrestling 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:45.400 with these issues. You know, the first book I wrote 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:47.520 with the word white and the title was actually in 0:04:47.520 --> 0:04:50.560 twenty sixteen called The End of White Christian America, and 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:52.880 it was really trying to wrestle with the demographics in 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:55.479 the country and the ways that we had moved from 0:04:55.520 --> 0:04:58.560 being this majority white Christian country to one that was 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:01.200 no longer a majority white Christian country. So trying to 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:04.000 look at the demographics and how that was setting off 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:05.919 I think a lot of reactions in our culture and 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:08.640 our politics. Just to kind of give you the numbers there, 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:10.919 you know, recently two thousand and eight, the country was 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:13.800 fifty six percent white and Christian, as you put all 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:17.920 you know, Protestants, Catholics, non denominational folks all together, a 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:20.880 majority white and Christian. By the time Barack Obama gets 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:23.479 out office, our first African American president, that numbers dropped 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:27.000 to forty seven and today at numbers forty two percent. Well, 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:29.240 the country just in a very short amount of time 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:32.520 actually has crossed this milestone from being majority white and 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:35.240 Christian to won the so longer majority white and Christian. 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:37.960 And then the last book, called White Too Long, was 0:05:38.000 --> 0:05:41.479 really focused on It was part memoir history, memoir, and 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:44.160 also kind of social science and attitudes in the country. 0:05:44.160 --> 0:05:47.839 But looking at really my own families history. My family's 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:51.960 longer routes go back into Middle Georgia, six generations there, 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:54.839 and so trying to tell the story of my own family. 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:57.200 I have a family Bible from eighteen fifteen, you know, 0:05:57.240 --> 0:05:59.560 that was very valued possession in my family. But also 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:02.599 found out that through doing some genealogical research on that 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.040 family that owned that Bible, that they also enslaved people 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:10.000 in Middle Georgia. So this Christian identity and enslaving other 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:13.480 people was seen to be completely consistent. And my own denomination, 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:16.680 the Southern Baptist Convention, which is actually the largest Protestant 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:20.359 denomination in the country still today, was founded in eighteen 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:24.640 forty five explicitly to make enslaving other people compatible with 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:27.000 the practice of Christianity. All right, and so just kind 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:28.560 of getting clear of that book was really trying to 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:30.760 get it clear of those roots. But I realized that 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:32.920 I really need to take the story back even further. 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:35.440 And so this book is trying to really locate where 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:38.479 does this come from. What's the kind of near proximate 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:43.400 cause to this link between white supremacy and Christianity that 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:46.520 really sets the moral compass in many ways in this country. 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:49.719 And so I pull it back in this book historically 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:53.120 back further. It leads back to fourteen ninety three where 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:56.200 this thing called the Doctor of Discovery had emerged and 0:06:56.279 --> 0:07:00.039 really does again like set the moral compass for Europeans 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:01.160 that land on these shores. 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:05.280 That's a useful bit of historiography from you. For a 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:08.320 couple of reasons. Columbus Day is going to have been 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:12.480 celebrated shortly before we air, and that has become a 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:17.560 controversial holiday in the United States. It was historically celebrated 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:21.200 as a moment of great discovery, the conjoining of Europe 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:25.560 with the North American continent, and a door opening up 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:29.080 to progress and prosperity. What we now know about Christopher 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:33.760 Columbus himself and the introduction of slavery through the Columbian 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:37.800 expeditions have provided us with a much more complex and 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:43.600 troubling picture of enslavement, expropriation, and mythologies built to justify 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:46.560 those things. And I think one of the really useful 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:50.160 historical things you do with the book is say, you know, 0:07:50.200 --> 0:07:53.480 we tend to think about the arrival of African American 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:59.240 slaves as the incenting moment around racial mythologies and racial 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:02.000 suppression and exploitation of the United States, but in fact it 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:04.720 began long before that tell us a little bit about 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:07.320 the doctrine of discovery in that context. 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:12.160 Yeah, even that move to thinking about including the enslavement 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:15.800 of Africans in the kind of colonial history is fairly new, right. 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:18.240 We really got that with the sixty nineteen project, which 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:22.520 just emerge over the last five years and not uncontroversially 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:25.480 a lot of backlash over that, But you're right, I 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:28.240 am arguing that we really need to broaden the aperture 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:32.280 even more because by the time sixty nineteen arrives, we 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:35.520 have more than a century of European interaction with indigenous 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:37.360 people in this country. I think we often forget that 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:40.679 the history goes back that far, and more importantly, what 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:45.080 we have is a kind of moral and theological worldview 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:49.320 that develops that guides the way that Europeans more broadly 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:52.800 think about people who inhabit these lands. And I think 0:08:52.840 --> 0:08:56.040 that piece is still very much with us today, rooted 0:08:56.080 --> 0:08:59.920 in a set of fifteenth century someone arcane papal document 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:02.960 that were developed, but they essentially boiled down to this 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:06.760 idea that because essentially people were asking, well, what's our 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:09.840 moral obligation to these people that we are encountering in 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:12.880 these lands, And the theological and moral logic that developed 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:16.080 basically came up with this one criteria and the essential 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:19.280 question was are they Christian or not? If these people 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:22.439 that they are quote unquote discovering were not Christian, then 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:24.439 they could be considered, I mean this is the actual 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:27.080 word in the document, they could be considered enemies of Christ. 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:30.880 And as enemies of Christ, then they were legitimized in 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:34.839 occupying those lands, taking possession of the land, stealing their goods. 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:37.400 It actually like spells out in these documents that they 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:40.480 have permission from the Church to do this. And then 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:42.720 this one phrase has always really stayed with me from 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:45.680 that set of papal documents actually says and not only 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:48.160 those things, but that they have permission to reduce their 0:09:48.160 --> 0:09:52.439 persons to perpetual slavery and all spelled out. So if 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:56.640 you think about the whole Transatlantic slave trade, genocide, dispossession 0:09:56.679 --> 0:09:58.960 of Native Americans, it's all sort of of a peace 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:02.280 with this moral and religious worldview that gets developed, you know, 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:04.440 out of the late fourteen hundreds. 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:07.400 And very similar to some of the later codes, you know, 0:10:07.440 --> 0:10:12.160 the white Men's Burden and secular constructs that were used 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:17.040 by the British and other European colonial powers to subjugate 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:21.480 countries in Africa and populations in Africa in East Asia, 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:24.840 and again the idea that you could put conventional morality 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:27.959 to the side because you were dealing with the population 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:31.640 of people who by definition were opposed to your own 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:34.240 moral code, so it didn't matter what you did to them. 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:36.480 Yeah, and the idea was that, you know, the terms 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:38.800 that come up over and over again in these documents 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:42.120 and even in more popular construls, not just the legal construls, 0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:45.680 but are the idea that by giving these people again 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:48.040 who are seen to be enemies of Christ or savages 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:50.959 or pagans, the words that come up are by giving 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:54.440 them Christianity and civilization, like those two were to come 0:10:54.520 --> 0:10:57.439 up all the time, Christianity and civilization, that these were 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:01.080 seen to be such enormous goods were being bestowed upon 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:04.640 these people that it justified everything else. They lost their land, 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:08.520 their lives, their goods, their freedom, their sovereignty, all of 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:11.840 that was seen to be justified because giving them the 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:16.079 superiority of Christianity and the superiority of European civilization was 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:18.280 seen to outweigh all of those losses. 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:22.000 I think the other useful thing that you do in 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:27.439 analyzing it this way is locate expropriation and racism within 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:30.959 the Native American experience, the indigenous peoples of the United States. 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:34.480 We have rich historiography around the black experience in the 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:38.199 United States, but I think it's less front of mind 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:42.160 how the genocide that was visited upon indigenous peoples in 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:45.559 the United States and then it preceded this epical slavery 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:47.880 period by a meaningful amount of time. 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:51.079 Yeah, that was something I really got clear about just 0:11:51.160 --> 0:11:53.200 in the process of doing research for the book. You know, 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:55.800 like in my home state of Mississippi, you know, we 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:58.400 think about these vast farmlands and then kind of you know, 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:00.560 still today it's some of the richest farmland in the world, 0:12:00.640 --> 0:12:03.800 and the Mississippi Delta and that alluvial floodplain kind of 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:07.480 going from Memphis to Vicksburg. But prior to eighteen hundred, 0:12:07.600 --> 0:12:11.360 those lands were heavily forested swamp land essentially, and now 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:13.439 the soil was very rich, but you couldn't get to it. 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:16.120 But people realized that that was going to be very 0:12:16.200 --> 0:12:20.000 rich land. And Europeans basically had two problems. One they 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:22.360 were occupied by indigenous people and two they didn't have 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:24.680 the labor to clear all that land and then to 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:26.760 turn it into farmland and the defarm it. And they 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:30.959 solved it really with violence, by killing off many of 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:33.560 the original inhabitants of the land by force and by 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:36.880 diseases that were spread, and then with force removal. There 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:38.720 was actually, you know, a whole period of the actually 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:41.400 got called Indian removal. That was the official policy of 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:44.400 the United States in the eighteen thirties. That resulted in 0:12:44.559 --> 0:12:47.000 what became known as the Trail of Tiers, was should 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:49.560 be called the Trails of Tears. There were multiple waves 0:12:49.600 --> 0:12:52.480 of force removals where you know, as many as twenty 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:55.000 five thirty percent of the folks died on the way, 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:57.120 there were kind of forced marches in the dead of winter, 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:00.320 in many cases over hundreds of miles that had to 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:04.600 happen first in order for African labor enslave labor to 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:07.200 be brought in to clear that land and to turn 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:10.319 it into farmland. But again, the thing driving the engine 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:13.360 is this idea. It's not that far from many of 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:15.839 our device today, but this idea that these lands were 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:18.960 intended to be a kind of, you know, divinely ordained 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:20.760 promised land for European Christians. 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:24.000 So let's bring it a little closer into the present. 0:13:24.160 --> 0:13:27.160 In your book, you focus on three case studies, as 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:31.079 it were, the lynching of three black circus workers in Duluth, 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:36.120 Minnesota in nineteen twenty, the Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre which resulted 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:39.480 in three hundred deaths in nineteen twenty one, and Emmett 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:43.480 Tills murder in nineteen fifty five. What links those three 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:45.960 events and why did you group them together in your book? 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:48.800 Well, you know, the truth is, I could have written 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:52.720 fifty chapters, one for each state that told very similar histories. 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:55.400 I wanted to get some kind of different kinds of 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:57.720 states that had different stories, So you know, Mississippi is 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:01.240 my home state, and wanted to start there for personal reasons. 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:05.480 And really this is the more recent story and until murder, 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:07.920 torture and murder of course, was the spark, really meaning 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:09.760 talk about it as the spark that ignited the modern 0:14:09.800 --> 0:14:12.760 civil rights movement, So thought that was important. It's also 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:16.480 a deep, deep south state. Oklahoma, you know, is essentially 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:20.360 its origins are, to put it kind of bluntly, was 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:23.400 to be a dumping ground for indigenous refugees that were 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:26.960 being pushed off the land all across the southeastern seaboard 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:30.760 and forcibly moved there to Oklahoma's has this very peculiar, 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:34.320 you know history itself, and then also this history of 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:38.680 white racial violence toward African Americans in Tulsa, and then, 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:40.680 you know, I didn't want to just pick on southern state. 0:14:40.720 --> 0:14:43.600 Oklahoma was a very conservative red state as well. Politically 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:45.800 it's I think it may be the only state where 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:48.960 every county voted for former President Trump in the last election. 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:51.360 So I want to go somewhere a little different culturally, 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:54.360 and can't get us further north in Minnesota, so good 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:58.320 kind of midwestern state hugs Canada pretty far north, and 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:01.240 you know, tell the story there. I think by doing that, 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:03.240 I think it helps make it clear, as it became 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:05.440 clear to me during the research, this is not really 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:08.080 a Southern story. It's not just a Red state story. 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:11.200 This is really an American story. And again, I think 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:14.360 you could tell these stories. There's comparable stories in every 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:16.520 state in the country. But by telling it through three 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:20.600 different lenses, I think the patterns become fairly clear. You 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:23.560 see their echoes of the same kind of treatment of 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:27.400 indigenous people, the same kind of treatment of African Americans, 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:29.960 and these kind of violent outbursts that happen in all 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:30.640 three places. 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:36.080 Is the commonality. They're both the combination of violence with 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:40.160 myth making and other excuses that justify the use of 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:40.720 the violence. 0:15:41.400 --> 0:15:43.240 Yeah, that's right. I mean, you know, there's, first of all, 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:45.960 this mythology we've been talking about that the US is 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:48.840 of you know, divinely ordained promised land, specifically for people 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:51.680 of European descent who are Christian, and so that gets 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:53.480 the whole thing off the ground and drives it, you know. 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:56.480 But then there are these outbursts of violence to protect 0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:59.520 that vision and myth making. And then there is you know, 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:02.720 in each place there was this process of intentional forgetting 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:05.440 of kind of sweeping it all under the rug after 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:09.200 these violent events happening, and protecting a kind of myth 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:12.800 of innocence that people continue to tell about themselves in 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:13.440 each place. 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:16.360 Throughout your book, and specifically towards the end, you talk 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:20.080 about paths towards healing, and you focus in on reparations 0:16:20.120 --> 0:16:24.600 as being a very practical and tangible tool for addressing 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:27.920 some of the wrongs of the past. It's a controversial policy. 0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:30.760 The African American community, the Black community the United States 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:35.560 supports it wholeheartedly. Hispanics for the most part, don't support it. 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:39.000 Asian Americans don't support it. White Americans don't support it, 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:42.280 and around half or so of the Democratic Party is 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:45.720 ambivalent to disapproving of it. And when I'm speaking of 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:48.200 reparations for our listeners, it's simply trying to put a 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:51.440 dollar amount on the damage that's been visited on these 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:55.000 exppropriated populations. I imagine we will get there soon with 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:57.960 Native Americans, but most of the dialogue right now is 0:16:58.040 --> 0:17:01.200 about the Black community and descendants of armor slaves, the 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:04.639 argument being that cutting a check might address some of 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:10.040 the economic and social fallout that came from slavery, oppression 0:17:10.160 --> 0:17:14.479 and expropriation. What do you do, though, Robbie, with the 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:18.159 fact that there is such sort of popular mechanical opposition 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:21.120 towards using something like reparations as a tool. 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:24.160 You're right about the kind of ambivalence in the general 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:26.560 American public about this, you know, I think that it 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:29.639 is really linked to a real ignorance of our history. 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:31.520 You know. I think that that's the link, is that 0:17:31.560 --> 0:17:34.400 if you ask about reparations in the abstract, people generally 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:37.200 know there was slavery. There was, But I think people 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:42.280 don't really know the links between slavery, reconstruction, tearing down 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:45.479 of reconstruction, the erection of Jim Crow, and just you know, 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:49.879 the systematic effort to disenfranchise African Americans even after the 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:52.960 abolition of slavery. And I think when you get clearer 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:58.760 about that history, the question of reparations becomes less controversial, 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:00.760 and I think the resistance to is less. So I 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:04.040 really think we're just at the very beginning of a 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:06.760 process of truth telling around this history. And in fact, 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:09.440 that's why we're seeing so much in the political battles 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:11.520 they're over history. What's going to be taught to our 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:14.760 kids in school. What isn't, what's appropriate, what's not, what's 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:17.520 the real American story, what's not? Like all these kinds 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:21.040 of questions, it's because there is this moment of reckoning happening, 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:23.760 and that if we fully reckon, I think with the 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:28.320 realities of that history, you know, the questions of reparations, repair, 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:32.840 repairing the damage, put in theological terms, repentance, those kind 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:37.120 of questions become I think, less abstract when you are 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:39.520 more grunted in the history. So I think this is 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:41.919 going to be an ongoing conversation. But as I see it, 0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:44.600 you know, if you think about a process of confession 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:48.720 and truth telling that leads to repentance and repair, we 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:51.480 are only at the very beginning of the confession and 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:53.840 truth telling part of that process. And so I think 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:57.520 as that goes on, that conversation will will develop, and 0:18:57.600 --> 0:18:59.680 I think it will need to include, you know, not 0:18:59.840 --> 0:19:02.960 just African Americans, but indigenous people. It'll need to include 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:05.320 you know, we also had like a whole history of 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:08.439 Asian American prejudice. I mean, we had an act that 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:11.360 was just explicitly called in the nineteen twenties the Chinese 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:14.040 Exclusion Act for goodness sake, so you know, we'll need 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:16.879 to reckon, I think, with all of that history going forward. 0:19:16.920 --> 0:19:18.560 But the only other thing I'd say to this is 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:20.800 that I think that sometimes people are thinking about this 0:19:20.880 --> 0:19:24.120 at a very high abstract like national level, but where 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:27.480 I've seen things on the ground kind of working is 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:31.320 actually at the local level. Right. So a place like Evanston, Illinois, 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:34.000 had the history of redlining, and they've actually tried to 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:36.920 set up a fund that allows for anyone who could 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:40.560 show that they were denied alone in Evanston on basis 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:42.919 of race, can then apply now for help with it 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:45.040 down payment, help with house payments as a way that 0:19:45.080 --> 0:19:47.439 the city is trying to reckon with that history. So 0:19:47.560 --> 0:19:49.120 all of that to say, I think the tighter it's 0:19:49.119 --> 0:19:51.800 connected to kind of local histories, I think that also 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:54.960 helps as well, because then there is a coherent story 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:57.320 that people are understanding we're doing this because of these 0:19:57.720 --> 0:19:59.080 concrete actions in the past. 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:02.080 Robbie, on that note, I want to take a quick 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:03.639 break so we can hear from a sponsor, and then 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:11.600 we'll come right back. We're back with Robbie Jones, author 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:14.240 of The Hidden Roots of White supremacy. We were just 0:20:14.320 --> 0:20:17.919 talking about reparations and its challenges, So let's talk a 0:20:17.920 --> 0:20:21.440 little bit more about money. You've criticized James Carville, Bill 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:26.680 Clinton's well known advisor, for recommending the politicians and policymakers 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:31.359 emphasized class over race. Carvill's famous formulation was, it's the 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:35.199 economy stupid. And I think your counter argument is, no, 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:40.000 it's white supremacy stupid, and it's white racism stupid. And 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:42.400 that if we're going to solve some of the divisions 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:45.280 we're dealing with now that have come out of the 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:49.159 history you and I were discussing earlier in the show, 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:54.200 you have to prioritize racism and the mythology surrounding white 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:55.959 supremacy to deal with that. 0:20:56.920 --> 0:20:58.960 Right, Well, you know, is certainly the case that these 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:01.760 two things are inter woven in our history. And I 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:03.719 don't want to overstate the point. You're right about my 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:06.440 criticism of that. I think it does not fully explain 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:11.159 the moment we're in, our deeper history, the deeper divides 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:13.280 that we're dealing with now. It may have worked as 0:21:13.280 --> 0:21:15.399