Speaker 1: Welcome to Woke af with me Danielle Moody. The last
Speaker 1: few months have seen an explosion of performative outrage from
Speaker 1: conservative media over what they are calling critical race theory.
Speaker 1: While critical race theory is indeed a decades old academic movement,
Speaker 1: the term has recently been weaponized by the right to
Speaker 1: dismiss any honest analysis of America's racist foundation that they
Speaker 1: want to whitewash or just completely ignore. And yet right
Speaker 1: now can be a more perfect time to teach Americans
Speaker 1: about the history of racism and how we can all
Speaker 1: do a better job of combating it in our society,
Speaker 1: which of course is why conservatives both protest so much.
Speaker 1: White people love talking about how they're not racist. But
Speaker 1: what if I told you it's not enough to simply
Speaker 1: not be racist, that you must, in fact be actively
Speaker 1: anti racist. That is the argument made by Abram X. Kendy,
Speaker 1: director of the Center for Anti Racist Research at Boston
Speaker 1: University and the author of the book appropriately titled How
Speaker 1: to Be Anti Racist. He also has a new podcast
Speaker 1: simply titled Be Anti Racist, and he joined me on
Speaker 1: my podcast last week, which you can support right now
Speaker 1: at Patreon dot com, Slash woke af to talk all
Speaker 1: about anti racism and the myriad of ways he is
Speaker 1: spreading the good word about this necessary practice. Ibram, We're
Speaker 1: at a time in our country following the murder that
Speaker 1: we all witnessed of George Floyd, the murders of Brianna Taylor,
Speaker 1: of Ahmad Aubrey, the list goes on and on and on.
Speaker 1: Twenty twenty was a cataclysm of events around race racism.
Speaker 1: I mean, we saw phone calls to the police for
Speaker 1: people that are bird watching. We saw you know so
Speaker 1: much and it seems like it's unrelenting. How do you
Speaker 1: describe your work? And then the necessity not to just
Speaker 1: say I'm not racist, but to actively be anti racist?
Speaker 1: What does that mean to you and why at this
Speaker 1: important point I believe in our history, is it necessary
Speaker 1: that we change the narrative from I'm not racist to
Speaker 1: actively being anti racist. Well, first, I'm happy that we're
Speaker 1: able to have this conversation and thank you for bringing
Speaker 1: me onto the onto your show. I think it's important
Speaker 1: for us to to start from a basic truth, and
Speaker 1: it's a basic truth that is under attack, just like
Speaker 1: truth itself right now. And that basic truth is that
Speaker 1: we live in a nation of racial disparities and inequities,
Speaker 1: and injustice is all around us. Whether it's Black people
Speaker 1: being disproportionately incarcerated, whether that's Native ping Native people being
Speaker 1: disproportionately killed from COVID nineteen, whether that's you know, black
Speaker 1: women dying at higher rates from pregnancy than than than
Speaker 1: white women, whether that's you know, Latdex people being disproportionately impoverished,
Speaker 1: and on and on and so the status quo is
Speaker 1: racial inequity. And the fundamental question of our time is
Speaker 1: why do these inequities exist? And there's two answers. One
Speaker 1: answer is because of racism, systemical structural racism. The other
Speaker 1: answer is because there's something wrong with those people on
Speaker 1: the dying or lower end. And and so, if the
Speaker 1: status quo is inequity, and the cause of that inequity
Speaker 1: is racism, to do nothing in the face of a
Speaker 1: status quo is to allow that status quo to persist,
Speaker 1: and so literally, to not do anything while Black people
Speaker 1: are being enslaved, to not do anything, while while Native
Speaker 1: folks are being mass murdered, to not do anything, while
Speaker 1: that the NUX people are being mass supported, what's going
Speaker 1: to happen? It's going to only continue right and and
Speaker 1: indeed slaveholders wanted people in Chicago at Boston where I lived,
Speaker 1: to do nothing, because that to do nothing was a
Speaker 1: form of complicity. And that's one of the things. So
Speaker 1: I've been trying to get the American people and really
Speaker 1: people around the world to realize that there's really only
Speaker 1: two options. You know, Either we're being racist by allowing
Speaker 1: the status quote to persist by our active champion of it,
Speaker 1: or by doing nothing in the face of it, or
Speaker 1: we are actively challenging racism and thereby being anti racist.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that where I find issue, where
Speaker 1: I find myself some days, where it feels like I'm
Speaker 1: screaming into the ether, is that we are still I
Speaker 1: feel at a point where we are trying to convince
Speaker 1: white Americans that racism actually exists. That we are still
Speaker 1: at a point where it took watching a black man
Speaker 1: have the life squeezed out of him for nine minutes
Speaker 1: in twenty nine seconds in public and broad daylight for
Speaker 1: folks in every state of this country to actively protest
Speaker 1: for black lives and then understand that by the time
Speaker 1: the fall came, steam had run out and the polls
Speaker 1: had started to change in terms of where people were falling,
Speaker 1: where white people were falling on their commitment to really
Speaker 1: not just articulating that black lives matter, but actively doing
Speaker 1: something to say that black lives matter. We just this
Speaker 1: past this month recognize the hundred year anniversary remembrance of
Speaker 1: the massacre that happened in Tulsa, and it was considered
Speaker 1: an extraordinary feat for the first president of the United
Speaker 1: States to actually visit Tulsa and to call it what
Speaker 1: it was, a massacre and not a riot. So if
Speaker 1: we are still I mean, it was a hundred years
Speaker 1: and we're still just getting to a place where a
Speaker 1: majority of people in this country didn't even know that
Speaker 1: that occurred. And not only that that occurred, but that
Speaker 1: wasn't in an emily. So if all of these things
Speaker 1: are true, it's like, and we're still at this point
Speaker 1: of convincing you know, I'm just wondering how we get
Speaker 1: to a place where we're actively working against this system
Speaker 1: when I have to make you believe that the system
Speaker 1: actually exists and it was meant to purposefully work against
Speaker 1: marginalized people. That's the fundamental challenge. And let me say,
Speaker 1: I think not to overly generalize white people. But there
Speaker 1: I suspect there were some white people who saw this
Speaker 1: horrific murder of George Floyd on their laptops, you know,
Speaker 1: on their phones, like like black folks did, and like
Speaker 1: other folks did, and they felt horrible. Some of them
Speaker 1: they have even felt guilty. They heard about a nearby demonstration,
Speaker 1: and they decided to go to that local demonstration, because indeed,
Speaker 1: there was demonstrations against police brutality and racism in almost
Speaker 1: every county in this country. And so then they went
Speaker 1: to that demonstration, and that demonstration had speakers, had had
Speaker 1: signs that were you know that, and the experience, you know,
Speaker 1: was one that that allowed them to feel better. So
Speaker 1: then they went home and you know, the only thing
Speaker 1: that changed were their feelings. And and and then you
Speaker 1: had other white folks who were mass and have been
Speaker 1: mass manipulated by by Trump and other Republicans and even
Speaker 1: other you know, Democrats really and and it sort of
Speaker 1: causes me to think, I don't know if you remember
Speaker 1: one of Malcolm X's great speeches when he was talking
Speaker 1: to black folks and he was like, you know who
Speaker 1: taught you to hate yourself? Yes, you've been hoodwinked you've
Speaker 1: been had, You've been left right. In other words, you
Speaker 1: know you've had you know, you had the forces of racism,
Speaker 1: the very powerful forces of racism. You know, some very
Speaker 1: powerful officials who with a growing awareness among white people
Speaker 1: that racist power, racist policies and practices, that structural racism
Speaker 1: was a problem. They were like, WHOA, people are going
Speaker 1: to start looking at us, in our policies, in our
Speaker 1: rhetoric as the problem. No, no, no no, I need to
Speaker 1: clap back and say, no, no, no, we are not
Speaker 1: the problem. Voters. Oppression policies aren't the problem. The ability
Speaker 1: for police officers to essentially, uh you know, execute people
Speaker 1: out will with no accountability based on bills that I
Speaker 1: passed are not the problem. Those people who are demonstrating
Speaker 1: against racism or the real problem. Those black people who
Speaker 1: are describing white people and other people as racist are
Speaker 1: the real problem. And and so then people by the
Speaker 1: end of the summer, as you stated, and certainly by
Speaker 1: this time, we're like, WHOA, Well, maybe people are like
Speaker 1: George Floyd, we're not the victims. Maybe they are the problem.
Speaker 1: And and so now we're in this period in which
Speaker 1: we're still arguing what is the problem. Is it systemic
Speaker 1: racism or the people who are who are identifying systemic
Speaker 1: racism as the problem. And so you've had so many
Speaker 1: Americans that have been misled into believing Nicolehennah Jones is
Speaker 1: the problem as opposed to the problems she pointed out
Speaker 1: in our Historical Memory over sixteen nineteen in slavery, we
Speaker 1: always say to ourselves, right, and that racism will die
Speaker 1: out right. I can't tell you how many times over
Speaker 1: the course of my life that I've heard that, you know,
Speaker 1: when the old racist die, right, everything everything, some type
Speaker 1: of utopia is going to descend on America. And I
Speaker 1: say this, I'm okaf all the time because I'm a
Speaker 1: former educator for early childhood education, and one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I went into education was for the sheer fact
Speaker 1: that our public education system is the biggest perpetuator of
Speaker 1: white supremacy. That it is not. It is not a marker,
Speaker 1: a genetic marker that has passed down right through family.
Speaker 1: It is something that is actively taught. We actively decide
Speaker 1: who the classics are, right, who the evaders are, who
Speaker 1: the leaders should be. And so when I see this
Speaker 1: pushback and not pushback, an essential decimation of the sixteen
Speaker 1: nineteen project being taught in schools. People be threatening to
Speaker 1: lose funding if you decide, if you even utter the word,
Speaker 1: utter the phrase sixteen nineteen project, that they are going
Speaker 1: to take away funding from schools. I just have to
Speaker 1: ask you, like, where do you go from there? If
Speaker 1: we're not if we can't even agree upon the truth,
Speaker 1: if we can't even agree upon the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: when when Joe Biden was in Tulsa, he said in
Speaker 1: his speech, you know, great nations face their dark their
Speaker 1: dark periods, right, they don't try and run away from it.
Speaker 1: And yet this nation has consistently run away from and
Speaker 1: denied and gas lit the population into believing that it
Speaker 1: doesn't exist, that there is no problem. And so how
Speaker 1: do you how do you grow from there? How do
Speaker 1: you activate from there? When the purpose of denying this
Speaker 1: body of work and just any critical conversations around race
Speaker 1: are to make white kids continue to be force fed
Speaker 1: the lie of American exceptionalism. That is just so important
Speaker 1: And that's the type of question we should be asking
Speaker 1: and thinking about because you know, even like even the
Speaker 1: term woke itself, people are viewing it in a so
Speaker 1: sort of pejorative sense when you know, last I checked,
Speaker 1: I think it's important for human beings to walk through
Speaker 1: life awake. What what what what white? What racist ideas do? What?
Speaker 1: What teaching on white supremacy does two white children, let
Speaker 1: alone children of color everyone. What it does to white
Speaker 1: children is it creates a scenario which they walk through
Speaker 1: life asleep. You know, because if you, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're an American today saying things like systemic racism doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: then what you, as a white American uh, perceived is
Speaker 1: that the cause of all these racial inequities and disparities
Speaker 1: that we talked about earlier is not the result of
Speaker 1: systemic racism, and it must be because of the inferiorities
Speaker 1: of superiorities of racial groups. So you walk through life
Speaker 1: not actually awake to reality, and then you even assess
Speaker 1: your own life story through uh you know this these myths. See,
Speaker 1: you can't even understand the times in which you've survived,
Speaker 1: you know, police violence because you were white, or the
Speaker 1: ways in which you had access to capital, and so
Speaker 1: you just believe, I'm just the greatest person on earth
Speaker 1: and if only those black perks would work as hard
Speaker 1: as me. So you have an individual that doesn't even
Speaker 1: able to understand their own sort of standing in the world,
Speaker 1: nor the standing you know of white people in the world,
Speaker 1: nor the sort of reality of you know, of racism
Speaker 1: in the world. And then this is what's crucial. If
Speaker 1: you don't teach white children and even adults about racist ideas,
Speaker 1: about racist policies, and you convinced them that everything is equal,
Speaker 1: then you are able to easily manipulate them. You're able
Speaker 1: to be a billionaire and say to white working classmen,
Speaker 1: I am your defender. I'm going to push policies that
Speaker 1: help you. And then you're able to get into office
Speaker 1: not do anything to help those working class white men,
Speaker 1: and then you're able to maintain and if anything, grow
Speaker 1: their support, even as their own economic conditioning is worthy.
Speaker 1: And and that is essentially what happened. So white folks
Speaker 1: are so easily manipulated based on their racist ideas. But
Speaker 1: when they're taught um and they begin to see those
Speaker 1: racist ideas and even the privilege, and they adopt the
Speaker 1: more anti racist perspective, they're no longer able to be
Speaker 1: manipulated by by by by elected officials like Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: That is indeed the point. And it's so like, how
Speaker 1: do you through your work, right through your um, your
Speaker 1: new podcast, how will you continue to unpack that truth
Speaker 1: that racism is and and and the system of white
Speaker 1: supremacy built in this country is really about mass manipulation.
Speaker 1: As you have said, it is really about if you
Speaker 1: have young people in schools, because I'll go back to
Speaker 1: the education piece, begin to question why there is inequity,
Speaker 1: why certain things are the way that they are. Why, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I have friends that will talk to me,
Speaker 1: white friends that will talk to me about, you know,
Speaker 1: their great grandparents that passed down wealth, homes, businesses, this
Speaker 1: then the other thing, oh, their family legacy, right, and
Speaker 1: that they've been able to then benefit from and build
Speaker 1: off of. And I'm saying to myself, of course you
Speaker 1: were right because their businesses weren't burned down, they were
Speaker 1: able to get loans in the first place, they weren't
Speaker 1: run out of town. They were able to get loans
Speaker 1: to buy homes, to build, you know, to build businesses.
Speaker 1: And so if you don't see that it isn't laziness,
Speaker 1: it isn't It isn't this idea that we have created
Speaker 1: this stereotype around black people, that it really is these
Speaker 1: policies and these systems. If you don't get folks to question,
Speaker 1: then they continue to perpetuated. I'm just if we're still
Speaker 1: at a point of questioning reality, it's like, are we losing?
Speaker 1: Why are we? Are we? How are we? How do
Speaker 1: we win? What does that? What does that look like?
Speaker 1: Winning more people over to recognizing that is not enough
Speaker 1: to not be racist or oh why don't say racist things?
Speaker 1: I actually think that we have a governing majority of
Speaker 1: people who recognize racism as a problem. And but within
Speaker 1: that majority, you so, for instance, you have black men
Speaker 1: who are like, yes, racism is a problem, but they
Speaker 1: can't really recognize its intersection with sexism, so they then
Speaker 1: they're perpetuating that. Or you could have a white person
Speaker 1: who says, yes, racism theoretically is a problem, and it's
Speaker 1: a problem as it relates to environmental racism. You know,
Speaker 1: educational inequities is a problem. But now we can't rethink
Speaker 1: public safety right, and and so you have people who
Speaker 1: who don't understand or I should say, aren't recognizing the connections,
Speaker 1: or have racist ideas when it comes to one racial
Speaker 1: group and anti racist ideas when it comes to another
Speaker 1: racial group, and reject the racist ideas about their own
Speaker 1: group and accept the racist ideas about others and and
Speaker 1: don't realize that they are actually reinforcing what they claim
Speaker 1: to be battling. And again, I again, I want to
Speaker 1: sort of emphasize that, you know, as a man of color,
Speaker 1: you know, especially coming after a twenty twenty election where
Speaker 1: a growing number of men of color compared to twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen voted for Donald Trump on this pretext that he
Speaker 1: somehow was going to free them, right, And so I
Speaker 1: think there is a there is a a number of
Speaker 1: people who are have some level of awareness, but I
Speaker 1: think we have to get them to really connect the
Speaker 1: dots and also get them to be self reflective and
Speaker 1: self critical. There are too many white liberals who are
Speaker 1: just focused on let's say, white conservatives as the problem
Speaker 1: and don't want to look in the mirror about how
Speaker 1: they may be in reinforcing racism. You know. One of
Speaker 1: the many speeches, but one of the things that that
Speaker 1: has always stuck out to me about doctor Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King was the warning about white moderates. Yea, though, I
Speaker 1: mean because I find that that warning is something that
Speaker 1: we don't really take as an alarm. You know. Right now,
Speaker 1: we have a majority in Congress. You know, we have
Speaker 1: the White House, and yet we can't manage to pass
Speaker 1: a voting rights bill that is going to sustain our democracy.
Speaker 1: We are a ticking time bomb as a country with
Speaker 1: I don't know, roughly two and a half years left
Speaker 1: right before fascism completely descends. And so I just I
Speaker 1: guess my question to you, you know, my final question
Speaker 1: to you is knowing that truth, like, do you have
Speaker 1: a level of hopefulness about where we are going? In
Speaker 1: the direction that we're going in? We have over three
Speaker 1: hundred and forty eight voter suppression bills that have been
Speaker 1: rolled out in forty seven states, passed in fourteen that
Speaker 1: are all about curbing the rights of people of color
Speaker 1: to be able to vote. And you had a man
Speaker 1: member of the Texas legislator that said, well, if it
Speaker 1: wasn't for our voting suppression bills in Texas, Texas would
Speaker 1: have gone for Biden literally said the quiet part out loud.
Speaker 1: So are you hopeful? Do you have hope? Because you know,
Speaker 1: my listeners know that I struggle without on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: So I'm curious. So I think that it is a
Speaker 1: very very difficult sort of times as you just described.
Speaker 1: I mean literally, the Republican Party is gearing up too.
Speaker 1: If their candidate loses in the twenty twenty four election,
Speaker 1: that they essentially would not be willing to consummate Biden's reelection.
Speaker 1: Like that's where everything is headed towards. And again that's
Speaker 1: if they're able to lose as a result of this
Speaker 1: series of voter suppression policies, which they're probably the favorites
Speaker 1: because of the voter suppression and because of even Democrats
Speaker 1: sniping sort of at each other, specifically centrist claiming that
Speaker 1: aggressives and other particularly black activists somehow lost uh you know,
Speaker 1: the the you know seats for Democrats, um and telling
Speaker 1: people to quote tone it down, uh, to so that
Speaker 1: they can you know, keep Congress or regain the presidency.
Speaker 1: And and this just this constant telling particularly young people
Speaker 1: of color to wait, tone it down, and then you know,
Speaker 1: how long are we gonna wait? You know, I don't
Speaker 1: as I know as a young black male that any
Speaker 1: day when I walk outside and a police car passes
Speaker 1: me by could be my last. Uh. And so like
Speaker 1: I think there's a certain level of urgency, but but ultimately,
Speaker 1: in terms of hope, I'm hopeful, not necessarily because of
Speaker 1: what's happening in society or what's not happening in society.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping from a philosophical standpoint that I believe you
Speaker 1: have to believe change as possible, radical change as possible
Speaker 1: in order to bring it about. And and and so
Speaker 1: that's really why I maintain hope. And then as an historian,
Speaker 1: you know, and especially as a descendant, you know, as
Speaker 1: as as a Black American, as a descendant of enslave people,
Speaker 1: and you you know, black folks have in this country
Speaker 1: have done the impossible time and again. Uh. And and
Speaker 1: you know, I think we can, especially those of us
Speaker 1: who you know and black folks really have always been
Speaker 1: leading the anti racist sort of movement. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: I think we can do the impossible again. I hope
Speaker 1: that you are right. And I'm just you know, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm so thankful for the work that you do,
Speaker 1: for the writings that you do, the teachings um that
Speaker 1: you do, because I I want to believe that we
Speaker 1: can do the impossible. Abolishing slavery was considered impossible, right like, Uh,
Speaker 1: America's first black president was considered impossible. Having a woman
Speaker 1: vice president that is a woman of color was considered impossible,
Speaker 1: and we've done those things. UM, So I hope. My
Speaker 1: hope is that your work will continue to open up
Speaker 1: people's a lot eyes so that they stop walking around
Speaker 1: half asleep. UM. Please please tell folks, um some of
Speaker 1: the guests that are coming up on your on your podcast,
Speaker 1: that they are going to be able to wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, we have a just an incredible lineup, you know,
Speaker 1: Robin d g Kelly, Julean Castro, Jamel Hill, we have
Speaker 1: Miriam Kava, we have Heather McGee, Rebecca Coakeley friends of mine,
Speaker 1: David Truer. Yeah, we I mean, you know, we have
Speaker 1: a great lineup of folks. And and obviously each of
Speaker 1: them are experts about different sort of forms or areas
Speaker 1: or sectors of racism, and I'm really excited to dig
Speaker 1: deep with each of them in these different areas. The
Speaker 1: importance of anti racism cannot be overstated. In an era
Speaker 1: in which the right is pushing back against programs like
Speaker 1: the sixteen nineteen Project and the Boogeyman of critical race theory.
Speaker 1: We need to defend these necessary educational programs while also
Speaker 1: practicing anti racism in our own lives and teaching those
Speaker 1: around us about the urgent benefits of being anti racists.
Speaker 1: To hear more from Ebrahm, do check out his podcast,
Speaker 1: be Anti Racists and to hear more from me, you
Speaker 1: can support me on Patreon. Five dollars a month gets
Speaker 1: you access to hundreds of shows, including five brand new
Speaker 1: hour long shows in your feed every single week. Head
Speaker 1: over to patreon dot com slash wokeaf now and subscribe.
Speaker 1: We have had so many woke guests in the last
Speaker 1: few months that I have been excited to learn from
Speaker 1: and share with the woke af nation. Power to the
Speaker 1: people and to all the people. Power, get woke and
Speaker 1: stay woke as fuck.