Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: America really needs good teachers, because without good teachers, you
Speaker 2: get college dropouts who say things like this.
Speaker 3: Now, Kanye West is defending himself against really the indefensible.
Speaker 2: He said slavery was a choice.
Speaker 4: Here's the same you.
Speaker 1: Hear about slavery for four hundred years, for four hundred years.
Speaker 1: That sound like a choice, just me, No, Kanye, slavery
Speaker 1: is not a choice.
Speaker 2: Going blonde is a choice. Both are terrible, but one
Speaker 2: is easier to undo. Although, actually, you know what, when
Speaker 2: I think about it, slavery was a choice for white people.
Speaker 2: White people were like, Hey, should we keep doing stuff
Speaker 2: ourselves or make other people do it for us?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Other people?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds good.
Speaker 1: That sounds good.
Speaker 3: Good choice.
Speaker 2: So Kanye West popped up at TMZ's offices and decided
Speaker 2: to freestyle some history lessons. Thankfully, TMZ Stuff of Van
Speaker 2: Lathen was there to call Kanye out in person.
Speaker 6: Producer Van Lathan taking West to task about the slavery comments.
Speaker 7: While you are making music and being an artist, the
Speaker 7: rest of us in society have to deal with these
Speaker 7: threats to our lives.
Speaker 8: Frankly, I'm disappointed. I'm appalled, and brother, I am unbelievably
Speaker 8: hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something
Speaker 8: to me that's not real.
Speaker 2: Wow, that was powerful. I was really really powerful. And
Speaker 2: you know there was one scared white person in that
Speaker 2: office who was like, hello, police, there's two black people
Speaker 2: arguing in the office right now. You know, normally I
Speaker 2: wouldn't really care what Kanye West said about slavery or
Speaker 2: black history. But what does suck is that now every
Speaker 2: member of the Tiki tourist club out there is going
Speaker 2: to use Kanye's words to justify their hates. Basically, the
Speaker 2: way Kanye samples old school soul music is how racists
Speaker 2: are going to sample him. Now, I'm going to be like, well,
Speaker 2: black folks, that CHOI says like slavery. I know we've
Speaker 2: all been disappointed by Kanye West, but it turns out
Speaker 2: he's not the only one who doesn't seem to understand
Speaker 2: slavery in America. A recent online survey found that only
Speaker 2: eight percent of American high school seniors could identify slavery
Speaker 2: as the central cause of the Civil War. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: even worse, ten percent say the winners of the Civil
Speaker 2: War was Captain America that's scary, and this seems like
Speaker 2: an insane statistic. But when you see how some schools
Speaker 2: try and teach slavery, you'll understand why.
Speaker 9: A homework assignment out this week at a charter school
Speaker 9: in San Antonio has set off an uproar. The students
Speaker 9: were instructed to make a list of the negative and
Speaker 9: positive aspects of slavery.
Speaker 3: This is the paper Robert Levar's eighth grade son was
Speaker 3: given to fill out in history class. You can see
Speaker 3: his son wrote not applicable on the side, labeled positive aspects,
Speaker 3: and wrote a long list of negative aspects. Robert says,
Speaker 3: there's no excuse for this assignment.
Speaker 2: Okay, First of all, that kid gets an A for life.
Speaker 2: That was amazing, because that assignment is horrible. Like that
Speaker 2: assignment is so bad, it almost seems like a trap
Speaker 2: to find the racist kids in class. It's like, okay, kids,
Speaker 2: what were the positive aspects of slavery? I know, cheap
Speaker 2: labor trick question, Go to detention a little grand wizard, and.
Speaker 1: It gets worse.
Speaker 2: It gets worse because these insane lessons on slavery have
Speaker 2: spread into other subjects somehow.
Speaker 6: Gonette County parents are outraged tonight over third grade math homework.
Speaker 10: It referenced slaves picking fruit and violent.
Speaker 11: One problem said each tree had fifty six oranges. If
Speaker 11: eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each
Speaker 11: slave pick? Then there was another if Frederick got two
Speaker 11: beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in
Speaker 11: one week?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, first of all, two beatings time seven, that's
Speaker 2: fourteen beatings. But secondly, slavery is too serious to just
Speaker 2: casually drop into math problems. And by the way, I'm
Speaker 2: not just worried about how inappropriate those questions are. I'm
Speaker 2: worried about how it's escalating. Like first it's just picking oranges,
Speaker 2: next it's beatings. You know, if the next question starts
Speaker 2: out with eight men in white robes show up to
Speaker 2: Frederick's house rob So look, obviously, these assignments aren't treating
Speaker 2: slavery with the weights it deserves. But it turns out
Speaker 2: some teachers go too far in the opposite direction. A
Speaker 2: Bronx teacher blanding in hot water for what he allegedly
Speaker 2: did to children during an assignment on the slave trade.
Speaker 12: She singled all black students, told them to lie on
Speaker 12: the floor, and stepped on their backs to show them
Speaker 12: quote how it is to be a slave.
Speaker 10: A controversial lesson about slavery has been pulled from a
Speaker 10: to Rito's High school. A mother complained recently after getting
Speaker 10: this email, staff would act as slave ship captains. The
Speaker 10: email described and the children's slaves. They use masking tape
Speaker 10: to tie their wrists together, make them lay on the
Speaker 10: ground and in a dark room, have them watch a
Speaker 10: clip from the film Roots.
Speaker 4: What the people.
Speaker 2: Imagine how confusing that is for a child, because on
Speaker 2: the one hand, getting tied up is terrifying, on the
Speaker 2: other hand, getting to watch a movie in school as
Speaker 2: sweet as hell. Like if you asked eight year old
Speaker 2: Trevor to get an ass whipping to watch Jurassic Park
Speaker 2: and Science Clouds. I'm taking that beating. It's all right,
Speaker 2: and you have to admit that lesson was historically accurate.
Speaker 2: I guess you know. Slave captives did tie up Africans,
Speaker 2: load them on boats, and then had a movie nights.
Speaker 2: The Africans were like movie or chains. I can't see
Speaker 2: this screen. This is my favorite part. Nobody puts baby
Speaker 2: in a.
Speaker 1: Gunna ha.
Speaker 2: And look, I know I know some people say, Trevor, no,
Speaker 2: these teachers are just they're just trying to be creative
Speaker 2: and how they teach. And I get that, I get them.
Speaker 2: But here's my question. How come teachers only seem to
Speaker 2: get creative like this with slavery, right, It doesn't happen
Speaker 2: with any other historical subject. Like they're never like, hey, Connor,
Speaker 2: because you're Irish, I'm gonna take away your lunch so
Speaker 2: you can learn about the potato famine. They never say that.
Speaker 2: And then also this thing of like justifying bad things
Speaker 2: in history. You know, you never hear of teachers asking
Speaker 2: kids to write an essay on why the iceberg was
Speaker 2: good for the Titanic, or asking for three reasons why
Speaker 2: those people deserve to be eaten by Jeffrey Dahmer. Like,
Speaker 2: all I'm saying is, if you're gonna teach slavery that way,
Speaker 2: teach it all the way, or at the very least,
Speaker 2: if you're gonna teach slavery this way, and the lesson
Speaker 2: on a high note. You know, if you tie the
Speaker 2: kids up and make them watch roots, then afterwards they
Speaker 2: get to watch Jango unchained and with the teachers ass
Speaker 2: right back. According to the Internet, Winston Churchill once said
Speaker 2: history will be kind to me. I know this because
Speaker 2: I intend to write it now. I'm not sure that
Speaker 2: he should have been so confident about how history would work,
Speaker 2: because it turns out that he never actually said that,
Speaker 2: but he did say something very similar to it, which
Speaker 2: makes it more accurate than most quotes on the internet.
Speaker 2: You know, And to be honest, I guess there's just
Speaker 2: something very powerful about having a person having some italicized
Speaker 2: texts next to their face. But the point about history
Speaker 2: being written by the winners is true. I mean, just
Speaker 2: look at the American Revolution. America won that war, so
Speaker 2: history teaches it as a fight for freedom against the
Speaker 2: tyranny of England. But best believe if England had won
Speaker 2: the war, well, history would be about how they put
Speaker 2: down a riot by a bunch of cheating thugs. They's
Speaker 2: domestic terrorists, threw our chay into Boston Harbor. While trust
Speaker 2: as Native Americans, which aside from being criminal, is very problematic.
Speaker 2: And if history is taught by the winners, nobody in
Speaker 2: America is winning more than white people, which is why
Speaker 2: so much of what's in schools has been from their
Speaker 2: point of view.
Speaker 8: African American history is not taught adequately. What we learned, essentially,
Speaker 8: is of whitewashed history.
Speaker 13: Studies have found less than ten percent of class time
Speaker 13: is devoted to black history. Only eight percent of seniors
Speaker 13: can identify slavery as a central cause of the Civil War.
Speaker 6: There is no national standard for what history is taught.
Speaker 6: Each state said standards, which outlines what students are expected
Speaker 6: to learn. Seven states do not directly mention slavery, and
Speaker 6: a do not mention the Civil Rights movement. Only two
Speaker 6: states mentioned white supremacy.
Speaker 8: The kids learned that slavery was bad, but we ended it.
Speaker 8: Some stuff happened, but Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks
Speaker 8: kind of fixed that. And now look, Barack Obama, we
Speaker 8: had a black president. Racism is over. We're done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty crazy that most students in America are
Speaker 2: only taught about a handful of important black Americans, because
Speaker 2: can you imagine if it were the other way around?
Speaker 2: Welcome everybody to white history. One oh one. We start
Speaker 2: off with Thomas Jefferson where it all began, and then well,
Speaker 2: nothing really happened until Tom Hanks. Class just missed. But yeah, basically,
Speaker 2: America treats history the way most people treat their browser
Speaker 2: history just delete all the embarrassing stuff and hope no
Speaker 2: one notices. But the good news is that as society changes,
Speaker 2: they re examine their posts and ask themselves, should we
Speaker 2: keep telling ourselves what we wish happened, or should we
Speaker 2: understand what actually happened. And that's what's happening in American
Speaker 2: schools right now. Students are asking their school administrators to
Speaker 2: incorporate anti racist education into their curriculum.
Speaker 6: They aim to have books written by a person of
Speaker 6: color and their life struggles are required part of the curriculum.
Speaker 12: In North Carolina, a committee of social studies educators proposed
Speaker 12: that the term systemic racism should be included in the
Speaker 12: state's curriculum standard.
Speaker 9: California State Board of Education has created the nation's first
Speaker 9: statewide model for ethnic studies curriculum at the high school level.
Speaker 6: Education officials say that kids do need to learn about
Speaker 6: discrimination and oppression, that textbooks often overlook a lot.
Speaker 3: Of times in school, you don't see a big representation
Speaker 3: of black history.
Speaker 6: I see comments all the time saying I learn more
Speaker 6: on TikTok than I do for my own school.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how much education is lacking in America. Kids
Speaker 2: are going to TikTok to learn, which is insane. Social
Speaker 2: media isn't supposed to be a school. It's supposed to
Speaker 2: be where you post stuff that gets you suspended from school.
Speaker 2: And I'm not saying you call it learn about history
Speaker 2: on TikTok. Please don't get me wrong. I'm just saying
Speaker 2: you gotta be careful not to mix up history with
Speaker 2: everything else happening on TikTok. Wait, So Harriet Tubman started
Speaker 2: the Underground Railroad and the weight loss Dance pretty dope. Now, look,
Speaker 2: re examining your history is not easy to do, especially
Speaker 2: if it requires some self criticism. You know, in many ways,
Speaker 2: writing history is like a breakup. Each person wants to
Speaker 2: tell the story about how they were the one who
Speaker 2: was right and the other person was an asshole. You know,
Speaker 2: it feels better to say she wasn't nice to my
Speaker 2: family as opposed to she found out about my secret
Speaker 2: second wife. And in the same way as American schools
Speaker 2: are starting to change what they teach about America's history
Speaker 2: with racism, it's causing a strong reaction from people who
Speaker 2: aren't comfortable with what their kids are learning.
Speaker 14: There's growing backlash tonight against what critics call the indoctrination
Speaker 14: of public school students in an anti white curriculum. It
Speaker 14: has to do with the teaching of what is called
Speaker 14: critical race theory.
Speaker 13: Critical race theory teaches people and our children to judge
Speaker 13: one another not based on the content of their character,
Speaker 13: but solely on the color of their skin. It would
Speaker 13: have our children growing up hating this country and hating
Speaker 13: one another.
Speaker 2: It teaches more or.
Speaker 3: Less that America is inherently racist, stating more or less
Speaker 3: that if you're born white, you are necessarily racist.
Speaker 14: Essentially, every white person should apologize for being white and
Speaker 14: what happened two hundred plus years ago.
Speaker 4: We are tired of the continual drum beat of our
Speaker 4: educational system as used the program for kids to program
Speaker 4: our kids into thinking that America is a country of
Speaker 4: hate and division.
Speaker 12: Just because I do not want critical race theory tak
Speaker 12: to my children in school does not mean that I'm
Speaker 12: a racist.
Speaker 2: Dammit, bravo. Tearing up is like a white woman's go
Speaker 2: to move for getting out of it any sticky situation. Well,
Speaker 2: if it got me out of a speeding ticket, I'd
Speaker 2: see if.
Speaker 4: It works on a historical reckoning.
Speaker 2: Look, I get why these parents are upset. I mean,
Speaker 2: they don't want their children learning that white people are
Speaker 2: inherently racist. But that's not necessarily what teaching about racism does.
Speaker 2: For example, a big reason why American neighborhoods are segregated
Speaker 2: today is because historically the government made it almost impossible
Speaker 2: for black people who tried to move into white neighborhoods.
Speaker 2: It was called redlining, and it was a societal structure
Speaker 2: that still has racist effects, even if no white people
Speaker 2: in those neighborhoods now are personally bigots. The point is
Speaker 2: that you can look at your history critically without believing
Speaker 2: that you are personally to blame for it. And a
Speaker 2: good example of this is Germany. Right, they teach the
Speaker 2: Holocaust in the schools, but little Klaus isn't walking home
Speaker 2: from class like, oh mama, it should been a Nancy.
Speaker 2: This says that I was hitner I did the same
Speaker 2: thing as him, even I'm five. Yes old, No, that
Speaker 2: doesn't happen because Germans understand that we learn from history
Speaker 2: to grow from it, not to wallow in it. But
Speaker 2: you see what's happening right now is that in America
Speaker 2: some people don't understand that, and their hysteria is spilling
Speaker 2: into actual laws.
Speaker 9: Several states, including Florida, Idaho, and Iowa, have worked to
Speaker 9: ban the sixteen to nineteen Project and critical race theory
Speaker 9: from their core education plans.
Speaker 12: Arkansas became the latest state where state agencies are barred
Speaker 12: from teaching any concept that the United States is an
Speaker 12: inherently racist nation. In Louisiana, a Republican lawmaker is now
Speaker 12: under fire for comments he made on the House floor
Speaker 12: when proposing the theory's elimination from academic curriculum.
Speaker 7: If you're having a discussion on whatever the case may
Speaker 7: be on slavery, then you can talk about everything dealing
Speaker 7: with slavery, the good, the bad, the ugly.
Speaker 10: There's no good to slavery, though, Well.
Speaker 7: Then whatever the case may be, you're right, You're right.
Speaker 7: I did mean to imply that.
Speaker 2: Wow, guys, Wow, it's almost like this guy wasn't properly
Speaker 2: taught about America's history with racism. Huh. Although I am
Speaker 2: glad that he recognized how wrong he was, you know,
Speaker 2: but part of me does wish that he had just
Speaker 2: kept on digging in. Oh, really, you think that no
Speaker 2: good came from slavery?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: I'm the only one who likes the blows. None of
Speaker 2: you like the blows. Who's the real racist now?
Speaker 11: Hmm?
Speaker 2: Still me? I guess it is still me. And you
Speaker 2: know what's really weird about this whole thing is how
Speaker 2: the same people who freak out about cancel culture now
Speaker 2: want to use the power of the government to stop
Speaker 2: bad ideas from getting into schools. But I guess the
Speaker 2: solution is if anyone rarely wants to get anti racism
Speaker 2: education in schools, well they should put the curriculum and
Speaker 2: mister potato Head's penis and that way, Conservatives will defend
Speaker 2: that shit to the death. Now, look, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that systemic racism is behind all of
Speaker 2: America's problems. In my opinion, I think a lot more
Speaker 2: laws are written to protect the upper class from the
Speaker 2: lower classes. I mean, that's why a lot of laws
Speaker 2: that screw over black people also screw over poor white people.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of counties in America pull poor people
Speaker 2: over and ticket them for random things like tail lights
Speaker 2: or whatever they want to just to meet their quotas.
Speaker 2: But what they won't do is do that kind of
Speaker 2: thing on wall streets, right, They don't pull people over
Speaker 2: who have access to lawyers or access to power. No
Speaker 2: one's frisking down the guys from Wall Street to check
Speaker 2: if they have cocaine. They want to go after poor people.
Speaker 2: And it just so happens that the easiest way to
Speaker 2: find poor people in America is to look at the
Speaker 2: color of their skin, because if they're black, the chances
Speaker 2: are higher that they're poor. Or look at how it's
Speaker 2: illegal to jump turnstiles in New York. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: targeted towards poor people, but it affects black people more
Speaker 2: because white men can't jump. But look, that's just me.
Speaker 2: Big issue that is being brought up with this controversy
Speaker 2: is what is the point of teaching history? Like, what
Speaker 2: is the actual point? Is it to make kids feel
Speaker 2: good that they live in a perfect country with no problems,
Speaker 2: or is it to give them an unsparing assessment of
Speaker 2: how society got where it is so that they have
Speaker 2: the tools to change it in a better direction. And
Speaker 2: I say it should be the latter, because otherwise, as
Speaker 2: a wise person once said, those who cannot remember the
Speaker 2: past are doomed to repeat it. My guest tonight is
Speaker 2: an award winning reporter for The New York Times, magazine
Speaker 2: and creator of the sixteen to nineteen Project, which commemorates
Speaker 2: the year the first enslaved Africans were brought to the
Speaker 2: colony of Virginia, and it examines the ways the four
Speaker 2: hundred year legacy of slavery continues to shape America. Please
Speaker 2: welcome Nicole Hannah Jones. Thank you, welcome to The Daily Show.
Speaker 2: Thank you and congratulations on creating and working with a
Speaker 2: group of people on a project that has gone on
Speaker 2: to become more than just a moment, but rather a
Speaker 2: rethinking of America's history. Let's start with the why behind this.
Speaker 2: I mean, history seems like it has been written, so
Speaker 2: why try and write it again?
Speaker 5: Well, history has been written, but it's been written to
Speaker 5: tell us a certain story, and the sixty nineteen Project
Speaker 5: is trying to reframe that story, and it's really about
Speaker 5: the ongoing legacy of slavery. We've been taught that slavery
Speaker 5: was a long time ago, get over it, which is
Speaker 5: something nearly every black person in this country here's at
Speaker 5: some point. And the sixty nineteen Project is really saying
Speaker 5: that slavery was so foundational to America and institutions that
Speaker 5: we are still suffering from that legacy now and it's
Speaker 5: exploring the many ways that we still are.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that you've chosen the year sixteen nineteen because
Speaker 2: many people would say, but this was before America existed.
Speaker 2: You know, why not start at America's founding and then
Speaker 2: not include the years before when this was a colony
Speaker 2: in Virginia and Britain were involved. So why do you
Speaker 2: choose that point and why do you argue more importantly
Speaker 2: that on the fourteenth you say, on the foreigner anniversary
Speaker 2: of this fateful moment, it is finally time to tell
Speaker 2: our story truthfully. Yes.
Speaker 5: So it's funny because this year is also the Foreigner
Speaker 5: the anniversary of the Mayflower. No one argues that we
Speaker 5: shouldn't learn about the Mayflower because that predates the United States.
Speaker 5: We know that that was an important moment. I would
Speaker 5: argue that the White Lion, which was a ship that
Speaker 5: arrived a year earlier carrying enslaved Africans, was far more
Speaker 5: important to the American story than sixteen twenty than the Mayflower.
Speaker 5: So no, America hadn't get formed, but Virginia was the
Speaker 5: first colony. Our institutions would come out of the thirteen colonies.
Speaker 5: Our legal system, our cultural system, our political system, and
Speaker 5: certainly the anti black racism that we still ruggle with
Speaker 5: is born at that moment.
Speaker 2: When you start off in this magazine, there's a really
Speaker 2: beautiful passage in the beginning where you talk about your
Speaker 2: personal journey and how you struggled with your relationship with
Speaker 2: America as a country, and it's a really beautiful tale.
Speaker 2: You tell about growing up, you know, on the land
Speaker 2: where so many people had died and toiled as enslaved people.
Speaker 2: You also talk about how your father was a proud
Speaker 2: American and how you didn't understand how he could be
Speaker 2: proud to be American when America seemed to be against
Speaker 2: him in spite of everything that he did. How did
Speaker 2: you reconcile that or did working through this project change
Speaker 2: your view on how to be American or how not
Speaker 2: to be American?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Absolutely, working on the project changed my perspective on
Speaker 5: my father. I opened the piece talking about how my dad,
Speaker 5: who was born in apartheid in Mississippi, flew this flag in
Speaker 5: our front yard on this giant flag pole, and he
Speaker 5: was one of the only black people I knew who
Speaker 5: flew a flag in their yard. And I was deeply
Speaker 5: embarrassed by that. But as I started researching for this project,
Speaker 5: and my essay is really about how black Americans have
Speaker 5: had this pivotal role of actually turning the United States
Speaker 5: into a democracy, I got that he understood something that
Speaker 5: I didn't, That no one has the right to take
Speaker 5: away our citizenship and our rights to think of ourselves
Speaker 5: as American because so much of what black people have
Speaker 5: done is what has built this very country that we
Speaker 5: get to live in today.
Speaker 2: What do you what do you mean specifically when you
Speaker 2: say that, because that was that was an idea that
Speaker 2: I don't think I had fully thought about before I
Speaker 2: read this magazine, was the concept that America's foundation was
Speaker 2: a lie, in that it was a group of promises
Speaker 2: that weren't that weren't fulfilled, you know, to both people
Speaker 2: of color and to women in many respects. And and
Speaker 2: what you argue in this magazine is that black people
Speaker 2: basically have the job of making it a truth. What
Speaker 2: did you mean by that?
Speaker 5: Absolutely so, when Thomas Jefferson writes those famous English words,
Speaker 5: we hold these truths to be self evident, that all
Speaker 5: men are created equal. He owns one hundred and thirty
Speaker 5: human beings at that time, including some of his own
Speaker 5: family members, and he understands that one fifth of the
Speaker 5: population will enjoy none of those rights in liberties. So
Speaker 5: we are founded on a hypocrisy, on a paradise. But
Speaker 5: black people read those words and said, oh, we're going
Speaker 5: to believe that these words are true and apply to
Speaker 5: us and fight again and again. We see them fighting
Speaker 5: at the Revolution. The first person to die for this
Speaker 5: country was a black man named Christmas Addics, who wasn't free.
Speaker 5: We see that happening with the abolitionist movement, largely led
Speaker 5: by black Americans. We see that happening at the Civil War,
Speaker 5: with the reconstruction amendments, and of course the Civil rights movement,
Speaker 5: which brings the franchise to large segments of America for
Speaker 5: the first time. So we said we were founded as
Speaker 5: a democratic republic, but most Americans could not vote at
Speaker 5: the time of the Constitution. But thanks largely to black
Speaker 5: resistance and freedom struggles, we are as close to a
Speaker 5: multiracial democracy as we've ever been.
Speaker 2: A really beautiful story in that told not through the
Speaker 2: lens of anger, but rather through the lens of collecting stories.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's it's the fact that it's a
Speaker 2: little angry, doesn't It doesn't. It doesn't feel like so
Speaker 2: much as it feels like a truth. What what it
Speaker 2: has sparked, though, is a fight over history and how
Speaker 2: the history is told. You know, once this magazine came out,
Speaker 2: there were many historians who who you know, came after
Speaker 2: you and said, no, this is this is incorrect. The
Speaker 2: primary reason that America sought its independence from Britain was
Speaker 2: not because they wanted to maintain slavery. It was because
Speaker 2: of taxation without representation. It wasn't the primary cause. Why
Speaker 2: do you think there's such a resistance to slavery being
Speaker 2: one of the primary causes of America breaking away from Britain.
Speaker 5: Because we need to believe as a country that our
Speaker 5: founding was pure, that yes, you know, we had some troubles,
Speaker 5: including holding five hundred thousand people in bonded, but that
Speaker 5: largely we were a nation founded to be exceptional and
Speaker 5: these majestic ideas and that are found though complicated. Men
Speaker 5: were men who were righteous. But when you argue that
Speaker 5: our founders were many of them very hypocritical, and that
Speaker 5: you can't just simply overlook the fact that slavery was
Speaker 5: a motivation. In some of the colonies, just taxation was
Speaker 5: a motivation, but also the ability to keep making a
Speaker 5: lot of money off of human bondage. That is very unsettling,
Speaker 5: not just to the average American but to historians who
Speaker 5: have seen their job as protecting that founding narrative. The
Speaker 5: difference is, you know, when you're black in this country,
Speaker 5: you don't have the luxury of pretending that that history
Speaker 5: didn't exist, and what that history has done is really
Speaker 5: marginalized our story, when really the story of black people
Speaker 5: and slavery is central to the United States.
Speaker 2: When you worked through this project, there are new pieces
Speaker 2: of information you discovered. There are stories that you find
Speaker 2: were never told that needs to be told. And I
Speaker 2: know you can't write about everything, but I was interested
Speaker 2: in whether or not you would think that other countries
Speaker 2: who are in in slavery get off easier than the
Speaker 2: United States, because the one thing they did differently to
Speaker 2: America as we know it is that they sort of
Speaker 2: outsourced slavery. You know, if you think about whether it
Speaker 2: was the Americas or Spain or many of these other
Speaker 2: colonial nations, their slaves were in the countries and then
Speaker 2: they left those countries and were like, we're done with slavery,
Speaker 2: but they also don't have to deal with the people
Speaker 2: they enslaved, whereas America has an interesting relationship where you
Speaker 2: have to deal with the people because they're still here.
Speaker 2: So not just not to feel sorry for America, but
Speaker 2: do you think there's also a reckoning that should happen
Speaker 2: in this way in Europe?
Speaker 12: Maybe?
Speaker 5: Oh, for sure, all the colonial powers need to have
Speaker 5: a reckoning, and reckoning also needs to happen on the
Speaker 5: continent of Africa. But I think the fundamental difference there's
Speaker 5: too Yes, slavery occurred in the bounds of the country
Speaker 5: that would become America, but also of those colonial powers,
Speaker 5: America is the only country that was founded on the
Speaker 5: idea of individual rights and liberty. Interesting, that was founded
Speaker 5: on the idea of God given inalienable rights. None of
Speaker 5: those other European I mean, these were monarchies. They weren't
Speaker 5: founded on idea that every person had equal rights, but
Speaker 5: we were. So that hypocrisy really matters. And of course
Speaker 5: I argue that that hypocrisy is why we have struggled
Speaker 5: so much to get over and address the issue of slavery,
Speaker 5: because it forces us to acknowledge this lie at our founding.
Speaker 2: Before you go. One of the main questions many people
Speaker 2: may have, and you see this unfortunately all too often
Speaker 2: is people saying, why do you have to keep trudging
Speaker 2: this up? Can't we just move on? It's been four
Speaker 2: hundred years now, can't we just move on? What do
Speaker 2: you hope would be sparked by the conversations that come
Speaker 2: from a magazine that delves into slavery like this? What
Speaker 2: do you want someone who sits at home and says,
Speaker 2: they go, Nicole, I'm white and I have nothing to
Speaker 2: do with this, and I don't know what you want
Speaker 2: me to do. What would you hope people take away?
Speaker 5: That's a great question. Let me just say for the record,
Speaker 5: nobody wants to get over slavery more than black folks.
Speaker 5: It's not it's not to our benefit. I say, the
Speaker 5: fact that our nation can't get over slavery is not
Speaker 5: benefited black people for a single day. But that's the problem.
Speaker 5: We've never dealt with the harm that was done. I'm
Speaker 5: forty three years old and my father was born into
Speaker 5: a Mississippi where black people could invote, Black people couldn't
Speaker 5: use public facilities. That was all perfectly legal. We're not
Speaker 5: far removed from this past at all, and there's never
Speaker 5: been any effort to redress that harm. So what I
Speaker 5: hope that people will take from the magazine. Every single
Speaker 5: story in the magazine starts with America Today and shows
Speaker 5: how these things about American life that you think are
Speaker 5: unrelated to slavery actually are. And I hope by confronting
Speaker 5: that truth, maybe we can finally start to repair the
Speaker 5: harm that was done and then finally start to live
Speaker 5: up to be the country of our ideals.
Speaker 2: It's a fantastic job, fantastic magazine.
Speaker 1: I really wonderful have any on the show.
Speaker 14: Thank you so much.
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