Speaker 1: Push it. I'm ready. I'm gonna start us off. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: do it. Smiling, keep smiling, keep shining, you shine, knowing
Speaker 1: you can always count on me for sure. That's what
Speaker 1: some of my best friends are for. Man, you got it.
Speaker 1: I'm Khalil Jibrad Muhammad, I'm Ben Austin. And even after
Speaker 1: that song, we're still best friends. One black, one white.
Speaker 1: I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And in this show,
Speaker 1: we wrestle with the challenges and the absurdities of a
Speaker 1: deeply divided and unequal country. And in this episode, we're
Speaker 1: exploring the story of the Florida man who calls the
Speaker 1: teaching of the History of Race and Racism or ap
Speaker 1: African American Studies propaganda and indoctrination. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Florida man. Here is Ronda Santis, and he and his
Speaker 1: conservative cronies, they are sabotaging this advanced placement African American
Speaker 1: Studies course. And we're gonna look at the national implications
Speaker 1: of this move. Let's get to the show. Let's do
Speaker 1: it now, Khalil. In January, ron De Santis, the governor
Speaker 1: of Florida Republican, announced that he was going to ban
Speaker 1: this AP African American Studies curriculum in his state. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've heard, I've heard all about it. He is he
Speaker 1: is about to ban our show too. I mean that's that.
Speaker 1: I have a friend inside of the of the governor's
Speaker 1: mansion who sent me a leaked memo that said, some
Speaker 1: of my best friends are is way too woke. It
Speaker 1: will potentially infect the minds of our students in the
Speaker 1: state of Florida. It lacks any educational value, and we
Speaker 1: need to go after it. So those are the things
Speaker 1: that his education department or people in his administration said
Speaker 1: about this AP curriculum, where you just said about our podcast,
Speaker 1: and both are probably not true. He called it woke indoctrination,
Speaker 1: that it lacks educational value, and actually, let's hear around
Speaker 1: a Santa's basically trash this AP curriculum, this course on
Speaker 1: black history, what are one of what's one of the
Speaker 1: lessons about queer theory? Now, who would say that an
Speaker 1: important part of black history is queer theory? That is
Speaker 1: somebody pushing an agenda on our kids. And so when
Speaker 1: you look to see they have stuff about intersectionality, abolishing prisons,
Speaker 1: that's a political agenda, and so we're on that's the
Speaker 1: wrong side of the line for Florida's standards. We believe
Speaker 1: in teaching kids fact. I love it teaching kids facts
Speaker 1: like I love that you responded to this, because since
Speaker 1: this story broke in January and then in February, the
Speaker 1: college board who creates the APE curriculum, actually came out
Speaker 1: with a curriculum with a bunch of revisions. You've been
Speaker 1: in the news. You've been all over the place talking
Speaker 1: about this, and in the way that our you know,
Speaker 1: sound bite social media news cycle works, even things you've
Speaker 1: said became part of the news. Right. Actually, I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to drum up, you know, even more downloads for
Speaker 1: our podcast. Fox News had a headline of a story
Speaker 1: and said Ivy League professor meaning Khalil Jibrawn Mohammed on
Speaker 1: MSNBC trash's critical race theory critic as fake journalist. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I was really just giving the facts of
Speaker 1: the guys actual credentials. That's what I didn't trash him that.
Speaker 1: I know you didn't, man, I know you did. But
Speaker 1: this is this is why it's so great because now
Speaker 1: you and I get to talk about this subject. We
Speaker 1: get to talk about this AP curriculum and all that
Speaker 1: it means. So let's jump into this important story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all jokes aside. This really is fundamental to who we
Speaker 1: are as a country. It's fundamental to our capacity to
Speaker 1: make the changes that you and I think are so
Speaker 1: important and so many of our guests have been talking
Speaker 1: about all season. All right, my man, here's how I
Speaker 1: feel like we can talk about this to actually sort
Speaker 1: of explain what has happened throughout this process. So the
Speaker 1: College Board, which which writes the AP curriculum for states
Speaker 1: and then for the entire country, they created an African
Speaker 1: American Studies curriculum and they said that they were piloting
Speaker 1: this in I think about sixty different in schools across
Speaker 1: the country. Yeah, something like that. That's right. They had
Speaker 1: like a draft of this going out, and that draft
Speaker 1: is leaked and conservative news media and then ROUNDA. Santis,
Speaker 1: the Florida Governor sort of jump on this and criticize it.
Speaker 1: When they start seeing what's inside the curriculum. The Governor
Speaker 1: of Florida, Rhunda Santis, and the Department of Florida Education
Speaker 1: got hold of what was in the framework. They called
Speaker 1: it a framework and it listed a number of topics
Speaker 1: that would be explored in this future curriculum, and some
Speaker 1: of it was about black lives matter, some of it
Speaker 1: was about reparation, some of it was about people who
Speaker 1: are black and queer, and more particularly, it was about
Speaker 1: a number of topics that you and I are constantly
Speaker 1: historicizing because they overlap with the story of our lives.
Speaker 1: In other words, things have been going on since the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement, you know, like since the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: And we heard the Santis in the opening, and we
Speaker 1: heard sort of him talking about what he felt was
Speaker 1: the problems of this curriculum. And one of the other
Speaker 1: things that he's able to say is that it's actually
Speaker 1: against the law in the state of Florida to teach
Speaker 1: these things, which is crazy because the laws have changed
Speaker 1: in the last two years there, so there's a stop
Speaker 1: there's a stop Woke Act that that bans the teaching
Speaker 1: of critical race theory. There some aspects of the courts
Speaker 1: have sort of challenged some aspects to it, and not
Speaker 1: just critical race theory but also the sixteen nineteen project.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, I'm glad that you're you're emphasize
Speaker 1: this point because here he basically set the conditions in
Speaker 1: place to render anything like what we're talking about with
Speaker 1: this African American studies and things to come as illegal.
Speaker 1: I mean, talk about a rig system. You have a
Speaker 1: situation where you've defined an entire category acknowledge as potentially
Speaker 1: divisive and not just about race and racism, also about
Speaker 1: sex and sexism. This is as much about gender issues
Speaker 1: in the broadest sense as it is about about race.
Speaker 1: And so here you pass a law a year ago
Speaker 1: they say, hey, we're not going to allow these things,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna call out the sixteen nineteen project and
Speaker 1: other things. And of course this curriculum comes along independent
Speaker 1: of the State of Florida's own retrograde backwards agenda, and
Speaker 1: he's like, OOPSI it breaks our law. Can't use it here,
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, go ahead, go ahead. No, So I
Speaker 1: just want to talk about what happens next. So there
Speaker 1: is this sort of conservative attack on this curriculum, and
Speaker 1: then the college board comes out on February first, the
Speaker 1: first day of Black History months, they released the final
Speaker 1: version of this class and it suddenly has emitted, it's
Speaker 1: excluded all these things that conservatives like the Santiss has
Speaker 1: said are problematic. That's right, and very conveniently. So, I
Speaker 1: mean you took a look at it. What did you
Speaker 1: think when you saw some of the things between the
Speaker 1: before and the after. Well, you know, here's one of
Speaker 1: the things I thought about. Like, you and I are
Speaker 1: both teachers. We both teach college courses, and I've taught
Speaker 1: high school as well in the past. And when you
Speaker 1: make a curriculum, you do have to make all sorts
Speaker 1: of choices, right, you have to. You can't teach everything
Speaker 1: in the world, and so you have to. You might
Speaker 1: teach you know, my new book Correction and your book
Speaker 1: The Condemnation of Black Condemnation of Blackness. Oh man, see
Speaker 1: you don't even you're stumbling on the title of my
Speaker 1: book to all these years, and that's all you need.
Speaker 1: And then and then you throw in some other like
Speaker 1: you know, here and there things. But but but this
Speaker 1: is more than just that kind of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: natural pruning that you have to make to fit things
Speaker 1: into a class, right, this is something different is going
Speaker 1: on here. Well. The thing is, I mean, when you
Speaker 1: look at them before and after, it is obvious that
Speaker 1: they've turned something that was defined as African American studies
Speaker 1: which is inclusive of history but also includes concerns about
Speaker 1: the present. If you take a sociology class right now
Speaker 1: on any college campus, you're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: prison industrial complex, you're going to talk about policing, you're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the current education system. So the
Speaker 1: thing about African American studies that is different than African
Speaker 1: American history is it is a conversation between the past
Speaker 1: and the present. That's what it was built to do.
Speaker 1: And so they took out basically most of the present.
Speaker 1: So you were among eight hundred scholars who criticized this
Speaker 1: and wrote a public letter. What did the letter say, Well,
Speaker 1: just to be clear, the letter basically said because it
Speaker 1: came out before the revised curriculum, but it was intended
Speaker 1: to come out right before because we were concerned, as
Speaker 1: the drafters of the letter, that there would be political
Speaker 1: influenced by Florida and that we would see the kind
Speaker 1: of changes that we saw. So we didn't want this
Speaker 1: celebratory news story on February one, on the first day
Speaker 1: of Black History Month, to be like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: look at this amazing thing that the college board has done,
Speaker 1: without paying close attention to the implications that Florida governor
Speaker 1: had in fact influenced it. So what we said is
Speaker 1: that the college Board has an obligation to uphold the
Speaker 1: standards of academic freedom and to protect the broad range
Speaker 1: of academic interest expressed in the original curriculum, and that
Speaker 1: Rhonda Santis ultimately was trampling upon their autonomy as an organization,
Speaker 1: as well as implications for all people doing this kind
Speaker 1: of work in the field. So that a politician censoring
Speaker 1: academia is problematic in itself. Yeah, but like you know
Speaker 1: this as well as anybody. You're a journalist, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is this is the equivalent of some politicians somewhere
Speaker 1: saying that you, I mean, let's not even make it hypothetical,
Speaker 1: your book could be banned in the state of Florida, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: precisely because of the content of it. So the implications
Speaker 1: are massive and different from all the states that have
Speaker 1: passed these anti CRT laws and book banning laws. The
Speaker 1: difference is that what happened here has national educational implications.
Speaker 1: Did you you took an AP class, right, and how
Speaker 1: did it work? Remind me how your AP class work
Speaker 1: and why you took it in high school? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we're going into AP. I probably only took
Speaker 1: AP European History. This is going back to the late
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, and you probably took like three or four
Speaker 1: APS when we were in high school together. Ye. But
Speaker 1: but but it's a way to get college credit. So
Speaker 1: it says that you know, if you if you get
Speaker 1: I think if it's the top scores of five, the
Speaker 1: next scores of four, you get college credit. If you
Speaker 1: get a high score, and it shows that you're college ready,
Speaker 1: just shows that you're taking you're you're taking the highest
Speaker 1: level classes in your school in a way. That's right.
Speaker 1: So your AP European History, like my AP American History course,
Speaker 1: we both did well enough to get credit going to
Speaker 1: into college. But guess what you get? I got I
Speaker 1: gotta I gotta five, I gotta four. Yeah, well my
Speaker 1: four was just as good in terms of one, you know,
Speaker 1: the four hours of credit. Yeah, you became historian. Look
Speaker 1: at me? So no, man. Look, So here's the thing.
Speaker 1: What people have to appreciate why this has national implications
Speaker 1: is because this AP class will define every AP offering
Speaker 1: in this course across the entire United States, not just
Speaker 1: in Florida, not just in Tennessee, not just in Illinois
Speaker 1: where we went to school. And guess what all the
Speaker 1: colleges that then will be asked and universities to accept
Speaker 1: this curriculum in terms of giving credit to those students.
Speaker 1: So everybody's invested in this. So that's why this is
Speaker 1: such a big deal. I'd like us to talk about
Speaker 1: maybe a few specific writers and techs that were taken
Speaker 1: out of this AP African American Studies curriculum and use
Speaker 1: that to think about the bigger issues what happened there
Speaker 1: in Florida and now the country and how we're supposed
Speaker 1: to think about this. Okay, all right, And maybe a
Speaker 1: good place to start is one of the authors who
Speaker 1: was omitted from the APE curriculum is James Baldwin. I know, man,
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable. Let's talk about what it means that he's
Speaker 1: actually removed from this curriculum, right. And so you know,
Speaker 1: when you when you look at the curriculum, the final
Speaker 1: version that came out, it has Martin Luther King, it
Speaker 1: has Malcolm X, and it sort of jumps over James
Speaker 1: Baldwin and and a lot of stuff of sort of
Speaker 1: the black power movement, and you know, maybe it even
Speaker 1: kind it kind of stops there. It not only stops there.
Speaker 1: The original full curriculum had a whole unit on the
Speaker 1: Black Panther Party. It even dealt with the Nation of Islam, which, frankly,
Speaker 1: you know, aside from my own family history, you can't
Speaker 1: actually understand Malcolm X without putting the Nation of Islam
Speaker 1: in its own historical context. The original unit they had
Speaker 1: was from The Fire Next Time, Baldwin's nineteen sixty three
Speaker 1: essay that is an interrogation of the Nation of Islam,
Speaker 1: because Baldwin was trying to make sense of this alternative
Speaker 1: path to self determination and independence for black people. In
Speaker 1: other words, one of the most dominant strains of black
Speaker 1: thought was black nationalism, and at the time when Baldwin
Speaker 1: was writing The Fire Next Time, he was trying to
Speaker 1: make sense of these different paths. All of that's gone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And one of the ironies of this curriculum is that
Speaker 1: the whole idea or the idea of black studies sort
Speaker 1: of emerges from this moment, from this protest moment. Correct,
Speaker 1: this is when the field is invented. That sort that
Speaker 1: to remove sort of the genesis of it feels ahistorical
Speaker 1: and the last question on Baldwin before we move on.
Speaker 1: Why do you think he was the target of removal.
Speaker 1: Why would he sort of spur this kind of backlash
Speaker 1: against him. Well, I think Baldwin is controversial today because
Speaker 1: Baldwin's critique of white liberals has been a very prescient
Speaker 1: voice in this moment. Is his attempt to try to
Speaker 1: give voice to the contradictions of a country that claimed this,
Speaker 1: you know, this American exceptionalism, this city on the hill,
Speaker 1: this American democracy like the world had never known. And
Speaker 1: when you listen to Baldwin, you hear him really fundamentally
Speaker 1: articulating that the damage of racism was really the moral
Speaker 1: perversion of white people. They've been raised to believe, and
Speaker 1: by now they helplessly believe. Then, no matter how terrible
Speaker 1: their lives may be, and their lives have been quite terrible,
Speaker 1: and no matter how far they fall, no matter what
Speaker 1: disaster to overtake, some they have one enormous knowledge and
Speaker 1: consolation which is like a heavenly revelation. At least they
Speaker 1: are not black. Yeah, it's like a it's such a
Speaker 1: powerful rendering of white privilege. Exactly, And in his amazing locution,
Speaker 1: I just want to repeat this notional white privilege, as
Speaker 1: you put it, at least they are not black. And
Speaker 1: see that's that is Baldwin putting his finger on the
Speaker 1: deepest wound in the American psychology, which is to say,
Speaker 1: a long time ago this country decided they would define
Speaker 1: blackness as those who would whose lives would subsidize the
Speaker 1: freedoms of others. And that is the third rail of
Speaker 1: American politics right now that people like de Santists and
Speaker 1: red state leaders around the country have been working double
Speaker 1: time against in the wake of all those white people
Speaker 1: who are like you know what, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be part of this anymore. After seeing George Floyd be killed,
Speaker 1: I don't want to have anything to do with this,
Speaker 1: and I want to learn more. Khalil, you and I
Speaker 1: are here talking about this ap African American studies curriculum,
Speaker 1: and we are going to take a short break and
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're going to continue that conversation.
Speaker 1: But we're going to see how it's also about gender
Speaker 1: studies and queer studies. Let's do it, Khalil, we are back.
Speaker 1: Some of my best friends are and man, this ap
Speaker 1: African American Studies curriculum all right, So we talked about
Speaker 1: Baldwin being cut out of it. Another huge sort of
Speaker 1: whole after the final version comes out, is that there
Speaker 1: was all this stuff on queer studies and gender studies,
Speaker 1: and as we heard de Santis in the opening, you know,
Speaker 1: he was objecting to that and he says that is
Speaker 1: not history, and that's all removed. That's right. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: he when he says something like queer theory, and I
Speaker 1: love his like very like fourth grade enunciation, intersectionality, He's like,
Speaker 1: he's essentially creating these categories that are dog whistles to
Speaker 1: his supporters to say that must be bad. And of course,
Speaker 1: in a time when we are seeing legislative action to
Speaker 1: ban transpeople from having access to healthcare or access to
Speaker 1: publicly funded sports, something like queer studies has a direct
Speaker 1: relationship to the actual political fights that are happening. But
Speaker 1: that's what education has always been about. Let me give
Speaker 1: you a really good example of this from my standpoint.
Speaker 1: You could tell me if you disagree in the sciences,
Speaker 1: nobody pretends in the sciences that they aren't solving problems
Speaker 1: based on hypotheses that will cure cancer, solve global warming,
Speaker 1: increase safe and clean water fixed irrigation systems in the
Speaker 1: drying deserts of California. Everyone has a normative goal. Why
Speaker 1: shouldn't we have a normative goal to solve our understanding
Speaker 1: of the ways that people's lives are affected by forms
Speaker 1: of discrimination, bigotry, and systemic inequalities. Now, historians don't necessarily
Speaker 1: do that, but a lot of other social scientists do
Speaker 1: that work. And that's the work of people who have
Speaker 1: been doing queer studies. They've been trying to do something
Speaker 1: that is really simple, like, if we can't solve for
Speaker 1: the fact that trans people are the most likely to
Speaker 1: experience violence in any other identity based population, then we're
Speaker 1: probably not going to fix this problem until we fix
Speaker 1: it for them. That's simple, right, That is simple. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know this is this is sort of low
Speaker 1: hanging fruit for someone like the scientists to attack, you know.
Speaker 1: He his state, Florida had also passed this don't Say
Speaker 1: Gay legislation, which bans the teaching of I think kindergarten
Speaker 1: through third grade where you can't talk about gender identification
Speaker 1: or sexuality sexual orientation, right because the idea essentially at
Speaker 1: you know, as the news has reported that one this
Speaker 1: is inappropriate for kids. And two that you know this
Speaker 1: curriculum might convince some kid that they aren't sis gender. Look,
Speaker 1: I got to tell you this story because this isn't
Speaker 1: just about you know, two smart guys and two smart
Speaker 1: alecky guys like you and me having this conversation and
Speaker 1: on our moral high horse, you know, just like all
Speaker 1: these dumb people. Right, this is also said you said,
Speaker 1: I love that he said smart Alec. The other day
Speaker 1: we were talking and I said, I said the word joshing,
Speaker 1: and I was like, man, I hated just that. I remember,
Speaker 1: I was like, what am I doing? What have I become?
Speaker 1: Sometimes as we age, you know, we revert back to
Speaker 1: the mean. You know, that whiteness just just just just
Speaker 1: bubbling up inside of you. So so one of my
Speaker 1: really close friends sends me a text and he's following
Speaker 1: the news and he literally writes this. He says, he's following,
Speaker 1: he's following the news. He's seeing you talk about this
Speaker 1: ap Carre's on the news, that's right. So he's following
Speaker 1: this particular controversy and he says from the text, he says,
Speaker 1: keep fighting the good fight. Brother. I washed a discussion
Speaker 1: on MSNBC this morning regarding the issue and the discussion
Speaker 1: meldedt LGBTQ plus civil rights with the current APFAM studies.
Speaker 1: That doesn't sit well with me. But I admit I'm
Speaker 1: ignorant on many of the LGBTQ concerns, like the lgbt
Speaker 1: kicks concerns. It reminded me of like I'm ignorant on
Speaker 1: the blacks and their situation. But so But but he's
Speaker 1: also being really honest, and he's looking to you for
Speaker 1: he's trying to understand. But he for him, these are
Speaker 1: totally separate things, and he feels like it's mudding. This
Speaker 1: is a black guy. I'm assuming that's right. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and and he is saying that, you know, I'm feeling
Speaker 1: like these two things shouldn't be conflated in a way,
Speaker 1: they shouldn't be connected. That's right. But but he's open,
Speaker 1: he's oh, he's asking you to like correct him in
Speaker 1: a way that's correct. Yeah, He's like, I'm prepared to
Speaker 1: admit I'm not sure I understand why these things are
Speaker 1: being put together, because for him, it's like, I am
Speaker 1: a fierce warrior for our black history being taught truthfully,
Speaker 1: but why do we have to link this to queer theory.
Speaker 1: So in other words, you can rally behind the black
Speaker 1: history stuff to some degree, even that's controversial in many ways,
Speaker 1: but this other stuff is like, it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: it's appropriate. No, But even even when you're talking about
Speaker 1: somebody who is an ally and who's experiencing this is
Speaker 1: also confused about these connections. So it is like I
Speaker 1: was saying, it's much easier to exploit that as a
Speaker 1: reason to sort of throw it all out, and you
Speaker 1: were talking about intersectionality, and so intersectionality is this idea
Speaker 1: that our different identities and the different ways that people
Speaker 1: experience oppression that they can be they can be interconnected,
Speaker 1: they can reinforce one another, they're they're not wholly separate,
Speaker 1: and we can think about them in those terms. That's right.
Speaker 1: So the one way to think about this is both
Speaker 1: historical and in terms of thinking about how people need
Speaker 1: certain tools to make sense of their lived experiences today.
Speaker 1: So historically, intersectionally, we can understand that someone like James
Speaker 1: Baldwin was a fierce critic of American racism, and he
Speaker 1: was gay, and he experienced being gay in ways that
Speaker 1: made him not as much a celebrated writer in some
Speaker 1: pockets of Black America at that time than he is today. Similarly,
Speaker 1: one of the leading towering figures in the civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: a person who was in many ways responsible for helping
Speaker 1: to guide Martin Luther King Jr. Was a man named
Speaker 1: Bayard Rustin who was also gay, and in fact his homosexuality,
Speaker 1: his gayness was a source of tension, so much so
Speaker 1: that he was essentially pushed to the back of the
Speaker 1: movement at key moments because people tried to embarrass him
Speaker 1: by it and said, you know, we're going to expose you,
Speaker 1: so you can't fully participate. So that's yeah. I also
Speaker 1: think about I think about Bell Hooks, who's also you know,
Speaker 1: deeply involved in the study of intersectionality and who identified
Speaker 1: as queer, of also being removed from from this curriculum
Speaker 1: as well well, not just that she's been banned like
Speaker 1: Tony Morrison and some of the others even before the
Speaker 1: ap African American Studies curriculum. She passed recently too, which
Speaker 1: makes it even more sad. But you asked this question
Speaker 1: about intersectionality in terms of the specific way in which
Speaker 1: it is such a charged issue, and one way that
Speaker 1: is is because a person who's who is credited for
Speaker 1: coining the term. Her name is Kimberly Crenshaw. She's a
Speaker 1: law professor, and she essentially coined this term in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine because she was trying to make sense in
Speaker 1: legal studies in cases the differences between white women's experiences
Speaker 1: with employment discrimination and black women's experiences with employment discrimination.
Speaker 1: They weren't the same. All women were suffering from a
Speaker 1: lack of promotion, they were subjected to serial sexual harassment,
Speaker 1: and they were paid much less than their male counterparts.
Speaker 1: But black women experienced all those things plus the additional
Speaker 1: anti black racism, which meant that what they were experiencing
Speaker 1: was even worse. Not to say that these things always
Speaker 1: have to be compared on a hierarchical scale, but if
Speaker 1: you were only solving for gender issues for women in
Speaker 1: the workplace, you were not solving for race issues amongst
Speaker 1: women of color too. That's it. That kind of the
Speaker 1: original contemporary version of intersectionality. So a curriculum that doesn't
Speaker 1: think about all the ways that these are interconnected, you're
Speaker 1: missing out on an understanding of the world. This is
Speaker 1: how the world was. Yeah, so what did you tell
Speaker 1: your friend, Well, I told him, I said, you can't
Speaker 1: actually understand the fullness of the civil rights movement without
Speaker 1: understanding the people who actually made it happen. We just
Speaker 1: it's just another form of mythology. It's you know, it's
Speaker 1: like one that we feel good about. I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't tell him this, but I, you know, would also say,
Speaker 1: like a lot of black churches that supported the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement were also simultaneously discriminating against black people who
Speaker 1: were gay, either closeted or outwardly from fully participating in
Speaker 1: the life of the church. So this is something that
Speaker 1: today contemporary social justice movements have been very active to
Speaker 1: correct for. And the reason why they've been active in
Speaker 1: correcting forward is because it was an issue, and it
Speaker 1: did hurt the movement, and it created divisions, and it
Speaker 1: also created unfinished business literally like things that never got
Speaker 1: sold for. And so Black Studies was totally built to
Speaker 1: look at that dance between what happened in the past,
Speaker 1: what have we learned from the past, and how does
Speaker 1: that help us make sense of our current condition. Man, man,
Speaker 1: I got so much going on in my head right now,
Speaker 1: I actually need to take a short break and let's
Speaker 1: pause for a minute. Let's come back and let's talk
Speaker 1: more about how all these contemporary issues are removed from
Speaker 1: the curriculum. Okay, so we're back from the break, and
Speaker 1: I just want to go back to Kimberly Crenshaw for
Speaker 1: a minute. Like, she is a critical race theorist. That's
Speaker 1: who she is. She's been that for her entire career.
Speaker 1: That's what you get from that body of work to
Speaker 1: help make sense of the world as it actually operates.
Speaker 1: And that's a powerful thing. It's kind of like, for me,
Speaker 1: anti scientism at its best. It's like the scholarship has
Speaker 1: moved on from where Desantist thinks it was when he
Speaker 1: was a student to a better place, just as science does.
Speaker 1: And he's like, Nah, I don't like these I don't
Speaker 1: like these updates. Let's stick with the old ones. Let's
Speaker 1: stick with what we used to know, because that makes
Speaker 1: us all feel better. Yeah, what he talked about is truth.
Speaker 1: To him, that truth is a sort of very narrow
Speaker 1: and very palatable one that's right and does it isn't
Speaker 1: challenging in ways that are uncomfortable. So, yeah, you're talking
Speaker 1: about truth. Well, one of those truths is that the
Speaker 1: United States has the largest prison system the world has
Speaker 1: ever known. That's not news right to us. You've written
Speaker 1: about it. I've written about it. You know many people
Speaker 1: who we are engaged with. This is a well known thing.
Speaker 1: But guess what. In the early version of the African
Speaker 1: American Studies curriculum, there was a whole unit to address
Speaker 1: this issue and they were featuring the author and scholar
Speaker 1: activist Michelle Alexander. Yes, I said scholar activism, because in
Speaker 1: Black studies a lot of people are scholar activists. That's
Speaker 1: just the way it is. So people read excerpts from
Speaker 1: the New Gym Crow that was in the curriculum, and
Speaker 1: now it's been cut out, it has been removed altogether.
Speaker 1: The AP is moving to this space where some material
Speaker 1: may not actually be used on the test, but you
Speaker 1: can opt into studying more deeply a topic. And for
Speaker 1: this particular topic, it couldn't be more pressing as a
Speaker 1: societal issue, covering everything from the war on crime and
Speaker 1: the war on drugs to systemic policing and of course,
Speaker 1: as I've already said, this massive punishment system. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we're talking about Michelle Alexander and the New Gym Crow,
Speaker 1: and you told me that you were going to have
Speaker 1: dinner with her last Saturday, and that you were going
Speaker 1: to try to record her to just hear a response
Speaker 1: to how she felt about being cut out of this curriculum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the timing couldn't have been better. We were planning to
Speaker 1: have this conversation and I was going to have a
Speaker 1: chance to talk to her about it. So we're at
Speaker 1: a dinner party, folks are doing the dishes. We've just
Speaker 1: finished up, and it was a little awkward, I'll admit,
Speaker 1: because you know, Michelle Alexander's like super famous and she's
Speaker 1: my friend. But it felt like I was crossing line
Speaker 1: between like, Okay, by the way, I want to hear
Speaker 1: your thoughts on this issue, which has everything to do
Speaker 1: with That's what it means, That's what it means to
Speaker 1: be a professional podcast. You got you gotta do the work,
Speaker 1: all right. You know she understands. So so here's what
Speaker 1: she said. I guess I would say that I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to see it being part of the fascist backlash in
Speaker 1: Florida to the teaching of truth about our past and
Speaker 1: our present. I'm not surprised, but I also hope that
Speaker 1: the teaching of this history isn't limited ever to people
Speaker 1: who have good GPAs and have access to AP courses.
Speaker 1: I'm dreaming of freedom schools that make this kind of
Speaker 1: education available to all students of all colors, no matter
Speaker 1: what their background or their GPA, or whether it's a
Speaker 1: college board course or something that's being taught in someone's
Speaker 1: kitchen or backyard. I think this is history. Well, y'all
Speaker 1: need to know. Good job Khalil getting that tape. That's
Speaker 1: that's the work that's in fascist backlash, the truth and
Speaker 1: her talking about AP as. You know, there is something
Speaker 1: I guess elitist about it, but that the education that
Speaker 1: we're talking about, it needs to happen all over the place,
Speaker 1: and it's great that she's focusing on ways to get
Speaker 1: this information elsewhere besides from an AP curriculum. Well, I
Speaker 1: just saw just to echo your point in what she said.
Speaker 1: I was actually surprised by her response in that way,
Speaker 1: because what she said is, yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: fascism binding its way out of Florida and impacting the
Speaker 1: rest of the nation. And of course this is not
Speaker 1: the first or only example we could point to, but
Speaker 1: she's like, this material is so important that it needs
Speaker 1: to be taught, whether it's in classes, classrooms or not.
Speaker 1: And that's the bigger issue because, you know, to use
Speaker 1: a very academic way of putting it, Black studies has
Speaker 1: always been about fugitive knowledge, meaning knowledge that was being policed,
Speaker 1: knowledge that was criminalized. Because knowledge, as we say, as
Speaker 1: you know, the Old Schoolhouse rocks, you know, little animations
Speaker 1: would say, knowledge is power, and so the power to
Speaker 1: diagnose one's condition matters. And I just want to go
Speaker 1: back to the College Board because so Michelle's book is omitted,
Speaker 1: and really everything contemporary is emitted, and you know, sort
Speaker 1: of history kind of stops in the nineteen sixties. The
Speaker 1: College Board says that it cut out most of these
Speaker 1: books because they're not primary sources. They're secondary sources, that's right.
Speaker 1: You know, like a primary source would be like an
Speaker 1: Audrey Lord poem or or Martin Luther King's letter from
Speaker 1: a Birmingham jail. But that a work of history, or
Speaker 1: a work of journalism or a work of criticism that's secondary.
Speaker 1: That's right, And that's kind of bogus. It's a very
Speaker 1: blurred line between what is primary and secondary, in part
Speaker 1: because as history evolves, those things change. What is secondary
Speaker 1: in one moment later becomes primary I mean diary entries,
Speaker 1: letters between people, even news reporting in the moment, say
Speaker 1: news reporting about the Civil War or the Civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: all primary documents today and generally when historians write from
Speaker 1: the position of the present looking back on that stuff,
Speaker 1: we call that secondary sources. And the thing about Michelle's
Speaker 1: work just to focus on that, in particular, the New
Speaker 1: Gem Crow. It was a cultural touchstone for a massive
Speaker 1: re education or not even re education, new learning about
Speaker 1: the scale of the system at this punishment system and
Speaker 1: where it came from, meaning what its origins were. So
Speaker 1: it changed not only hearts and minds. I saw people
Speaker 1: as in diverse as settings as reading on the New
Speaker 1: York City sub way when it first came out, to
Speaker 1: folks on the beach in Martha's Vineyard reading it. I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody was reading the New Gym Crow at some point,
Speaker 1: and of course people organized around it and used it
Speaker 1: to make policy claims. So it's hard to say ten
Speaker 1: years later whether or not the New Gym Crow is
Speaker 1: a quote unquote primary or secondary source. What is clear
Speaker 1: is that it's essential. Listen. I just had I made
Speaker 1: a timeline for the beginning of my book called Corrections
Speaker 1: about the prison system. And I put the publication of
Speaker 1: our book in the timeline because it's a historically important moment.
Speaker 1: It is this reevaluation marking toward this movement that in
Speaker 1: the last I don't know, ten years or so towards decarceration.
Speaker 1: You know, President Obama is the first president to enter
Speaker 1: a federal prison after this book is published ever. And
Speaker 1: I'd say because of this book. Because of this book,
Speaker 1: it is it marks a moment in time when thinking
Speaker 1: about prisons and our system of incarcerating a quarter of
Speaker 1: the world's prison population changes, and what an important thing
Speaker 1: to study just as a historical document. That's an historical moment.
Speaker 1: That's right, yea. But listen, as you said, it's bogus
Speaker 1: that the College Board is saying this issue about secondary
Speaker 1: and primary because that's not really the issue here. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're we've sort of been talking about this throughout. The
Speaker 1: real issue is that these current events, that contemporary issues
Speaker 1: are in some ways the most threatening, and they're also
Speaker 1: and they're also the easiest to turn into round Santis
Speaker 1: or Trump or whoever propaganda. They're the easiest sort of
Speaker 1: to fire people up about. That's right. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: not just Michelle Alexander. Just to mention a couple of
Speaker 1: other things, the whole issue of healthcare discrimination. I mean,
Speaker 1: so many people now have a better sense of how
Speaker 1: racism in our healthcare system because of COVID nineteen is
Speaker 1: a life or death matter. And people like Dorothy Roberts,
Speaker 1: who we've had on show recently talking about the family
Speaker 1: policing system, has been a major contributor to understanding this
Speaker 1: broad history of medical racism and healthcare discrimination and the
Speaker 1: tackle on black women's reproductive rights. And it's not just
Speaker 1: Dorothy Roberts, it's the entire Black Lives Matter movement that
Speaker 1: was in the first version of this thing is now
Speaker 1: completely gone, which is astounding, And it just goes on
Speaker 1: and on at the end of the day. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's really important to reiterate again that
Speaker 1: this is not a history curriculum. This is not African
Speaker 1: American history curriculum. It's not an ap history class. It's
Speaker 1: it's African American studies. So I guess you can make
Speaker 1: the argument that history is sort of said in a moment,
Speaker 1: but sort of studying, say, the Black experience in America
Speaker 1: to remove sort of anything from the present sort of
Speaker 1: even how that path reverberates up to. Now, that's not
Speaker 1: you're not looking at the field. That's you're cutting yourself off.
Speaker 1: You're not only not looking at the field. But here
Speaker 1: we are having a national conversation yet again about systemic
Speaker 1: police violence in the case of the murder of Tyree
Speaker 1: Nichols and Memphis that happened just a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and this is something that Congress is currently debating. I mean,
Speaker 1: you remember those scholastic newspapers that were current events like
Speaker 1: this is this is current events, and it's depressing current events,
Speaker 1: but it's most certainly current events. It's part of the
Speaker 1: world we live in. And guess what if you happen
Speaker 1: to be a black child and you're living in a household,
Speaker 1: either in Memphis or where your parents are concerned about this,
Speaker 1: and they're watching the news, You're being exposed to this information.
Speaker 1: You can't escape it. So at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: if we are actually to truly understand what black studies
Speaker 1: had always been about, it is the basic building block
Speaker 1: for connecting the dots from the past of slave patrols
Speaker 1: to racist sheriff's in the gem Crow South, to the
Speaker 1: kind of policing that's been going on all over America
Speaker 1: over the last fifty years. That's what Black studies empower
Speaker 1: students to understand and gives them the choice at the
Speaker 1: end to do something about it or not. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it makes me think about a lot of the the
Speaker 1: energy that has fueled this political censorship, you know, from
Speaker 1: from critical race theory and the and the sixteen nineteen
Speaker 1: project to this ap curriculum and this idea of a
Speaker 1: kind of patriotic education. You know, of of of something
Speaker 1: about America that you can only think of it in
Speaker 1: terms of all its ideals. And you know, you, if
Speaker 1: you're white, you shouldn't be made to feel uncomfortable about
Speaker 1: all of it. It's problematic aspects. Um maybe you should
Speaker 1: celebrate other you know, other races, but maybe even not um.
Speaker 1: And and that's sort of been behind a lot of this.
Speaker 1: It's such a it's such a like almost it's a
Speaker 1: childish view of history that things are that are uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: if you just sort of close your eyes to them,
Speaker 1: then they don't exist. African American history and studies has
Speaker 1: always been, in some ironic way, a way of just saying,
Speaker 1: be true to what you put on paper, as doctor
Speaker 1: King wants it, like just live up to your own
Speaker 1: fucking principles, and and like like what are we supposed
Speaker 1: to do with that. We can't even do that without
Speaker 1: laws being passed to say that is propaganda. So that's
Speaker 1: where we are right now, and that's why this is
Speaker 1: such a massive issue that isn't going to stop. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're making me think about Michelle Alexander and what she
Speaker 1: said to you that the ap curriculum is really important
Speaker 1: in all the ways that we've been talking about, and
Speaker 1: it's also symbolic. So it's it's actual students and a curriculum,
Speaker 1: and it's also symbolic of all of the censorship and
Speaker 1: the exclusion that's going on right now. And it's scary
Speaker 1: both for what it is and and for what it augurs,
Speaker 1: what it pretends, what it makes us think is possible
Speaker 1: in excluding more and more and more. And I've been
Speaker 1: thinking in our conversation about Baldwin and then also about
Speaker 1: the new Jim Crow, about a moment last year when
Speaker 1: I was actually teaching Baldwin inside a maximum security prison
Speaker 1: here in Illinois. It was late Baldwin. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was sort of Baldwin in the nineteen eighties during the
Speaker 1: Reagan era before his death. I think he dies in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, right, he does, and Baldwin depressed. Baldwin,
Speaker 1: Baldwin feeling defeated by history. Baldwin, who his friends from
Speaker 1: the civil rights and Black power movement are mostly gone,
Speaker 1: had been killed, feeling like everything from them home and
Speaker 1: had failed. And the students, most of them who had
Speaker 1: who were roughly our age and had been in prison
Speaker 1: since they were young men or teenagers, and most of
Speaker 1: them had no outdate, and they had such long sentences
Speaker 1: that they were likely to die in prison or to
Speaker 1: be elderly by the time they get out. They do
Speaker 1: have those sentences, and how much Baldwin meant to them
Speaker 1: in understanding the Reagan era and the Trump era and
Speaker 1: the excitement that was happening, like crackling, you mean, being
Speaker 1: able to understand how Baldwin the same things happening thirty
Speaker 1: years ago. Yeah, And just like when you're in a
Speaker 1: classroom and and you know, sparks are flying and it's
Speaker 1: crackling with energy because people are making these connections. It
Speaker 1: was I could see it better because I was sort
Speaker 1: of experiencing it, you know, inside this crepid maximum security prison.
Speaker 1: What a what a curriculum can actually do to sort
Speaker 1: of bring these things together? You know, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's liberating. I mean, quick quick addendum to what you described.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the most affecting things I've experienced
Speaker 1: is talking to a formally incarcerated person and them say
Speaker 1: to me, man, brothers, nice to meet you. You're one
Speaker 1: of the most well read people in prison. And by
Speaker 1: that they mean people are reading the Condemnation of Blackness
Speaker 1: and it's helping them make sense of their reality. That's,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, very personally gratifying. But I know
Speaker 1: that that this is exactly what your teaching experience has
Speaker 1: been like for you. Yeah, and this is it's you know,
Speaker 1: a moment like that in that classroom of sort of
Speaker 1: having to look at Baldwin again much more closely, having
Speaker 1: to think about the past, which isn't that far away.
Speaker 1: You know that this is nineteen eights, which is excluded
Speaker 1: from this APE curriculum, and thinking about our last five
Speaker 1: ten years. Um, it made sense to me. It made
Speaker 1: sense to me more. And you know that's what you
Speaker 1: want out of this. We don't want to ignore it.
Speaker 1: We want to try to sort of get inside of
Speaker 1: these this these stories of our of our country. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I mean in so many ways. You know, what this
Speaker 1: moment tells us is that knowledge is the building block
Speaker 1: for changing our society. And Rod de Santist knows that
Speaker 1: as well as anybody. And he's cutting off that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not saying listen in a positive way, like you're
Speaker 1: saying that the opposition knows that there's there's there's power
Speaker 1: and danger and people knowing too much absolutely that's right,
Speaker 1: and seeing things for what they are. And therefore we
Speaker 1: if those of us committed to truth, those of us
Speaker 1: committed to justice, this is all of our fight. And
Speaker 1: you know he's coming for ap African American studies today.
Speaker 1: It'll be women in gender studies tomorrow. So folks, folks,
Speaker 1: folks better get get ready, get your armor on. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: well I'm glad. I'm glad I have this fight with you,
Speaker 1: or at least that we are in this fight. That's right.
Speaker 1: I'm not fighting with you right now. We're in this together,
Speaker 1: all right, man, Love you, Love you too. Some of
Speaker 1: My Best Friends Are is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: The show is written and hosted by me Khalil, Gibron
Speaker 1: Mohammed and my best friend Ben Austin. This show is
Speaker 1: produced by Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Sarah Knicks, our
Speaker 1: engineer is Amanda Kawan, and our managing producer is Constanza Gallardo.
Speaker 1: At Pushkin, Thanks Selita Mulad, Julia Barton, Heather Faine, Carly Niggliori,
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Speaker 1: Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the Brilliant Avery R. Young,
Speaker 1: from his album Tubman. You definitely want to check out
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Speaker 1: is it indoctrination in doctrine, woke indoctrination