Speaker 1: I'm Erica Alexander and I'm Whitney down Welcome to Reparations
Speaker 1: The Big Payback, a production of Color Farm Media, I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and The Black Effect Podcast Network. Erica, I
Speaker 1: want to play you something two stitches, two tiny stitches
Speaker 1: and one across like this man, excellent, Only you have
Speaker 1: clever fingers and the mind to match you make it
Speaker 1: easy to learn. Man. Sound familiar? Yes? Yes, uh, that's
Speaker 1: the ghost from mini series past. It's a familiar because
Speaker 1: it's me. I'm sixteen and I'm playing the part of
Speaker 1: a slave name only Judge in a mini series called
Speaker 1: George Washington The Forging of a Nation. Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 1: Where'd you get that from? Wow, Whitney, Yeah, I see,
Speaker 1: Well she was Martha Washington's personal slave, is what I know.
Speaker 1: At least that's what they told me. And you might
Speaker 1: add other duties, you know, like polishing Georgie Porgie's cherry tree.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was one of my first gigs. I
Speaker 1: was thrilled to get it too because I got to
Speaker 1: act alongside of the legendary Patty Duke and shop at
Speaker 1: the gift shop. You know, they filmed that at Mount
Speaker 1: Vernon Plantation. Well, you know Erica. I had a chance
Speaker 1: to watch this many series and it looked like in
Speaker 1: this that you and Martha were pretty tight. No, only
Speaker 1: and Martha were pretty tight, not me, don't get it.
Speaker 1: Let's let's be clear about this. And maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know my friend Gingeri who does the Uncivil podcast,
Speaker 1: that's the first place I heard on these real story
Speaker 1: Otherwise I wouldn't know much about it. But I mean,
Speaker 1: it's extraordinary how African American and their slave experience have
Speaker 1: mostly been authored by white people. I mean to a
Speaker 1: lot of black people. That's like Nazis writing Jewish Holocaust
Speaker 1: memoirs and think it's for roots. Because boom, that's when
Speaker 1: it changed things and we started taking the narrative back.
Speaker 1: But up until that point, for the most part, it
Speaker 1: was from a white point of view. And just to
Speaker 1: be clear, George Washington, the Forge in nomination is supposed
Speaker 1: to be about his life, not hers. But if there's
Speaker 1: an industry that could need urgent care and redress of
Speaker 1: reparations inside of media and storytelling, yeah that's Hollywood. Because
Speaker 1: the white gaze is single handedly deformed and destroyed blackness. Well,
Speaker 1: I would argue that the media has also deformed whiteness
Speaker 1: to Erica, not to destroy it, but to present it
Speaker 1: as something that it wasn't. Now, do you mind hearing
Speaker 1: from some more white people on slavery? Yes? I mind?
Speaker 1: Are you crazy? Did you just hear what I just said?
Speaker 1: I mean, we're like on different planets right now. But Erica,
Speaker 1: I think you're letting white people off the hark I
Speaker 1: let them off the hook. Okay, Yes, they should have
Speaker 1: to tell the accurate story. There are some white people
Speaker 1: who are trying to do that. Will you give it
Speaker 1: just a chance? It's you're saying it's possible that they can.
Speaker 1: I mean, but see, I'm saying that they did it
Speaker 1: whether it was possible or not. And I'm sure, by
Speaker 1: the way, some people did a lot better than most.
Speaker 1: But you want to do it now here? Do the
Speaker 1: history of slavery from a white point of view? That's ballsy,
Speaker 1: I can. Okay, black people, everybody, you know what. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give this white man a chance to do his
Speaker 1: thing here. Do not send the letters to me. Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you, Erica, Good luck player. Okay, now let's get
Speaker 1: back to ony lovely, only lovely. I watch you like
Speaker 1: a hawk man. Then I practice in my room till
Speaker 1: I get it right. I'm beginning to think that you
Speaker 1: learn faster than I can teach you. Ma'am. I I've
Speaker 1: been wanting to say this for a long time. When
Speaker 1: Mama died of the fever, he took us in. I
Speaker 1: just want you to know how thankful I was and
Speaker 1: always want me My dear only took us in thankful. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting phrasing for a slave. Well, what could I say?
Speaker 1: The whole truth would have distr Roy George Washington's hero mythology.
Speaker 1: So the writers created a story that preserves him and
Speaker 1: mangles only Yeah, the story is sanitize. The result is
Speaker 1: a made for TV Frankenstein movie, Miss thank You. It
Speaker 1: was one of my first I'm happy to be in
Speaker 1: this Whitney. You're bringing this up and you're tearing it
Speaker 1: apart now rethinking everything If that's not my attention. But now,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember there's a big plot twist.
Speaker 1: One is missing. Oh I remember, then where could she be, George? Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure she just met a friend in the market
Speaker 1: and they went down to look at the ships. I
Speaker 1: have the most awful feeling something's happened Christopher. Mrs Washington
Speaker 1: is worried about Ony. She's been missing for several hours.
Speaker 1: You know where she might be. I say she's been
Speaker 1: acting out the strange later, strange this for an all
Speaker 1: the time, Molly. Would you bring Molly to us? Please? Yes, sir.
Speaker 1: She hasn't been herself. She used to come to me
Speaker 1: with all her little concerns and questions. For days now
Speaker 1: she's kept herself, hasn't affected her work. She's too conscientious
Speaker 1: for that. But all I get is yes, ma'am. No, ma'am,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid for George. Molly. Do you know where only is? No, Sir,
Speaker 1: I think you do. No, Sir, Molly, you must tell
Speaker 1: us the truth. She may be in trouble, need help. No, please, Molly.
Speaker 1: She run away with Gerald, the Frenchman. I wondered, ma'am
Speaker 1: vernon because he tried with me first. He's gonna do
Speaker 1: it wrong. I know, Oh, George, Molly, do you know
Speaker 1: where they went? They long gone, Newson, New England. Freedom
Speaker 1: free either he doesn't care about her freedom. He wants her.
Speaker 1: She'll be ruined and he'll abandoned her. I didn't want
Speaker 1: her to go, ma'am. I swear I didn't. I know,
Speaker 1: it's all right, Why would she want to flee situation
Speaker 1: where she's treated so well, where she's loved. Wow, there's
Speaker 1: a lot to unpack in that scene, Erica, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was riveting. No comment on the plot. Media and storytelling
Speaker 1: suffered then like it does now from a chronic white superiority.
Speaker 1: It's like a dry rod. It's just up in there,
Speaker 1: and um, only or any other black person is unrecognizable,
Speaker 1: you know inside of that. That's not only by the way,
Speaker 1: that's her hologram, her balances visited and made it made
Speaker 1: for TV movie, that's not her. So yeah, but Erica,
Speaker 1: let's be honest here. Don't you think that was the goal? Right,
Speaker 1: Like the rewriting and presentation of history to support the
Speaker 1: idea of American exceptionalism and the inherent goodness of white Americans. Right?
Speaker 1: You know, the scene seems laughable now to us, but
Speaker 1: it's really not because the real story of Owny Judge
Speaker 1: and George Washington was so bonkers. You know, George Washington
Speaker 1: place an ad in the Philadelphia Gazette on May seventy
Speaker 1: six after you know, his loving ony went missing, and
Speaker 1: this is what he said, absconded from the household of
Speaker 1: the President of the United States. Owny Judge, a lightning
Speaker 1: loottle girl, much freckled, with the very black eyes and
Speaker 1: bushy hair, just like you. She said, I just now
Speaker 1: I'm really happy I got the role because I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't look anything like who they're describing. But gone.
Speaker 1: She's a middle stature, slender and deliberate, Oh delicately delicately,
Speaker 1: about twenty years of age. She has many changes of
Speaker 1: good clothes of all sorts, but they are not sufficiently
Speaker 1: recollected to be described, which I think is really weird.
Speaker 1: Here's those person he loves. He doesn't even remember what
Speaker 1: she looks like, really saying that, you know, Well, no,
Speaker 1: he didn't know, he said, he knows what she looks like.
Speaker 1: She he doesn't know where her clothes looked like. Trust me,
Speaker 1: that black, bushy eyed stuff. That's telling us a lot freckled.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, she knows, he knows, you know. Then
Speaker 1: he goes on with my favorite line. He says, there
Speaker 1: was no suspicion of her going off, nor no provocation
Speaker 1: to do so, no provocation, And then he goes on
Speaker 1: to offer ten dollars to anyone who will quote bring
Speaker 1: her home only ten Wow, damn as if that's her home? Right?
Speaker 1: So right? No provocation apparently, Erica, owning someone who you
Speaker 1: know is supposed to provoke you. If if somebody owned you,
Speaker 1: would that provoke you? Please? I get provoked nowadays if
Speaker 1: you look at me wrong. So you know, what do
Speaker 1: you want? Look? I know I know that I provoke
Speaker 1: you at times two. But that's that's another story, Erica.
Speaker 1: When you play it roll, you said that you didn't
Speaker 1: know owing his real story that you were here. You
Speaker 1: are yet a young black woman playing a young black
Speaker 1: woman who was a slaved by George Washington, the father
Speaker 1: of our country, and he was so concerned about escape
Speaker 1: because he quote loved her at the time. How did
Speaker 1: that hit your ears? It didn't, I know awareness of it.
Speaker 1: You know. By the way, being black is a state
Speaker 1: of minds. Certainly being negro is a state of minds.
Speaker 1: Being a nigger is a state of mind. And she
Speaker 1: would have seen herself as maybe a very you know,
Speaker 1: she's in the big house, but she's still a nigger
Speaker 1: in their eyes. So the film is faithful to her
Speaker 1: status only didn't exist anymore to the filmmakers than she
Speaker 1: existed in seventeen seventy three, except as decoration to George
Speaker 1: Washington and his benevolence and all other stuff. And look
Speaker 1: at it was interesting when you say delicately formed. That's
Speaker 1: amazing that they described her that way. That's a mind ripper.
Speaker 1: But it makes me think, you know, talking about not existing.
Speaker 1: You know, there's another famous George, George Floyd, who was
Speaker 1: killed in an eight minute, forty six second blockbuster. Everyone
Speaker 1: saw that one, but he did not exist to that
Speaker 1: white officer. And that's why if you look at media,
Speaker 1: representation matters, and we need reparations. If you want black
Speaker 1: lives to matter, well, let me try and do my
Speaker 1: part here, Erica, and re contextualize the story that we
Speaker 1: just heard the story of Onie and George. Here's the
Speaker 1: real story that there was no Frenchman only found out
Speaker 1: that the loving Martha had decided to give her as
Speaker 1: a wedding present to her granddaughter. And she knew this
Speaker 1: granddaughter who was just awful, so she decided to leave.
Speaker 1: She just jumped on the ship called the Nancy that
Speaker 1: was headed to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and she settled down there,
Speaker 1: married a free black man named Jack Stains and they
Speaker 1: had three children. Now Washington never stopped pursuing her, of course,
Speaker 1: and when he discovered her whereabouts, he sent this man
Speaker 1: named Whipple to try and convince her to come back.
Speaker 1: What's amazing is she agreed, but she had one condition
Speaker 1: that if she came back, the Washington's would promise to
Speaker 1: free her after their death, not while they were she
Speaker 1: was alive for coming back, but after they died. So
Speaker 1: she essentially was agreeing to serve as their slave for
Speaker 1: have her long we're gonna be alive for and well,
Speaker 1: that of course was not agreeable to George Washington, so
Speaker 1: he hatched another plan with his nephew, and he was
Speaker 1: gonna kidnap her, but luckily for her, the locals tipped
Speaker 1: her off and she got away. Grape Vine worked finally
Speaker 1: for once. Yeah, but he never stopped trying to get her,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to come for her children too, because
Speaker 1: even though Stains her husband was a freeman, the children
Speaker 1: had with only legally belonged to the Washington So by
Speaker 1: getting her he could get her three children as well.
Speaker 1: He didn't become George Washington, the general that saved America
Speaker 1: from the British by giving up. He was always going
Speaker 1: to come for her. That's her, you know, he was
Speaker 1: his property to her. I mean, she was no one.
Speaker 1: But we got to give a shout out to the
Speaker 1: underground Grapevine finally working for a sister. You know, they
Speaker 1: helped her escape. Again, She's being watched, she's being pursued,
Speaker 1: she's on the run. I mean, only's white folks keep
Speaker 1: popping up and saying we own you your hours, We're
Speaker 1: gonna pursue you and find ways to pursue you over
Speaker 1: yind you that we still own you Black folks. I
Speaker 1: promise you feel that today. I mean, we are just
Speaker 1: surveilled all the time, under surveillance, and it's astonishing and
Speaker 1: it's manifested in just different ways. You heard that young
Speaker 1: black man in Texas, Rodney Reese, he's walking home from work,
Speaker 1: Whitney crazy story. Yeah, well he was arrested because he
Speaker 1: was walking in the street. Now this is during a
Speaker 1: massive climate catastrophe. The police had time to do that,
Speaker 1: to arrest a young man. He had his mask on.
Speaker 1: He's balking home from Walmart, minding his own business. But
Speaker 1: their business has always been to undermine our business, to
Speaker 1: watch us, to pursue us. And you know, I have
Speaker 1: friends who right now say they feel surveilled through zoom
Speaker 1: and claim they have to justify their whereabouts even under quarantine,
Speaker 1: like oh where you ad you know, and they don't
Speaker 1: like doing that. I mean, everything is connected, you know,
Speaker 1: the will turns. It's interesting Erica. Also, what we see
Speaker 1: with the storytelling. One of the things that white people
Speaker 1: have always done is they've been able to tell stories
Speaker 1: about themselves because they didn't have They could always deny
Speaker 1: the evidence. There was like plausible deniability. And what's happening
Speaker 1: with all these things like that, like you know, talking
Speaker 1: about Rodney Reaess and some of these other stories, is
Speaker 1: that there's actually evidence now that can't there. With these
Speaker 1: bodycams on the police, with the cell phones people are carrying,
Speaker 1: they're now showing the story and white people are forced
Speaker 1: to watch this new story and reevaluate the context of
Speaker 1: how they're seeing things. And you know, this is what
Speaker 1: we're learning. There's what we're talking about, right, is that
Speaker 1: the stories we tell ourselves about America, as you call it,
Speaker 1: America the Beautiful, is that things are always a little
Speaker 1: more complicated, a little darker than we'd like to admit,
Speaker 1: not just a little whitney. Come on, they're a lot
Speaker 1: darker and they're very complicated. You know, you're doing too
Speaker 1: much little stuff that's minimizing. It's not little, it's a
Speaker 1: very it's a lot complicated, Yes, a lot more complicated. Continue.
Speaker 1: The other thing we've been talking about, how this strand
Speaker 1: of slavery, the sort of strand of horror that sort
Speaker 1: of permeates so many of these stories that's not called out.
Speaker 1: I think I think that reparations include a storytelling component,
Speaker 1: a component where we retell our stories and we people
Speaker 1: have to relearn history and learn the full story so
Speaker 1: Americans have a true understanding of their history. So in
Speaker 1: the full story of Washington, you know, Mr I cannot
Speaker 1: tell a lie, and who was celebrated for freeing his slaves.
Speaker 1: After his death, he pursued a young black woman who's
Speaker 1: only crime what she wanted to seek, the same freedom
Speaker 1: that he had spent decades fighting for. You know, it's
Speaker 1: funny that guy Whipple who sent to actually try and
Speaker 1: convince her to come back. He wrote to Washington telling
Speaker 1: him quote, a thirst for freedom had been her only
Speaker 1: motive for absconding. And this is how you know, the
Speaker 1: founder of our country, the father of our country, responded,
Speaker 1: which is pretty depressing. I regret that the attempt you
Speaker 1: made to restore the girl should have been attended with
Speaker 1: so little success to reward unfaithfulness. This was about her
Speaker 1: asking to be freed out of death with a premature preference,
Speaker 1: thereby connect beforehand the minds of all her fellow servants, who,
Speaker 1: by their steady achievements, are far more deserving than herself
Speaker 1: of favor. So what he's saying is that only people
Speaker 1: who submit to bondage willingly are deserving your freedom. Anybody
Speaker 1: who has the temerity to try and take freedom for
Speaker 1: theirselves like he did, well they should forget about it. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, the father of our country is the father
Speaker 1: of our suffering, the father of our bondage, the father
Speaker 1: of tremendous evil. And again, you know, And if you
Speaker 1: just flip the script a little bit and see it
Speaker 1: from the Africans point of view, he's he's worse than Hitler.
Speaker 1: He's setting up a country to be independent but self
Speaker 1: supportive of the biggest holocaust in world history. So let's
Speaker 1: get that straight. Number one. But I think we should
Speaker 1: move on because holl is this is cute, and I
Speaker 1: like thinking about, you know, old jobs that I have
Speaker 1: and I really really do despite that, I still will
Speaker 1: chair us the time I had on there, and you
Speaker 1: know what it meant for me to be chosen to
Speaker 1: be on a series like that, because it was a
Speaker 1: big deal and moved me forward. But let's move on,
Speaker 1: because only just one slave story in a long history
Speaker 1: of slavey, and we got a hall ask if we're
Speaker 1: going to get through it. So this woman, she's got
Speaker 1: a very interesting history and has been telling the truth
Speaker 1: and putting it out there. Her family was an owner
Speaker 1: of slaves, a white woman named Brown. My father would
Speaker 1: whisper when he was talking about black people, and there
Speaker 1: was just a message that came through that whisper that
Speaker 1: was we have to be very carefully and we can't
Speaker 1: talk about this much. So it wasn't that he was
Speaker 1: saying anything overtly racist or anything like that, but just
Speaker 1: to sort of like tread lightly, kind of feeling that
Speaker 1: pervaded the low voice. My name is Katrina Brown, and
Speaker 1: my life revolves primarily around my discovery that my ancestors
Speaker 1: were the largest slave trading family in US history. It
Speaker 1: was just complete cognitive dissonance the idea that they could
Speaker 1: have been slave traders, so the idea that I came
Speaker 1: from a family of ministers and academics, and like my
Speaker 1: grandfather was a philosophy professor, my other grandfather was a minister,
Speaker 1: So there was some pride around not being in money
Speaker 1: making occupations but being in more service the betterment of
Speaker 1: mankind type occupations. So no one realized that the Dwolves
Speaker 1: were basically the largest slave trading family in US history.
Speaker 1: So statistically they brought more Africans on their ships than
Speaker 1: any other family north or south. So a huge fortune
Speaker 1: was amassed from all of this that was pretty much
Speaker 1: squandered by a couple of generations later. We wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to say we inherited my directly from the slave trade,
Speaker 1: but it's really obvious to me that we have been
Speaker 1: in the elite ever since, and it fits the pattern
Speaker 1: where once you're in the elite, you marry other elite families.
Speaker 1: So I'm like super aware of the class privilege that
Speaker 1: has remained even if we're not at like the uber
Speaker 1: rich level, and I'm super aware of how much social
Speaker 1: capital I have. So we've gone to a lot of
Speaker 1: Ivy League schools, private schools, you know. So I've had
Speaker 1: just the best education, and that's a pattern in the family.
Speaker 1: So just extremely aware of how much we were set
Speaker 1: up to succeed basically, and to be able to go
Speaker 1: into the professions of our choosing, etcetera, etcetera. Embarrassing might
Speaker 1: sound like too small of a word, but it's just
Speaker 1: embarrassing to admit the ways in which the cover up manifested,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's so mortifying still, Like
Speaker 1: can I even say this that it was being trivialized?
Speaker 1: How could it have been trivialized, of all things to trivialize.
Speaker 1: But there was the kind of party line, shall we
Speaker 1: call it was about referring to them as pirates, scally wags,
Speaker 1: boys will be boys, you know. That was kind of
Speaker 1: the energy around it, like a dismissive like those back then,
Speaker 1: those you know, that's what people did back then, and
Speaker 1: those wrapped scallions. You know, there's a way in which,
Speaker 1: despite working on this for twenty five years, it's still
Speaker 1: too shocking to even contemplate. There's still too much nous
Speaker 1: to it that operates within my psyche. I had a
Speaker 1: cousin who shared with me early on she said, I
Speaker 1: assumed that if it was the Dewolf's and it was
Speaker 1: the slave trade, it must have been a polite slave trade.
Speaker 1: And then she of course laughed at herself because she
Speaker 1: was like, of course, it wasn't a polite slave trade.
Speaker 1: There's no such thing as a polite slave trade. But
Speaker 1: it was by way of saying, like, we're good. People
Speaker 1: were nice, people were polite, right, That's who we are.
Speaker 1: So if we did it, we must have done it
Speaker 1: in a polite manner. So you have caught me in
Speaker 1: the act of manifesting that tendency to minimize and to
Speaker 1: understate it, because to state it baldly as it is
Speaker 1: is just still to me so upsetting. So if I
Speaker 1: were doing it, do over, I would say, they purchased
Speaker 1: human beings who had been kidnapped by force, and we're
Speaker 1: in a complete and utter state of terror. And it
Speaker 1: was the most horrific type of circumstance one could possibly imagine.
Speaker 1: And my ancestors did it over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: And as my cousin Tom said, they must have known
Speaker 1: it was evil. How could you not when you were
Speaker 1: hearing people screaming in the holds below and yet they
Speaker 1: somehow told themselves stories to justify that this was okay.
Speaker 1: And their blood runs in me rascals in scallywags, that's
Speaker 1: another way to put it. Uh yeah, Or at least
Speaker 1: she's admitting that her family history had been sanitized, like
Speaker 1: George Washington. There's a pattern that develops very clearly. What
Speaker 1: a brutal system though, right? I mean, it makes me
Speaker 1: wonder just karma exists. I'm not mean spirited, Whitney, I
Speaker 1: don't want you to think that. But has this knowledge
Speaker 1: been brutal for Katrina Brown's family because they've prospered, they've
Speaker 1: done well. I mean, are the sins of the father
Speaker 1: really visited upon the sun inside of the family? What
Speaker 1: do they feel? But she's certainly trying to bear the
Speaker 1: weight and atone for that evil legacy. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe white folks, you know, in in your DNA, it
Speaker 1: isn't encoded the same way that it is for the
Speaker 1: descendants of slaves. But I'll keep looking for signs of life.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a cosmic curse, Whitney, that's cast upon your
Speaker 1: people that will always keep most whites at arm's length
Speaker 1: with their reckoning of slavery. Yeah. I mean it may
Speaker 1: you may have that, but it's working for you now,
Speaker 1: but it will not stop nemesis. If we're talking about storytelling,
Speaker 1: Nemesis is on your ass, no doubt. I think the
Speaker 1: only way to stop at Erica's for wet Americans to
Speaker 1: fully acknowledge their legacy. They have to accept their history
Speaker 1: if they want to live as moral humans. That's kind
Speaker 1: of what I think. And I think that any sentient
Speaker 1: white person with the slightest bit of self reflection has
Speaker 1: to grapple with us. You know, we white people have
Speaker 1: been the dominant storytellers for so long, and we could
Speaker 1: use tools to lie the necessary facts, or we'd use
Speaker 1: minimizing language to create a moral space for ourselves in
Speaker 1: a story. We know that in our hearts is immral.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna get a little fan boy here when
Speaker 1: I talk about Edward Baptist. He wrote a book called
Speaker 1: The Half Has Never Been Told that I think all
Speaker 1: white people should read, and I'm gonna paraphrase him here,
Speaker 1: and he says something like historians have for years to
Speaker 1: use minimizing language about the true nature of the slave system.
Speaker 1: They talk about discipline, quote, and punishment as if there
Speaker 1: were some logical basis for the system of slavery, rather
Speaker 1: than simply naming it for what it was, a super
Speaker 1: profitable economic system. Who lowest gear was torture. A man
Speaker 1: named Henry Clay, named after the almost president, Secretary of
Speaker 1: State senator from Kentucky. Henry Clay, who had been born
Speaker 1: in North Carolina and then as a young adult sold
Speaker 1: to Louisiana, talks about the enslavery who had he was
Speaker 1: owned by, who had a whipping machine, and so when
Speaker 1: somebody didn't do their work at the speed in the
Speaker 1: pace that the slave owner thought was appropriate, they'd be
Speaker 1: tied down on the whipping machine and somebody would crank
Speaker 1: a handle and that would turn a wheel which had
Speaker 1: a bunch of whips attached to it, and it would
Speaker 1: whip the person who was tied down on the bench
Speaker 1: that was part of the machine. I read this story
Speaker 1: and I said, you know, this is working on a
Speaker 1: couple of different levels here, right, So it's working on
Speaker 1: a level for Henry Clay and that he may or
Speaker 1: may not have actually seen this thing, right, But it's
Speaker 1: also working on a level that I think he probably
Speaker 1: intended as a metaphor. Right, This is a metaphor for
Speaker 1: the system of labor. En slavery itself didn't do the
Speaker 1: amount of labor that you were supposed to do. Right,
Speaker 1: If you refuse to to consent to the extraction of
Speaker 1: your labor, you were going to be tortured in a
Speaker 1: predictable fashion, which of course inspires people to do whatever
Speaker 1: they can to try to avoid that torture. So I
Speaker 1: thought about that, and I said, you know, this also
Speaker 1: is a a metaphor for the system on a couple
Speaker 1: of levels as well, because there are a number of
Speaker 1: different forces that are acting to push even en slavers
Speaker 1: are getting pushed right to extract even more labor. Right,
Speaker 1: the more cotton that gets produced relative to supply, the
Speaker 1: lower the price is going to be. And so to
Speaker 1: increase revenue, they are going to push. They're going to
Speaker 1: turn the whipping machine, if you will. They are going
Speaker 1: to push enslave people to work harder. And so the
Speaker 1: whipping machine, if you think about it as a metaphor
Speaker 1: for the system of measurement and torture with the intent
Speaker 1: of increasing the amount of labor extracted, that whipping machine, right,
Speaker 1: is geared into the other machines, the other relationships which
Speaker 1: might call the political economy of the Atlantic world, of
Speaker 1: the Anglo European world in the first half of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century all the way up until the Civil War, right,
Speaker 1: Because if cotton prices go up, that's going to inspire
Speaker 1: more people to buy more slaves increase their amount of production.
Speaker 1: If cotton prices go down in many cases, will inspire
Speaker 1: them to increase production as well, so they can increase
Speaker 1: the total amount of revenue. So, no matter what happened,
Speaker 1: the whipping machine was going to keep turning faster and
Speaker 1: faster because it's tied into these other movements of supply
Speaker 1: and demand. In the industrializing West, the whipping machine used
Speaker 1: to inspire fear, used to improve productivity from other slaves
Speaker 1: who want to avoid a similar fate. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of stopping frisk It reminds me of three strikes, you're out.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all ways to keep a nigger in line. Really,
Speaker 1: it's insidious. Well, you wanted to have white people talk
Speaker 1: about slavery, how's your team doing? Well, that's not really
Speaker 1: for me to answer, right, I think it's for you,
Speaker 1: And I think that if we're gonna talk about slavery,
Speaker 1: who better we created it, we perpetuated it, we benefited
Speaker 1: from it. Don't you think we should also contribute to
Speaker 1: explaining it accurately for a change, you know, as well
Speaker 1: as work to help clean up the mess. And that's
Speaker 1: you know. I think a lot about this Baldwin quote
Speaker 1: about not being able to change anything you don't face.
Speaker 1: So I think it's our obligation it is. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: white people always rely on black people to lead the
Speaker 1: racial conversations, and it gives them permission to lay in
Speaker 1: the cut. But if you ignore it, it's self sabotage.
Speaker 1: We see what happens racist a white construct fixed to
Speaker 1: black people. Black people cannot save you all from destruction.
Speaker 1: You know, how can you save a destroyer? White people
Speaker 1: have to get it there, tearing up their own village
Speaker 1: by denying that they're not only the source of the boogeyman,
Speaker 1: they are the boogeyman. Boom whin, Sorry, Whitney. I know
Speaker 1: I tried. I tried to let you use all white
Speaker 1: voices to tell the story of the history of slavery,
Speaker 1: but it just didn't feel right. So it's time for
Speaker 1: me Errikey to disrupt the disruptor. I gotta figure out
Speaker 1: how though you actually think that there should be a
Speaker 1: hotline for black people. When we need to talk to
Speaker 1: white people about difficult topics that have to do with
Speaker 1: black people, we call the hotline and it would immediately
Speaker 1: patch us through to somebody that can help the rest
Speaker 1: of us sort this stuff out. I know Mega Marcot
Speaker 1: where she had that hotline with. She was hanging out
Speaker 1: with those royals and Buckingham Palace. I'm lucky because I
Speaker 1: have friends who have friends who have friends who can
Speaker 1: help me. So let's do this. Like who wants to
Speaker 1: be a millionaire? I'm gonna call a friend. Who am
Speaker 1: I gonna call? Oh? I know, I know, I know
Speaker 1: who to call. This be all he's perfect, he's perfect.
Speaker 1: Let me do this. Come on, come on, please be in.
Speaker 1: He's an o G, raised by o G, was born
Speaker 1: a print of the movement and raised by black kings.
Speaker 1: And this man is in the struggle. He's our equivalent
Speaker 1: of American royalty. Yeah, I know he can figure this out.
Speaker 1: Reverend Owl, thank you so much for this. I know
Speaker 1: you are very busy man, and I admire you so much.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate your time. Asked to be with you, Erica,
Speaker 1: No problem, and I have a lot of respect for
Speaker 1: you down through the years. Oh thank you, sir. I
Speaker 1: appreciate that. I don't need to tell you that everywhere
Speaker 1: we go there are white voices who author black stories,
Speaker 1: and they've done it throughout the years, whether it's slave
Speaker 1: narratives and those types of things. Why do you think
Speaker 1: that white people feel compelled to take the lead and
Speaker 1: sometimes take over telling stories and narratives about black folks.
Speaker 1: What it comes down to is white supremacy. They take
Speaker 1: ownership and some of the the cucriminal, but it's there
Speaker 1: that they are more qualified to tell us our story
Speaker 1: and others our story than we are ourselves. I was
Speaker 1: reading this book on Frederick Douglas and how when Frederick
Speaker 1: Douglas was the runaway slave workers way from New York
Speaker 1: to New England, and there was buzz around the abolitionists
Speaker 1: world about this well built slave that was bright, could read,
Speaker 1: and that we could use him to go out there
Speaker 1: and push our cars. And the white New Englanders who
Speaker 1: were being abolitionist movement brought him in and they started
Speaker 1: bringing them around the various allemages, and then he started speaking,
Speaker 1: and they were like no, no, no, no, we don't
Speaker 1: need you to talk. We just need you to be there,
Speaker 1: be the slave. We'll do the talking. It's like we
Speaker 1: are really not saying you're equal. We sympathize with y'all,
Speaker 1: but let us do the talking. Let let us write
Speaker 1: out the screenplay. Let us tell the black experience, Oh no,
Speaker 1: you're not ghetto enough. Come on, that's moneyed up, rather
Speaker 1: than allowing us as equals to say, wait, manute, this
Speaker 1: is our journey and we know our journey better than anybody.
Speaker 1: And that is a form of white supremacy. I run
Speaker 1: into it even in my civil rights political work, where
Speaker 1: progressives feel that they can tell blacks how we deal
Speaker 1: without suffering. Lady, we get you all ourselves. And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying we shouldn't have allies. I'm not saying we
Speaker 1: can't work with people, but you can't take ownership of
Speaker 1: me and you. A person that was like a father
Speaker 1: figure to be James Brown, and part of the problem
Speaker 1: that I saw a first hand that he had is
Speaker 1: that you actually had musical producers and presidents of record
Speaker 1: companies that wanted to tell him how to do black music. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Mr Brown, that's a little too raw, that's
Speaker 1: a little too why don't we kind of modify that
Speaker 1: a little. And Jay was saying, maybe that's where I
Speaker 1: got it from. You're gonna tell me how to be black.
Speaker 1: You're gonna tell me what I'm doing. And that was
Speaker 1: his fight, and he did not get some of the
Speaker 1: things that other more quote mainstream black artists got till
Speaker 1: later in light because they considered him to get up
Speaker 1: and I'll never get Erica. In the last year of
Speaker 1: his life, he said to me, he said, you know
Speaker 1: what raver I said. What he said, The difference between
Speaker 1: me and some artists is they wanted to go mainstream
Speaker 1: for commercial and financial success. He says, I wanted to
Speaker 1: make mainstream come black because I was not gonna be
Speaker 1: me in order to make a few doubts. And that's
Speaker 1: how I grew up an activism and what I do
Speaker 1: immediate and a lot of people they will play whatever role,
Speaker 1: not only on the screen on the set, they play
Speaker 1: that role in the office and let other people write
Speaker 1: their story to them, like we don't have enough sense
Speaker 1: to know our own stories, to write our own story.
Speaker 1: And we thank them for interpreting to us a journey
Speaker 1: that we went through and know that they only are
Speaker 1: guessing about that's I think where the rubber meets the
Speaker 1: road is the exact storytelling that we tell ourselves. I
Speaker 1: have a theory about Mr George Floyd. I believe that
Speaker 1: he was killed because of the narrative in the white
Speaker 1: officer's mind who told him that he was not only
Speaker 1: able to do it, he would do it with impunity,
Speaker 1: and he could do it in broad daylight. And that's
Speaker 1: still were not better because as a white man, as
Speaker 1: you say, white superiority, that narrative runs deep. What do
Speaker 1: you say to that type of thinking and how it's
Speaker 1: placed in the white of mind. I think that you
Speaker 1: hit it right on the head. It's a bond sense
Speaker 1: of entitlement, that of costs. I can put my knee
Speaker 1: on the neck and uh, it might not be nice
Speaker 1: to the family, but nothing's going to happen to because
Speaker 1: I'm white and they are blacks. That's just the assumption,
Speaker 1: which is why of walking to the pulpit to preach
Speaker 1: the funeral of George Floyd. But halfway through the sermon, Erica,
Speaker 1: it hit me why George Floyd resonated with so many
Speaker 1: of us, Because we've gone through a lot of police
Speaker 1: fatality before but the outporn was global, and it was
Speaker 1: because the knee on his neck symbolized what all of
Speaker 1: us have gone through. And that's what I preached about.
Speaker 1: We would have been better in Hollywood and Halem if
Speaker 1: y'all didn't put your knee on our neck, that knee
Speaker 1: on our neck, that you would hold us down and
Speaker 1: as because why we weren't rising, we were a rose
Speaker 1: if you didn't have your knee on our net. And
Speaker 1: when we saw that cops knee on George's neck, we
Speaker 1: thought about what happened to our career, as our professions,
Speaker 1: our families, because we've been fighting the knee on our
Speaker 1: neck all of our lives, all of our existence since
Speaker 1: we got here. And that is what George Floyd represented,
Speaker 1: and that's why it resonated inside of us even so
Speaker 1: consciously when we didn't understand why, well, we've been told
Speaker 1: a version of ourselves that is stereotypical. I don't even
Speaker 1: know if we know what a real black person looks
Speaker 1: like half the time because it's been distorted, and we've
Speaker 1: also accepted that distortion. What do we need to do
Speaker 1: to return ourselves to some sort of narrative that starts
Speaker 1: to not only tell our story, but tell our story
Speaker 1: not through the Negro that was created beforehand. I think
Speaker 1: we've gotta go back and discover who and what we are,
Speaker 1: and that is manifested in different ways. We owe different tribes,
Speaker 1: but that all of those were real. We've got to
Speaker 1: claim who we are unapologetically, and then we must stand
Speaker 1: and own that space and say that's non negotiable. And
Speaker 1: anyone else from the outside that wants to interfere and
Speaker 1: in many ways modify our story. We must tell our
Speaker 1: community we are not patronize them or support them. We
Speaker 1: can no longer allow ourselves to be interpreted by those
Speaker 1: that do not understand us. And that's why I think
Speaker 1: that we've got to start with our authenticity. If I've
Speaker 1: got to be somebody else for you to accept me,
Speaker 1: then I'm bowing the white supremacy. God made me. You
Speaker 1: don't have to remake me. I will find the way
Speaker 1: He made me. Just get out of my way, get
Speaker 1: your need on my neck. That's the best hotline you
Speaker 1: could ever have, straight to Reverend Shopton. But I need
Speaker 1: to get back to Whitney. See what he's got in
Speaker 1: store for me. Whin There's one more thing I want
Speaker 1: to talk about when it comes to storytelling, Erica and
Speaker 1: that's protagonists. You know, protagonists have names Adam Ishmael Lowman. Yes,
Speaker 1: I know, they're all white men. Our names means something
Speaker 1: and tell us something about the role of the hero
Speaker 1: in the story. And you're My name's Erica. Alexander and
Speaker 1: Doo mean very very different things. When I was growing up,
Speaker 1: we had a book in our house called the Book
Speaker 1: of Doo. This book cataloged various branches of our family,
Speaker 1: going back to nine when a guy named Henry Dow
Speaker 1: sailed here from England. You know, I was never that
Speaker 1: interested in the book. It was big, had a lot
Speaker 1: of charts and stuff, but it did have some value
Speaker 1: to me in the sense that I kind of knew
Speaker 1: where I came from in a very specific sense, like
Speaker 1: who my ancestors were and how their stories flowed through
Speaker 1: the history of our country. And I bring this up
Speaker 1: because I thought about this the other day when you
Speaker 1: were we were talking to our producer and you complimented
Speaker 1: her on her name and she replied, that's my slave name.
Speaker 1: And that phrase always brings me up short. It's so
Speaker 1: direct into the point, and it's a hard reminder of
Speaker 1: how different our histories are and how visible those histories
Speaker 1: are in the most direct and gratidian ways. So thinking
Speaker 1: about that, maybe want to ask you Eric about your
Speaker 1: name Alexander. I wondered if you do it's origin and
Speaker 1: how you felt connected to it. You know, I know
Speaker 1: you know genealogy, but your name reflects a very different history,
Speaker 1: and I wondered how you thought about it well with me.
Speaker 1: First of all, I want to say that I think
Speaker 1: it's really cool that you know who you are. It's
Speaker 1: even some heavy stuff. It's a rare gift for anybody
Speaker 1: to have a book like that, and I recommend you
Speaker 1: spend more time appreciating that mighty Book of dow And
Speaker 1: I'd like to see it too. Did y'all put any
Speaker 1: of your bad deeds in it? You rascals and scaliwags
Speaker 1: or worse? It's just just the good stuff. But listen,
Speaker 1: You're yesterday contained seeds to your tomorrow, So it's no
Speaker 1: shade to you. By the way, I can bet you
Speaker 1: that what your family accomplished with all those centuries, and
Speaker 1: I'm not saying they didn't work hard and sweat and
Speaker 1: toil all that stuff in the Book of Down but
Speaker 1: I know I accomplished in half a lifetime and on
Speaker 1: a Google doc with the help of a series TV
Speaker 1: in network you know presents. But the people who write
Speaker 1: these things down and appreciate it and move it on,
Speaker 1: they're seeking immortality. And I think I have already a
Speaker 1: little piece of that. And it wasn't easy to get
Speaker 1: because both my parents were orphans. And yes, DNA tells
Speaker 1: the real story of who I am. I know I
Speaker 1: have this blood from the Congo and from Ghana on
Speaker 1: a few other places, but my real self is manifested
Speaker 1: in real time. I I'm who I am right now,
Speaker 1: And like many black people, I created myself from the
Speaker 1: mud that was laid at my feet. But whatever parts
Speaker 1: and pieces I could get, So no, if you want
Speaker 1: to know, I don't care or know what white man
Speaker 1: or woman gave my family its name, because it was
Speaker 1: not meant to identify me, certainly not anybody who had
Speaker 1: gotten that name. It was meant to disappear us a brand.
Speaker 1: It's an ugly brand as far as I'm concerned, and
Speaker 1: it's meant to lay claim to our family's destiny, and
Speaker 1: it hasn't invested in our welfare or our human potential.
Speaker 1: I can't quantify the weight of my enslaver's inherited name.
Speaker 1: It's impossible. I just feel that the loss of having
Speaker 1: to carry it while I accomplish the impossible. That's why
Speaker 1: so many Black people change or alter and dispose of
Speaker 1: their names. If you're talking about people like Muhammad Ali,
Speaker 1: my friend Queen Latifa, L. L. Coo, J quest Love,
Speaker 1: Malcolm X, Harry Tubman, my Angelou Stevie, wonder they they
Speaker 1: gave themselves those names. We implant our intention inside of
Speaker 1: them and and a rebirth happens. It creates space from it.
Speaker 1: You know, in America, black people need an alter ego
Speaker 1: to vanquish the evil that is around us. Now, after
Speaker 1: having said all that, my name is Erica Rose Alexander,
Speaker 1: and Alexander means protector of the people, and I shall
Speaker 1: continue to endeavor in that pursuit. I was renamed princess
Speaker 1: by the way twice in Africa by two different queen
Speaker 1: mothers in two different countries, thirty years apart. That was
Speaker 1: a powerful thing to go back and experience that. So
Speaker 1: you should know that I am African royalty. But to
Speaker 1: keep things casual, I give you permission Whitney Dow of
Speaker 1: the Book of Doos to simply call me your highness
Speaker 1: for the great it's your choice, and you're welcome next
Speaker 1: time on reparations. The big payback. Slavery was eliminated in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five around the passage of the thirteenth Amendment.
Speaker 1: So people think that's history, that's a long time adult,
Speaker 1: and why are we still talking about it. The attitude
Speaker 1: is get over it, And so I think it's important
Speaker 1: to restate some of those very pointed facts of brutality
Speaker 1: in the inhumanity of slavery. Most of our education we
Speaker 1: were deprived of really in depth understanding of slavery. It
Speaker 1: wasn't in our schools. We were basically trying to overcome.
Speaker 1: And I remember the slave narratives. I've read them here
Speaker 1: and there in the recent years. And I remember the
Speaker 1: writing of a slave woman to her husband he had
Speaker 1: been sent to another plantation. She said, come quickly, because
Speaker 1: I and your daughter are going to be sold tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and your son will be sold on the block in
Speaker 1: another day. Who could live like this? Is that not
Speaker 1: worthy of a commission to study and to determine how
Speaker 1: we can do better and how we can make amends.
Speaker 1: How we can make the healing not only reflect on
Speaker 1: African Americans, but all of America. This podcast is produced
Speaker 1: by Eric Alexander ben Arnon in Whitney Down. The executive
Speaker 1: producers are Charlemagne the God and Dolly s. Bishop. The
Speaker 1: supervising producers Nicole Childers, and the lead producer is Devin
Speaker 1: Mavock Robins. The producer writer Serres Castle, and the Associate
Speaker 1: producer is Kevin Famm. With additional research and writing support
Speaker 1: provided by Nile Blast. Original music by d J d
Speaker 1: t P Reparations. The Big Payback as a production of
Speaker 1: Color Farm Media, I Heart Radio and The Black Effect
Speaker 1: Podcast Network in association with Best Case Studios. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.