WEBVTT - Free-ish 0:00:01.400 --> 0:00:04.720 This episode is sponsored by FX's Fleischman Is in Trouble, 0:00:05.160 --> 0:00:09.399 starring Jesse Eisenberg, Claire Danes, Lizzie Kaplan, and Adam Brodie. 0:00:09.680 --> 0:00:12.639 The strama tells the story of recently divorced Toby Fleischmann, 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:15.320 who dies into the world of app based dating with 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:17.360 the kind of success he never had in his youth. 0:00:17.760 --> 0:00:21.280 Then his ex wife disappears, leaving him with their two 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:24.880 children and no hint of her return effectus. Fleischman Is 0:00:24.920 --> 0:00:42.960 in Trouble, streaming November seventeenth only on Hulu. Good morning, peeps, 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:45.840 and welcome to oikate F Daily with Meet your Girl 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:51.240 Danielle Moody recording not So Live on this Thanksgiving week 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:56.560 from the Brooklyn Silarium. I'm really excited to bring up 0:00:56.680 --> 0:00:59.200 later in the show a guest that I have honestly 0:00:59.200 --> 0:01:01.640 been trying to get woke f for quite some time, 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:04.240 but he had been in the midst of writing the 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:06.240 book that we are going to talk about in just 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:09.520 a little bit. Clint Smith is a writer at The 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:12.639 Atlantic and he is the author of How the Word 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:17.480 Is Past Reckoning with the history of slavery across America. 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:20.600 And you know, I will tell you that when I 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:26.280 finished the interview with Clint, I was really uneasy, filled 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:29.399 with a lot of different emotions about the current state 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:34.440 of our politics. How it is feels like I keep 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:39.520 running these flashbacks in my head of moments in history 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:44.040 that bubbled up, moments of rage and angst and anger 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:48.000 and denial and frustration that all seem to be coming 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:51.880 ahead at this moment. And he speaks a lot in 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:55.840 our interview about the importance of narrative and how our 0:01:55.920 --> 0:02:00.560 histories are defined and what defines those histories right, And 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:04.160 it is not necessarily, as he will say, empirical evidence, 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:07.720 but it is stories and who those stories are passed 0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:12.560 down from and our connection to them. And as I 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:17.080 was thinking about his book and have been thinking doing 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:22.119 a lot more thinking, frankly, since the outrage the performed 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:25.640 outrage by the radical right with regard to critical race theory, 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:28.320 which is only taught at the graduate level and law 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:33.680 school level and not in our elementary schools, I've been 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:42.079 thinking a lot about slavery and our denial of this horrific, cruel, 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:49.160 inhumane system that is the foundation of this country, and 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:55.040 that our denial of its existence, of its effects that 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:58.400 are still seen today and experience today not just through 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:03.400 the racial wealth gap, not just through the lack of 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:07.680 equity in our public education system, but is seen and 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:12.160 felt in the trauma that Black people in this country 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:18.000 and throughout the diaspora hold. In my conversation with Clint, 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:22.280 I found myself welling up with tears. And I have 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:27.720 no immediate connection to slavery. I can't go through my 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:32.160 lineage as many Black people in this country and around 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:37.240 the world can't and pinpoint to you modes of our 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:41.920 history and thinking about how purposeful and strategic that was 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:45.920 to deny people a connection to their past so that 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:50.800 they have no real future. Right when we say that 0:03:50.880 --> 0:03:54.480 like the past is prologue in many ways and instances, 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:59.400 that is absolutely true. The past informs our present and 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:05.400 sets up our future. And without a real connection to that, right, 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:09.200 without without a shared history that is steeped in truth, 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:13.280 I just wonder how much further out of control our 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:20.360 society is going to spin. You know, everything seems so urgent, 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:27.480 so distraught, so horrendous at this moment. And you know, 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:30.080 one of the things that Kurt will, that Clint will 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:35.159 say in our conversation is that you know, six years 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:40.200 before the civil war that he was studying. People did 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:43.599 not think in that moment, oh my god, this can happen. 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:45.839 There is a civil war that's going to be pending. 0:04:46.600 --> 0:04:48.400 And he said much in the same way that here 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:51.560 we are in twenty twenty one, and we're coming barreling 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:54.040 to the end of this year. And I just said 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:56.680 the other you know, the other day to my therapist, 0:04:56.760 --> 0:04:59.800 I said, I cannot believe that it's going to be 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:03.680 twenty twenty two, Like where the fuck did the last 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:07.320 two years ago? And I have no idea where we 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:11.400 are headed in this country, right, like no farm grasp. 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:15.760 And she said to me that this feeling of anxiousness 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:20.159 that we're experiencing, and obviously we're experiencing it in a 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:25.960 variety of different ways, comes from the lack of safety. Right, 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:28.360 She's like, it comes from the lack of safety. She goes, 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:31.800 think back, you know, to nine to eleven. Up until then, 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:36.280 there had never been an attack, a terrorist attack from 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:41.680 outside terrorists, right, foreign terrorists on American soil since Pearl Harbor. 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:46.720 So our understanding in America is that we are fundamentally safe. 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:51.279 Now we know and I know that there are communities 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:54.000 in this country that have never felt fucking safe. And 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:56.360 that's the point that I want to get to next, 0:05:56.480 --> 0:06:02.880 is that it is the foundation of safety right when 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:05.200 we talk about our basic needs, being that we talk 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:09.960 about food and shelter and clothing, and what that means 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:15.560 is safety right from the elements right. And so what 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:19.440 does it mean to have communities of people whose safety 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:27.919 has consistently and fundamentally been challenged year after year, decade 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:31.479 after decade, generation after generation. What does it mean to 0:06:31.560 --> 0:06:34.320 an exist in a country where you never feel safe? 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:40.480 And that's the experience of black people in America is 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:46.120 to never really truly feel safe, to always feel on edge, 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:49.839 whether it is going into a store to go pick 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:52.440 up an Iteman item, to know that you can be 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:56.400 followed right, you can be thrown out of said store 0:06:56.760 --> 0:07:00.400 over suspicion of nothing other than being black, having the 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:03.800 audacity to walk into a store, the threat if you 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:06.720 were a driver, to be driving and pulled over and 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:10.960 to either be killed right or harassed and totally and 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:22.560 completely emotionally viciously attacked right to walking down the street right, 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:26.640 and the idea that any white vigilante, whether they have 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:32.360 a badge or not, can fundamentally, stop end your life 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:36.920 off of a whim. That the way that most of 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:40.080 us exist and the fact that we're still breathing and 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:47.240 thriving is through happenstance, right, And we don't get to 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:52.119 really have those conversations. We are gas lit into believing that, 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:54.960 you know, we're fundamentally the problem. If we were to 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:58.360 just you know, be like everybody else, then all would 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:01.000 be well, except we're not like everybody else. We're not 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:03.920 treated like everybody else is treated. We're not spoken to 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:06.160 in the way that other people are spoken to. We 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:11.560 don't have the same history, right. And so the fact 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:14.960 that we exist in a society that is just now 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:18.520 in the twenty first century taking down monuments to fucking 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:22.800 Confederate soldiers, that we have more monuments in this country 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:29.760 to honor those that try to overthrow our government as 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:33.360 opposed to those that were fighting for the liberation right 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:36.600 of enslaved people, tells you everything you need to know 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:40.679 about America. And we wonder, you know, like, oh, how 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:44.160 come these insurrectionists are not being dealt with and blah blah, 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:47.679 because they'll get a fucking statue in a couple of years. 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:50.240 They'll have high schools named after them, they have fucking 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:54.440 highways named after them. And so what does it mean 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:58.520 to continually exist in a place that doesn't want you, 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:03.640 doesn't see you? Right? And how were we ever to 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:08.440 move forward when we can't even agree on facts, when 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:12.720 we can't agree on truth? Right, when our understanding of 0:09:12.800 --> 0:09:15.600 history all depends on who is teaching it to us, 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:18.760 where we are learning it from where we are hearing it. 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:23.560 And so I, I, you know, I really do worry 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:31.760 as our present moment is really indicative of our past transgressions, 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:38.040 our denial of truth, of facts of history. Right, you know, 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:43.199 I think about the ways in which I consistently feel robbed, 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:51.920 never truly being educated to understand, like the truth of America, right, 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:57.480 who was trampled, who was harmed? Who fought back, as 0:09:57.520 --> 0:10:00.840 Clint will say, even knowing that they were never going 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:06.640 to reap the benefits of their fight, of their warrior spirit, 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:09.360 that they were just doing so in the hopes that 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:14.760 at some point, right, at some point, there would be liberation. 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:21.560 And even now we're only free ish. So I really 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:26.120 hope that you all taken this conversation that I had 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:31.480 that was for me so profound that I had so 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:35.800 many more questions to ask, so much more that I 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:38.520 wanted to learn, and I hope that you will tell 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:42.440 me in the comment section below what came up for 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:47.160 you during my conversation with Atlantic writer Clint Smith, and 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.720 some of the things that you've been asking yourself right 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:54.800 as we are moving through our world right now that 0:10:55.000 --> 0:10:58.560 is just so out of whack. How what are the 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:00.960 questions that are coming up for you? What are you learning? 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:03.840 What are you unlearning? I'd love to hear that in 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:08.800 the comment section. Coming up next my interview with author, 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:14.520 activists and staff writer at The Atlantic, Clint Smith. Folks, 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:17.440 I'm very excited to welcome to wok A Daily for 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:21.720 the very first time writer at The Atlantic, activist, poet 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:25.000 and author of the new book How the Word Is Past, 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:29.240 a reckoning with the history of Slavery across America. Clint Smith. 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:35.360 Welcome to wok F Daily. Your book cannot be more timely, 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:39.480 I think if you had tried to make it so, 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:43.400 can you talk to us? One of the first questions 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:48.120 that I have for you is, in our current political 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:54.120 and cultural climate that is one of chaos and distress 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:58.200 around our connection to truth and facts, how has your 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:02.760 book been received far given that you know, it's come 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:06.320 at a time when we are debating critical race theory, 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:11.640 when we are debating our founding. Yeah, well, thank you 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:14.080 so much for having me. It's it's really wonderful to 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:17.199 be here. I mean, I've been overwhelmed by the way 0:12:17.240 --> 0:12:21.920 that my book has been received. I've not experienced the 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:25.760 same level of pushback that I think some other texts 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:31.120 that my book is in conversation with maybe has, maybe 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:33.640 because I think that's for a lot of reasons that 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:36.800 we might not have time to get into now. But 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:43.000 but what I think is that many people are drawn 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:45.440 to it because, as you said, it is speaking to 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:49.160 something that is so central and present in our current 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:52.560 political political discourse. And I always tell folks that I 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:55.960 wrote this book for like a fifteen and sixteen, sixteen 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:58.120 year old version of me, you know, who grew up 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:02.800 in New Orleans, surrounded by Confederate iconography and feeling like 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:05.200 I never had the language to understand why it was there, 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:08.360 who grew up in a city that was always being 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:10.640 told all the things that were wrong with it, all 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:13.640 the you know, because of violence, because of poverty, because 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:18.000 of the way that you know, the public housing projects 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:22.640 represented the deterioration of the American family, and implicit within 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:25.440 all of that was people saying all the things that 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:28.000 they thought were wrong with black people. And I remember, 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:30.320 and in a majority of black city, you don't necessarily 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:31.920 have to say it, but it can be implied with 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:36.400 the sort of language that you use. And I remember 0:13:36.440 --> 0:13:40.840 growing up in New Orleans and feeling a sense of 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:44.319 of psychological and emotional paralysis, where like, I knew what 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:46.040 I was hearing was wrong, but I didn't know how 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:48.000 to say it was wrong. I didn't have the language, 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:50.040 I didn't have the history, I didn't have the sociology, 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:52.240 I didn't have the toolkit with which to push back 0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:55.520 against it. And part of what has happened over the 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:57.560 course of my adult life, and I think specifically with 0:13:57.600 --> 0:14:01.400 this book, was attempting to give myself the language to 0:14:01.640 --> 0:14:05.400 understand so much of what I experienced growing up. And 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:10.120 I hope that the book serves as an offering to 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:15.000 those who, like me, recognize that they didn't understand the 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:17.880 history of slavery and thus the history of this country 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:20.760 actually in any way that was commensurate with the impact 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:22.200 that it has had on this country. And so this 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:24.040 book was a sort of four year journey for me 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:27.160 in trying to answer so many of the questions and 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:29.400 fill in so many of the gaps that existed in 0:14:29.440 --> 0:14:33.720 my own education, and hopefully bring the reader alongside with 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:36.520 me to answer some of the questions that they might 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:40.800 have had as well. You know, I tell my listeners 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:44.040 often they have heard me say that, you know, I 0:14:44.120 --> 0:14:48.040 am a child of immigrants that grew up out east 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:51.880 on Long Island in New York, in a majority white area, 0:14:52.240 --> 0:14:57.400 majority white suburb, and throughout my entire life have felt 0:14:57.440 --> 0:15:02.080 like I've had to teach myself about black history. I've 0:15:02.120 --> 0:15:06.480 had to teach myself about the truth of slavery and 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:10.440 only being able to even scratch, not even the surface 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:14.960 there to be able to teach myself about black revolutionaries 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:19.120 throughout our history. Because I've said many times before that 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:21.640 I believe that one of the greatest extensions of white 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:25.080 supremacy is our public education system. That if you can 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:29.240 invisibilize people to their history, to their you invisibilize them 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:33.680 to their future right. And you know, I wonder for 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:38.560 your fifteen and sixteen year old self, what were some 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:42.000 of the questions that were percolating in your mind at 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:45.560 that time that you have been able to reconcile with 0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:50.160 through the last four years of this research. Yeah. So 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:52.520 in many ways that's tied to the origin story of 0:15:52.560 --> 0:15:55.560 the specific project, which is in twenty seventeen, I was 0:15:55.600 --> 0:15:58.560 watching the statues of the Confederate monuments come down in 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:01.760 New Orleans and statue a PGT bow guard Jefferson Davis 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:04.480 Robert E. Lee, And I was watching these statues come 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:06.360 down and thinking about what did it mean that I 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:08.680 grew up in a majority of black city in which 0:16:08.680 --> 0:16:11.800 there were so more homages to enslavers than there were 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:13.920 to enslave people. What does it mean that to get 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:16.000 to school I had to go down Robert E. Lee Boulevard, 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:17.520 To get to the grocery store, I had to go 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:20.360 down Jefferson Davis Parkway, that my middle school was named 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:22.800 after a leader of the Confederacy, that my parents still 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:25.280 live on the street today, named after someone who owned 0:16:25.280 --> 0:16:27.680 over one hundred and fifty enslaved people. Because the thing is, 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:31.480 we know that symbols and names and iconography aren't just symbols. 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:34.440 They're reflective of the stories that people tell, and those 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:37.280 stories shape the narratives that communities carry, and those narrative 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:40.120 shape public policy, and public policy shapes the material conditions 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:42.800 of people's lives. And that's not to say that taking 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:44.800 down a sixty foot tall statue of Robert E. Lee 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:47.040 is going to suddenly erase the racial wealthcap but it 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:51.160 is to say that these things, these statues, these this iconography, 0:16:51.200 --> 0:16:55.080 these symbols help us understand a narrative and a story 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:57.840 that has been created around this country. And I think 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:02.520 looking it and then learning more about them gives us 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:05.399 the tools with which to identify the lies that we 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:08.119 have been told about this country, which then allows us 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:10.800 to sort of look around and understand that the reason 0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:13.280 one community looks one way and another community looks another way, 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:15.720 it's not simply because of the people in those communities, 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:17.879 but because of what had been done to those communities 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:20.520 generation after generation after generation. I think all the time 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:24.760 about this nineteen sixty four essay by James Baldwin and 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:28.119 Talk to Teachers, And I was a high school educator, 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:30.080 and so this was a text that I returned to 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:32.280 over and over again. And one of the things that 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:37.760 he says, he says that the responsibility of the teacher 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:40.359 and he's talking teacher here literally, but also as a 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:42.919 sort of metonym for the largest society. He's like, the 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:46.280 responsibility of the educator is to help the black child 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:49.040 understand that, even though the world has told them over 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:51.600 and over again that they are criminal, that it is 0:17:51.640 --> 0:17:54.520 in fact the society that created the conditions that that 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:57.040 child is forced to grow up in that is truly 0:17:57.040 --> 0:17:58.800 the criminal. And for many of us, now that that's 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:01.760 really intuitive, we're like, oh, it's clear systems, not interpersonal. 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:04.800 But I think one that wasn't clear for me growing 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:07.840 up because it wasn't part of our discourse in the 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:10.200 way that it is now. And I think too, part 0:18:10.240 --> 0:18:11.560 of what I learned over the course of writing this 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:13.760 book is that for millions and millions of people, and 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:17.720 we see this right in our politics, that is that 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:20.960 is still not clear. Right. There still is this myth 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:25.040 of meritocracy that's embedded into our sense of what America 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:27.359 is and what it represents. There is still this sense 0:18:27.359 --> 0:18:30.640 of if you work hard, you can get to what 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:34.200 you want and nothing else should should matter. There's still 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:36.280 this sense, and we see it in the discourse around 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:42.080 critical race theory, This idea of people decontextualizing the quote 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:45.840 of doctor King and talking about you know, doesn't either 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:50.199 little children standing together holding hands, and doesn't matter what 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:51.879 the color of the skin is. It's the content of 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:56.480 their character. Obviously, that's paraphrasing and using that and decontextualizing 0:18:56.480 --> 0:19:01.080 it and weaponizing it in an effort to prevent people 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:04.879 from excavating the history that explains why so much of 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:07.280 our society looks the way that it does today, particularly 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:13.960 with regard to racial inequality. You know, I often think, now, 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:18.320 more so than I ever have before, think about a 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:23.160 shared history, a shared trauma, and a shared past. Right 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:27.560 that is supposed to be our organizing principle, right, this 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:31.440 idea of perfecting a union, this idea that you can 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:35.479 come here and, unlike other countries, you can imagine and 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:39.520 in in certain cases be able to create that imagined future. 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:44.320 But I realize now, and what is just coming to 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:48.639 bear as we you know, release Killers onto the Street, 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:52.960 is that we don't have a shared history, and that 0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:58.320 the frustration, the anger that I feel right now is 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:02.159 about the fact that everything that you write about, what 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:04.480 we are learning about, what Nicole Hannah Jones did with 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:08.600 the sixteen nineteen project is about airing out these lies. 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:12.120 But there are only lies to people that actually connect 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:16.240 to truth. And so I guess the question that I 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:20.480 have for you is, in this four year project of 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:24.360 doing this in depth the research, how do you reconcile 0:20:24.480 --> 0:20:27.240 the truth that you were able to excavate in a 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:33.720 society that doesn't have shared connection to truth? Yeah, I mean, 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:38.680 it's that is the central question. And I think about 0:20:38.680 --> 0:20:41.639 a visit that I took to Blainford Cemetery in the book, 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:44.280 And Blainford Cemetery, for those who don't know, is the 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:46.680 one of the largest Confederate cemeteries in the country. It's 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:49.240 in Petersburg, Virginia, and it's where the remains of thirty 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:51.760 thousand Confederate soldiers are buried. And I went there and 0:20:51.800 --> 0:20:56.560 spent the day with the Sun's Confederate veterans, and for me, 0:20:56.640 --> 0:21:00.240 it was a really it was an unsettling time, but 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:03.320 it was also a really clarifying time because I remember 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:05.639 a conversation, for example, I had with this guy named Jeff, 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:09.520 and Jeff was telling me about how his grandfather would 0:21:09.520 --> 0:21:11.919 tell him all these stories about the men who were 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:15.040 buried in these fields and how they fought for freedom, 0:21:15.080 --> 0:21:17.080 how they fought to defend their culture, how they fought 0:21:17.119 --> 0:21:21.199 to defend the South, how they fought to defend how 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:23.320 this had didn't have anything to do with slavery, It 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:26.080 just had to do with protecting themselves against the war 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:28.480 Northern aggression. And he talked about how they would come 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:30.479 here at dusk and sit in the gazebo at the 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:33.320 center of the cemetery and watch the deer sort of 0:21:33.359 --> 0:21:35.640 scamper through the tombstones, and they would sing the old 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:40.680 Dixie anthem. And now Jeff talked about how he does 0:21:40.720 --> 0:21:43.639 the same thing for his grandchildren. Right, he brings his 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:45.800 granddaughters here and they sing the Dixie anthem, and they 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:47.880 come to these events, I mean these events that look 0:21:47.960 --> 0:21:50.600 like they're not They don't look like clan rallies. They 0:21:50.640 --> 0:21:55.159 look like family reunions, right, And they're like intimate, intergenerational 0:21:55.240 --> 0:21:58.159 family events in which these stories are passed down. And 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:00.240 so the thing, the reason I bring this up is 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:06.240 because for so many people, history is not about empirical evidence, 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:12.240 primary source documents. Historical fact is it is a story 0:22:12.600 --> 0:22:14.800 that they are told, and it is a story that 0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:16.960 they tell. It is an heirloom that has passed down 0:22:17.000 --> 0:22:21.800 across generations. It's something where you know, community and lineage 0:22:21.800 --> 0:22:25.679 and family take precedence over truth. And so if I 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:29.600 go to Jeff and I say, actually, it's quite clear 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:32.119 that the Confederacy fought this war over slavery. All you 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:34.440 have to do is look at the declarations of Confederate Secession, 0:22:34.720 --> 0:22:37.200 and you know it says in eighteen sixty and eighteen 0:22:37.240 --> 0:22:40.040 sixty one and all these secession conventions that the Southern 0:22:40.119 --> 0:22:42.760 states had to stay, Like Mississippi says, our position is 0:22:42.800 --> 0:22:46.399 thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material 0:22:46.440 --> 0:22:48.600 interest in the world. Right, so they are not vague 0:22:48.640 --> 0:22:51.280 about why they're seceding. Alexander Stephens, the vice President of 0:22:51.280 --> 0:22:54.600 the Confederacy, says very clearly in his Cornerstone speach in 0:22:54.600 --> 0:22:56.480 eighteen sixty one, where he says, the cornerstone of the 0:22:56.480 --> 0:22:59.200 new nation we are building is the principle that black 0:22:59.200 --> 0:23:01.000 people are in fear you're to white people. It is 0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:04.040 the idea that the great Revolution, the cause of the 0:23:04.080 --> 0:23:07.760 Great revolution rupture our country is experiencing is slavery. Right, 0:23:07.800 --> 0:23:12.639 They're they're not vague about it. Again, But for Jeff, 0:23:13.520 --> 0:23:17.000 it doesn't matter, because if he is to accept that information, 0:23:17.600 --> 0:23:19.960 then he would have to accept a very different story 0:23:20.000 --> 0:23:22.960 about who his grandfather is, and it would threaten to 0:23:23.040 --> 0:23:26.640 crumble and disintegrate. So much of who he understands as 0:23:26.640 --> 0:23:30.199 grandfather is, subsequently what the nature of their relationship was, 0:23:30.440 --> 0:23:33.159 and subsequently who he is. Right if so much of 0:23:33.200 --> 0:23:35.280 who you understand yourself to be as tied to a 0:23:35.320 --> 0:23:38.040 specific story of this country, and the story of this 0:23:38.119 --> 0:23:41.439 country told to you, specifically by certain people that you 0:23:41.480 --> 0:23:46.200 are tied to emotionally, people who you love. When people 0:23:46.280 --> 0:23:48.359 ask you to tell a different story about America or 0:23:48.480 --> 0:23:51.240 are a more holistic story about America, it is not 0:23:51.320 --> 0:23:55.680 just a sort of inconvenient need to reassess and re 0:23:55.760 --> 0:23:59.280 examine the history. It is an existential crisis, right. It 0:23:59.720 --> 0:24:01.840 is a wat to your sense of who you believe 0:24:01.880 --> 0:24:04.120 yourself to be in the world, who you believe your 0:24:04.119 --> 0:24:06.800 father and your mother, and your grandfather and your grandmother 0:24:06.840 --> 0:24:09.159 and your children and the community that is giving you 0:24:09.160 --> 0:24:12.119 a sense of identity and value and purpose. And that 0:24:12.280 --> 0:24:15.000 is what we see right now is like so many 0:24:15.040 --> 0:24:18.720 people whose sense of the story they told themselves is 0:24:18.840 --> 0:24:21.560 under threat. Because you have folks like Nicole you have 0:24:21.560 --> 0:24:24.040 folks like Ebra, you have folks like Keeps your Blaine, 0:24:24.040 --> 0:24:26.600 you have folks like I mean, there's so many historians 0:24:26.600 --> 0:24:31.120 and Matt Gordon read Time, Miles, you know, Vincent Brown. 0:24:31.160 --> 0:24:32.920 I mean, the list goes on and on. So many 0:24:32.960 --> 0:24:36.919 people who are creating work that is forcing our country 0:24:36.920 --> 0:24:39.720 to look at itself more honestly, which means that the 0:24:39.840 --> 0:24:44.280 story that they told themselves about themselves is no longer true. 0:24:44.520 --> 0:24:46.679 And so then what does that mean for who the 0:24:46.720 --> 0:24:50.680 story you tell about yourself? And that's a scary thing 0:24:50.920 --> 0:24:54.800 for a lot of people to accept, but to be clear, 0:24:54.840 --> 0:24:57.720 there are many people who do accept it, right, And 0:24:57.760 --> 0:25:00.000