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S1E3: How to Create a Black Person
29 Plays1 month ago
This episode will discuss what race actually means, why Black people need to hear more stories about slavery and why you aren’t supposed to talk about white supremacy. We’ll unpack the myth that the US is a “nation of immigrants,” discuss the “Book of the Day” and more.
Trigger Warning: This episode contains references to/discussions of racism, white supremacy, hate crimes, and other forms of racial violence. Please be sure to take care of your mental health.
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Transcript
Introduction to Race as a Social Construct
00:00:01
Books, BBQ & Black History
All right, welcome back to another episode of Books, BBQ and Black History. I'm your host, of course, Toya. I'm a North Carolina-based social scientist, educator, and organizer with an abolitionist praxis. On today's episode, so today's episode is called How to Create a how to create Black People. And what that really means is that today is going to be a discussion about race. So today we'll talk a little bit about what race actually is. What does it mean when we're talking about race as a social construction?
00:00:33
Books, BBQ & Black History
Some of the consequences of the racial hierarchies that are created.
Contextual Reading on Race
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Books, BBQ & Black History
of course, we're going to talk about white supremacy because Yeah, and we will talk about why Black people need to know and continue learning about race and white supremacy. But per usual, I am actually going to start off with the excerpt from the book that we'll be talking about a little bit later today. So I'm about to read the excerpt for the book of the day or the book of this episode, I should say. So here we go.
00:01:07
Books, BBQ & Black History
When I began to work, I discovered the difference between myself and my master's white children. They began to order me about and were told to do so by my master and mistress. I found, too, that they had learned to read while I was not permitted to have a book in my hand.
00:01:24
Books, BBQ & Black History
To be in the possession of anything rented or printed it was regarded as an offense. And then there was the fear i might be sold away from those who were dear to me and conveyed to the far south.
00:01:35
Books, BBQ & Black History
i had to I had learned that being a slave, I was subject to the worst to us of all calamities, and I knew others in similar situations to myself, thus sold away. My friends were not numerous, but in proportion, as they were few, they were dear, and the thought that I might be separated from them forever was like that of having the heart term torn from its socket.
00:01:57
Books, BBQ & Black History
While the idea of being conveyed to the far south seemed infinitely worse than the terrors of death, to know also that I was never to consult my own will but was, while I lived, to be entirely under the control of another was another state of mind hard for me to bear.
00:02:11
Books, BBQ & Black History
Indeed, all things now made me feel what I had known before only in words, that I was a slave. Deep was this feeling and it preyed upon me, my heart, like a never dying worm.
00:02:23
Books, BBQ & Black History
I saw no prospect that my condition would ever be changed. Yeah, I used to plan in my mind from day to day and from night to night how I might be free. All right. So I am, of course, going to come back and revisit that because, yes, we will talk about where this what book this came from and why I chose it for this particular episode. So first thing I really want to start with is having a conversation about
Defining Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality
00:02:49
Books, BBQ & Black History
what. What race actually is. I think that like for me, just as a Black person, I've kind of always known that there was something to be to being Black I knew race was, you know, about how people perceive my skin color, but like until I.
00:03:07
Books, BBQ & Black History
I guess sat back and like really took the time to like learn what race as a concept actually meant. I wasn't surprised about what I found, but that's what I really want to take a little bit time of explaining before we get into some other stuff. So when we are talking about race within sociology, the way that we define race is is talking about how we categorize people by their skin color and phenotype phenotype just meaning what you physically look like so when people think about race of course you know number one thing people think about generally is skin color because that is something phenotypically people can see so categorizing people by their skin color but it's also not just skin color it's also about your hair texture it can also be about like other sorts of physical features maybe in your face maybe well i would say mostly in face But again, we're really talking about these phenotypical traits. And the really interesting thing is, even though I'm telling you about, you know, race being connected to these physical traits, it is not a biological category. It is actually a social one, which I'll talk about in a moment. So race is about how we categorize people by skin color and their phenotype, their physical appearance. Most of the time, skin color. Race and ethnicity tend to get mixed in together, but I kind of want to give a little bit of clarity about how these concepts are
Race as a Social Construct
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Books, BBQ & Black History
a little bit different. So ethnicity is really referring to a shared culture or a way of life, whereas race, again, is just about your phenotype and what you look like. ethnicity is something that can be related to your language your religion material culture which would be the physical tangible things of culture that you can see such as food clothing cultural products generally when we're talking about ethnicity we're talking about a group identity that stems from some sort of
00:04:59
Books, BBQ & Black History
common ancestry, cultural heritage, those sorts of things. And the most important thing kind of about ethnicity is again, that this is a cultural heritage generally. Can it be related to race?
00:05:12
Books, BBQ & Black History
Maybe, but ethnicity actually existed before race existed. So we all have different ethnicities that we belong to. So I'll give you example in a moment. And also one differentiate race and ethnicity from nationality because nationality is also different as well. Nationality is really talking about your citizenship. Where do you have citizenship at? So to give a example of how this looks in real life would be my race would be Black That is my phenotype.
00:05:45
Books, BBQ & Black History
My ethnicity would be African-American, Black American. That's how I would define it for myself. And that ethnicity is related to having, I am a descendant of chattel slavery, which we'll talk about in a moment. but But that is that ethnic background for me. And citizenship would be American, though I use that very loosely.
00:06:07
Books, BBQ & Black History
So that is the difference between race, ethnicity, and nationality, just to help kind of ground the conversation. So when I have said, you know, race is about phenotype and we're, you know, categorizing people by their skin color. I also pointed out that race is not biological, but we're categorizing people by skin color. How is that not biology?
00:06:27
Books, BBQ & Black History
So race is what we would actually call a social construction. Social construction just means that it is an idea that has been created and accepted by people within a society. So there is no DNA, no, there's nothing that says that race is like a naturally occurring thing.
00:06:46
Books, BBQ & Black History
It is literally something that socially people came up with. And it has historic context as well, which we'll talk about. But social constructs are just ideas that have been created and accepted by the people within society, socially constructives.
00:06:59
Books, BBQ & Black History
So race is a social construction based on observable human traits. And it's also not a self-identity. This is what we call in sociology an ascribe status. Ascribe meaning that it was given to you. So you don't choose, and I'll say this specifically within the United States, but you don't choose your race. Your race is essentially chosen for you. So I can't say, you know, that I'm a white person no matter, I don't believe I'm a white person, I gotta say that. But like I can't say that I'm a white person because it doesn't matter how much I say it. i am Black
00:07:30
Books, BBQ & Black History
So my blackness will never allow me to be white. So when we are talking about, you know, an identity that isn't really self identity, but one that is given to you by society, that's what I mean when I'm talking about kind of the social construction. But when we're talking again about the social construction of race, we i would say a lot of times there's this conversation about how do you figure out kind of what racial category you're in and you know racial categories kind of change you know from time to time. So i want to briefly mention something called the racial formation theory. And this actually comes from sociologists by the name of Michael Omi and Howard Winant.
00:08:10
Books, BBQ & Black History
they actually wrote a book about how racial identities are essentially to be understood within a social and historical context. Their definition for racial formation theory is a process by which the socio historical designations of race are created and manipulated. And so what this means is that there is no way to understand racial categories without understanding the history and social context in which those categories were created. so
00:08:40
Books, BBQ & Black History
the racial category of Black was created for
Historical Context of Racial Categories
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Books, BBQ & Black History
a reason. That's also why this episode episodes called How to Create a Black Person, because why were Black people created? Because there has to be a historical and social reason for this.
00:08:53
Books, BBQ & Black History
And the reason why I'm talking about this particular theory, because these are not Black people, but the theory is so relevant. And when we're talking about kind of this formation of racial categories within the U.S., it really forces us to focus on both the historical context of race and where kind of the social context are positioned now. So in the U.S., s the physical kind the physical categorizations of people by their race determines what sorts of things they get access to, what resources, all of those sorts of things. So when we are talking about again, the creation of the racial categories, the question that has to be asked is why do these racial categories exist and how are people treated differently throughout them?
00:09:39
Books, BBQ & Black History
And what we're talking about kind of that historical and social context now to kind of get into the other stuff is in order to understand race in the United States, you have to have some understanding of real accurate history of the United States. So one of the first things that I usually like to talk about with race is that there is no understanding of race without a conversation about slavery in the United States. There is no understanding. When we are talking about race, specifically when we are talking about kind of the creation of these categories and what does history have to do with it. So...
00:10:18
Books, BBQ & Black History
In the United States, the United States was founded on the genocide of indigenous people and the enslavement of African people. And the type of slavery that was practiced in the United States is really, really important to talk about because even when we talk about slavery, we don't get specific enough about what was unusual about the type of slavery that United States practiced. So the United States was one of the places where that was on the path of the transatlantic slave trade, where nearly 13 million African people were kidnapped and forced onto European and American ships and trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean to be enslaved and abused for hundreds of years, honestly.
00:11:00
Books, BBQ & Black History
Even though this is a conversation right now about the United States, I do want to point out that Black people were trafficked to South America, the Caribbean, Latin America. It wasn't just the United States. there People were dropped off in different places. So I'm really going to specifically talk about
Chattel Slavery and Racial Categories
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Books, BBQ & Black History
kind of the creation of these things within the United States. So I'm mentioning the Transatlantic slave trade because in order to talk about chattel slavery, which is the type of slavery that the United States was practicing, we have to have a conversation about how that, you know, kind of came about. So when we are talking about chattel slavery, chattel slavery is a system in which people were considered legal property to be bought, sold, sold and owned forever. And this was something that was supported by the U.S. and European powers from the 16th to, to say, like the 18th century. And the important part of naming this as chattel slavery is that slavery has actually been something that has existed historically throughout the world, which while problematic, chattel slavery is a little different in the sense of people were essentially enslaved in perpetuity. And not just that, but chattel is also another name for like livestock. And so people were treated as not human beings, but literally as things, right?
00:12:16
Books, BBQ & Black History
Yeah, I'll just say things. They were not humans. And so when we are talking again about the creation of these racial categories, there has to be a conversation about why people are put into these categories. So when we are talking about chattel slavery, the important thing to understand about that as well is that it was a very, very, very dehumanizing process.
00:12:40
Books, BBQ & Black History
time frame, historical understanding within our society. So during during chattel slavery, we have things like breeding plantations. And if you understand that Black people were seen as chattel and that they were not considered human beings, they were considered livestock, then also understanding they were bred like livestock. We hear a lot about sugar plantations, we hear a lot about cotton plantations, rice plantations, but we never really get to hear about the breeding plantations that existed as well. And so I'm bringing this up to talk about just how dehumanizing these sorts of things are. And i'm bringing up the breeding print plantations as well, because when we get into the conversation about gender, that's going to be kind of a relevant context into what we're going to talk about as well. We also have with chattel slavery, the existence of things called slave codes and North Carolina also had some of these slave codes because they were one of the original 13 colonies that practice slavery. So the North Carolina slave codes were regulations for enslaved people to obey their masters. They weren't laws at this time, but they were just codes. And examples of slave codes within North Carolina would be that if you were born a slave, you would be a slave forever. That was a part of the slave codes.
00:13:58
Books, BBQ & Black History
You could not testify in court against white people. you could not, Black people or enslaved people at that time could not gather in large numbers. They couldn't travel without permission. They couldn't marry white people. Gave white of enslavers near total control over enslaved people. And I'm pointing these things out again just to point out how little autonomy exists.
00:14:20
Books, BBQ & Black History
enslaved people had under the system of chattel slavery. And again, that's really, really important as we get into, like I said in a moment, more about race. chat During chattel slavery, enslaved people were actually the capital. Yes, you know we know we talk about money you know being exchanged now to get resources. People who were enslaved were the actual money in these systems. And again, I'm really pointing these things out just to to provide that context of of the dehumanization of this particular social system.
00:14:55
Books, BBQ & Black History
We also have lynchings, you know, that happened under slavery, after slavery as well. Killing Black people was not a crime because they were not people. They were literally considered chattel. And so kind of understanding, again, this part of history is really, really important because when we start looking into kind of the legal parts of it, then we can start putting together how, again, race has been socially constructed. So that's just a little bit again about the context of the history that is necessary to understand race and how Black people were created. But now I'm also going to use the U.S. Census to kind of build that out a little more. So
U.S. Census and Racial Implications
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Books, BBQ & Black History
the U.S. Census is a demographic survey that the United States does pretty much every 10 years. The last one, and this is 2026, so the last one was in 2020. But the US Census helps the government decide how to distribute funds and assistance to states and localities. It's used to draw lines for legislative districts and to basically divvy out the seats each state holds in Congress. And I'm bringing up the US Census right now to talk about race because I'm also about to explain to you why we talk about Black and white people so much. using the U.S. Census. But the U.S. Census is essentially showing us how resources are going to be divided within society. And so, the U.S. Census, it asks a lot of questions about, like, gender, how many children you have, immigration status, race, all this information to essentially decide how we're going to divvy up resources within society. So I say that to say the U.S. Census is pretty important. So let's talk a little bit about the U.S. Census. So the first U.S. Census was actually in 1790. And on the first U.S. Census, it had the category for race. And on the U.S. Census, the first racial categories were free white males and females, all other free persons,
00:16:52
Books, BBQ & Black History
and slaves. So that's three racial categories, and I repeat them. Free white males and females, all other free persons, and slaves. So there are no Black people in 1790, according to the u s Census.
00:17:09
Books, BBQ & Black History
but there are technically because slaves would be Black people. But we do see that white people show up in the U.S. Census. And it's really important to kind of understand the context of that because, again, racial categories can only be understood in context of the social and historical environment that's happening within society. So if you have free white males and females, all other free persons and slaves, guess what had to be happening in society for this to be the case?
00:17:37
Books, BBQ & Black History
slavery. So the explanation of those racial groups are that, you know, we have free white people, males and females, because we have a system of slavery because you can't have slaves if, if there is not a system of slavery. So when we are talking about, you know, Black and white people with the United States, the reason why we talk about Black and white people so much is no matter how much time has passed in this society, that is the original racial hierarchy.
00:18:07
Books, BBQ & Black History
Black people at the bottom, white people at the top. Everybody else in society kind of gets filtered through. And we'll talk about that more, especially with immigrants. But the OG racial hierarchy is white people enslaved, which is really Black And that's really, really important because also when we're talking about this hierarchy, to be white is to be human and to be slave is to not be human. Because again, slaves were chattel. They weren't considered people. So there's already, again, that differentiation in what the racial categories mean, because it's not just about skin color within American society. It's also about whose life matters, who gets to essentially have humanity. And again, this is just from looking at the U.S. Census. And another few interesting things from the U.S. Census is if you look at all of the different racial categories that have existed on the U.S. Census since 1790, There has never been a time where all the racial categories stayed the same. They always change, which also lets us know that this is something that's socially constructed because if race was just a normal natural occurrence in the world, then it would not change from 1790 till today because
00:19:24
Books, BBQ & Black History
I know there might be some calculations that are off, but in 1790, gravity was the same as it was today. Like I said, not you know getting too deep into that, but that's the point in that social things you know essentially change. Also really interesting about the US Census is that when I told you about those first three racial categories, you might have noticed there are lots of racial groups that are missing. I didn't mention Asian people. I didn't mention indigenous people because they did not show up on the census until various other periods of times. and
00:19:55
Books, BBQ & Black History
that to me is also, again, that indication about the social construction of race because indigenous people not being one of the first U.S. Census is actually kind of wild because they existed before the U.S. Census also was a thing as well. But again, if we understand that race is about, you know, not just race, but we understand the U.S. Census is about divvying up these resources based on your racial category and the U.S. stole those resources from indigenous people, then why would they include them, you know, in the U.S. Census? So,
00:20:30
Books, BBQ & Black History
so when we are again talking about the U.S. census and the social construction of race, another thing I want to point out is that even in those kind of original racial categories of, you know, free white males and females, all of the free persons and slaves, even though those things have like kind of changed over time, one of the the the only rules of race, even with kind of the the ways that it changes based on historic and social context is that really the only rule of being white is that you cannot be Black.
00:21:02
Books, BBQ & Black History
Whiteness is actually very, very, very, very very malleable. Not that Blackness isn't because you can actually put, you can absolutely put people into that non-humanity category. But whiteness is a little bit more malleable because there are lots of white people today that were not considered white, you know, when the country was founded and all of those sorts of things. And that's really a kind of conversation about assimilation. And so when we are talking about assimilation, this is when you have a, a well, because we're talking about race, this is when you have a racially marginalized group that integrates socially, culturally, or politically into the dominant culture of society. So in the United States, the dominant racial culture would be white people. And so when...
00:21:52
Books, BBQ & Black History
People come into the society, and by people i'm talking about immigrants, refugees, anyone who is entering into this new racial hierarchy within the U.S. within US society, they have to ultimately fit into the hierarchy that is already there. So white people at top, you know, Black people at the bottom. And when we are talking about kind of this assimilation, i think a lot, don't want to say everyone, but I remember learning about the melting pot, about the United States being called a melting pot, where, you know, we all just melt into this wonderful, what is it, this wonderful, you know, culture, know,
00:22:32
Books, BBQ & Black History
And we come from all these different cultures and we just you know melt into one. That's you know the melting pot. But we also have another one called the salad bowl theory. And that's really talking about how people of all these different cultures, when they come into America, instead of like feeling like you have to meld and assimilate into one American culture, that dominant culture, that people should still be able to retain their own culture while still kind of building into the culture that is created within the United States. So the melting pot culture,
00:23:05
Books, BBQ & Black History
The melting pot theory that I guess is a theory, but the melting pot analogy I would say that people learn about is really about assimilation.
Assimilation vs. Multiculturalism
00:23:14
Books, BBQ & Black History
And the salad bowl theory is really about multiculturalism. And so when we're talking about assimilation with race, a lot of times what happens is that because the racial hierarchy is white people are at the top.
00:23:27
Books, BBQ & Black History
Black people are at the bottom. When anyone comes into the society, so I'll use immigrants as an example, when immigrants come into the society, generally they tend to be, true and and I would say this is also the contingent on what does their skin color look like, because everyone cannot assimilate into whiteness, you know, because it's based also on phenotype. So if you're a darker skinned person, you can't really assimilate. But for those who are not darker skinned, generally what will happen is that there will be a process by which people start to socially learn, you know, how people of different races are treated, how they are, even how they are presented, you know, to society. So Black people are presented as like violent,
00:24:10
Books, BBQ & Black History
did like just a lot of like very negative stereotypes about Black people. And what's really interesting is those same stereotypes tend to be used on immigrants. So every new you know group of immigrants that comes in, those stereotypes are essentially recycled until they assimilate within society, if they you know actually can. So fitting into that racial hierarchy within society. So even as we have a more multicultural society, At the end of the day, the racial hierarchy still remains white people at the top, you know, Black people at the bottom. And assimilation really comes from this idea of, again, that people have to kind of adapt to the dominant culture or the dominant racial culture, which tends to be white people's culture. And when that happens, a lot of people who are not white are expected to give up, you know, their parts of their culture. yeah.
00:25:04
Books, BBQ & Black History
When we're talking again about kind of having these racial categories as well and having these racial hierarchies, we also have the existence of discrimination. Discrimination are actions against a group of people based on their group membership or just attributes related to discrimination.
00:25:23
Books, BBQ & Black History
Anything related to their group membership, I guess. And discrimination, I'm specifically if we go to talk about institutional discrimination, but institutional discrimination can be embedded into procedures, policies, or objectives in large institutions. So you don't even really need people to like...
Institutional Discrimination Examples
00:25:41
Books, BBQ & Black History
individually have these feelings, I guess, to like do anything because you can write these into policies and they disproportionately impact people. So here are a few examples of racial discrimination. It doesn't really matter if it's intentional or not intentional. What really matters is the outcome of it. So here's some examples of racial discrimination that has come from these racial hierarchies that were created. So Jim Crow laws,
00:26:06
Books, BBQ & Black History
After slavery was abolished, dot, dot, dot, we'll talk about that. After slavery was abolished in the United States, Jim Crow laws were another way of essentially disenfranchising Black people who were no longer enslaved. And these were strict mandates on the segregation of races. So this was very much the separate but equal you know doctrines. North Carolina's Jim Crow era roughly began in about 1868 when the state constitution called for separate schools for Black and white students.
00:26:41
Books, BBQ & Black History
Interracial marriage was banned in North Carolina in 1872. Later on, new laws required separate school books for white and Black students. That was 1889. in the state passed a constitutional amendment. requiring poll taxes and biased literacy tests. So to keep Black people from voting. So I'm really bringing that up as well today because I just want to say, you know, North Carolina is currently, and and hopefully again, one day these things will not be true, but currently to this day, North Carolina has gone out of its way to essentially try to keep Black people from getting education. As we can see, that is a part of Jim Crow. Keep them from voting. That is a part of jim Jim Crow. And that is also related, again, to these racial hierarchies. And this is a blatant example of, what is it, of racial discrimination through policy. Jim Crow is the law. That is literally policy that disenfranchises people with the support of the government. So that's an example of
00:27:45
Books, BBQ & Black History
discrimination. We also have redlining. So redlining is is pretty interesting because whenever... so let me tell you what redlining is first. So redlining is a process by which banks and other institutions refuse to offer mortgages or offer worse rates to customers in certain neighborhoods based on their racial and ethnic com compositions. And this is actually one of the clearest examples of institutionalized discrimination and racism in the history of the United States.
00:28:13
Books, BBQ & Black History
Even though it was formally outlawed in 1968 with the passage of the Fair Housing Act, it continues to this day. So even though redlining is technically illegal, the consequences of redlining have never stopped. It's still harder today for Black people to own a home than a white person, isn't even when they have the same same sort of background. And this is really important when we're talking about redlining outside of homes being the ways that people actually build wealth within society. This is also really relevant because I don't know if people know this, but schools are funded by property taxes.
00:28:51
Books, BBQ & Black History
Schools are funded by property taxes. So you take redlining where you push Black people into poor neighborhoods where their homes are worth less and then also subsequently say that, you know what, we're going to base the resources on your school on how much those homes that you were living in are worth.
00:29:12
Books, BBQ & Black History
Well, what that means is that Black children or not even just Black children, but lots of Black children, especially those living in lower income areas, are going to inferior schools for no other reason than they are Black.
00:29:28
Books, BBQ & Black History
And because it is written as a law in the policy, so it says, the policy says that, you know, we're going to fund schools by property taxes, but if we racially segregate people and put, you know, wealthier people into nicer areas, and we say that, you know, because y'all homes are worth more, y'all are going to have, you know, better schools, then you are quite literally creating the circumstances for that, you know, social inequality to essentially exist. So that redlining, even though it's technically illegal, we can still see the impacts of that institutional discrimination today. And,
00:30:04
Books, BBQ & Black History
Yeah. And I would say like this, this for me is an interesting thing to talk about right now, because the North Carolina state government is actually trying to propose an amendment to essentially eliminate property taxes.
00:30:18
Books, BBQ & Black History
or pay place a limit, I should say, on property taxes in North Carolina. And, you know, a big part of that is to stop the funding for for schools because ultimately the goal was never for, you know, Black children to go to school. And so North Carolina, in my view, is just not interested in educating Black people, specifically like Black youth. Yeah.
00:30:42
Books, BBQ & Black History
Also kind of related to the the discrimination, because I just feel like I give all these examples that I can think of right now, especially when it comes to North Carolina. But the the racial gerrymandering that, you know, i know the really big thing lately had been the Voting Rights Act being struck down by the Supreme Court. And so now a lot of these Southern states have been...
00:31:06
Books, BBQ & Black History
enacting laws to disenfranchise Black people from having the right to vote and something i just thought about when i saw that and even as i was like kind of putting this episode together it's like especially what what was happening in Louisiana was that you know north carolina already did that before the voting rights act was struck down There was a lawsuit against the state of North Carolina from a very, very... that What was the quote? it was They said they drew up the maps with surgical precision to essentially dilute the Black vote in North Carolina. And it was ruled unconstitutional like years ago. And in 2025, when the Republicans ended up with another majority due to gerrymandering in North Carolina, when they ended up with a supermajority in the government... They essentially they essentially disregarded the fact that that map was unconstitutional and brought it back. So, like, North Carolina actually does not have, you know...
00:32:08
Books, BBQ & Black History
represent Black people in North Carolina really don't have state representation or the ability to be represented in electoral politics because of this racial gerrymandering, which again is an example of discrimination using, you know, racial prejudice to basically stop people from being able to participate in social things within society. And so I really, again, find the need to bring that up because even as I'm talking about these consequences of you know these racial hierarchies with discrimination, I'm talking about racism in a moment, but the point of bringing that up is for people to understand that these things did not stop. They may have morphed and they look different, but these things have not stopped. And a lot of the times... you know, Black people are presented as if they are, you know, there's just something culturally wrong and we aren't doing we're supposed to do. And, you know, we're not raising our kids, right? And there's like, no, like everything in the society has been set up to essentially make us fail. And the ones who are able to get past that, like that is, you know, amazing. But that is not the reality for lots and lots of Black people because it was never really set up for us to fail.
00:33:21
Books, BBQ & Black History
within the society but i digress another consequence of racial hierarchies racism And I'm going talk about racism briefly because I really want to talk about white supremacy. But before I get to white supremacy, I want to talk about racism because I do think that this is something that people tend to be familiar with.
Racism and Power Dynamics
00:33:40
Books, BBQ & Black History
But when when I, the way that I define racism is racial prejudice plus power. Prejudice meaning you have a preconceived negative attitude or belief about a group of people. Power meaning you have the ability to exercise racism.
00:33:57
Books, BBQ & Black History
your own will over another. So racism isn't just a feeling. I think that when you know name racism as just a feeling, you ignore all the structural things that make racism possible. Lots of people can have negative feelings about people because of their, you know, group membership, but everybody doesn't have the ability to do something with it. And that's, to me, the biggest difference between, you know, saying that racism being a feeling and racism actually, you know, being about prejudice plus power. Power affects more than just personal relationships. Like your your racial feelings, that might just be... don't want to say just, a you know, that that's not serious, but like people can feel how they feel.
00:34:40
Books, BBQ & Black History
That's what it is. But when it starts impacting how you're... If you're going to get hired, that you're more likely to die in childbirth, that you are more likely to get the death penalty... to be convicted of crimes that you did not do like that for me is it is going a little bit you know deeper and so when we talk about kind of this idea of racial prejudice plus power as racism let's talk about what that looks like so a great example of that would be scientific racism and as a social scientist i love to talk about the idea that science is not objective anyone who tells you that science is objective is someone that I would look at very suspiciously because science is created by human beings. So human beings are going to influence the science that they are creating. But scientific racism is the use of faulty science to support systems of support the system of the racial hierarchy. And it's basically, again, just using science to justify the racial hierarchy within society. So science that, so example of that would be phrenology. If you've ever heard of like people, people, and I'll say Black people specifically, being compared to monkeys or like animals or that sort of thing, that's phrenology. It was a pseudoscientific method that attempted to link intelligence, personality, and behavior to the shape of a person's skull. Another one that I would say is like more recent is if you've ever heard of people, don't even want to say heard, but the idea when people started talking about like intelligence and IQ tests and those sorts of things, which also ends up in eugenics. But there was a book that was released, I'm going to say like the 1990s called The Bell Curve. And it was basically a book, and it was by sociologists, but it was basically a book that said that, you know, they looked at the...
00:36:39
Books, BBQ & Black History
the results of tests and found that was it white people were really Asian people and white people scored better than Black people so based on those results the authors of that book essentially said and it was Hernstein and Murray by the way the bell curve Hernstein and Murray and the authors of that book basically said that you know oh well this is proof that you know people are just less smart than these groups of people so they looked at iq test and the results and basically were like oh we're going to use this science to say you know this is why the racial hierarchy exists but taught nothing about slavery denying access to education redlining jim crow didn't talk about none of that and so that's why i'm like you know even when we talk about science is like
00:37:25
Books, BBQ & Black History
being objective it really isn't and that's also a really great example of racism scientific racism using your racial prejudice against groups of people to justify the system that is essentially harming them so the power structure that is harming them that is racism like it's not just the feeling it's it's when you actually are able you know to do something with it and last thing i'll note about that before talking about white supremacy is that Understanding that racism is about racial prejudice plus power also allows for the understanding that white people do not experience racism.
00:38:04
Books, BBQ & Black History
And like to hear that and be offended by it is to ignore what race actually is, how it was created, you know, within the United States, because white people have never been disenfranchised in the way that Black people have or indigenous people. And so,
00:38:22
Books, BBQ & Black History
If you are a part of a racial group that is oppressing other people and the people that you are oppressing do not like you, that is not racism. That is actually a very normal reaction to living under oppression. And the idea that you can belong to a group that oppresses other people... And that the people that you're oppressing can never be angry about that is also what we are going to, you know, kind of go into now is white supremacy.
Understanding White Supremacy
00:38:51
Books, BBQ & Black History
So white supremacy is a form of racism centered upon the belief that white people are superior to people of all other racial backgrounds and that they should politically, economically and socially dominate non-white people. And one of the first things to say about white supremacy is that you are really not even supposed to talk about it. That's a big part of the reason why they're trying to get it up out of education, you know, woke and, you know, critical race theory and like all this language that they're coming up with is really to stop people from learning about white supremacy.
00:39:25
Books, BBQ & Black History
Whiteness under white supremacy and white racialized identity refers to the way that white people, their customs, their culture, and their beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups are compared.
00:39:36
Books, BBQ & Black History
And this is really at the core of understanding race in the United States because whiteness and the normalization of white racial identity throughout America's history has created a culture where non-white persons are seen as inferior or abnormal. So everybody else under white supremacy, everybody else is a race, but not white people.
00:39:57
Books, BBQ & Black History
And this is also connected to that idea that Du Bois talked about with double consciousness, because what black people understand is that when people say American, they ain't really talking about black people.
00:40:08
Books, BBQ & Black History
American for a large subset of people in the United States really is referring to white people. That's why you don't hear people saying white American, but you hear African American, Mexican American, Hispanic American.
00:40:23
Books, BBQ & Black History
you You hear all of these other iterations, Asian American, Indigenous American, even though I don't use that language, but like but we don't hear people talking about white people like that because white people are considered you know the standard. Another important thing to talk about with white supremacy is that at the root of white supremacy is anti-Blackness. And that's the part people really...
00:40:46
Books, BBQ & Black History
I feel I have the hardest time with really talking about. But anti-blackness is the devaluing of Black people, Black culture and Black history and white supremacy and anti-blackness or or specifically anti-black racism are at the root of pretty much every social issue within the United States. And I'll talk about that more when I get to, you know, the more Black people stuff. but another thing to understand about white supremacy is that white supremacy isn't just about race. this part where it's talking about, you know, we center white people, their culture customs, cultures, and belief as the standard.
00:41:25
Books, BBQ & Black History
that means it shows up in, in other ways because beliefs about gender, which we'll get into in the next episode, beliefs about gender in our society, the idea that, you know, men are supposed to be this and women are supposed to be this and that there are only men and women in society. That so that's that came from you know the people that colonized the society. They killed the original inhabitants, indigenous people, who actually, that was not their belief system. And people were forced into that. The idea that Christianity is the, Christianity being the dominant religion within the United States, that's related to colonialism and chattel slavery. Black people being Christians directly related to being enslaved. This was literally given to Black people by the people who enslaved them and so that religious hierarchy also a part of white supremacy homophobia transphobia the idea that all people have to be heterosexual that's also a part of those european colonial beliefs we're speaking english right now not the indigenous language that is a part of you know colonialism Under white supremacy, white people, cisgender people, heterosexual people, non-disabled people, wealthy people, Christian people, if you fall into any of these categories, you are seen as being more human. You are seen as being more valuable. You're seen as being more deserving of leadership. This is what whiteness actually is. So if you fall into any of these categories under a white supremacist society, you are provided with more humanity and power to harm people, that don't fall within those categories. So those will be the marginalized people within society in a white supremacist society. So again, white, cisgender, heterosexual, non-disabled, wealthy and Christian individuals are seen as more human within these societies. So they're less likely to have their rights taken from them. Although I will say, oh, they absolutely can be, but they're less likely in a white supremacist society. And part of the reason you're not supposed to talk about white supremacy is because you're not supposed to talk about those hierarchies and how they actually are not natural. I really need people to understand that heterosexuality is a type of sexuality.
00:43:40
Books, BBQ & Black History
Christianity is one of thousands of different religious practices. Men and women are two of many different gender categories that have existed throughout, you know, centuries in time.
00:43:54
Books, BBQ & Black History
There are lots of patriarchy is A social system. There are also matriarchies and matrilineal societies. So men being in leadership within society is not just a natural thing, you know, that has happened. There is historical context to that as well. And I say all of this because part of white supremacy success is that people are not necessarily questioning the way that it functions because people believe that is a natural, normal order of things for, of course, men are supposed to lead. Of course, white people are supposed to be in power. Of course, wealthier people are supposed to have more access to things. Of course, people who are not disabled are supposed to be prioritized society. Like, those things are presented to us as normal and not as things that have ultimately been created or systems created to disenfranchise people. So again, kind of the importance of like knowing what white supremacy is, is understanding that it is not just
Forms of White Supremacy
00:44:49
Books, BBQ & Black History
about race. Like, yes, race, very important, but white supremacy isn't really just about race.
00:44:55
Books, BBQ & Black History
We have overt and covert white supremacy, overt being the in-your-face, generally socially acceptable points of white supremacy. So the KKK would be an example. Nazi flags. and And I'm saying this to even with the understanding that in 2026, these things are becoming really, really more socially acceptable, which is also pretty scary. the KKK, MAGA, Confederate flags, Nazi flags, those will be over examples of, of white supremacy. And I'm putting MAGA in there because I really hope people understand at this point that there really is no, no difference ideologically with that, you know, white supremacist, what is it that white supremacist ideology, uh, with MAGA, the KKK, Nazis, all of that. those are over examples. Those are generally socially unacceptable.
00:45:44
Books, BBQ & Black History
The covert examples are the socially accepted ones that are not as visible, but these tend to be more prominent. An example would be a Eurocentric school curriculum. So the school curriculum is focusing on European history and not African history or Asian history or Mexican history or indigenous history, even though, you know, Mexican people are also indigenous. But anti-immigration policies in a so in a society that was built on genocide is actually wild. ideas around the the concept of reverse racism. It's also a part of of, what is it, that covert white supremacy, cultural appropriation. you know Imagine genociding indigenous people and then making your sports teams
00:46:28
Books, BBQ & Black History
Using their cultural imagery as like logos. That's actually wild. But all of those are examples of white supremacy, just so, you know, we can see how it exists, you know, throughout society. So the is a white supremacist society. That's not really something that's up for debate. We couldn't have a white supremacist president if there was not a white supremacist society. He is one person out of, you know, millions. He's not even really that special. because there are lots of people that like think like that, but that's an indictment on how people are creating these racial categories, you know, within society. So now that I've kind of given all of that, you know, kind of background, I want to talk very briefly about, or maybe not briefly, but I want to talk about why Black people need to know and continue learning about race and white supremacy.
Importance of Understanding Race
00:47:17
Books, BBQ & Black History
First and foremost,
00:47:20
Books, BBQ & Black History
white supremacist violence is still happening. ICE is white supremacist violence. Police brutality is white supremacist violence. Literally have been reading about, not even just reading about, but literally read about a 16 year old, i say this, a 16 year old Black girl was lynched in Charlotte, North Carolina. Julia Nzita had been missing for, since what is it? April 28th.
00:47:53
Books, BBQ & Black History
her family, or rather someone in North Carolina found her hanging from a tree on the property of a church. And Julia, 16 years old, was also from the Democratic Republic of Congo. So her immigration status, I feel like is also important to that conversation and rest in power to that beautiful young lady. And I'm bringing up that story because...
00:48:20
Books, BBQ & Black History
Black people do not hang themselves from trees in the South. That is not, and no matter how many suicides they rule that as, that is not, knowing the historical context of like lynchings and all of those, I'm bringing that up because again, these are stories that get swept under the rug, that people just will, again, ruling it suicide, meaning that they're not going to really investigate that. But yeah,
00:48:46
Books, BBQ & Black History
in the context of everything that's happening in the U.S. right now and the escalation of, like, violence against non-white people, these stories, I do think, need to be taken seriously, lifted up, mentioned so that people learn about these stories and learn about these people, more importantly, you know, than the stories and understand that this is a battle that still is ongoing.
00:49:10
Books, BBQ & Black History
Still is ongoing. So, again, I note that white supremacist violence is still happening. And that is something that people, Black people should take very seriously. Another reason why knowing about race and white supremacy is really important for Black people is because it'll help kind of point, pick out like propaganda that you start seeing happening. And one of the biggest pieces of propaganda that wanna point out is the myth of the United States being a nation of immigrants. And understanding race and white supremacy helps you to unpack that as like literal propaganda, white supremacist propaganda, because calling the United States a nation of immigrants erases the true history of this society and the violence against Black and indigenous people. I would actually say that this is a nation that was built off of four different groups, the settler colonists or the colonizers, you know, people like to call them, the colonizers, indigenous people, enslaved people and immigrants. colonizers would be the people who came here and essentially genocided the indigenous people indigenous meaning the people who were already connected to the land here
00:50:16
Books, BBQ & Black History
And the the settler colonists came over from England and they basically took their land. They murdered them, took their land, forced them to convert, used a lot of violence to make that happen. We have enslaved people. So same colonizers stole people from Africa, kidnapped them, brought them over to the United States and forced them to work for free. And then we have immigrants. So immigrants come in you know, for a variety of different reasons throughout the history of the United States. And this is not to say that, you know, that the immigrant conversation isn't important, but I really have to note that every time people say that the United States is a nation of immigrants, it it erases the very horrific things that happen to Black and Indigenous people. And it ignores and erases specifically the genocide of Indigenous and Black people. And it's also really interesting to me because whenever I hear white people call Mexican people immigrants, it's just really wild. And it shows how good American propaganda through history really is because
00:51:21
Books, BBQ & Black History
Mexico was here before the United States was. And just because you drew a border on something doesn't mean that those people, you know, don't exist. Like white people are actually the immigrants or most likely to be the immigrants and or colonizers of, you know, the United States. So it's so interesting. Anytime I hear conversations about immigration, because I'm just like, You know, actually indigenous people like this is their land. Black people are the only group that actually did not come here by choice.
00:51:53
Books, BBQ & Black History
Colonizers came here and killed the people that were here and then declared it their land. And immigrants, like I said, of different immigrants came for a variety of reasons. and But like by distorting that story to say that the United States is a nation of immigrants, you get to erase all that violence. you know, that, you know, actually happened. And i think in the other episode, I mentioned about how like Black people are,
00:52:16
Books, BBQ & Black History
survivors of genocide and part of like not talking about Black people survivors of genocide is that once you again name that genocide you got to talk about who did it and the people who did it were the white supremacist colonizers in the united states and that conversation is also really important because the the propaganda we're presented with as history again comes from a eurocentric a european you know, perspective, because when people talk about the constitution is this wonderful document of freedom and all that, I'm like, they own slaves.
00:52:49
Books, BBQ & Black History
Like some of them were pedophiles. Some of them were rapists. Some of them were murderers. And you're telling, and they had to literally add amendments to give rights to like other people. Women weren't considered people. slaves weren't considered people. They had to like literally write amendments in there for that. And that to me is like important.
00:53:07
Books, BBQ & Black History
It's an important sort of conversation to have. So yeah, so yeah, the United States as a nation of immigrants is absolutely a myth and is very offensive to Black and Indigenous people, in my view, who are still living through, you know, these these genocides. Also important to know about race and white supremacy as a Black person because it requires you to rethink what violence, you know, actually is. And this is something I actually explore in my own research, which I'll talk about in a later episode.
00:53:36
Books, BBQ & Black History
But colonial violence is generally always justified. And so, like, the history of the United States, like I said, doesn't really talk about, like, you know, the murdering of, you know, millions of indigenous people, of destroying their land, of destroying their food, you know, the the sexual abuse of, you know, enslaved women, just women in general, you know, throughout this society. But like,
00:54:04
Books, BBQ & Black History
It's always justified because the thing about a white supremacist society is that it can only be held together by violence because it is not a natural hierarchy. And societies that are built off of colonialism actually require a distortion of the past just to justify the hierarchies that are currently present. So again, a big reason why people are not taught Black history is because Black history, Black and Indigenous history, because I got to say that, but Black and Indigenous history literally exposes the lie of freedom, democracy, and all that of the United States, because there has never, ever been a time in U.S. history where Black people have been recognized as full human beings participating within society. Also want to note that legal violence is justified within white supremacist societies against those who are racially marginalized. So that would be things like police brutality, the institutional violence of poverty, of the lack of health health care, allowing people who are abusers to be in positions of power, the warmongering,
00:55:13
Books, BBQ & Black History
voter id having you know voters rights being something that people have to you know vote on and can be struck down you know from year to year as it you know just was lots of different legal ways like i said to disenfranchise people and i mean ice like ice is a really great example they are legal they are legal racialized violence that is allowed and funded and paid for by taxpayers And I think this conversation about rethinking what violence is, is really important because just because someone puts on a suit does not make their their actions less violent. Just because someone has a larger bank account does not make their actions less violent. And one of the really interesting things I want to pass along also for that context is that when we talk about violence specifically within the United States is that a lot of people like to, you know, outsource and, you know, talk about Nazis and all of that. I really need people to understand that white supremacists precede Nazis.
00:56:10
Books, BBQ & Black History
They precede Nazis. Nazis are actually like the the nephews, I'll call them, the nephews of white supremacy. because
Global Impact of White Supremacy
00:56:19
Books, BBQ & Black History
they also learned, you know, i want to say, you know, Europeans got it just from the United States because they've been doing, you know, wild stuff for a really, really long time, but they absolutely did pick up on the violence that United States, white supremacists, the legal violence that white supremacists used against Black people. They used that for Nazism. So Jim Crow laws, you know, helped to expire inspire some of the things that Hitler did.
00:56:45
Books, BBQ & Black History
with nazis and again i feel like that's important to note because white supremacists are just as violent as nazis and i really need people to understand that also need Black people to understand about white supremacy understand white supremacy and race because you actually do not need to be white to be an agent of white supremacy there are lots of Black people and i want to say you know There are a good amount of Black people who can be agents of white supremacy, who are agents of white supremacy. And you know some of them are absolutely in the government. The defense of white supremacy requires justifying violence against marginalized folks. That means dropping bombs on people in other countries. It don't even matter the reason. If you're justifying that, especially when they're not white people, that is white supremacy. If you're justifying, you know, stripping trans people of their white rights and like not defending their right to exist as they are, that is white supremacy.
00:57:45
Books, BBQ & Black History
The pushing of the idea of Black on Black crime being the reason why Black people aren't doing well, that is white supremacy. Black people are poor because we don't have financial limit literacy. That is white supremacy. Again, you can contribute to these issues just by trying to justify the hierarchy that we are actually living in.
00:58:05
Books, BBQ & Black History
not having a global politic and really only caring about you know Black people within the united states i'd also name that as white supremacy because blackness don't stop at the border Black people are treated poorly throughout the world anti-blackness is a global thing literally was watching the us saw the videos about you know chinese people and the natasha doll and like which is a Black doll that they like Abuse like they they find it funny to abuse like a dog that looks like a Black baby and I bring that up to just show how global anti blackness, you know, actually is so it's not just you know white people. It's just this upholding of some people deserve humanity and some people don't but it looks like anywhere in the world that black people are those groups.
00:58:50
Books, BBQ & Black History
that don't deserve humanity from what I've you know seen. But I don't want to doom and gloom you know all of that. I just think it's really important for us to you know have that context. i also think it's important for Black people to know about, about what is it, white supremacy and race, because you should actually really be proud of your background as a Black person. I understand that my ancestors were tortured, you know, essentially as slaves. And as someone who understands that I'm a survivor of genocide, I will never be ashamed of what my ancestors had to endure because it should actually be the people that benefit from that and the ones whose ancestors engaged in that behavior. Those are the people who should be ashamed. But it's really hard to have those conversations when people don't even know it, don't want to acknowledge it, you're not taught about it, that it's hidden, you know, that sort of thing. You punish for, like, even saying those things.
00:59:52
Books, BBQ & Black History
Because even in the midst of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, mass incarceration, and all the ways that white supremacy has tried to deny Black people their humanity, we still...
01:00:06
Books, BBQ & Black History
create. We still are. We still, you know, are amazing. Our food is, it don't even matter what culture I go into. I know that if Black people made it, the food is probably good. Our spiritual practices, you know, are powerful. No one's ever going to be able to convince me again that Black spiritual practices are evil when they was, Christianity was killing Indigenous people. So,
01:00:33
Books, BBQ & Black History
I will never allow someone to demonize, you know, spiritual practices of my ancestors. Music. We've been creating some of the most beautiful music, like, forever. We're just an extension of that. Shout out to the ballroom culture. Black LGBTQ people have been creating... really beautiful fashion language, just so many contributions. And like, even watching people like, you know, doing all the clock it and like, not really having any understanding of like, yeah, y'all like that's from black LGBTQIA people. And the fact that we're still able to create things and like people will denigrate black people, but they always want to invite to the cookout. I don't invite nobody to the cookout that ain't black. But because you don't need to invite to the cookout because if you're black, you're already there. But I find it so interesting that people always you know have negative things to say about black people, but our culture is everywhere, everywhere. And so clearly we got something that somebody wants. you know, learning more about black people, about race, about white supremacy has made me more proud of my background. Yes. Slavery is a horrific part of that story, but that is for the people, who are racialized white to unpack, a survivor of genocide, i don't have nothing to be ashamed of, of but the ones who defend it deny it, downplay and continue to participate in it, you know, pretty much should be,
01:02:00
Books, BBQ & Black History
Now, an interesting fact I've learned as a sociologist, even though I've just shared all of this stuff, is that, you know, we we've been talking a little bit about slavery and about how slavery is really the origin of the racial hierarchy within, you know, the United States.
13th Amendment and Modern Slavery
01:02:14
Books, BBQ & Black History
But slavery actually was never abolished. The 13th Amendment actually reads, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment or a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction. So what does that mean in layman's terms? It means that slavery is abolished only for those who are not convicted of crime.
01:02:39
Books, BBQ & Black History
So if you were convicted of a crime, all those things that you were not allowed to do once slavery was abolished, guess what? Now you can do it to people that are in prison.
01:02:50
Books, BBQ & Black History
And I didn't even, you know, go too deep into that because my background is actually in criminology. So that part right there, it needs a whole episode to talk about it. But yeah. And when I, so even though slavery wasn't abolished, it was just restructured into something different, i.e.
01:03:08
Books, BBQ & Black History
the prison system. So when people talk about prison as a extension of slavery, that's not a like metaphor. Like that's like a literal, it literally is an extension of slavery that's not like i said a metaphor it just it is i learned about this ava duvernay's documentary 13th when i was in graduate school studying to be a criminologist and this was really interesting to me because literally everything happening today in the united states can be traced back to chattel slavery and the genocide of black and indigenous people and not really
01:03:44
Books, BBQ & Black History
ever being accountable or paying reparations, you know, to that. The reason why you know we have issues with people, you know wages within our society is because if your society was actually started off of the labor of off of the free force labor of people, then you probably don't want you know to pay nobody because you know putting these people into prisons, that actually is free labor. don't know people know that, but like prisons actually contract labor out. So fun fact about North Carolina, and I know I'm digressing. But a fun fact about North Carolina is that if you are convicted of a crime and put into prison in North Carolina,
01:04:21
Books, BBQ & Black History
If you are an able-bodied adult, you are required to do whatever work that the prison assigns to you, and you cannot be paid more than $1 per day. And sometimes I'm to say this stuff, but I will always say, please go look these things up.
01:04:35
Books, BBQ & Black History
Please. Because this is information you can find on the internet. But yeah. And what is the benefit, you know, of of prisons putting people in there and only paying them, a you know, $1 a day? Well, it means places like Walmart.
01:04:49
Books, BBQ & Black History
Amazon, you know, the California with the, you know, firefighters, you can contract, you know, prisoners, incarcerated people out to do that work. And then you don't have to pay them.
01:04:59
Books, BBQ & Black History
And so now you have free labor again, dating back to chattel slavery. ICE and police violence, that is also related to this history because ICE is literally modeled after the police. Police literally evolved from slave patrols. They were literally out catching people who were slaved they enslaved to bring them back to slavery. They were asking...
01:05:22
Books, BBQ & Black History
They were asking these escaped enslaved people for their freedom papers, almost like ICE is asking for proof of citizenship. And in the same ways that those slave patrols did not care about whether those Black people have freedom papers, does ICE care about whether you have citizenship?
01:05:37
Books, BBQ & Black History
No, because again, it is an extension of what the United States has always been. the attacks on education, that also goes back to this conversation about chattel slavery and the genocide of black and indigenous people the attacks on education are related to the fact that black people were literally never supposed to have education literally were killing black people for learning how to read and write and the only thing they were really allowed to how to read was the bible and the attack on education today i would actually connect to this idea of like Black people were never supposed to have education. The most we were ever supposed to do was to serve white people, to be slaves to white people. And the fact that that's no longer the case is really a disruption to, again, the racial hierarchy that the United States was built on. And so, yeah, that is my interesting fact I learned as a sociologist.
Reflecting on Slavery Narratives
01:06:29
Books, BBQ & Black History
So all of this now, because it's been a pretty, pretty long episode, I'm really glad. But all of this now really goes back to the book excerpt that I read. And so the book excerpt I read is from a book called North Carolina Slave Narratives, The Lives of Moses Roper, Lunsford Lane, Moses Grandy, and Thomas H. Jones.
01:06:50
Books, BBQ & Black History
And excerpt that I read at the beginning was about was from Lunsford Lane. He was an enslaved Black man in North Carolina, born May the 30th, 1803, to Edward and Clarissa Lane,
01:07:02
Books, BBQ & Black History
who were enslaved on neighboring plantations in Raleigh, North Carolina. And I chose that narrative, one, because i know a lot of people feel like we talk about slavery, you know, too much and people don't really want to have those conversations. But that's not my feeling.
01:07:18
Books, BBQ & Black History
I think that we don't know enough about slavery, to be quite honest, because I think if people knew more about it, they would really understand about the conditions that we are living in and understand the connections between what is actually happening in our society, you know, right now. Also thought it was interesting in that excerpt about how Lunsford Lane made a note of how like he was able to play with white children. But as he got older, that's when he started realizing like, oh, I'm actually different than these white children because these white children can tell me what to do. And they realize that they have authority over me as a black enslaved person. He also pointed out how he noticed that the white children were encouraged to read and write and it wasn't permitted for him.
01:08:03
Books, BBQ & Black History
and he talked about, and and also I noticed it mentioned the psychology of slavery and recognizing that you don't have full autonomy over yourself or your own decisions. And the excerpt ended with him kind of discussing his dreams of freedom for from slavery. So even though he recognized how harsh his conditions were, he still dreamed of better than what he was living in and you know for me that's really reminiscent of that our ancestors did more with less and for me i'm like i'm not living under those conditions is it bad right now absolutely but he's talking about wanting to learn how to read and write as you know i'm someone who is able to go and get like multiple degrees And for me, it's like, what was the point of me getting those degrees I'm going to just go off and live like a white person in a white supremacist society and do nothing for the people that are part of my community?
01:09:03
Books, BBQ & Black History
I think that... this is also a good conversation about how children are, you know, also socialized into the racial hierarchy. And so any conversation I hear people saying about, it oh, you know, kids don't need to learn this and blah, blah, blah. If I talk to any black person, they can tell me about a racist person from their like childhood. You know, even for myself, I've told people this before, but like, you know, most of the people I went to high school with that were racist, they are MAGA now.
01:09:30
Books, BBQ & Black History
and And I'm not surprised because they were racist when we were kids. And so they grew up to be racist adults because nobody challenged or, you you know, that racial, the racial ideas that they had. And, and so the idea that white children shouldn't learn about race because, you know, it'll hurt their feelings is also white supremacy because what it implicitly says, we don't care about the harm that, you know, black children are getting from racist,
01:09:58
Books, BBQ & Black History
people, racist adults and racist children, but we got to protect these white children, which I would also note. there's a pedophile to president so there's not really that much protection of children going on in a society that would elect somebody like that also with that narrative from lunsford lane is it reminded me that education has always been a way or denying people education has always been a way to try to interfere with Black liberation because we were never supposed to be educated
01:10:29
Books, BBQ & Black History
Voting, I think, is a tool that can be used for Black liberation. I myself personally, and I have to say this, me personally, I'm not telling you what to do. Electoral politics really aren't my thing. I see voting, you know, as a tool. But there's a reason that the most radical organizations, radical Black organizations require people to read, require them to be politically educated. because there's lots of conversation about people dying for the right to vote. But we also need to talk about people dying for the right, people being killed for the for learning how to read and write.
01:11:02
Books, BBQ & Black History
Because a Black population that focuses on voting instead of literacy is how you get Black faces in high places that are also agents of white supremacy. So we still need to make sure that we are, you know, cognizant of our past so that we are not reproducing people. We are not producing people within the Black community that are going to reproduce white supremacy for with a Black face, I would say. So this has been a pretty long episode, but I want to leave you with my inspirational quote for today or the one from somebody. So this is from Maya Angelou.
01:11:39
Books, BBQ & Black History
Bringing the gifts my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of a slave. I rise, I rise, I rise. And i love... this quote because like I said before i think slavery is a hard conversation to have but of course because we're talking about race today there's no way to kind of get around that but like when I think uh because I've been reading like you know slave narratives and seeing what you know our ancestors have like lived through i cannot help but like
01:12:14
Books, BBQ & Black History
be proud of being in a space to be able to share these things, to challenge, you know, these systems that have stolen our lives, you know, of of millions of Black people globally and to basically, you know, let people know that we are not, we don't have to accept this. And like, I think, you know, i could have been born anywhere, any place as anybody and I would choose to be black you know every time so I just want to say you know thank you for being here for this episode I know this was a little longer than general maybe maybe they'll be longer you know this is the first season we still figured it out but I'm looking forward to continue learning with you. As always let me know what you think like comment subscribe let me know what you think about this episode and as usual glad to be learning with you.