How Has the Definition of WHITENESS Changed Over Time?

[00:00:00]Okay.

[00:00:01]Can we Can we rewrite history?

[00:00:04]>> Mhm.

[00:00:04]>> Michael Harriot. And how do we how do we shift the narrative because we those of us who have hair of wool and skin skin of bronze are still under the same the same edict, right?

[00:00:16]>> Mhm.

[00:00:18]>> But it's it's oppressive.

[00:00:21]How do how do we get out of it? And and what's wild is they have some people who also have been grafted in because the Italians were not considered that and before them the Irish weren't either.

[00:00:32]>> Right.

[00:00:33]>> But somehow they got And now we have the Spanish-speaking folk who know black.

[00:00:38]You know, they've been able to expand this notion of Christianity or whiteness to encompass people who would fall back then would have fallen under that same outcast.

[00:00:48]>> Right.

[00:00:48]>> outcast.

[00:00:50]We will never be able to be grafted in, nor should we want to.

[00:00:54]>> Right.

[00:00:55]>> So how do we have a different discussion today so that one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all applies to justice for all all of us.

[00:01:04]>> Right. So I think that we've always had that discussion, right? We've never centered or founded that discussion in the idea of we want what the white people have.

[00:01:18]Like our notion of freedom was based on our idea, not a pope, not Henry the Navigator, not these scriptures.

[00:01:32]They were based on who we were before there was an America, before there was kidnappers, before there was Henry the VIII, right?

[00:01:41]And those are the ideas that we forced upon this country. And our job, I think, is to keep expanding those ideas, right?

[00:01:51]Because again, our notion of freedom was not black freedom.

[00:01:56]It was human freedom, right? Again, and so I think what we've been doing again, there's nothing that black people have ever done to expand the idea of freedom in this country. Not democracy. I I kind of bristle when I hear these people talk about this idea of democracy because it it's not democracy. The founders specifically say you can read the letters from Thomas Jefferson. Again, these are not my interpretation. You know I don't want that democracy stuff, right? Um not democracy, but freedom. And this is a different thing. Political liberty, personal, individual, and collective freedom, right?

[00:02:40]And they were different and we forced them upon this country. We fought again, when we gave ourselves the right to vote, we gave everybody the right to vote.

[00:02:53]When we we enacted our own emancipation.

[00:02:56]Like remember, like the 13th Amendment also gave Native Americans citizenship. It gave everybody citizenship, right? Um And so cuz there are no constitutional amendments, very few laws that specifically say like existing is for black people.

[00:03:14]It will say stop like the thing that we enacted was for everyone.

[00:03:19]And I think that idea carrying it forward, right?

[00:03:24]You know, there's people who kind of want to base laws on this exclusive notion of black Americans or on like this restrictive thing that's kind of like a mirror image of white supremacy, but with black people.

[00:03:44]And that's never been who are now. That is a separate issue from who should get reparative justice from this country, there's people who should specifically receive it, right? But expanding the idea of liberty and freedom, the ideas that they said, they wrote, but we took and made them reality. I think that is our job.

[00:04:07]>> I've been struggling 250 years with talking about this country's founding.

[00:04:11]The entirety of the 250 years, when I think about culture, when I think about America, they say, you know, apple pie, you know, certain things are American.

[00:04:23]But it seems like blackness has been part and parcel of creating the American aesthetic, culture, language, music, art from its inception. Am I Am I wrong for that? This is me just being an armchair historian.

[00:04:39]>> I mean, you're not wrong, right? I mean, when you think about it, all of the things that we think of of as American culture are adaptations of black culture.

[00:04:51]>> Give us some examples, Michael.

[00:04:52]>> Well, the music, right? Like, I mean, white people were not singing songs in church, right? Like, when I talk about the Holy Ghost, right? Like, now you see, you know, white people get in THE SPIRIT. THAT WAS NOT A THING, RIGHT?

[00:05:05]Until we came here, right? Um not even just that, like, jazz, funk, like, rock and roll, like, um all of it >> All of it.

[00:05:16]>> were adaptations I mean, even country music, right? Anything with a banjo.

[00:05:20]Right. Not just anything with a banjo, right? The guy who they called the father of country music, right?

[00:05:27]If you asked him, right? He says, well, look, man, um I used to be what they call a gandy dancer. I used to work around black guys on the railroad. My father was poor. I worked around black guys, and that's how I learned the rhythm. We would have to >> Um when you hit it was a song.

[00:05:44]>> And I they taught me how to imitate a train whistle. Well, that's what country music called yodeling now, right? They called him like later on people would say his would after he died his wife said, well, he you know, got that from Scottish Highlanders and then it turns out he had never been to Scotland, right? He just got it from some black folks, right? Um the what they call the first family of country music, the Carters.

[00:06:12]Well, how did they get all that music?

[00:06:14]They had a guy who traveled around with them. They called him the human tape recorder.

[00:06:20]And he would take these folk songs and teach them how to play them, right? So, the style of guitar ring and singing all of those songs came from one black guy who and you know what they gave him for?

[00:06:32]Right? He had he had miss he was missing a leg. So, they bought him a wooden leg, right? Um and his name Lesley Riddle. You can look it up. Like I'm not making up this these ideas, right? So, again, the culture, even the stuff that we kind of refer to as like white culture, the the rock and roll, the country music, all that there's no culture without black culture, right? Um and so, when we talk about and it's America's biggest export, right? And then it's not just >> Yes.

[00:07:05]>> not just the culture, right? Like there was no European or American form of blacksmithing until they got they went to Africa and got blacksmithing people who had been doing it for millennia, right? You talk and it's it's rice, the rice culture, right? Um how we eat, right? The first American edible cash crop, rice, Africans, right? Um all all of it, right? When you talk about the knowledge, the history, um it is it the culture that we call American that we export all over the world is just black culture's adaptation to America.

[00:07:46]>> What I see it as is um erasure of blackness. It's taking black people's stuff and erasing them and then commodifying it and then reframing the history around it, right?

[00:07:57]So, everything from vaccines, Onesimus, teaching people how to vaccinate against smallpox. An enslaved person like, "Oh, this is all you got to do, get put a little bit here." And ancient technology that came from Africa, the rice like you mentioned, macaroni and cheese.

[00:08:15]Like all all the spices, anything that has seasoning.

[00:08:19]>> [snorts] >> Anything that has seasoning. How they preserve meat, you know, it's it's stunning to me, but it also speaks to a different kind of culture because you and I, you know, we the way we move we don't need to have that whole I need credit for this or we need to lift up one person and celebrate one person because nothing happens singularly. Anywhere. It's always a collaboration and who gets credit is the person that that gets to write it down, right? Or gets to say I did this. But you even what we're doing here, it takes a village to produce a show. I would never sit here and say, you know, my name's on it, but every day I thank everybody because this doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's wild to me. Maybe that's white culture. Maybe that's whiteness.

[00:09:07]The the ability to take credit for things.

[00:09:09]>> Right. Because the idea of intellectual property really kind of didn't exist, right? Like it was like, you know, you ask Socrates and play They would go to Africa and and the Africans were like, "Yeah, we'll teach you how to, you know, the the the guess the weather and chart the stars and we'll teach you algebra and all of this stuff, right? And philosophy and all of the scientific knowledge. We'll give that to you." And they not well, Socrates and all of those people they were willing to give the Africans credit. It was later that we were erased, right? Cuz it wasn't like the people who taught them say you got to tell them my name, right? They didn't think that the the intelligence and the information belonged to them, right? Until >> Right.

[00:09:55]>> it was like it wasn't really until the 1300s when like these European glass makers really is when the first time it started. Um they gave what they call a patent on a glass making technique.

[00:10:08]And from that like that is the origin of what we now call capitalism, right? Um and so Mhm.

[00:10:17]>> So then somebody said, "Hey, if we give a patent and we can make money cuz you got to pay for that, right?"

[00:10:23]>> Right.

[00:10:23]>> And now I don't have to do anything to make money but give you a letter or number to say >> Make it illegal to to to do this thing, to use this technique unless they pay us.

[00:10:36]And that idea of patenting like again was instrumental in the development of America because when they came here what we they the people here who first came were inept and they gave them what they call land patents to bring people who could build and to grow. They gave them 50 acres for every person who they brought over, right? And so these initial families that came over here we think they conquered America.

[00:11:04]No, they got free land. They came over here and got free land.

[00:11:07]>> That didn't belong to them.

[00:11:08]>> Right. And then we know like again these are my I do we you can look 1638 a guy named George Menefee said, "Hey man, what if I patent the get land patents for what he called the Negroes I have bought out of Africa."

[00:11:25]>> We're prepared. Do not give in to fear.

[00:11:29]We are fearless.

[00:11:32]This is not the time be afraid. This is a time to stand up and fight back.

[00:11:37]And to resist any temptation for them to divide us.

[00:11:41]We're in this together. The rule OF LAW IS ON OUR SIDE. WE WILL NOT GIVE IN, not give up, we will not capitulate, WE WILL NOT BOW, WE WILL NOT BEND, WE WILL SURVIVE.