TheGrio Daily

Caucasian Race Theory

Episode 8
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“The history of racism should make white kids feel bad.” It’s Wypipo Wednesday and today we are talking about critical race theory; three words that seem to demand people to pick a side. Michael Harriot gives us the most accurate, clear, concise breakdown of critical race theory you’ll ever need. TheGrio Daily is an original podcast by TheGrio Black Podcast Network. #BlackCultureAmplified

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Michael Harriot [00:00:05] Hello and welcome back to theGrio Daily, the only podcast that knows what to do if your train goes off the track. Pick it up. No, go pick it up. Pick it up. I’m world famous wypipologist Michael Harriot. You know, I’m kind of like a Baptist preacher. So, I ain’t gonna hold you long. You know, I know Reverend Jenkins. He be lyin’ what he’s saying he ain’t gonna hold you long. But I’m only going to take up like ten, 15 minutes of your time every day to talk about something that’s going on in our village. Right. And while Reverend Jenkins might not ever dedicate a single sermon to white people, you know, because there are no white people in the Bible. theGrio daily, we welcome all of God’s children into our loving arms. So we dedicate every mid-week episode to Wypipo Wednesdays. That’s when we travel to the deepest regions of caucasity to explore the world of whiteness. Think of me as like the alligator hunter of whiteness. And today we’re going to talk about what are the scariest subjects in all of Caucasian, CRT. No, we’re not talking about the legal theory. They use the lens of race to examine social structures. We’re talking about white people’s fear of historical truth and history and conversations about race. We call it Caucasian Race Theory. I’m Michael Harriet, world famous wypipologist. And this is theGrio Daily.

Before we get into this, we’re going to have to explain how all of this started. So if you read white people’s versions of the news pr history, law professor and civil rights attorney Derrick Bell created critical race theory in the 1980s out of thin air. And he was the pioneer. Don’t get me wrong. But you know how white people think, right? They think Martin Luther King invented civil rights. They think, you know, Harriet Tubman invented the Underground Railroad. They think, oh, I don’t know, Juvenile invented backing that ass up, Bill did pioneer using the law and a racial lens to examine legal structures. Black people have been doing that since forever. For instance, there was a lawyer who argued that the movement to abolish slavery was in direct conflict with the Constitution. And he was a judge, too. But the judge who wrote that he came a little bit before Derrick Bill, see his name was Macon Bolling Allen, and he was literally the first Black lawyer in America. And one of the fears that white people have about CRT is that it makes white kids feel bad. 

Ron DeSantis [00:02:59] We are not going to tell some kindergartner that they’re an oppressor based on their race and what may have happened 100 or 200 years ago. 

Condoleezza Rice [00:03:07] I would like Black kids to be completely empowered to know that they are beautiful in their Blackness. But in order to do that, I don’t have to make white kids feel bad for being white. 

Michael Harriot [00:03:19] Wait. School isn’t supposed to make you feel bad. Aye somebody. Yeah. Yeah. Can ya’ll get my mom on the phone? Yeah. She didn’t cussed me out when she found out I didn’t know my timetables. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was six, though. Get back to the episode? Okay. Well, if you’re studying slavery, though, shouldn’t you feel bad? Do you want kids giggling about lynching and human trafficking? Or do you not want to teach them at all? And if we did feel bad, why do we teach history at all? For instance, kids learn about the English colonies and how to get settled in New York and the Spanish in Florida. And then when we get to Black people, we teach our kids that slaves came from Africa. Wait, wait, wait, wait slaves came from Africa? But what was their religion? It just came from Africa. But but but but. But you said, like, the Dutch people was farmers and then they were aristocrats. And some of them, you know, had religion. They were pilgrims. So so was the African people. What a kind warriors was. You know, the Mandingo warrior. Nah they was just African. But but that’s the whole continent tho. Like were they born slaves? No. You said the Pilgrims was pilgrims before they came over here, right? And the English they were settlers looking to seek a new land and the Spanish conquistadors. So how the Africans were slaves when they came over here? Where exactly did they come from? Africa! Apparently, Black people don’t have countries or religions or skills see all those Black people who came over here through force and kidnaping, they were just people from a continent. And doesn’t erasing the history, culture and the whole back story of an entire people make Black kids feel bad? Doesn’t this inherently teach Black kids that their origin story is worthless in the context of the entire American education system? That’s Caucasian Race Theory. And to be fair, you know what? white people didn’t actually care about CRT for a long time. They didn’t care about critical race theory. What they hate is any unimpeachable truth that reveals the social, political or economic advantage that they have had in America since the beginning. So how did this get to be so crazy? In March of 2021. This dude named Christopher Rufo admitted that his goal was to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think Critical Race Theory. Yeah. His goal was just to make everything Black negative. That’s how everything became CRT, the 1619 Project. Black History Month. Wash clothes. It all became CRT and he wasn’t done. See Rufo. He wasn’t just like some dude on Twitter. He actually worked for a powerful think tank called the Manhattan Institute. And it’s like, run by, like, the whitest white people. They spread ideas like Western societies. White people are better and that Black people have lower IQ. That’s really a thing that they wrote. So in August of 2021, the Manhattan Institute created a sample piece of legislation for Republican lawmakers that redefined CRT. According to the Manhattan Institute and Christopher Rufo definition. And since then, according to education advocacy outlet Chalkbeat, at least 36 states have introduced legislation or executive orders that restrict teachers from educating students on racism, Black history, or even using the word white people. You know, white people hate when you say white people, but where did it get those ideas from? Like, where did the Manhattan Institute get them? Did they just like create this sample legislation? Well, if you look at those laws, they are almost  copy and paste it from that Manhattan Institute sample legislation. And whenever I read research like I’m a nerd, so I always look at like the footnotes in notes. So let’s do it with the Manhattan Institute sample legislation that ended up in 36 states miraculously. Right. Let’s see where they got all of this research for them to create these racist, anti CRT laws. Oh, wait. Christopher Rufo. Christopher Rufo and Christopher Rufo again. Oh, man. It’s just like, oh, Christopher Rufo. The guy who said his goal was to make people have negative feelings about Black history. Doesn’t it all makes sense now? Well, I mean, it actually makes me feel bad. But you know what? I don’t mind. See. Throughout American history, making people feel bad has actually been a good thing because it actually causes change. The Voting Rights Act was fought for, for years, but you know what made them actually signed the law? Because white people felt bad when they saw police beating protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. You know, the March on Washington’s entire point was to make white people feel bad. That was the whole point of many of the civil rights protests during that era. And I know you all think that Donald Trump became president because of economic anxiety. But what the hell is economic anxiety? You know what it is? Why isn’t white people feeling bad? Also, it probably had a little bit of something to do with them taking orders for eight years from a Black dude. But, you know, feeling bad is actually a catalyst for change. So let’s look at things that make me feel bad. 

Reporter [00:09:38] A new study published by the National Academy of Sciences pulled data from close to 2 million hospital births in Florida for over two decades. The study found that if Black babies were cared for by Black doctors, they were twice as likely to survive than if cared for by white doctors. 

Ted Talk [00:09:54] A 2019 build report showed the majority white districts receive about $23 billion more in annual funding than nonwhite districts, even though they serve about the same number of students. 

Ted Talk [00:10:07] Black girls are seven times more likely than their white counterparts to experience one or more out-of-school suspensions, and they are nearly three times more likely than their white and Latinx counterparts to be referred to the juvenile court. 

Michael Harriot [00:10:21] Yeah, you know what else feels bad? Racism. And the only thing that we can do to change it is to make other people feel bad. We’ve got to make people understand that it is bad that a Black boy is six times more likely to be shot and killed by a police officer than a white boy. We should feel bad that kids with Black sounding names are more likely to have their resumes tossed in the garbage. We should feel bad that no matter how hard a Black person works or how long they go to school, they will statistically be paid less than a white person with the same education and experience. We should feel bad that the average Black person has one dime for every dollar that the average white family has. And every Black child in America lives in a separate country than the white privilege children. And it should make everybody feel bad. Imagine if you went to the doctor’s office and you found out that you had cancer. Because, you know, racism, it really is a cancer. But before you found out, the doctor ran all those tests and he looked in all your holes. Look, I’m not a doctor, but I think the technical name is looking in holes. I think what they’re telling me in the control room, it’s best to call it a doctor’s exam. I would agree to disagree. But after he looked in all your holes. He discovered that you have a malignant growth that is probably going to kill you. But, you know, there’s a good chance that chemotherapy and operation maybe could save your life. And he walked into the room to tell you about this operation or about this new spectacular treatment that could cure cancer. Both just before he walked in. The nurse grabbed him by the arm and said, Hey, are you sure you want to tell the patient about this treatment? Like, are you sure you want to let them know that they’re sick and they might die and that this cancer is growing inside the body that will definitely kill them because, you know, it might make them feel bad. No. How much sense does that make? See, either you can believe that the path towards progress, equality and a multicultural equal democracy is to learning about the injustices of the past. Or you can believe that one day on one bright morning, all the white people in America will wake up at the same time, hop in the shower without a washcloth, grab a cup of coffee and say to themselves, You know what? This world that gave me this educational advantage, which gave me this health advantage, which gave me this economic advantage, which gave me a political advantage which lasted throughout my life and my mama’s life and my grandfather’s life dating back to before they wrote the Constitution. I think I should give that up. And I’m not making this decision based on anything I learned in school or anything a teacher told me or anything I read in the book. The thought dropped into my mind out of the blue. Do you believe that will happen? And if not, then the only option that we have is to make people feel bad about upholding the status quo. And that’s why we should be making white children feel bad. And if you don’t think so, then you believe in Caucasian Race Theory. Thank you for coming to theGrio daily. Don’t forget to download theGrio app. Don’t forget to subscribe. And don’t forget to tell at least one of your friends about this podcast. And as always, I’ll leave you with another Black saying about the probability that white people will magically come to their senses and start giving up their privilege. Who do I look like? Boo boo the fool. Thank you for listening to theGrio Daily. If you like what you’ve heard, please give us a five star review. Download theGrio app, subscribe to the show and share it with everyone you know. Please email all questions, suggestions and compliments to podcasts@thegrio.com. 

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